Oreo CheeseCake

so this blog has become unBEARably boring (like the pun, huh? huh? teehee) so the terrorrist polar bear has hijacked it again to post my newest (by new i mean like 8 months old) recipe which has always been a favourite of mine - oreo cheesecake !
it all began when wilson told me about nat baking the best oreo cheesecake ever and this got me thinking about oreo cheesecakes.. so i tried my hand at baking it.

it tasted pretty damn good if you ask me, but why do i natter on? recipe below ! with one measly photo just because i didn't take any photos :(

Oreo Cheesecake

3 - 4 cups Oreo Cookie crumbs
3 tbsp butter, melted

3 pkgs. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
1 can (14 oz.) Sweetened Condensed Milk
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 TBS flour
3 large eggs
1 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
20 Oreo Cookies, quartered
Oreo cookies for garnish if desired

1. Preheat oven to 300° F. Grease 9-inch springform pan.
2. Fill an oven safe cake pan (I use a 9×9) 3/4 full with warm water. Set on bottom oven rack while oven is preheating.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, combine Oreo crumbs and butter, stir to combine. Press onto bottom and 1 inch up side of prepared pan.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove and increase oven temperature to 350.
5. In a large mixing bowl beat cream cheese until creamy. Add sweetened condensed milk and beat until smooth. Add sugar and flour, beat to combine. Add eggs one at a time beating only to combine after each addition. When adding the third egg, also add the lime juice and vanilla extract; beat until combined.
6. Bake in preheated oven for 50-65 minutes or until edge is set and centre moves slightly. Watch carefully and do not overbake.
   
7. Shut oven off and allow cheesecake to cool in oven for 1-4 hours. Run a warm knife around edge of cheesecake after 1 hour.
   
8. Place in fridge to cool completely. Allow to chill at least 24 hours before serving for best flavor and texture.

Using a spatula, gently fold in the quartered Oreo cookies. Gently pour batter evenly into prebaked crust.
*You can arrange Oreo cookie pieces over top of batter for a pretty presentation if desired.

So that's it for now.. more post when I'm free ! quite possibly a post on how to make the awesomest sweet corn or durian or green tea icecream coz i just bought an ice cream maker and ice creams are fun !

may the force be with strawbunny! cheers

seafood chowder

WARNING: THIS BLOG HAS ONCE AGAIN BEEN HIJACKED BY THE FURRY BEARY COUNTERPART AS IT HAS BEEN DORMANT FOR FAR TOO LONG

believe me i am very much aware this is a super backdated post.
and that you can't see the seafood chowder made. just the puff pastry that sits on top of the soup.
but its still a pretty fantabulous seafood chowder.

am pretty sure this will be liberally edited once the author comes home from darwin and realises what i've done (;

anyway to cut the chase, the recipe for seafood chowder!

Seafood Chowder

if you make it right it SHOULD look like this

Ingredients (serves 6)

• 1 medium carrot, finely chopped
• 1 stick celery, finely chopped
• 3 (750g) potatoes, peeled, roughly chopped
• 4 cups (1 litre) chicken stock
• 2 corn cobs
• 500g gourmet marinara mix
• 200ml thickened cream
• Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 2 tbs chopped fresh parsley
• Crusty French bread

Method

1. Place carrot, celery, potatoes and stock in a large pan. Cover and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until vegetables are tender. Process mixture until smooth. Return to pan.
2. Cut kernels from corn cobs and add to soup. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until corn is tender.
3. Reduce heat and add marinara mix and cream. Stir, without boiling for about 3 minutes or until seafood is cooked and chowder is hot. Season to taste.
4. Stir through parsley. Serve immediately with bread. or with puff pastry if you fancy it (like i do!)

have a good meal people ! =)

It's always greener on the other side

Thanks to a beary insistent relation of mine, a whole family of tubby, furry little green globs were created at 12a.m. last night. You know who you are.

The icing on the onde-onde was that pandan leaves are not readily available in good ol' Aussie as opposed to in Malaysia. And at that hour no less. So we ended up having to cheat a little with pandan flavouring and a mixture of blue and yellow food colouring. Which made our onde seriously GREEN. Think the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz kinda green.


But otherwise, our creations were pretty authentic. We had a wee bit of trouble with the shapes of some of our onde but given it was 12a.m., who really cares? Seriously though, expect to have a lot of mishapen ondes along the way. It takes a while to master the technique of making a non-leaking onde-onde.

Some of the sorry mishaps of our attempt

The Beast and Beauty

For the uniniated, who are no doubt tremendously confused right now, onde-onde is a Malaysian sweet meat made of glutinous rice flour with a beautiful gula melaka filling. 'Beautiful' because when you take a bit out of it, the filling literally explodes in your mouth. Mmmm...

Onde-onde

Ingredients
Outer layer
500 gm glutinous rice flour
3 pandan leaves
(alternatively: pandan flavouring and green food colouring)
100 gm dessicated coconut
½ cup water at room temperature
1 pot of boiling water

Filling
⅓ cup gula melaka shavings (palm sugar)

½ cup brown sugar
mixed together evenly

Method

1. Blend pandan leaves with the room temperature water.
2. Add the water to the rice flour and knead the mixture by hand till it just becomes a dough. The consistency of the dough should be easily shapeable and not too dry. A rough guide would be when the dough can be first kneaded without sticking to your palms. For example, the picture here shows what your dough should NOT look like.
   
3. Pinch out some of the dough, enough to roll a 2 cm diameter ball.
4. With your thumb, make an indentation in the middle of the ball and pack some of the fillings into it.
   
5. Pinch the top of the outer layer of the onde to reseal it, leaving the filling inside. Roll it gently into a ball once again.
6. Drop the onde into a pot of boiling water
7. When the onde floats to the surface of the water, scoop it out and roll it in a bowl containing the dessicated coconut.
8. Allow to cool at least 10 minutes before eating to avoid scalded tongues.

Just as a note, each onde-onde should be eaten whole because they tend to squirt when chewed on. Enjoy!

Merry Chrismurf!

Having taken an almost six month hiatus from penning down my recipes, I feel a little apprehensive about blogging again. Also, I wanted to make a stellar comeback with some blindingly awesome recipes.

Although I wouldn't say that anyone would be struck blind by the few recipes I shall post up today, I do think that in the spirit of the holidays, I will be forgiven. And besides, who can go wrong with the often eaten and very appreciated Christmas Feast.

Most of us are well aware of the Reason for the Season but, being food lovers, we can't help enjoying stuffing our faces year after year after year. One could almost say, that God's giving us a reason to celebrate so we might as well go all out..






But, I digress. To cut to the chase, I put together (with liberal help) a menu of the following;

• A Cheese Platter
• Seafood Chowder
• Shepherd's Pie
• Glazed Christmas Ham with Mango Chutney

topped with an Asian dessert brought in by a friend.





Oh wait, I tell a lie. The Seafood Chowder is actually entirely courtesy of the furry beary alternate contributer to this blog. I put this disclaimer in to avoid beheading once all the goodwill runs out.

This was my (or our) maiden effort at Christmas Ham, and it was suprisingly easy albeit extremely time consuming. For any first timers, give yourself a good 4 hours to get this done.


Glazed Christmas Ham





Ingredients
Ham
Raw cured ham or gammon, kg, boned
2 bay leaves
1 star anise
1 tbsp peppercorns
1 packet of cloves

Glaze
4 tbsp runny honey
2 tbsp dark rum
2 tsp Dijonnaise mustard
1 tbsp brown sugar

Method

1. Submerge the ham in a large pot of cold water along with the bay leaves, peppercorn and star anise. Bring to a simmer and cover for 2 1/2 hours. Drain
   
2. When slightly cooled, remove skin from ham leaving a decent layer of fat
3. Score the skin in a diamond pattern with a sharp knife and stud the middle of each diamond with a clove.
4. Preheat the oven to 180 C
5. Gently heat the glazing ingredients in a pot, stirring till even.
6. Sit the ham in a roasting tray and bake for 30-40 minutes, basting with glaze until golden. Just before fully cooked sprinkle thyme on top.
7. Serve with mango chutney.

*Awesome possum!*

Cheese Platter

The cheese platter was a mix of shortbread, cracked pepper water crackers, mixed nuts and my two favourite cheeses, fruit cheese and brie. The brie's nutty, creamy flavour goes fantastically with the salmon while the nuts compliment the sweetness of the fruit cheese.


Shepherd's pie is one of my favourite dishes to make simply because it's really quick, tastes good and looks like you actually put in lots of effort. I'm a less-work-more-results kinda girl.




Shepherd's Pie

Ingredients

Filling

500 grams lamb mince
2 carrots - diced
1 large onion - diced
3 tbs olive oil
2 tbs Worchestershire sauce
2 tbs Tomato sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Topping

4 potatoes with skins on
2 tbs milk
1 egg
butter, salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Boil the potatoes until soft (about 20 min). Mash the potatos with a masher or a fork and add milk. Add butter, salt and pepper to taste.
   
2. Heat the olive oil in a pan on medium heat. Fry onion and carrot until carrot is soft.
3. Stir in the lamb mince and break up all the clumps. Cover the pan and allow to simmer until the lamb juices out. Then add in the Worchestershire and tomato sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste.
   
4. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius
5. Stir in an egg into the mashed potatoes. This gives the Shepherd's pie that lovely browned look. Brushing butter on top of the layer of mash helps as well.
6. Scoop the filling evenly into a baking dish. Cover the filling with the mash potatoes and smooth the top over with the back of a spoon.
   
7. Drag the tines of a fork along the top of the mash potato topping to make that well-recognised shepherd's pie pattern.
8. Bake for 30-40 minutes and allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Merry Chrismurf!

Carrot Cake Murder

It's not that I've suddenly turned morbid, but this is actually the title of a book. And I can prove it, so there! Amazingly I spotted this book on the library shelf just after I'd made the culprit on its front cover, so I knew I had to blog this. I haven't read the book at all by the way.

Fresh from the oven

This is probably among my favouritest cakes on my cakes-to-bake list. Which is a little surprising considering I usually detest carrots. As in Hate with a capital 'H'. However, I have been convinced to forego any homicidal thoughts towards those evil orange veges ever since the carrot cake redeemed them.

The combined ingredients make for a really moist bite with some added texture thrown in by the pineapple and walnuts within. Yummm. It can be made with cream cheese on top but I opted not to so I could convince myself I wasn't wreaking havoc on my diet.

The recipe I have is from my friend Sue Ann, so all the credit for how good it tastes should go to her=)

My slice of cake posing prettily

Carrot Cake (with Cream Cheese Frosting)

Ingredients

Cake
3 cups grated carrots
2 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
¾ cup walnuts/pecans
½ tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4 eggs
½ cup oil
1 ¼ tsp vanilla
1 can crushed pineapple

Frosting
3 ½ cup icing sugar
225mg cream cheese
1 ¼ tsp vanilla
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)


Method

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.

2. In a large bowl, combine grated carrots, flour, white sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt & cinnamon.

3. Stir in eggs, oil, 1 ¼ tsp vanilla, pineapple & ¾ cup chopped pecan/walnuts. Spoon batter into pan.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 30-40mins or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool.

5. Frosting – In a medium bowl, combine icing sugar, cream cheese, ½ cup butter & 1 ¼ tsp vanilla. Beat till smooth, then stir in chopped nuts. Spread on cooled cake.

As a note to the terrorist bear-bear: I know you're disappointed that I would ever stoop to the level of eating the forbidden vege. Therefore, I will need to convert you to my cause by baking this cake for you the next time I visit.
May the Force be with you

Like a ton of bricks

There have been so many happenings lately that baking took a seat on the back burner for quite a while. Also, honestly, I think I just wasn't quite in the mood to jump start my mixer and whip up a batch of batter. Which, interestingly, is good for the recipe I'm about to post.

The newfound morsel that dragged me out of my lazy state was a migrant from back home. I'm embarrassed to say I'd never actually eaten it while staying my couple of decades in Malaysia. Once I had a bite of it though, I was just itching to make it! I not only like how it tastes, but also it's appearance. To top it all off, it's amazingly easy to make and requires absolutely zero baking, (Wow!) hence the comment above about this recipe being good if you can't be bothered to get out the mixing bowl. (Yay for lazy people)

The cake in question today is the Kek Batik. A little bit of a misnomer, since it never ventures near an oven. I think it's sometimes called Kuih Batik too, but don't take my word for it. As you can see, it looks like those higgledy-piggledy brick walls in the old English country side. For those not in the know, Batik is a traditional Malay art which involves the drawing of intricate patterns on cloth. I should actually include a photo of it in here, just for interests sake.



Back to the cook book, the entire cake making process involves simply chucking Marie biscuits into a rich chocalatey mixture, bringing to boil over a slow fire and then squashing it (in a very literal sense) into the required cake dish to cool. After which, pop it into the refridgerator for a couple of hours and the next thing you know, you'll be the proud owner of a freshly made cake.

Cut the cake with a sharp knife to appreciate the emerging patterns formed by the layers of biscuits squashed together.

It somehow reminds me of the Great Wall of China. *Haha*

Kek Batik

Ingredients

3/4 stick of butter
2 eggs (beaten)
1 cup water
1 small tin condensed milk
10 tbsp milo
3 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp sugar
2 packets of Marie biscuits


Method

1. First break the Marie biscuits into halves and set aside
2. In a good sized pot, melt the butter on medium heat over the stove
3. Turn the fire to low and add in the eggs, stirring vigoroulsy to avoid clumping.
4. Add in all the other ingredients except the Marie biscuits while stirring the mixture continuosly.
5. When the mixture is shiny, add in the biscuits and keep stirring till the biscuits have become soft but still maintain their shape. Don't forget to keep stirring!
6. Once all the biscuits have been coated with chocolate and are suitably mushy, pour into a cake tin.
7. Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes. Put a sheet of cling wrap over the top of your cake and press down to compress all the softened biscuits, forming a 'layered' cake. Once the cake has been evenly squashed into the tin, peel off the cling wrap and discard.
8. Wait for the cake to cool further and pop it into the refridgerator for 3-4 hours. I was predictably impatient and stuffed it into the freezer after the first hour to speed up the process.

Food imitating life. Doesn't it look just like the bricked wall?

Look what popped up

As i'm sure everyone can see, strawbunny blog has been dead for sometime so the terrorist bear-bear has decided to rescue it from somewhat total boredom with a guest post.
this time, not grudgingly allowed by strawbunny (;

German Pop-Up Pancake

• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup flour
• 6 eggs
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• dash salt
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence
  
• Preheat oven at 400*F

The key to this recipe is to blend the ingredients together with a blender or food processor. Whisking it works but it doesn't turn out as smooth. Grease a muffin tray and half-fill each compartment.


Bake for 15 minutes, or until puffy and golden on top. If greased properly it should pop right out. Top up with strawberry jam (i find homemade strawberry jam taste tonnes better than the ones you buy off the shelves) and whipped cream.

to make strawberry jam, cut 250g of strawberries into small cubes and mix throughly with 250g of caster sugar in a pan. let it sit for an hour then add juice of half a lemon/orange and boil on a slow fire for 1 and a half hours or until it is thick and syrupy. add a bit of gelatin powder to make it more firm.

other serving suggestions include topping the puff pastry with whipped cream and adding ur favourite fruit.


Another favourite snack of mine is cheese baked oysters. paying 17 bucks for half a dozen of measley oysters causes havoc on my wallet so the best compromise is to make my own (;

Cheese Baked Oysters

1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened
4 lg. cloves garlic, finely minced
4 tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
Fresh ground pepper to taste
mozzarella cheese
a couple of mushrooms and slices of ham, cut into small pieces

a half dozen oysters

Preheat oven to 425*F. Thoroughly beat softened butter, garlic, parsley, mushrooms,ham and pepper with wooden spatula. Apply garlic butter mixture to oysters and sprinkle mozzarella generously on top. bake for 7 minutes. Serve garnished with a wedge of lemon.