So, this year, I baked the regular plain mooncakes and a batch of chocolate mooncakes too. You can find the recipes in my recipes page. Again, this year, I bought the ready-made fillings of lotus paste, chocolate paste and red bean paste. No point wasting hours cooking the fillings when there are really good ones that we can buy. Besides, they even have sugar free lotus-paste  fillings which I could give to my diabetic grandma.

Anyway, this year, I went easy on the egg glaze and got really chocolatey and nice looking mooncakes.

See? A real improvement compared to last year’s horrid looking ones.

Baked mooncakes are a real time-consuming process as you have to allow for ‘resting’ time of about 10 hours for the raw ingredients before we can wrap the fillings and bake it.The first process is to mix together baking soda, golden syrup, alkaline water and oil in a mixing bowl and then let it rest for about 5 hours.

Then, I sift the flour and cocoa powder together and leave aside until the first ingredients are ready. After five hours, I add some chocolate essence and then fold in the flour into the brown liquid mixture to form a smooth, sticky dough.

Again, I have to let the dough rest for another 6 hours or so. Only after that that I divide the dough into small portions, flatten it and wrap it around the fillings into a ball. Then I push the ball into the plastic moulds I bought last year.

Then I pop those mooncakes into the oven for about 10 minutes. Remove and let it cool for 5 minutes and then brush on the egg glaze and then bake another 3 minutes.Then I get these:

Some of the sizes vary a bit because by the time I waiting 11 hours for the dough to be ready, it was already midnight and let me tell you, moulding mooncakes in the middle of the night is not exactly very accurate when it comes to the size.

Here’s the recipe:

Baked Chocolate Mooncakes Recipe

Ingredients A

400g golden syrup

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tbsp alkaline water

100g corn oil

Ingredients B

450g plain flour, sifted

100g cocoa powder, sifted

Other ingredients

1 tsp chocolate essence

1.5 kg of ready-made lotus paste/ chocolate paste/ red bean paste

Instructions

1. Mix ingredients A in a mixing bowl and let it rest about 5 hours.

2. Sift ingredients B together.

3. After 5 hours, add the chocolate essence to the ingredients A and stir will combined. Then fold in ingredients B. Mix it together until you get a smooth sticky dough. Set aside for another 6 hours.

4. Divide the dough into small balls, about the size of a ping pong ball or smaller depending on the size of your moulds, and then flatten it on a floured surface using a rolling pin. Scoop a generous dollop of fillings onto it and wrap the skin around it.

5. Push the wrapped dough into the floured mould and then gently push it out using the lever (if you are using a wooden mould, then gently knock it out).

6. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place the moulded mooncakes on a floured baking pan and bake between 8 to 10 minutes.

7. Remove from oven and let it cool for about 5 minutes. Then, lightly brush it with some egg glaze to give it some glossy shine. Bake for another 3 – 5 minutes.

8. Once done, remove from oven and let it cool before removing from the baking pan.

Egg Glaze Recipe

Ingredients

1 egg yolk

1/2 tbsp water

a pinch of salt

Instructions

Mix it all together in a bowl and use a pastry brush to lightly brush it on the mooncakes.

Other Mooncake Baking Tips You Should Know:

1. Never over-bake your mooncakes or else it will go out of shape (as I also experienced that last year). So, if your oven is of a higher wattage, bake it for less than 10 minutes, maybe at 8 minutes and after putting the egg glaze, you bake it for another 2 to 3 minutes.

2. Never keep the mooncakes in an airtight container immediately after it has cooled down. It is always best to leave it out in the open, preferably overnight for the skin to soften. You don’t want dry, hard mooncake skin!

3. The golden syrup is important because it is what keeps the mooncake from becoming mouldy (as in fungi growth) too fast.

4. Even with the golden syrup, these are homemade mooncakes so they don’t last as long as commercial mooncakes which may contain added preservatives sp it is best to keep them in a dry cool place and don’t keep for too long.

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I made it with a can of evaporated milk instead of soya milk since I had that available. It is pretty easy to make actually and does not take up much time, except for the waiting time for it to firm up.

All you really need is sugar, jelly powder, water and milk or soya milk. If you like some canned longans in it, you can also have that ready and open a can.

Get the containers ready, the plastic cups with covers. I use the cup as measurements for the amount of water or sugar needed. I think each cup is about 200ml. So, if you are making 15 cups of pudding, you will need 15 cups of water, 1 cup sugar, half can of the evaporated milk and half packet of the jelly powder. First, you will need to dissolve the jelly powder, bring the 15 cups of water to boil, add the sugar, jelly solution and the milk.

Once it’s cool down, you can pour into the containers.

You then wait for it to really become firm before you add the canned longans and some of the syrup from the canned longans.

Refrigerate and serve cold. It’s great as dessert, tea time snack or for the sake of eating something sweet but not so sinful. The cups I’m referring to here are the containers we use for the pudding. Here’s the recipe and simple instructions:

Soya Milk Pudding Recipe

(This recipe is for 34 servings)

Ingredients

34 cups of water (about 200ml each cup)

3 cups of sugar (300g)

1 can of evaporated milk or soya milk (400g)

1 packet of the jelly powder (as in the picture above or about 50g)

Instructions

1. Dissolve the jelly powder in 200ml of water

2. Heat up the 34 cups of water in a pan.

3. Add the sugar and let it dissolve.

4. Add in the dissolved jelly and the milk or soya milk.

5. Stir over medium heat for about 15 minutes.

6. Remove from heat and leave to cool but before it firms up.

7. Pour into the cups and leave it to firm up.

8. Add the canned longans to each cup, then refrigerate. Serve cold.

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Far from being boring, it is so flavourful that the remaining sauces from the boiled chicken is pure neat chicken stock. Talk about a two in one dish! And yes, this dish is pretty healthy as it involved loads of vegetables and no deep frying to be seen!

Chicken Recipes: Five Spice Boiled Chicken Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 chicken, chopped into small pieces

2 tbsp five spice powder

2 tsp salt

2 carrots, cut into chunks

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 large tomato, cubed

4 fresh shiitake mushrooms, cubed

2 pods garlic

2 cups water

Instructions

1. Season the chicken with the five spice powder and 1 tsp of salt for at least an hour.

2. Heat up the pot of water and then dump all the ingredients in and the rest of the salt.

3. Lower the heat and let it simmer partially covered for up to an hour. By then, you’d get a very thick sort of ‘gravy’ and you can dish out the chicken and vegetables.

If you noticed, I didn’t remove the chicken skin. I felt that by not removing the skin, it gave even more flavors to the chicken stock. Although a bit oily, I’m quite fine with it.

If you have a crock pot / slow cooker, it is even easier. Just dump everything in, set it at low and leave it on overnight and you’ll get tender chicken with absolutely wonderful gravy and chicken stock.

Just remember to set aside some of the gravy as chicken stock to be used in your cooking.

See? Boiled chicken aren’t all that bland after all and it even produced a great by-product of chicken stock!

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Egg tarts have to be one of my favourite non-chocolate desserts or snacks or whatever category you wanna place them in. To me, egg tarts are probably the best pastry ever made…well, except for pineapple rolls. And cheesecake. And…err…never mind. Let’s just say, I absolutely love egg tarts and have been hankering to try making them myself.

So, I did a search and found the Hong Kong Style Egg Tarts recipe from allrecipes.com. Please don’t laugh at my not-so-perfect pastries. It is my first time after all. This is going to be a rather long post so I won’t rattle on so. Here’s the recipe:

Egg Tarts Recipe

Ingredients

For the pastry:

1 cup icing sugar

1 cup butter

3 cups flour

1 egg, beaten

a dash of vanilla essence

For the custard:

2/3 cup white sugar

1 1/2 cups water

9 eggs beaten

dash of vanilla essence

1 cup fresh milk

Equipment

12 egg tart moulds

Instructions

1. Grease your egg tart moulds very, very lightly.But you don’t have to if you don’t want to because these moulds are non-stick (or so I was told when I bought it from the baking supply shop).

2. Sift the icing sugar and the flour into a mixing bowl.

3. Add the butter and rub it into the mixture until you get crumbs.

4. In a bowl, lightly beat the egg and then add it to the mixture and start kneading till you get soft, pliable dough.

5. You can start forming small balls and then place them on the moulds and start forming the base using your fingers to push the dough into the mould.

Egg Tart Recipe: Making the custard

6. Pour the water into a pan and heat it up and add the sugar. Bring to a boil and let the sugar dissolve. Then remove from heat and cool completely. (So that you don’t cook the eggs when you add this to the egg.

7. Place all the eggs in a bowl and beat lightly. Sieve it into another bowl. Add in the milk and vanilla. Stir and mix well.Add into sugar and water mixture. Stir till well combined.

8. You will need to pass it through a sieve again or like me, use a smaller sieve and pour it into the prepared dough.

9. Preheat the oven to 160C. Then you bake the tarts for about 30 minutes or until the egg custard is cooked and not watery anymore.

Did I mention that I simply love egg tarts? Especially when it’s hot from the oven. Yum.

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Okay, if you really hate cabbage that much, you don’t have to suffer through this recipe. Or the next one, for that matter. I promise, after tomorrow, I won’t be posting anymore cabbage recipe. Not that I don’t blame you for hating cabbage, after several days of thinking of how to cook ‘em and having to eat cabbage, I could well understand your hate for cabbage. Even I don’t want to have anything to do with cabbage for at least a year. Or two. For the cabbage lovers or those who suddenly found themselves stuck with a huge head of cabbage -figuratively speaking, that is- here’s another simple cabbage recipe:

Cabbage Omelette

Ingredients

4 large leaves of cabbage, sliced thinly

two eggs, beaten

dash of sea salt

2 tbsp flour

1tbsp corn flour

Instructions

1. Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl. Add the salt, the flour and the corn flour. Mix well. Then add the cabbage to the mixture.

2. Heat up some oil in the wok or pan. Then pour a ladleful of the mixture in.

3. Lower the heat to medium low. Turn over the omelette when its cooked and then let it cook for a while more. Once it is done, you can remove and serve hot.

You really need to serve it hot or else when cold, it does get a bit sticky and unpalatable. Or maybe it’s just me. Whatever it is, this is a vegetable omelette so it is sorta healthy too.

Tomorrow, I’ll share with you my final way of ridding my fridge of cooking cabbage.

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First, I used some of it, raw, with my pita dinner with baked chicken breast meat. Then I cooked it in three other ways.

Here’s one of it:

Easy Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

5 large leaves of cabbage, roughly chopped

1.3 ltr water

2 large carrots, cut into chunks

2 pods garlic

2 tomatoes, sliced

half cube chicken stock

7 peppercorn

dash of salt

5 pc bite-size chicken strips, seasoned with salt

Instructions

1. Get your ingredients ready and heat up the water in a pot

2. Then you just dump everything into the pot of boiling water.

3. Lower the heat and let the soup simmer for about 30 minutes over low heat.

That’s it. It’s as simple and easy as it could get. Then you get a bowl of simple cabbage soup. Best of all, it is pretty healthy too.

Yeah, I am sure everyone has heard of the cabbage soup diet and all but really, as healthy as this is I can’t envision myself drinking this cabbage soup day in day out. That’s just darn weird. So, this soup took care of some of the cabbage.

Tomorrow, I’ll post up another way of disposing of the cabbage…errr…I mean cook the cabbage.

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Now, enough raving about the chicken and let’s get on to the three-step, stir fried chicken breast meat with Thai basil. Why three step? Well, because it isn’t four steps or one step or any other step. Just three easy steps. You slice the chicken, marinade the chicken and stir fried the chicken. Oh, yeah. There is a fourth step. You EAT the chicken.

Okay, okay, enough rambling on and on. I know you are here only for the chicken. Err…chicken recipes, I mean.

Chicken breast recipes: Stir fried chicken with basil

Ingredients

1 piece chicken breast meat (about 200g, I think), sliced thinly

2 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp light soy sauce

(and if you are concerned over the almost excessive use of sauces, just use those no-MSG, low sodium, organic, healthy, lowwhatever kinds. But please, don’t skimp on the sauces, it is what made the whole dish flavorful.)

A handful of Thai basil leaves (in case you are wondering, here’s what it looks like below:)

2 tbsp diced garlic

2 tbsp cooking oil (go ahead, use olive oil if you want, that’s what I use all the time)

The Three-step Stir Fried Chicken with Basil

1. Marinade the chicken with the sauces and add the leaves too (rub the leaves in to release its beautiful scent) for about an hour or so or less, however long you want.As long as you marinade it, it is good enough.

2. Heat up oil in wok, sautée the garlic till fragrant and then dump in the chicken together with the basil leaves.

3. Final, crucial step: Stir fry the chicken till it is cooked through. That will be between 5 minutes to 10 minutes depending on your heat but please don’t cook it over high heat or else you may risk burning it.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot the fourth even MORE IMPORTANT step…

Serve it up hot and eat it!

Due to our eternal love (or so it seemed) for chicken and chicken breast meat, do stay tuned or better still, SUBSCRIBE to this blog for more healthy, wholesome chicken breast recipes. Really. No tricks. And yes, I also offer some sinful unhealthy selections of chicken recipes and other recipes too. This is not exactly a chicken recipes site or anything. I promise. We do eat other stuffs too.

I highly recommend these sauces to use with this recipe:

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To get the curried baked chicken breast, I rubbed some chili powder onto the chicken breast meat first before I add the curry paste. So, for sure, this dish is as hot and spicy as I wanted it to be! So, you see, baked chicken need not be bland or plain. It can be crunchy and now it can be spicy with curry flavours!

I am sure, by now, you must be wondering why I have so many baked chicken breast recipes in recent times. Well, lets just say I needed to revamp the way we eat and add in more healthy, wholesome and non-oily food. Baked chicken breast is probably one of the healthiest dishes I could think of as it has minimal oil and thus, less calories compared to frying. Also, it is easy to prepare. Just season, pop into the oven and it is ready to eat!

Now, lets get on with it….

Chicken recipes: Curried Baked Chicken Breast Recipe

Ingredients

150g chicken breast meat, cut into strips

2 tbsp chili powder

1 tbsp sea salt

4 tbsp curry paste

1 tbsp olive oil

Instructions

1. Clean the chicken, drain and pat dry. Cut into long, thin strips so that it cooks easily. Season the chicken with the salt and chili powder.

2. Rub the curry paste all over the chicken.

3. Place the chicken strips onto a tray covered by foil. Drizzle it with some olive oil and bake in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes. Then turn over and bake for another 10 minutes. It’s done when it looks like this:

To really test if it is done, just pick a larger piece and nudge the centre with a fork. If it is all white inside with clear juices, it is done. If there’s still a hint of pink, then pop it back into the oven and bake for a few more minutes. Just be careful you don’t over-cook it or else you’d get some really tough and hard chicken breast meat!

I’d say it goes great with some brown unpolished rice and green veg. However, how you like to eat it is entirely up to you as it can also be made into chicken salad or as a main dish with potatoes and salad as sides.

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Chicken Curry Kapitan is probably The Food Critic’s favourite curry since it always evoke such good memories of his granny’s wonderful nyonya food. When it comes to curry, though I have all the recipes, I’m just too lazy short of time to get all the ingredients and blend it into a paste. Heck, we have modern packaged curry pastes after all!

Anyway, we can never find a really good packaged chicken curry kapitan paste so I went to my most favourite convenient spice stall at the wet market and asked her to pack for me the blended curry paste. I don’t know about anywhere else but in Penang, at most big wet markets like the one in Jelutong, we have a stall selling blended spices which you can buy so you don’t have to blend it yourself. Pure convenience if you asked me.

So, I took the easy way out to cook my chicken curry kapitan and at the same time, used some of the paste for my curried baked chicken breast. Heheheh…that’s right. Two dishes using one same ingredient but two different methods of cooking.

Chicken Curry Kapitan

AND

Curried Baked Chicken Breast Meat

Let me start with the:

Chicken Curry Kapitan Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 chicken, chopped into small pieces

1 tbsp light soy sauce

2 tbsp dark soy sauce

10 kaffir lime leaves

***kaffir lime leaves***

1 tbsp tamarind, (soak the tamarind in about 1/2 cup of warm water for the juice)

***tamarind***

dash of sugar

dash of salt

Curry paste containing the following blended ingredients:

10 red chilies (or more if you prefer it to be spicier)

2 stalks lemon grass

small piece, about thumb-size fresh turmeric

5 shallots

1 small piece, about thumb-size ginger

1 small piece, about thumb-size galangal

4 candlenuts (soaked to soften first)

1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 tsp belacan (fermented shrimp paste)

Instructions

1. Season the chicken with the light and dark soy sauce.

2. Heat up the wok with some cooking oil and then stir fry the chicken till it is partially cooked (about 70% cooked).

3. Remove the chicken and you will notice there’s some leftover oil. DO NOT throw it away. Use it for the curry.

4. Now get your curry ingredients ready…

***tamarind juice***

5. Heat up the oil and sautée the curry paste until fragrant. Then pour the tamarind juice over a strainer into the paste.

6. Continue to sautée until the juice is almost dried. Add salt and sugar to your taste. Test, if it is not sour enough, add more tamarind juice. If it is not salty enough, add more salt. Add the sugar to balance it out so usually a dash of it is enough or up to 1 tsp.

7. When the paste is almost dried up, add the kaffir lime leaves. Remember to scoop up about 4 tbsp of the paste and set aside for the Curried Baked Chicken Breast.

8. Then, add the chicken and stir to make sure it is well coated in the curry paste. Stir fry the chicken in curry paste until the chicken is completely cooked, about 15 to 20 minutes. Always cook over medium to low heat to avoid burning the curry.

9. Once cooked, remove from heat and serve warm with rice.

Chicken Curry Kapitan

This chicken recipes post is just too long so I will post up the Curried Baked Chicken Breast Recipes separately.

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Still, I don’t quite like going to the hawker stalls for a bowl of beehoon soup. That’s because most hawkers like to add MSG into the soup to make it tasty. And some are so oily, it makes me gag. So, once in a while I will try to cook the homemade version of beehoon soup. But today, I am sharing with you The Food Critic’s very own recipe, not mine. Since he loves beehoon soup, naturally, he also knows how to cook it. Yes, that’s how he earned the other nickname My Personal Chef. He does cook occasionally.

Since he cooks by estimation, the recipe below will consists of all guess-timate amounts.

Homemade Beehoon Soup Recipe

Ingredients

10 tbsp minced chicken, seasoned with some salt or light soy sauce

About 5 leaves of Chinese white cabbage, chopped

2 – 3 pods garlic

An assortment of fishballs and beancurd (as below)

Mint leaves (for garnishing)

1 large carrot, sliced thinly

1 cup fresh beansprouts

half cube of chicken stock

dash of salt (optional)

3 – 4 cups water

150g brown rice vermicelli, soaked to soften

Instructions

1. Heat up the water in a pot / wok. Once it comes to a boil, add the chicken stock cube.

2. Then add the Chinese white cabbage and garlic.

3. Remember to keep the heat at medium to low so that the water is simmering and not boiling.

4. Add in the minced chicken by tablespoons-ful so as to form small meatballs (as pictured below).

5. Once the chicken is almost cooked when it has turned pale and are no longer pink, then add in the beancurd and fishballs:

6. Let the soup come to a boil. Then it is time to add in the vermicelli.

7. Now, if you prefer your carrots and beansprouts to be cooked, then it is time to add those in. Since I like them to be on the raw side, I just add them as garnishings. The vermicelli cooks very easily so once you put it in, let it boil for a minute or so and it is ready to be served hot!

8. Just ladle the vermicelli and ingredients into a bowl, add the carrots and beansprouts and then garnish with mint leaves.

Vermicelli absorbs water pretty fast so it is best to serve immediately or else you will find that the soup is all gone! Oh and I preferred the beansprouts to be raw (or half raw since it is partially cooked when the scalding hot soup was poured on it) because I bought organic beansprouts which do not have the nasty raw flavour. Instead, it is pretty sweet and crunchy to boot.

It took me about five minutes to take some shots of the beehoon soup, just look how much of the soup has ‘disappeared’! This is best eaten with some fresh cut chilies dipped in light soy sauce. Yum! And that’s not all, since the vermicelli soup has minimal oil and with loads of vegetables, it is quite, quite healthy too.

Of course, you can always leave out the beansprouts or substitute it with other vegetables like choy sum / siew pak choy or even celery / broccoli although the taste will differ slightly.

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