Sweet Corn Pudding (Kuih Jagung Manis)

I was craving for the taste of sweet corn and I remember I used to have them in desserts. So I went searching for desserts that uses sweet corn and found this:
http://spicehunt.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/kuih-kastard-jagungcorn-custard/

I followed the simple steps described and made the pudding. The ingredients I applied were different in amount though. This is what I used:
1 cup of Custard powder
1 cup of sugar
2 cups of fresh Milk
1 can of Del Monte corn kernel (cream style）
A pinch of salt
2 1/2 cups of water

I mixed the sugar, custard powder, salt, milk and water in a big bowl until the sugar and the powder dissolved instead of putting them in a mixer. I poured the mixture in a pot and stirring it slowly until it boiled. After a while, the mixture thickened indicating that it was time to stop cooking. The corn were added into the mixture and stirred until they were well-mixed together. The final product were left in a tray to cool down and set before it was shoved into the fridge. (If the final mixture is too thick, i recommend that you put in more water or milk so that when it sets, the surface will look smoother)

Less than 20 minutes of work and the end result was fantastic. I highly recommend this for dessert lovers.

Pear and Chocolate Pavlovas

I went to a bookstore a couple of days ago and bought a dessert cookbook called "101 Tempting Desserts" by GoodFood Magazine. The main reason why I got the book is because I wanted to make some desserts but in a smaller scale. Recipes you get on the internet are usually large cakes, pies or something of similar portion. I wanted something special and the desserts there were just fine, in terms of their size and serving appearance. I am quite new to types of milk, cream, cheeses, chocolates and spices but I believe in trial and error so I dipped into the book and experimented with this recipe.

Ingredients:
For the meringue
2 medium eggs whites ( got mine from the refrigerator so dunno how much that was)
130g caster sugar (the recipe asked for 175g, i reduced the quantity but still think it is too sweet)
1 tsp cornflour
1/2 tsp wine vinegar ( I didn't have this so I used cream of tartar instead, the main purpose of this vinegar or cream of tartar is to increase the acidity of the egg white for forming peaks)

For the pear
5 Pears, peeled (HK$9)
2 tbs honey (I couldn't find honey in my kitchen, lol)
300ml Apple juice (HK$14 for a box, still some left in the fridge)
1 cinnamon stick (i used a very very very small stick)

For the chocolate sauce
100g Dark chocolate (HK$38 for 200g of 70% dark chocolate)
142ml carton double cream (I used ordinary milk instead)

For the filling
284ml carton whipping cream (i bought a 500ml whipping cream for HK$33)
200g Half fat greek yogurt (dunno what greek yogurt is so i just bought plain low fat yogurt)

Method:
The night before serving, I spent time peeling the pears and removing its cores but leaving the stalks on. I used the end of a spoon to scoop or you can say scrape, the cores out because a knife is just too sharp and it will cut through the flesh.

Using a small pot, I brought the apple juice, pears together with the cinnamon to a boil and then at low heat simmered them with lids closed for 30 mins until the pears turned soft. I did turn the pears around so that both sides were cooked evenly. The cooked pears were cooled and moved to the fridge.

The next day, I separated 2 eggs for their egg whites into a metal bowl. Using a mixer at medium speed, the egg whites were beaten until a bit of foam formed. Cream of tartar, cornstarch and part of the sugar were added. More beating were applied at high speed and the rest of the sugar were added. The egg whites turned stiff after 5 minutes of beating and were divided into 5 parchments on a baking foil. The oven was pre-heated at 130C and the spreads were baked for around 40 minutes. The meringues turned crispy and light brown and were very very sweet.
In another bowl, I mixed the yogurt and whipping cream, beating them with a mixer at mid-speed until it turned thick. A side note is that I added 5 tbs of sugar to this mix because I thought it was very bland (but it turned out that this sugar was not necessary because the meringue itself was sweet enough so either you can reduce the sugar in the meringue and add some to this mixture or vice versa)
The dark chocolate was then melted with some milk which served mostly as a decoration.

As you can see, the lower layer was the meringue and it was topped with the cream and then the poached pear and a little bit of chocolate. Easy preparation it was and I thought it looked quite good.

Note:
- As I've said before, I thought the meringue was too sweet but then the yogurt cream complemented it. The dark chocolate was a bit too bitter and I guess it was to counter the sweet pear, which was not that sweet because I did not add honey.
- I left the chocolate in the fridge for a day and surprisingly, it tasted better with the cream and meringue instead of the pear.


I personally liked the yogurt cream a lot. A little bit of sourness from the yogurt plus the creamy texture from the whipping cream. The pear itself was good enough after poaching.

Tiramisu

Not long after the pudding, I went back to the kitchen again. This time I made Tiramisu.
Research:
I googled up "tiramisu recipe" and ended up with millions of online recipe. Seems like there are different versions of tiramisu available so I picked one with the best description and even a video tutorial.
http://megan.cc/Tiramisu/

Ingredients:
1 pack of 250g mascarpone ($56)
1 box of 200g whipping cream ($26)
4 eggs (from the fridge, so at no cost of mine, haha)
1 pack of castor sugar ($10)
1 pack of lady fingers ($20)
1/2 cup marsala wine ($90 per bottle)
1/2 cup kahlua ($172 per bottle)
few tbs of cocoa powder ($20 per can)
1 tall cup Americano coffee ($30)
I bought a bottle of kahlua and marsala wine, so that costed a bit but I am sure they will come in handy next time I need them.

In the making:
1. I made Zabaglione (sounds fancy huh?) by mixing 4 egg yolks and approx half cup of sugar first in a metal bowl. Using a pot, I boiled a little bit of water and I put the bowl in to cook for approximately 20 minutes, stirring it non-stop and adding in half a cup of marsala wine in between. The mixture turned thick and some of them were cooked and hard, sticking to the sides of the bowl. I turned off the fire and transfered the bowl from the hot water to a cold water bath.
2. Next, I went on to "whip" the cream. Using a mixer, I stirred the whipping cream (it was my first attempt at cream whipping). At first, the mixer was set to 1 and gradually I increased the speed to the highest (5). The cream splashed everywhere and it was touch cleaning up the walls. The cream finally became thick after 5 minutes but not as tall as I expected it would be.
3. Using a spatula, I stirred the mascarpone until it's soft and then added the Zabaglione to it. The cream was folded in last until all 3 mixtures combined.
4. The coffee was cooled and I added in half cup of kahlua (and some water to dilute the strong coffee). Using a pair of chopsticks, I dipped in the lady fingers one by one and arranged a layer in a container. I thought the biscuits were not soft enough so I spooned in some more coffee which was a big mistake.
5. I added in a layer of the cheese mixture and then lady fingers layer and finally another cheese mixture layer. Cocoa powder was spreaded on top in the end before the whole thing was refridgerated for a couple of hours.

Serving:
I had a hard time scooping out the tiramisu out of the container as it was too soft. I think it's because I added too much coffee to the biscuit layer, and the cream didn't form too well.

Comments from dearest patrons:
My gf: I can taste the wine but not too strong. Too watery but other than that, it's more or less the tiramisu you can get elsewhere.
My mom: Not bad, but too much water (water from the coffee).
My brother: Too much water, but it's ok.

If I were to make tiramisu again, I would add in more wine and maybe vanilla essence to the cream to make the taste better. To make the texture stronger, I would add in less coffee to the lady fingers and whip the cream longer. As you can see, the bottom layer is soaked in coffee....

Simple South East Asian Sago Pudding

I was looking for some simple recipe to start with and I remember trying a simple dessert when I was young back in Malaysia.

Research :
So I went on the net and did a search for "sago pudding". Sago (西米) is a simple and well known ingredient for dessert by itself so no need for much introduction there. Alright, I found two recipes that looked attractive enough at:
http://cookingismypassion.blogspot.com/2006/10/sago-pudding.html
and
http://asiancuisine.suite101.com/article.cfm/south_east_asian_treat

Ingredients gathering:
1 pack of sago
$2 worth of pandan leaves (around 5 long leaves)
1 small can of coconut milk
1 pack of palm sugar (from a nearby Malaysian groceries store)
4 molds (from Jusco 10 dollar shop)

Total cost was approximately hkd70.

Cooking:
Usually when it comes to cooking, I do not use measuring tools because I am too lazy to. Here's what I did.
1) Boiled water in a pot, put in 3 knotted pandan leaves and poured in half a pack of sago (* had no idea how much that would yield). Cooked the sago for 8 minutes, covered the pot and left it for 15 minutes. I realized that the amount of water should at least be 4 times the amount of sago before it started to expand, I had to add water in between so often.
2) I used cold cooked water to run through the cooked sago over a sieve (* to stop the cooking so to prevent overcooking I think). I had a hard time washing the sago off the sieve afterwards (* a result from too less water). The sagos were placed in the molds and because I had too much left, I had to place some in a shallow bowl and they were sent to the refrigerator for 2 hours.
3) I cooked a block of palm sugar with a little bit of water and some more pandan leaves. I took 20 minutes before I could dissolve 2 blocks of palm sugar (* because the water added before was just too much). A lesson learned is that the sugar would dissolve much more quickly if it is taken down to small pieces before boiling.
4) A pinch of salt was added to the coconut milk.

Serving:
The sago pudding were sticky so I had to use a toothpick to slide through the sides of the mold so that pudding came off easily. The dessert looked best when the syrup is added first and the coconut milk added later. The ratio of syrup to coconut milk should be around 4:1 because coconut milk is quite heavy itself.

Comments from the lab rats:
My girlfriend : tastes funny, quite good but rather filling (*I added a bit too much coconut milk on the first serving)
Mom: So cold now, just a bit would do (*temperature that nite was 10C). Oh, tastes good, nice nice nice.
Chi Wai : looks not so appetizing (*I packed it in a container for him and the coconut milk mixed with the syrup to form a brown mixture...) but tastes great!

The hardest part about this dessert is the washing. The sago sticked like glue after it is cooked so I suggest you add plenty of water during cooking. No pictures were taken this time but you can refer to the reference above for an idea on how it looks like.