easy Archives - The Wifey's Corner

November 19, 2017June 30, 2023

Simple French Toast

What are you doing to that few slices of bread left on the fridge? There are few ways that I can think of right now, such as making croutons, bread butter pudding, filled with ragout – crumbed and deep fried for delicious savory snacks. But we can also make french toast, which is easy and take no longer than 30 minutes. And that is what we had for breakfast yesterday morning 🙂

Anyway, this is how I prepared my french toast:

6 slices of sandwich bread
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of sugar
dash of vanilla extract
half teaspoon of ground cinnamon
butter

Combine all ingredients (except bread and butter) in a shallow dish, whisk well.

Melt some generous amount of butter on your frying pan. Meanwhile, dip the bread on the egg mixture and place it to the pan. Just note that if you leave the bread dipping in the mixture for too long, it will absorb more liquid hence longer cooking time.

Cook each side until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes.

It is best to serve immediately, or keep in the warm oven until you finish cooking all.

If I have double cream at home, I would use half double cream and half milk for the egg mixture. It will add more richness to the french toast. But, I have also known some people use mix of nuts milk and they come out as tasty as using regular milk. This recipe is definitely a versatile one where you can adjust it according to what’s in your pantry.

Of course, how you serve the french toast is really up to your liking. We love it with drizzle of maple syrup, or chocolate syrup and fresh fruits. Some have theirs with slices of bacon, absolutely any variations that make breakfast or brunch special. The one we had yesterday was only with dust of icing sugar and some chocolate syrup for hubby’s.

September 23, 2017September 22, 2017

Pumpkin Baked Cheesecake

Pumpkin is one ingredient that I never ever bought or cooked with, let alone baked with 😛 I enjoy pumpkin soup every now and then, or have had mashed pumpkin with my meal in restaurants. But that is all my encounter with pumpkin, really. Then I watched a video on making pumpkin baked cheesecake the other day and my curiosity prompted me to try it out. Perhaps I was thinking by adding pumpkin, the cheesecake would be healthier. I have to say the recipe does not disappoint, in fact you can hardly taste the pumpkin at all if you mashed them really fine. It taste just like a baked cheesecake, except maybe more orange in colour.

Anyway, here are the ingredients as per original video:

200 grams Kabocha squash/pumpkin, net weight after mashed
60 grams granulated sugar
200 grams cream cheese(room temperature)
100 grams heavy cream
2 eggs (large) at room temperature and whisked
Vanilla extract
Chocolate for decorating

Method:

Cut the squash/pumpkin to small pieces, skinned. Place in a microwave-safe dish, cover with cling wrap and microwave for 3 – 4 minutes until cooked.

Mashed them with a spatula, add in sugar and mix well.

Add cream cheese, heavy cream and eggs, whisk together until all combined and no visible lumps.

Lastly, add a dash of vanilla extract to the batter.

Pour into a round 15 cm baking pan.

Bake in preheated oven at 170 C for 30 – 40 minutes.

(Since I don’t have a baking pan of that size, I used muffin cups instead. My baking time took about 30 minutes.)

Once it is cooked, let it cool to room temperature inside the oven with its door ajar.

Decorate as you wish and keep in refrigerator.

Enjoy the cold pumpkin baked cheesecake with your favourite tea or coffee 🙂

July 1, 2017June 30, 2017

Jam and Cheese Thumbprint Cookies

While going through my photos folder, I saw these pictures of fail attempt of thumbprint cookies with blackberry jam. But still, I will share the recipe in case some readers get a successful results of it. It is supposed to be one of those easy and fast to make cookies as no cookie cutter involved. And even with the ugly shapes, they still actually taste really good. I truly hope that you will not be discouraged by the terrible looking to give this recipe a try. The baked jam gives nice caramelised flavour and become slightly chewy in texture. I kind of know which mistakes have led to the fails, so read on to the end for tips!

Ingredients (source from here):

150 grams of butter (50 grams of butter may be substituted with margarine)
120 grams of castor sugar (I’ll reduce to 80 grams next time as this is too sweet)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 egg yolk
225 grams of flour
20 grams of milk powder
20 grams corn flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
your favorite jam
grated cheese
1 egg white so the grated cheese will stick to the cookies

Mix butter, sugar, salt and vanilla extract until pale and fluffy. Then add in the egg yolk, mix again until well combined.

Add the flour and baking powder in four stages to the butter egg mixture – make sure to fold the mixture until well combined with a spatula after each stage of flour addition.

Make round-shaped cookies, dip top half of the cookie in egg white then grated cheese and place them in baking tray.

Then press the center of each cookie with your finger to create a dent. Fill in the dent with jam, make sure to not overfill these.

Bake for approximately 15 minutes at 175C preheated oven. It is done baking when the base of cookies start to harden and change to golden colours. At this stage the cookies might feel slightly under-baked, but once cooled to room temperature, they will be perfect.

Please pardon this horrendous looking cookies 😛

As promised, here were the mistakes I made on the attempt:

* I overfilled the cookies with jam, so it overflowed during baking and hence cracked cookies

* I had used jam with chunks of blackberry in it. This combined with overfilling has resulted in problem above. It will be best to use smooth-textured jam and fill in the cookie dents with piping bag.

* As usual, the amount of flour shown in recipe is guidance. Especially for cookies recipe, you may need to add or reduce the amount a little bit. My mistake was I should have reduced the flour a little bit so my cookie dough would not be too dry

* Do not dip the whole cookie in egg white, as they will be a mess to remove from the tray after baking. Therefore, only dip the top half and then cover with grated cheese

* Depends on type of jam you are using and your liking of sweetness, you may need to adjust the sugar amount for the cookie.

May 19, 2017February 1, 2018

Milk Jam

Milk jam is something I became aware of from a little shop in Ubud, Bali. I have never heard or even know of its existence until I stumbled upon Kou. Kou is a shop in Ubud that sells handmade soaps and jams – owned by a Japanese lady who married to Balinese man. The fact is Kou also inspired me to start making my own soap bars, which I still find satisfaction in doing so today. Anyway, one morning many years later I suddenly woke up with much curiosity of milk jam. So of course the first sensible step is look it up on Google 🙂

Milk jam search came up with so many results, but I think I like this one best. I have tried making the vanilla and earl grey tea versions, both are delicious. As you can see from the recipe below, you could play with so many flavours to add to the base recipe. I think it will taste lovely with matcha flavour, or pandan, I shall try these in next time 🙂 And also due to how slim that ingredients list, I’d suggest to use good quality vanilla extract, earl grey or any other additions so these flavours will really carry through the cooking time.

Base Milk Jam

200 ml thickened cream
250 ml milk (I used light milk as that was we have in the fridge and it turned out fine)
80 grams sugar (I used 70 grams)

Vanilla Flavour – add to base recipe

half vanilla pod

Early Grey Tea Flavour – steep for about 5 minutes then add to base recipe

20 grams earl grey tea leaves
80 ml hot water

Combine everything in a pot and cook with low heat.

Stir with a wooden spoon frequently to avoid any burned milk on the bottom of the pan. Especially when the mixture is started to reach boiling point and thicken up (took me about 20 minutes for half batch), you will need to keep stirring continuously. Fear not, once it reached that stage, it is almost done anyway.

Once it’s texture is similar to soft caramel, transfer to a glass jar and as it cools down, it will thicken up even more.

Above pictures are taken when I made the earl grey flavour. Do you notice the colour changes? It will even more noticeable on the vanilla or plain version

Yummy with toast, crackers, even on ice cream. Apparently it stays soft even on top of the cold ice cream (according to the source blog)

February 15, 2017

Mango Sago

As the temperature rose to extreme heat (according to the news lady) during last weekend and also abundance of mangoes, why not make some mango desserts right? The first time we had mango sago was at this one yum cha restaurant at Piccadilly Centre, Sydney. I don’t think have seen the same dessert on offer in any other yum cha restaurants we have been to before, where they usually only have mango pudding and mango pancakes.

Googled mango sago recipe and resulted in many variances, but this is the one I attempted to make.

Ingredients:

2 medium-sized mangoes
1/4 cup mangoes chopped
1/3 cup sago pearls
3 tablespoons sugar
3/4 cup milk, boiled and cooled to room temperature
1/4 cup condensed milk

Directions:

Soak sago in water and rinse off the excess starch. Then boil water in a pot and add the sago, cook until the sago turn transparent and soft. Keep mixing them while cooking to make sure none is stuck at the bottom of you pot.

Once cooked, drain and wash under running water; then drain well and set aside to cool.

In a blender, mix the mango puree and half of the milk and sugar until smooth. Transfer to a large bowl, add in the rest of the milk and mix well.

Give it a taste test while to measure how much condensed milk you will need. Depends on how sweet your mangoes are, you may need more or less of the condensed milk.

Then add in the sago, mix until everything is combined and smooth.

Refrigerate at least one hour before serving, garnish with chopped mangoes and enjoy the sweet summery dessert!

Cooked sago pearls

I served the mango sago with a little bit more milk to tone down the sweetness 🙂

Any mangoes with less fibers would be prefect for this dessert.
Obviously, the measurement are just a guide, so please adjust level of sweetness according to your liking.
Also, if you prefer thicker consistency, you may add more sago pearls; likewise more milk if you prefer it runnier. As it chills in the fridge, it will thicken up a little bit.
For a creamier and richer taste, you might want to substitute half or all of the milk to evaporated milk.
Add some pomelo or grapefruit chunks for an even more refreshing dessert and cut through the sweetness. Notice that grapefruit will usually hint of bitterness which isn’t the case with pomelo.