Apple Oat Crumble Pie

This is a simple yet lovely dessert to make! This could be on the table set for a Christmas meal or even as a potluck item!


Ingredients:

For shortcrust pastry, enough to line a 25-cm tart tin (can be prepared a day ahead)

300g plain flour
3 tablespoons caster sugar
200g unsalted butter, cubed
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons cold water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Sift flour into a mixing bowl. and mix in sugar.

2. Rub in the butter into the flour until it becomes crumbly.

3. Mix egg yolks and water and pour into flour mixture and mix to form a dough.(Do not overmix)

4. Roll dough into a ball and clingwrap before refrigerating for about 30 minutes before rolling out.

5. Place dough between baking paper and roll out to size and place into a greased tart tin. Make sure to tuck pastry into the fluted part of tin. trim of excess pastry.

6. Place a foil on the pastry and fill it with baking beans. Blind bake in preheated oven 200deg C for 20 minutes. Remove foil and beans and bake again for 15 minutes. Remove and egg wash and bake for 1 minute.

7. Set aside to cool before adding filling.


Filling:

6 large green apples, skinned and sliced or cubed
Zest of 1 lemon
3 teaspoons lemon juice

50g sugar
45g brown sugar
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

1. Mix apple with lemon zest and juice.

2. Place all ingredinets in a saucepan and mix well and cook over medium heat to cook for about 5 to 8 minutes. Set a side to cool.


Crunble Topping(prepare ahead before the filling)

1 cup rolled oats
90g brown sugar
6 tablespoons plain flour
100g butter, cubed

1. Mix all ingredients together. It shoild be crumbly. Chill until use.

 To assemble pie

1. Fill pie shell with apple mixture, leaving about 1cm from the brim. Top up with crumble and bake in preheated oven 180deg C for about 30 to 40 minutes.

2. Let pie cool down completely before removing from tin.

Welsh Bara Brith

The name of this bread sounds intriguing! It is a traditional bread levened with baking powder.
This 'bara' or bread originated in the Welsh countryside and 'brith' means spotted or freckled.

I love the texture of the 'bread' with a hint of orangy marmalade. It is not rich nor crumbly like a fruit cake. This will be on my list of frequently baked goodies!

Ingredients: (for 23cm x 13cm loaf pan)

2 tea bags infused in 310ml boiling water for 10 minutes

A
170g mixed dried fruits, chopped
170g currants
45g diced dried pinapple
160g light brown sugar

B
440g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon bicarbonate soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon powder
¾ teaspoon salt

C
1 large egg, lightly beaten
 ½ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoon marmalade

1. Remove tea bags and add all the dried fruits and sugar(A) and stir well. Cover and let stand for 1 hour to plump the fruit.

2. Place ingredients B in a mixing bowl and mix well.

3. Add the soaked fruit mixture and C to the flour mixture. Mix well. 

4. Pour batter into greased and lined loaf pan and baked in a preheated oven 165deg C for 1 to 1½ hours. Remove and cool on rack.

 Earthquake occurred during baking!

 Love the tight texture! Fruits don't fall apart!

Will add nuts the next time!

Milk Bread

Recently I bought another bread book on a whim! I had some vouchers to use at Popular bookstore and after buying some story books for my grandsons, I still had a ten-dollar voucher left to spend. After browsing, I chanced upon this bread book by Alan Ooi and immediately I was attracted to the pictures. I love cookery and baking books with lots of illustrations as they allow me to see the end result of the recipes.
This is the first recipe that I have tried from the book. I have no regrets so far as it turned out very good -  a milky and soft, moist bread!


Ingredients: ( Yields about 966g dough)

A
350g bread flour
150g plain flour
30g milk powder (I used Anlene. It's the only type I have)
40g caster sugar
7g instant yeast
8g salt

B
250ml cold fresh milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten
60g unsalted butter, soften
Evaporated milk for glazing

1. Place ingredients A in a miximg bowl and give it a couple of swirls with a hand whisk to mix.

2. Add milk and egg and mix with a dough hook until it forms a dough.

3. Add butter and continue mixing till all the butter is thoroughly blended in and the dough is smooth and elastic.

4. Remove dough and shape into a ball and place it in the mixing bowl, cover with a damp tea cloth or clingwrap. Rest the dough till it doubles in size.

5. Remove dough and hand knead for 1 minute.

6. Cut the amount required. I divided the dough into 2 portions.

7. Flatten the dough into a rectangular shape and roll like a swiss roll taking care to seal the joints.

8. I placed one portion in a loaf tin and the other on a baking tray. Rest until it doubles in size.

9. Make slits on the top of dough, glaze with evaporated milk.

10. Bake in preheated oven 195deg C for 20 minutes.

11. Remove bread to cool on a rack.

Banana Cake 1 & 2

Why Banana Cake 1 & 2?
I tweaked the recipe for the second batch of banana cake and baked it in cupcake cases!
The recipes varied slightly but the method is the same for both.
There's a difference in texture and taste!


Ingredients for Banana Cake 1                           

200g butter                                                            
160g caster sugar                                                  
4 eggs                                                                   
4 tablespoons evaporated milk                            
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
                                    
250g plain flour                                                                                             
1 teaspoon baking powder                                      
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
                                       
3 ripe Delmonte bananas, mashed
                              
50g walnuts, chopped                                                                                                
                                                                                       

Ingredients for Banana Cake 2

100g butter + 90 ml canola oil / corn oil
150g caster sugar
4 eggs
2 tablespoons evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

220g plain flour
30g cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda

 4 ripe bananas ('ang bak chio'), mashed
 60g walnuts, chopped



1. Preheat oven to 170deg C.

2. Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda together.

3. Cream butter and sugar till light and creamy.

4. Add eggs, one at a time to mix well. (Add oil if using recipe 2 before the eggs)

5. Add milk and vanilla extract. Mix well.

6. Add flour in three portions.

7. Lastly add mashed bananas  and walnuts and mix well.

8. Bake in greased and lined loaf tin for 40 mins or cupcake cases for 25 to 30 mins.

I used three 12cm x 10cm disposable aluminium baking tins for recipe 1 and 22 (4.5cm base) cupcake cases for recipe 2.
I had one banana left which I sliced and used it as topping for the cupcakes.

Banana Cake 1

Slightly heavier, more moist and richer!

Banana Cake 2

Lighter and less sweet!

Steamed Kueh Lapis

As a child I used to enjoy eating this kueh by peeling it layer by layer and saving the red part which is the top layer to the last. I wonder how many of us did that as a child.
Today my grandsons would do it the same by eating it layer by layer! Hmm.. Guess the eating style of this kueh never changes!
My mum called it "kow chang kueh" which means nine-layered cake. True to its name, there are nine layers to this kueh.

Ingredients:

540ml coconut milk from 2 grated coconuts
210g sugar
5 to 6 pandan leaves, knotted

180g tapioca flour
80g plain flour
pinch of salt
colouring

1. Add about 350ml water to the grated coconuts to extract 540ml coconut milk.

2. Gently heat coconut milk, sugar and pandan leaves till sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat to cool.

3. Mix tapioca flour and plain flour in a bowl and add coconut milk, a little at a time to mix with the flour before adding the rest. Strain mixture to remove lumps.

4. Divide mixture into 9 equal portions and add a drop of colouring to the mixture.
The colours in sequence from the bottom are: plain, pink, yellow, green, orange, plain, brown, blue and red.

5. Prepare steamer and grease and line the bottom of 7-inch or 18-cm round baking tin.

6. Heat up the baking tin and pour the plain layer and steam for 7 minutes. Repeat steaming process for the 8 layers. Steam for 10 minutes after the last layer.

7. Cool completely before cutting with a well-greased knife.

I used the colouring sparingly as I am not fond of using them.

I also omitted the brown colour and used plain for the layer before the red.

Orange Almond Pithivier

Pithivier is a round enclosed pie comprising of two pieces of circular-shaped puff pastry with filling stuffed in between.
If you are planning on making this, my advice is that it's more convenient to use store-bought puff pastry. Home-made puff pastry requires a cool environment(air-conditioned kitchen) to facilitate easy rolling out of the dough with butter in between the layers.
I had a really tough time rolling the dough as I had to choose a hot sunny day to do it! A battle between melting butter ooozing out of the dough and throwing it back into the fridge numerous time and sustaining aching arms and shoulders told me that it would be the last time I would ever make my own puff pastry!


Ingredients:

500g puff pastry (I used home-made)

Filling:

100g butter
80g caster sugar

Zest from 2 medium-sized oranges
1 tablespoon orange juice
150g ground almonds

2 eggs
50g plain flour

1 egg for glazing

1. Beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

2. Add zest, juice and ground almond. Mix well.

3. Add in lightly beaten eggs and finally flour.

4. Roll out half of pastry on lightly-floured table to ½ cm thick and use a plate of 20-cm in diameter to cut out a disc. Do the same for the other half of the pastry.

5. Place one pastry disc on a baking tray(save the hassle of moving the completed pie to a tray) and spread the filling, leaving a border of 2 cm from the edge.

6. Egg wash the edge and carefully place the other piece of pastry over it and press the edges together and use a fork to seal all round.

7. Egg wash the top of pastry and with the tip of a knife, mark curved lines from the centre to the edge to make a pattern.

8. Bake in preheated oven 180deg C for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Dust with icing sugar.

Whipping Cream Cake

This recipe is taken from "Piece of Cake". I was attracted to the name of the cake. As I read on, I muttered to myself, "Yup, it's definitely a piece of cake!" Lol!
The book title is so apt because every recipe simply requires using only one mixing bowl. It means you 'dump' all the ingredients in, mix, bake and voila! A cake is baked!


Ingredients:

2¼ cups plain flour
1½ cups caster sugar (I used 1 cup)
2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

4 large eggs
1½ cups heavy cream / whipping cream ( I used whipping cream)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Whisk flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.

2. Add eggs, cream and vanilla to the flour and beat at medium speed for about 1 minute.

3. Stop to scrape the bottom and side of bowl and beat on high speed for 2 to 3 minutes.

4. Bake in a greased 10-inch / 25-cm bundt tin in preheated oven 170deg C for 45 to 50 minutes.

5. Remove to cool on rack before slicing.

The texture is dense as in a pound cake. It has a nice taste and I find it quite addictive!