Strawberry Bread

This recipe was shared by a colleague. His wife invested a branded bread maker that is more high-tech than mine. He passed to me a hand written recipe booklet for my experiment. My first choice goes to Strawberry Bread. No specific reason, just the ingredients were easy to get. Since I just bought a non-stick chiffon cake pan, so I just use it to to mould the buns. 

The buns were soft and with mild fragrant of strawberry. You can replace strawberry flavored milk with chocolate milk in order to get chocolate buns. I'll give that a try too.

I'm submitting the strawberry buns to Aspiring Bakers #8: Bread Seduction (June 2011), hosted by Jasmine of The Sweetylicious. 

Strawberry Bread

Ingredients:

200ml fresh milk (strawberry flavored)

330gm of bread flour

1.5 tsp of yeast

25gm butter

40gm of fine sugar

1/2 tsp of salt

some beaten egg.

Steps:
1. Put all the ingredients into bread maker follow the sequence of liquid, semi liquid, and dry ingredients.
2. Select "dough" program.
3. When the dough is ready, divide it into 7 or 8 portions. Mould into balls and put on a greased pan.
4. Let the dough prove for another 40 minutes.
5. Egg-brush the top.
6. Bake at 180 deg C for 12-15 minutes

Vegetarian Curry Mutton One-Plate Meal

Some time ago, we were fancy over a local vegetarian restaurant's one-plate meal. However, their food quality have deteriorated over time. Hence, we no longer dine in the vegetarian restaurant. According to my previous dine in experience, I used to order their one-plate meal with rice, vegetarian curry mutton, and some veggies.

The one-plate meal concept interests me. So, I apply the similar way for my home cooking in preparing our meatless meal. I always have great appetite whenever I see this type of one-plate meal. Funny! :-)

For the vegetarian mutton curry recipe, please refer here.

Purple Sweet Potato Bun

Every time when I step into a hypermarket, I enjoyed myself looking for new ingredients for my cooking. Each hypermarket sure have their unique products. Some have wide variety of spices, and some are more fresh vegetables and fruits.

Last week, I found some fresh fragrant purple sweet potato which I seldom use in my cooking. Since I still have some left over "Pao" flour, I thought of trying to make some steamed buns. I played with the dough and shaped it into different shapes. This is the prettiest among all. 

Purple Sweet Potato Bun


Ingredients:
270gm of purple sweet potato, peeled, cut into chunks,steamed until soft and mashed
60gm fine sugar
500gm pao flour
1 tsp of yeast
10gm Sunflower oil
200ml water

Steps:
1. Put all the ingredients into bread maker follow the sequence of liquid, semi liquid, and dry ingredients.
2. Select "dough" program.
3. When the dough is ready, divide it into small equal portions. Shape it and put on parchment paper.
4. Let the dough prove for 45 minutes.
5. Steam it for about 15 minutes or longer depends on the size.

Leek and Chicken Drumstick Fried Rice

I just got a good quality pro-metal non-stick pan from hubby as a reward to my home cooking. So, it’s more convenient for me to pan-fry meat and seafood from now on with little or without oil. Today, I tried to pan-fry chicken without oil. The natural oil released from chicken throughout the frying process was retained for the rice frying process. That’s our chicken fragrant fried rice for lunch.

Leek and Chicken Drumstick Fried Rice
Serves 3


Ingredients:
1 stalk of leek, chopped (separate the green portion and the white portion)
1 chicken drumstick, deboned
2 eggs, beaten
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
3 bowls of cool rice

Marinades:
1 tbsp of light soy sauce
Dashes of white pepper powder

Seasonings:
light soy sauce to taste
oyster sauce to taste
1 tsp of sesame oil

Steps:
1.Marinate the chicken drumstick and leave for 15 minutes.
2.Heat up a non-stick pan. Pan-fry the chicken drumstick with skin facing down. Brown the chicken skin side and follow by the other side. Set aside the chicken and leave it cool before cutting it into cubes.
3.Mix the rice with beaten eggs.
4.With the chicken oil in the pan, stir-fry the leek (the white portion). Add chicken and garlic to mix. Pour in the rice and fry till golden yellow.
5.Add light soy sauce to taste. Drizzle sesame oil over the rice before dish out.

Coffee Buns (Tesco Bread Maker Recipe)

Since I owned a bread maker machine, I've tried making several types of bread loaf and buns. Not every baking is successful. Supposedly if you follow strictly the steps for the dough preparation using a bread maker, you shouldn't go wrong. But, the secret is in the ingredients, in terms of quality and proportions. For example, the yeast. So far, I tried 2 different brand of yeasts. The first brand results a good raise for dough, and the other one does not. I experimented using both brands of yeasts in several baking for the hypothesis, and it proved that my earlier assumption is right. So, I stick to my reliable yeast.

These coffee buns were made using the poor quality of yeast. Hence it did not raise properly. It's soft and springy while hot, but it's hard while cooled to room temperature. It was a failure. However, I believe with a good quality yeast, you'll get a perfect texture buns. 

Coffee Buns

Ingredients:
300gm bread flour
30gm fine sugar
half tsp of salt
5g of dried yeast
1 packet of 2-in-1 coffee powder
1 packet of raisins
180ml of room temp water
20gm of butter (at room temp)

Steps:
1. Put all the ingredients into bread maker follow the sequence of liquid, semi liquid, and dry ingredients.
2. Select "dough" program.
3. When the dough is ready, divide it into small portions. Mould into balls and put on a greased pan.
4. Let the dough prove for 15 minutes, then flatten slightly and continue to let them prove for 30 minutes.
5. Bake at 190 deg C for 12-15 minutes.