Perth Royal Show 07

Went to Perth Royal Show 3o Sep 07(yesterday). We were a little put off in the morning as it was cloudy and drizzle with rain. We took the chance and went and it turned out to be a lovely cloudy day, not intensely hot and it was not raining. It made the trip the more fun!

There were soOO many people on the day. This once a year thing is really an excitement for kids of all age (including many adults too LOL).

My newphew Alan first time in the show and had a good fun day. These chair lifts gives me a wobbly knees, not too comfy with heights like this.

Among many rides, my kid Nicole and Alan prepared to get tortured by all these rides. I am just a by standing chicken.. I rathter be the kids's porter(pile with all the bags and stuffs) than go on these rides. I only enjoy watching lah!

Nicoles and Alan had a good time checking the place out. Dogs, animals, rides, horse show games, rides, etc etc, we spent hours in the show ground and went home late at night with all the show bags. Good fun!

Mini Mooncakes/piggy Mooncakes

Today, I thought I will give mooncake another try again. I followed a recipe from the web, it turned out really nice. Although, again I find the color of the mooncake is a little paler than shop's type. Regardless, I am much more satisfied with the result compare the my first trial.

I did not make any red bean paste for this patch of mooncakes. I found this in one of the local oriental supermarket. The paste is much more softer than my homemade red bean paste. I put the paste in the fridge just to harden up abit so I can roll into balls. A bit too sweet for my liking too.

In the same shop I bought these Jelly moulds. I use them for my mini mooncakes as I cannot find any mooncake mould in Perth. The definition of the mooncake is not so fine but eh, I am not complaining, chinese say, "no fish, prawns also can lah"

Custard Swirl Bun

My family is mad about these buns, Sell like hotcakes as it is!

The Custard filling which I made the night before, I find it easier to work with when I make fillings the day before and allow it to sit in the fridge overnight.

The custard filling is thinly rolled and spread across the dough.

Dough is then roll into a swiss roll

Custard Swirl Buns

Ingredients
300 g Bread Flour
70 g Cake Flour
12 g (sachet) Instant Yeast
Pinch of Salt
60 g Caster Sugar
50 ml Butter Milk
75 ml Fresh Milk
125 ml water
30 g Cheddar Cheese
1 tsp Bread Improver
50 gm Melted Butter

Custard Filling
10g Custard Powder
50g Wheat Starch
100g Castor Sugar
100ml Fresh Milk
50g Melted Butter
1 lightly beaten egg

In a sauce pan, mix custard powder, wheat starch and castor sugar and milk over low heat. Stir constantly until well mix and add butter. Stir and mix well until butter blended in. Turn off heat and mix in egg. Do take note while stirring the filling, if it turns out a little dry/lumpy, small quantity of water (1-2 table spoons at a time) can be added to smoothen the lumps. The filling should look smooth and glossy. Set aside for use.


Put all the dough ingredients into the bread machine and set it on dough mode. Let the machine works its full cycle. Remove the dough from the machine and roll out on a floured board to 2-3 mm thick with a rolling pin. Try to roll it into a square(ish) shape.

In between two pieces of (approx 50 cm) non stick or greased baking sheets, place fist size custard filling and roll it out as thin as you can. Remove top sheet and slap it onto the square roll out dough with the sheet facing up. Keep rolling out the filling until most of the dough surface is covered with fillings. Roll the dough Swiss roll style follows by cutting the roll into 1 inch thick sections. Place the cut out rolls onto greased tins and let to prove for around 50 minutes or until twice in size. Glaze the rolls with egg and milk wash and bake in a preheated 180c oven for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow cooling before serving.

Mooncake

My first time making mooncake. It is much harder than I thought. I remembered mum used to work for a mooncake factory donkey years ago. Vaguely I remembered she said how precise and important all the ingredients were, now I realized it too. As two mooncake in Perth will cost around 18 dollars for one york mooncake, I thought I will give it a go.

I search high and low for alkaline water and the cake mould. Well, tough luck as it is sooO near to the festival already. In the end, I decided to use the US chinese recipe which can skip using the alkaline water. Well, all turn out fine except I do notice the texture of the mooncake is not as soft and dense like mooncakes which I bought from the shop. I use an empty square container for my moulding and write out a stencil of "fook" just to increase the feeling of mooncake. As you can see my mooncake mould is abit blunt.The red bean paste, I had to make them the day before so it would be easier to shape into ball.

I have to admit my family is not much of a fan of mooncake but they still sampled a portion of it. That is good enough for me as a first timer! Better next time..

Enterprising Fish Or What?

I want to share these old pictures of mine to show everyone, not only human knows how to advertise their business, fish can too!! It kind of read WELF CO. With unclear alphebats below the "CO" and somekind of alphabets on top of the welf co which I couldnt figure out. Wierd a?

In was back in year of 1994. I was holidaying on Tioman Island with a couple of friends. This paricular day in time, we were strolling on the jetty to wait and watch the beautiful sun set. As most people been on Tioman Island in West Malaysia, it is a unspoiled beautiful island with plenty of fishes. On the jetty, youngsters was dropping their lines hoping to catch a good fish. This young boy we came across had a bucket next to him and it seemed he was quite a lucky boy too. He had few fishes in the buckets and I was curious to see what he has got. When I looked into the bucket, I was quite shocked to see this fish lying on its side, still alive, with somewhat seemed like alphapets on its scales. With permission, I took the fish out of the bucket and showed it to my friends. I was absolutely amaized at what nature can create. And so I took a few pictures to remember this unusual finds. It was really a special highlight of our trip!

Peanut Caramel Brownies

My sis Jessie came over for a short holiday. She bought for me two lovely baking books. One is all about fudge and brownies and the other is all about steam buddings. Couldn't wait too long and already starting to gather ingredients the same day.

As I have quite abit of left over roasted peanuts, I opted to bake this brownies. In the book itself has not such recipe so I picked the caramel brownies which request to use walnuts and I changed it to peanuts instead. It actually turned out very well too.

Peanut Caramel Brownies

Ingredients

60g Self Raising Flour

40g Plain Flour

150g Butter(room temperature)

230g Brown sugar

2 Eggs

1tbsp Mil

1 tsp Vanilla Essense

75 g Roasted Peanuts (blended roughly)

Combine the self raising flour and plain flour and sift into a big bowl. In another bowl, whisk butter and sugar until light and soft. Add one eg and a time and whisk well. Add in milk and vanilla essense. Fold in the sifted flour gently and also the peanuts. Keep a little peanuts to dust the top of the mix after it has been poured into a greased tin. Bake in a preheated 180c oven for 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before cutting and store in air tight tins.

Pizza Pockets

Made another patch of pizza pockets for school lunch. Kids love these pockets as it is soo yummy!