Cakes and Cookies – The Occasional Cook

Cornflake Meringue Cookies

April 24, 2022 7shasha7

Hari Raya, or Eid, is in a week’s time! How time flies and sadly Ramadan will be over. However, in this part of the world, it also means that visiting begins. And this year in Singapore, we have just gotten news that there’s no more limit to people gatherings! We can have as many visitors as we want and go out with as many people in a group as we want! Hooray!

This also means that I have to ensure that my dining table is Raya ready! What this means is taking out my pink Pyrex canisters and filling them with cookies!

This year I decided that I’ll bring a bit of my childhood to Raya. I’ll bake cookies that remind me of my own childhood. Cookies I remember eating as a kid during this festivity and though I may not be able to master them all, I’ll try a few.

One of my childhood memories during Raya is eating these cornflake meringue cookies. Sweet and crunchy, they’re every kid’s dream.

I called my aunt for the recipe and it seemed pretty simple enough. First up, make the meringue. Next, add lightly crushed cornflakes and chocolate chips. Place in a liner (use a dark one for that colour contrast) and bake.

So these are all the ingredients needed! 1/2 cup egg white (that measured to 3 eggs), 1/2 tsp salt, 9oz caster sugar, 5oz cornflakes, 1tsp vanilla extract. Oh, and 9oz chocolate chips. In the end I added the entire bag because after measuring out 9oz, there was only a teeny weeny bit left of chips in the bag. It makes no difference to finish the entire bag! 😉

As you can see, this is so old school for me because the measurements given were in ounces. This is a family recipe that has lasted many many decades! 😂

Making the meringue is fun because with a Kitchen Aid mixer, you can do anything! 😂 (Kitchen Aid, can you please give me a new mixer. I’ll post more baking posts!)

After mixing the cornflakes and chips into the batter (which has been flavoured with vanilla extract), spoon huge dollops of the mixture into paper cup liners.

Bake at 150C for 20minutes and voila! All done!

They’re meant to be crunchy and oh so sweet. Next time if I make this I’m going to modify the family recipe and reduce the amount of sugar!

In any case, another achievement unlocked for me. More cookie recipes coming up. 🍪

Biskut Dahlia (Malay Butter Cookies)

May 5, 2021May 5, 2021 7shasha7

Eid is round the corner. And so I decided to bake another cookie I havent tried. These Malaysian cookies called Dahlia are so easy to make but I had such a horrible time pumping the dough out. They are beautiful, though and melt in your mouth.

I followed popular Malaysian YouTube Che’ Nom for this recipe, but I think I might try other recipes. Though they turn out soft, they were too soft and powdery in my mouth. But they do look so gorgeous and I am sure, look pretty in my pink Pyrex canister. Even though I have no idea who will be visiting me this year, given the stringent measures here we have to eliminate COVID.

The ingredients are so easy. 250g softened butter, 1 cup of corn flour, 1 cup of powdered sugar, 1 cup of custard powder, 1 egg yolk, and 2 cups of plain flour. Actually, for the flour the advice was not to add all in but to eyeball how much you need to form a soft dough.

So after mixing the ingredients above, this was my soft dough. It was a beautiful dough.

This was the device I bought for ‘beginners’. One can use a star nozzle and a piping bag but that apparently takes practice. But this was not easy either! Obviously, I am a novice when it comes to all things cookies.

The device is so small, that after three pumps, we had to refill it with dough. And this recipe, as with other recipes for this cookie I am sure, produces few cookies. For this recipe, we got 79 cookies exactly.

The chocolate chip center makes it so pretty!

Ready to be bottled and filled in the pink canisters next week!

Check out my Eid/Raya table next week when I fill my canisters with cookies, crackers, nuts and more! Who’s coming over to my house, now? lol. Die, pandemic, die. I curse you for ruining my Eid for two years in a row.

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts

Butter Cake

March 7, 2021May 5, 2021 7shasha7

Growing up, this was the only type of cake that I would get regularly. It’s very Singaporean or Malaysian to have butter cake as a snack or tea during small scale functions.

This butter cake recipe I got makes for a wonderful soft cake! The next time I make this, I’m going to mix some butter with Dutch butter. Find out more when I experiment with Dutch butter soon!

The recipe is so simple but made even more simple if you use a stand mixer with the whisk attachment. The original recipe is here and it’s the best one online.

Ingredients:

250g butter, softened (I used salted)

200g caster sugar

5 eggs

240 g cake flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

50 ml milk

Beat the butter and sugar till pale, creamy and fluffy. Then gradually the eggs, one by one. Add vanilla. Slowly add the dry ingredients in two batches. And then the milk.

Pour into lines well greased pans and bake at 160 Celcius for about an hour.

Cool it on a rack. Next time, I’m going to use a square pan.

Beautiful soft butter cake for tea time. Simple pleasures.

Bread and Batter, Cakes and Cookies, Desserts

Anna Olson’s Anything Muffin

March 5, 2021March 5, 2021 7shasha7

This has got to be the healthiest recipe for muffins I’ve ever used. However, when she said ‘anything’ she meant dried fruits, as in ANY dried fruits. My kids wanted chocolate chips instead so the healthy level just went down a few notches.

But really, this recipe is good but I couldn’t follow it completely. 1. She said not to use Greek yogurt but that’s all I had so I did. Turned out fine. Her recipe called for 124g of yogurt but my tub is 140 and you know, waste not! She said she only semi milk with 1 to 2 per cent fat. I couldn’t open a new packet just for this so I used what I had in the fridge, full fat. There’s no sugar except maple syrup, calling for half a cup. But my bottle could only give out to 1/4 cup so I added another 1/4 cup of honey. I used chopped walnuts and chocolate chips for the ‘anything’ filling.

Wait. Did I just make unhealthy muffins using her healthy recipe? 😱

No matter. The kids loved it and now there’s only 5 left of it for today.

I saw these cute sticks at Daiso and bought a pack

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts

Lemon Blueberry Loaf Bread

February 23, 2021 7shasha7

Yes, another lemon loaf but this time with blueberries. I used this wonderful recipe here at Jo Cooks but not exactly…

I only used 1 cup of fresh blueberries instead of 1.5 as in her recipe. I think a half cup more will result in too much blueberries and yo won’t be able to taste much cake! So one cup for me works fine because I can still cut into the cake.

Also, I added lemon paste. About one teaspoon of it and did not soak the cake in lemon syrup. The lemon paste added that lemony zing without me soaking in the entire cake with lemon sugar. Other than that, I think her recipe makes for a very good loaf!