Carrot Cake Muffin

It's been a while since I baked, and this was made a while back for a gathering with some friends who brought their toddlers along. I know there's a few camps about giving kids sugary stuff beyond or before a certain age. I haven't decide which camp we will be but this cup cakes has the natural sweetness of carrots and raisins, so if you decide to scale back the sugar amount in the recipe, I'm sure it will still be delicious :). Most of the 'sinful' stuff can be blamed on the icing, but this is made from cream cheese which you can lightly sweeten to 'convince it is a dessert', using the words of Jamie Oliver. This recipe is adapted from Alex Goh's Carrot Muffin recipe.

Ingredients

140g margarine

180g sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

40g honey

2 eggs

400g milk

400g plain flour

3 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder

220g grated carrots

100g raisins

115g cream cheese

50g soft butter

150g icing sugar

grated zest of one orange

Steps

1. Cream the margarine, sugar, salt and honey until light and then add in one egg at a time, ensuring it is smooth and light.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon powder well in a bowl first, then add in to the egg mixture alternating with the milk until well-blended.
3. Add in the carrots and raisins towards the end and scoop into individual muffin cups (80%) full. Bake at 190°C for 20-30 minutes.
   
   

   
   

   
   
4. Prepare the icing by beating the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and orange zest together until well mix and smooth. Ice the cup cakes when they have cooled.

Mee Sua Soup - Longevity noodles in soup

I am trying to start posting from my iPad so if any alignments looks strange, please pardon me while I make adjustments. With taking care of our 5 month old son, I have gotton really lazy at switching on my mac, but I would still want to keep updating the blog and especially since there has been quite a few likes even though I have not been able to update so regularly.

Living in Lund, one of the highlights is gathering with friends over a home-cooked meal. That's where I learn new dishes, new flavors and this is one of them. Chef Anlai, who has just become a restaurant owner ( Mui Kong at
Kyrkogatan 21, Lund 22222, Sweden) cooked this for their son's first year birthday earlier this year. I love it so much that I asked him how it was prepared and this is my take on it and hope it do justice. One thing you should be aware that these longevity noodles are quite salty in nature, so if you cooking a large amount, I suggest you soak the noodles otherwise the soup stock would be too salty to be enjoyable. The toppings can be varied, this is just a suggestion of what you can use.

Ingredients (3-5 servings)
1 packet of longevity noodles
200g lean pork, sliced into thin stripes and marinade with soy sauce and pepper
A handful of dried lily bulbs, wood ear mushroom, dried chinese mushroom, all soaked till hydrated.
A large handful of bean sprouts, soaked in hot boiling water
Quails eggs or normal eggs hardboiled
Fish balls and meatballs of your preference
300g pork ribs to make the stock,6-7 slices of ginger
3 spring onions, sliced finely
Sesame seed oil for drizzling over

Steps
1. Prepare the stock by boiling 1.5 litres of water with the pork ribs and sliced ginger. Remove the ginger and pork ribs when done.



2. Stir fry the lean pork, dried mushrooms and wood ear mushroom until done, set aside as topping for the noodles.



3. Prepare the dried lily bulbs by snipping away any hard ends, tie a knot(optional) and blanched it for a few minutes in boiling water, drain and set aside.


4. Wash the noodles once and bring the stock to boil. Add the noodles and cook until al dente. Add in the sliced spring onions and sesame seed oil.



5. Serve hot in individual bowls and top with the toppings and the best part is, you get to decide which and how much topping you want!

Strawberries and Cream Cheesecake from Martha Stewart

Sweden is quite famous for its summer strawberries because they are incredibly sweet (and cheap too during the season). So this is a nice recipe to make dessert with, I especially like the technique of roasting the strawberries because it does intensify the flavor very much unlike any other methods.  This is taken from Martha Stewart's website, but I have adapted the recipe to make a smaller cake and put this out in metrics system instead.

Ingredients

250g fresh strawberries, hulled, you can save a few for decoration

1.5 tablespoons light syrup

1/2 pack digestive biscuits, crushed finely

115g sugar

1.5 tablespoons butter melted

400g cream cheese room temperature

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

1/2 vanilla bean, scrapped

115g mascarpone cheese, room temperature

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 150°C, toss the strawberries in the light syrup and line them in a single row on baking paper and bake for 1.5 hours. It will shrink slightly, mash it up with a fork together with the liquid produced and set aside to cool.
   
   

   
   

   
   
   
2. Increase the temperature to 180°C while you mix the melted butter, 1 tablespoon of sugar and crushed digestive biscuit together and press it tightly to the bottom of the cake pan (I use a 20cm one). Bake it for about 10 minutes and let it cool.
3. Reduce the temperature to 160°C, beat the cream cheese with a electric mixer until smooth, then add in the sugar, salt, egg, vanilla bean seeds, mascarpone cheese one at a time ensuring there are no lumps.
   
   
   
   
4. Reserve a third of the cheese mixture and set aside. Use the remaining cheese mixture and combine with the mashed strawberries and mix well, pour into the cake form.
   
   
   
   
5. Dollop the remaining plain cheese mixture over the top and wrap the cake form in tin foil and bake in a large pan filled half way with water for about 1h 10 minutes. Let it cool and set in the fridge for at least 4 hours before serving.
   
   

    

   

Poached Salmon with Asparagus, new potatoes and green things

Contrary to the frequency of Asian recipes I post up, we do eat Western dishes. This is one of those. There's three components to the meal but they are easy to put together, maybe it can go under one of Jamie Oliver's 30 minutes meal. I have that cookbook, just haven't try any of the meals yet. Maybe I should, you think? Now that's its summer in Sweden, fresh new potatoes are everywhere and goes really well with salmon, one of the most commonly eaten fish here.

Ingredients (Serves 2)

2 slices of salmon 

Half a lemon

250ml water and 250ml white wine

1 bunch of asparagus

6-7 new potatoes

Half a leek, paprika, 4-5 button mushrooms

Steps

1. The potatoes will take the longest (about 15-20 minutes) to cook, so start the pot of water (generously salted) to boil it first while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
2. Take a shallow pan and fill it up with the water and wine, along with 3 slices of lemon, some salt and pepper. Slide the salmon slices in when it is gently simmering and poach it for about ten minutes, drain and set aside.
3. Prepare the asparagus by breaking the woody end parts, and slice the leek, paprika and mushroom.
4. Heat up a frying pan on high heat, and put in a knob of butter. Fry the asparagus first until your desired crunchiness, and season with salt and pepper just before dishing it up.
5. In the same pan, add more butter if required and stir fry the rest of the 'green things' (leek, paprika, mushrooms) again to your desired level of crunchiness and season with salt and pepper towards the end.
6. Serve everything on a plate with a slice of lemon and some type of sauce, here we normally use romsås, which is a combination of creme fraiche, mayonaise, salt and orange cavier.

Pork Ribs and White Radish Soup

White radish, also known as daikon or white carrot is the main ingredient used in the Singaporean carrot cake is also quite good as an addition to soup. This is a simple soup using just three ingredients, yet very flavorful.

Ingredients (2 portions)

Half a large white radish, peeled and sliced into thick medallions

150g pork ribs (this one I used was the soft bones part of the ribs which can be quite fatty, you can use other parts if preferred)

3-4 red dates

1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine

Salt to taste

Steps

1. First blanch the pork ribs in boiling water for a few minutes. Drain, rinse and set aside while you boil up 3 bowls of water again.
2. Return the ribs to the boiling pot of water together with the sliced radish and red dates. Wait for it to come to boil again then turn down the heat to let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
3. Add the Shaoxing wine and salt to taste just before serving.
   
   

Stir Fry Celery With Wood Ear Mushroom, Baby Corn and Carrots

Its fast but it's almost been four months since our baby boy arrived and life has never been the same again (especially for the blog!) and my husband suggested I can blog about parenthood and stuff. So since he starts tasting solids (we've tried rice cereal so far), you may see some baby food recipes coming up in this blog :)

First, this really nice refreshing dish to add to your Chinese dinner table. It was cooked by a friend who helped during the confinement period and I've grown to like it more and more. I wanted to make it for my Dad who visited us in Sweden late last month but didn't get the chance too. So hopefully my sister will see this and make it for him instead ;)

Ingredients
4-5 stalks of celery
1 carrot
1 can of baby corn
A handful of  dry wood ear mushroom
Chicken stock powder to taste

Steps

1. Peel the celery and carrot and slice into sections. Soak the mushroom until soft, remove any hard bits, drain and set aside. 
2. Heat up a frying pan on high with 3 tablespoons of cooking oil until smoke it coming out.
3. Add in the celery and carrots first and fry until they are bright in color before adding in the mushroom and corn.
4. Season with chicken stock powder and some water, I prefer them with a bit of crunch but you can cook it longer if you want it softer. Serve with rice.

MyMoment Yogurt Drink

I got an invitation recently to test this yogurt drink called MyMoment. You can check out the video here. I actually bought the strawberry flavour before and am looking forward to test the other flavours. You can also be a test pilot, just click on this link (it's in Swedish) http://smartsontestpilot.se/mymoment/bli-testpilot/ to participate. Enjoy!