japanese cheesecake

Rachel inspired me to try out a recipe for japanese fluffy cheesecake the other day. I dont know how close this one is to the one she was describing, but well, i thought it was worth a try.

First i mashed up some cream cheese with milk using a fork like this

then add some egg yolks, sugar, cream of tartar..cornflour..and lemon juice

and whisk up some egg whites and sugar till it gets all airy and fluffy like this [i love whisking egg whites with a hand beater..coz u dont have to expend that much energy but you get to see how some clear gooey mess turn into heavenly fluffy creamy looking meringue!]

fold the egg white mixture in like this,very gently so that you dont burst the air bubbles.


and bake in a bain marie for 40 minutes!

here's the finished product..with some blackberry jam glaze on top.


it was really soft, creamy and fluffy...and had a nice lemony flavour. the sweet blackberry topping gave it just enough sweetness to counteract the tangy lemony cake.
terk, chihui, jeniffer, joanna and simeon almost finished the whole cake so i guess it was okay-tasting. i used the leftover cream cheese to make a cheesy chicken sandwich with some roast chicken, tomato, spinach leaves and black pepper.

Price: RM30

Size: 7-inch round [small]

We had dinner at Bella Italia in ss12 tonight [same row as dominos, Taj Curry house and SJMC] Opposite sheraton hotel. it's a really nice little place run by an italian family [i think they're italian coz they look mediterranean and speak with that accent]
you cant miss it as the huge awning is in the italian flag colours - red white and green.

I had my usual pasta carbonara. it was okay..but not as good as the one i make while at tassie coz.. we all know you cant have an authentic carbonara without real bacon!! this was made with beef bacon. oh well. for RM12.90 you cant complain...] sorry for the blurry photo. havent mastered the art of taking photos without adequate lighting.

the Bruschetta was pretty good though.

dad ordered this pasta but no idea what it is.

lamb shank

tiramisu! again, it wasnt that great because it doesn't have any liquour in it! in fact it just tasted like any other commercially made sponge cake with too much fat.

I decided to try making a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting because FanYin suggested it and I'd never done one before. Lotsa people have been asking for it too!! besides...it's healthy right? since it contains beta carotene for your eyes. i'd like to think it's healthy bcoz of the 3 grated carrot in it..but uh....i think the fat from the cream cheese/butter/sugar cancels out any health benefits.
the cinnamon in it makes it a dark brown colour.

Everyone at cellgroup said the cake was nice so i guess it must've been. I managed to save a slice for mum. It was really moist with visible bits of carrot and walnuts.

Price: RM40

Size: 8-inch round

Mum made some gingerbread angels. arent they sweet??? nice skirts. ehhe. they're for my aunt's sunday school class. she used fresh ginger so they really tasted nice and gingerish!!

Price: RM22 for 10 gingerbread angels

Baked another fruitcake!!

somehow I'm a real fruitcake convert. perhaps I just wanted to use up this bottle of rum here that's been here for a long while...... i like the smell of it althugh i dont drink at all. this time, i decided to try something different and used chopped dried apricots to make up half of the dried fruits. the rest were the usual sultanas, orange peel, raisins and cherries. This recipe I used is quite different in that it includes orange essence along with vanilla. This, and all the spices [nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger] makes the cake smell really heavenly. However, i havent tasted it as it has to sit for at least 2 days. [perhaps to let the flavours meld...] I know it's a traditional christmas thing but who says u cant have fruitcake for chinese new year.... i think mum will be bringing this one to her hometown in Johor next weekend.

I had this spicy black pepper lamb pie at secret recipe ystd. it was really good. really spicy!! at RM5.90, I highly recommend it. The crispy hot pastry goes very well with the bits of lamb and potato inside...and the sauce is really nice and black peppery. it was VERY spicy because of the copious amount of pepper in it. anyway I like my hot pies with ketchup on top.... [although my friends thought it weird]

Ok I havent been blogging here for a long time.......coz i've been so busy. So, my apologies to you all who've been checking here often..I hope you hvent gotten bored yet. I baked more cookies yesterday. so I decided to take more photos. Here on top are the peanut butter cookies all stacked up on a trusty airtight Tupperware container. Yeah you gotta love the tupperwares. they're top on every housewife's wishlist. back in the 80's-90's they were the "in" thing so my mum stocked up on heaps of them. I have them in every imaginable size and shape, and i even have a cute tupperware egg separater device where you crack an egg into it, and the yolk stays on the thing while the whites fall through. really nifty. and Joy gave me some limited edition Tupperware cookie cutters some years back. Not to mention now I'm using this perfume by Tupperware [yeah who knows what they'd come up with next?]

These are my new creations! Chocolate chip walnut cookies. I thought it would look pretty to put the walnut pieces on top. also posing on top of a tupperware lid...

and here..................... is something very interesting.. [to me anyway] gavin's been to a new exotic land..where they have exotic looking cheese. This is Haloumi, which is a Cypriot goat's milk cheese [I THINK!!] that the middle eastern folks like to eat. I've seen a lot of it in cookbooks but it's hard to find around here [i saw some at TMC in Bangsar but it was RM16.90 for just a small piece, 180g!] but gav brought some of it home and i've been enjoying it everyday in lotsa weird ways. it's ussually fried or grilled [fried cheese!! can u imagine!???????????? as if it werent fattening enough!!] and eaten with a sprinkling of lemon juice and oregano but i've been frying it with scrambled egg, putting it on my rice, on my noodles and even on my maggi mee. yeah it's so fun to microwave coz it has a very high melting point so instead of melting, it gets nice and chewy and squishy. it has a really nice salty tangy flavour. I even chopped some up and put it in yoghurt to make some sort of a dip. in Cyprus it's eaten with watermelon, I read.. i cant imagine eating cheese with watermelon though..one's salty and the other's sweet. isnt that like..wrong? it's like eating chocolate with garlic. [ugh!]

the one about the fruitcake...[it's after christmas but well, it's time to reflect on what happened at Christmas is it not?]

ok u know how people talk about fruitcakes as if they're the worst ever dreaded thing but somehow you keep having to deal with it. like at weddings..and at christmas. mostly weddings, in our malaysian society. [yeah remember those ubiquitous prepacked rectangles of fruitcake you get at the dinner that wasnt part of the BIG 6 tiered cake?] i've met lotsa people who hate fruitcake [rach is one of em...] and yours truly [im a recent convert!] it was martha who asked me last year if i were gonna make any for Christmas. she said "Christmas cake" and I thought..what's a christmas cake?? I thought any cake consumed at Christmas could be deemed Christmas cake. after all...as long as u decorate it with christmas themed decorations or eat it at a christmas party, isnt that christmas cake? apprently not. "Christmas Cake" is actually fruitcake. I didnt pay much attention to it after that coz i was not a fan of fruitcake but after taking out my Christmas issues of Donna Hay and Martha Stewart magazines, i saw that fruitcakes took centre stage. so I had to try my hand at it. my first try was a flop..it was too dry and crumbly. so i tried again and this time, i did it the longggggggggggggggg way that takes a lot of patience. Yes, i soaked the fruits on rum...for a week [!!] then baked the cake..then poured some rum over it..then kept it for 3 weeks, pouring "some" rum over it every 5 days. at this point, some people i think, overdo it so the cake becomes some massive alcoholic thing but well, some [most] would say thr's no such thing as too much alcohol. so, anyway, the result was, according to my relatives who gobbled it up at christmas dinner, fantabulous. I wasnt there at the dinner coz I was home sick. [probably coz of the frantic insane amount of baking i did in the week leading to Christmas] It was only my 2nd attempt, but I was glad they liked it. when I tried some myself, it was nice and moist and had a very strong rum flavour and you coudl still feel alcohol warming up your throat. Ok,s o maybe next year we'll have some fruitcakes up. I wanna experiment with adding other types of fruit in it..like chopped dried apricot or even dried pineapple.