Moon cake

Glad to say that I have successfully tried to bake moon cake. I made it from frying the paste till baking. Of course I knew there are ready made paste sold in the shop. That I am not so interested. I want to do it the whole from the scratch from soaking beans till baking the molded cake.

I will not be writing the recipes because there are already many blogs writting about mooncake.

Baking bread made easy

This is the fastest method to made bread. It does not need to manually knead and wait for it to prove. What is needed is that you dump in all the required ingredients into the bread maker.

Ingredients
320 g bread flour
25 g sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp milk powder
1/8 tsp cinnamon powder (optional)
2 tsp instant yeast
1 egg
145 ml cold water
25 g butter
80 g raisins
20 gm melon seeds (optional)

Bread ready in approx 3 hrs time. Slice it when it is no longer hot with sharp knife. Suggested serve with serikaya.

Serikaya made easy

Serikaya has always been my all time favorite. As it is never easy to cook serikaya the traditional way since then I have stopped making my own serikaya. One has to stir and stand by the stove nearly hours to make serikaya the traditonal way. Today I cook it by using breadmaker.
Ingredients.
2/3 cup of sugar (1 cup will be more ideal for those not health conscious)
1 cup of egg (5 eggs)
1 cup of santan
12 - 15 leaves of pandan

Whisk the egg with the sugar, pour all the ingredients into the basket of the breadmaker. Press the jam function program button. The kaya will be ready in the next 1 hr and 5 mins. Never mind if it may looks a little bit like scramble egg. When it is luke warm, transfer the kaya into the blender and blend till smooth.

It is so fragrance. The smell of genuine home made kaya is totally different from the shelf ready made kaya at the supermarket.

The cost are :
Eggs - RM 1.50
Sugar - Abt RM0.50
Santan - RM2.00
Pandan - free (home grown)
Total cost RM4.00

If I were to buy from the wet market, this serikaya are sold at RM3.00/plastic cup . I can have about 3 cups - worth RM9.00. This is a saving of aprrox RM5.00 or in other words the RM5.00 is for labour cost.

Sources and idea of this breadmaker made kaya are from :
http://thelazychef.wordpress.com/2006/09/02/nonya-kaya/ and

http://www.agnestan.net/2009/05/07/kaya-from-a-bread-machine

Many thanks to the authors for generously shared their ideas of cooking.

Full Bloom

This plant was planted by me about 5 years ago. It has a purplish blue colour. The whole plant is taller than me. I guess it to be about 6 feet height. The plant is now growing wild and sturdy.