Ji Jor

Chee Jor or Ji Zhor depends on how one is going to romanize it..It's a chewy sweet potato finger.

The non-muslim community in Kuala Kangsar will know of this snack.This is sold at a small hawker stall near the town's supermarket, only available evening onwards, made by a Hokkien lady who resides few doors away from my old residence, a family friend.. It's like those sweet  potato balls, but made into fingers.

Soft Fluffy Doughnuts

It was a holiday project with the kids.

I promised them to make doughnuts for a long long time, just that it never came around.
Bad mother, haha! I still owe them croissants, homemade ones. Hopefully I'll make them by this year.

I manually kneaded these and the result was good enough for us.

Taro Balls 芋圆 - Taiwan AFF Chewies #2

I can frankly tell you, I'm not a fan of these things.

I ate them at Blackball before and didn't fall in love with it, but I won't say I hate them. I will still eat them, but not looking forward to them .

My husband's family makes a savoury version with leeks and crab, as a traditional dish every second day of the Chinese New Year. My husband do not look forward to that too, although he has been eating them since he was a kid.

Granite Tang Yuan 石头汤圆 - Balls #3

I saw this special form of tang yuan many years ago and had been hoping to try it out. Finally I did.
Every year, I do hope to make some  for the winter festival (although there's no winter here), but I just never made some, because no one bothers about it and just end up only me "shiok sendiri".

I was lazy to wrap fillings and decided to serve it 'muah chee style'. Now it looks like pebbles on sand...
I am thinking whether I can construct an aquarium bowl to serve it, complete with aquatic plants, fish and maybe prawns, haha, but that will be sooo big. It's just a crazy idea.

Mine look more like marbles and if you take a look at my source's granite balls, they look sooo real and nice.

I kept mine for more than 6 hours, soaked in room temperature water, waiting for my hubby to come home from work. I reheated the granite balls in the microwave, still submerged in water. Drained them and put them on the peanut sand. He enjoyed his after dinner dessert, saying the peanuts were the loveliest touch.

Granite Sticky Rice Balls
Idea adapted from: maimaidejianguo

200gm glutinous rice flour
14gm or 1 Tbsp butter
90ml boiling water
1-2 Tbsp water

1 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp bamboo charcoal powder

3/4 cup ground roasted peanut + 1/3 cup castor sugar (roughly 2:1 ratio)

1. Bring 1/2 cup of water to boil on a saucepan.
2. Measure the flour and butter and put it in a bowl. Make a well and when the water has  boiled, measure 90ml water into the well. (You can either use  6 Tbsp or a measuring cup, or weigh 90gm of water with the mixing bowl directly on the scale)
3. Mix it with chopsticks or a fork. Add in 1 Tbsp of room temperature water and knead (it might still be very warm, but it won't  burn your hand). Add  more water if it's needed and knead until a dough forms.
4. Divide  dough into 4 parts  and  knead 1 part with  charcoal powder and 1 part with cocoa  powder.
5. Roll each part into long logs, with equal length. flatten them and stack. Cut the stack into half and stack.
6. Cut the stacked dough into smallish pieces, it's ok if they are not in exact sizes.
7. Roll them into pebble shapes.
8. Bring a saucepan of water to boil. Put the balls of  dough into the  boiling water. Let them boil until they float. Lower the heat to medium low and let them simmer for another 2-3  minutes.
9. Remove the dough balls from the water and serve with peanut sugar.

You can serve these in light syrup too, of which is the usual way.

Blog on Break :)

See you in January for AFF Hong Kong Macau with a chicken week.

Getuk Ubi - KL Sel MFF #2

If it's not for a book Shannon showed me, I would've forgotten about this yummy snack I used to have back in those bus chasing days. I am not sure if they still exist around the Pudu and Kotaraya area as I haven't been there for 10 years.

This snack brings back nostalgic memories.

Cheesy Fried Bananas - MFF Sabah #7

Fried bananas are well loved and found everywhere here!

But in Tawau, the eateries there love to serve this version with cheese and brown sugar.
You can use any batter recipe that you like, any type of bananas that you like, but you must serve it with brown sugar and grated cheddar.

Batang Buruk Sabah - Sabah MFF #4

Crunchy addictive snacks from Sabah.

Batang buruk is also found in Johor and is one of Johor's specialties, but.... Sabah's version is a much simpler one. Using store bought spring roll wrappers, and allowing the use of dustings like powdered cereal,, milk powders or even malted powders, it is a easy to do snack that can be made in a jiffy. The Johor way that involved forming the crust in tube like shapes around papaya petioles requires more work and later stuffed with fillings instead of just dusting.

I made this using leftover spring roll wrappers from Chinese New Year and also milk powder samples, LOL.
Getting the idea of a quick dusting from McD, I utilized a paper bag :-)

Caramelized Sweet Potato - Sweet Potato #2

Grandaunt is the type of person who likes to repeat dishes. Don’t tell her you like it, if not you eat that at least 4 times in a week. Serious! Ask my brother about her infamous bean paste fish, he’ll puke if he ever thinks of that now. Or the ex workers of my mom’s salon who in the end got so sick of her Fish Paste Stuffed tofu that they picked the fish paste and left the vege carcass behind, and that made grandaunt furious. She has this notorious habit of repeating dishes and she hates it when people refuse to eat anymore. LOL.

Peanut Rolls - Nutty Treats #5

This is another treat I made for my demo. It was such a coincidence that I made so much stuff with nuts, LOL. Guess I went nuts this year.

This idea came in a sudden and I merged the idea of baklava with the popular CNY goodie that is the peanut puff (Kok Chai). Crispy fragrant pastry skin with sandy peanut filling. Ahh, Heaven for me. Baked rolls uses much less fat than deep fried.and again, peanut with ghee is match made in heaven. Yaya, I didn't use phyllo, but popiah skin is almost like it... just treat it like it :)

Sesame Honeycomb Cookies - CNY Crispies # 1

Last year, I did a cookie week for CNY, this year and Fried-Up week. Hopefully next year when CNY lands on end of February, I'll be doing a Dried Up week for CNY, because the sky is blue and air is dry when January begins.. right up until end of February.

Hasselback Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Seems familiar? That is if you've seen this in Sea Salt with Food.

It looked so pretty on her site. So I tried it.

I don't know whether it's due to my sweet potatoes or what, but the potaoes had a dry skin, akin to a tree bark. Hard and chewy, not crunchy.

But as you can see my purple sweet potatoes aren't that purple either. So, let me blame it on my sweet potatoes.
They're no good.

My MIL thought they were bread when she first saw it, and Mike's aunt said they looked like worms. I thought they looked cute.

Only Lyanne liked them. :(
I could only eat whatever that is not part of the "bark".

Fried Milk with Cream Cheese 炸牛奶

Bet you thought they were fries....



I found this fried milk thing while searching for other stuff. I do believe that sometimes we find what we did not intend to search for, and it takes us away from our goal.

There is a Italian version called Crème Fritta, meaning cream fritters, usually a custard, coated in bread crumbs and deep fried. The Chinese version is just a milk pudding coated with a batter. I saw another crème fritta, with cream cheese , but it’s just cream cheese and cream, a bit too heavy think. Why not I combine both recipes??? Fried Milk with Cream Cheese!!!

Fried Milk with Cream Cheese Recipe

500ml full cream milk
250gm cream cheese
100gm sugar
100gm cornstarch

1. Bring cream cheese to room temperature. Beat until it it smooth and free of lumps.
2. Mix cornstarch with 125ml milk, set aside and bring the rest of the milk to a boil with the sugar.
3. Pour some of the boiling milk into cream cheese. Stir. Add milk gradually to the cheese and mix till smooth.
4. Pour cornstarch mixture into(3). Mix.
5. Put milk mixture back into the saucepan/pot, on low heat cook until it thickens. Stir all the time to ensure bottom of pan doesn’t burn.
6. When milk mixture has thickened to a thick paste, pour into a very lightly greased (pour 1 tsp oil onto pan and swipe with a paper kitchen towel all around.) 9X9 square pan. You may use 8X8, just that it’ll be thicker. Both will work well.
7. Leave to cool down. It will harden to be a firm pudding. Chill in fridge until time of use.
*If your milk pudding is not smooth, don’t worry, just whack it with a pot blender.

Frying
~ the Batter (This is enough to fry half the pudding, if you intend to save the other half for tea the next day)

100gm rice flour
25gm all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
185ml water (3/4 cup)

1. Combine everything together to form a batter.
2. Cut milk pudding into strips, or squares, as preferred.
3. Heat few cups of oil and dip each milk pudding into batter and deep fry until golden. Do this one at a time, cos the pudding is quite fragile.
4. Serve hot. You can serve this with a sprinkling of icing sugar or just plain like that.


Verdict: It’s good, that is if you’re a milk lover. Although the cream cheese taste is not that prominent, but it sure lent a creamy end to the fried milk.

Suggestion: I f you want to try this out, maybe try adding in some finely grated parmesan to the milk pudding. It has a stronger cheese taste and smell. I also think that I should put in some salt to the milk.

Take a guess whose hand is that?? Lydia or Lyanne's???

These puffier looking ones were made with a second batch of batter using more baking powder than the 1st. Those fried with 1st batch batter were the first 4 pics. The recipe I gave here is my 2nd batch recipe.

Dulce De Leche Coconut Macaroons

I've forgotten where I got this recipe. I copied the wrong link when I typed out the basic recipe into my MS word. And thank you Quinn for highlighting to me that these are not Macarons, but Macaroons. One "o" different but it made a hell of a difference, as Macarons are those round cute things like a sweet burger that Tartelette is famous for and macaroons are these.

I had some balance from my DDL cake and made this macaroons. They smell so lovely when fresh from the oven, smell like those CNY egg rolls (kuih kapit) and crunchy. But one thing, they soften and gets really chewy quite easily when exposed to the air, so please store them into an air tight container.
If they do soften, just reheat them in the oven :)

Recipe:

30gm egg white (1 egg white)

Pinch of cream of tartar

100gm dulce de leche

½ tsp vanilla extract

200gm angel flakes /sweetened coconut flakes

1. Preheat oven to 160/180C. Line baking sheets with either silicone liners or non stick baking paper.

2. Mix the coconut flakes with dulce de leche and vanilla.

3. Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff. Gently fold them in to the coconut mixture.

4. Place heaped teaspoonsful of coconut mixture onto baking sheet.

5. Bake for 15 minutes or until sides of macarons are brown and crisp.

6. Let cool for 10 minutes. (I do this in the oven, door ajar, so that the heat of the oven will further dry it up. And I did it for 30 minutes)

I found that the egg white content was a bit too little. All went deflated when I folded in with the coconut. Maybe you would like another egg white to it.

And another DDL cake that neighbour Maria ordered..... remember I said that she did after tasting my 1st DDL cake???