Black Chicken with Black Dates Soup

When I was a kid, my mom always double boil black chicken with angelica and black dates. And I was a kid, angelica tasted bitter to me. Well, maybe she used a lot, like one whole root of it, in just a small double boiler. I wonder why, with regular white chicken, it’s always red dates, but when it’s a silkie/black chicken, it’s always black dates. Hmmm… matching skins? Black with black? Uh-huh, I don’t know. I only know it taste good now, cos I used much lesser angelica than my mom.

Angelica is a lady’s herb, so, do not feed to much of this to your man or your pre-puberty kids. You don’t want to mess with their hormones. A bit is fine, as this herb is also used in Bak Kut Te h, the famous pork herbal soup from Klang, but not too much and not too often. And do not consume angelica when you’re pregnant too. That’s all I know.

The soup is very sweet, minimal salt needed to add a salty edge to it. I only used ½ tsp for the whole pot of soup. Without the dang shen, the soup looks clearer, so suit yourself, to use dangshen or not, but it’s really nice with it.

1 Black Chicken/Silkie, mine was about 900gm, dressed weight
80gm black dates
30gm dang shen
3 pieces Angelica Sinensis root, dang guei
1 Tbsp wolfberries
2.5L water

1. Bring water to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, rinse the dangshen and wolfberries. Dangshen may contain dirt. Very lightly rinse angelica.
3. Remove seeds from black dates.
4. When water has come to a rolling boil, put in whole chicken and herbs. Bring back to a boil and lower heat to simmer for 2.5hours.
5. Season with salt and turn off heat. Let the soup sit for half an hour and skim off fat. But more fat will surface once you break up the chicken.

Winners of the Sponge Pancake Giveaway

Lucky Draw Numbering (ordered by date of submission)

1. HKChoo
2. Jasmine
3. Robert
4. Kathleen Kiew
5. DG
6. Jess Kitchen
7. Rasya
8. Jess Kitchen
9. Robert
10. Wen's Delight
11. Sonia
12. Sonia
13. Bann Dih
14. Nileey
15. Lena
16. Lena
17. Sem
18. Swee San
19. Jess Bakericious



And the winner of the Wilton Cake Leveler is .............

Lena, please email me your mailing address within a week (if not I'll select another winner, hahahaha!!). Thanks.

And haha, the winner of the Thermometer is ...........
You oredi know la.

It's Swee San

I'm seeing her today, so I'm presenting the gift to her personally

Dulce De Leche Ice Cream

Oh yes... I made this again. I mean, I made Dulce De Leche again.

This time I used Sweetened Condensed Filled Milk, of which is inferior than Condensed Full Cream Milk, but definately better than  Condensed Creamer. If you ask me to compare the taste, definately the real thing tasted better. This looks like it, but taste wise.... hmmph... not there. Maybe 70% there. But better than nothing. Oh ya, if you want to know what brand I used, F&N's Sweetened Condensed Filled Milk, so far, I've only seen it in supermarkets, grocery shops don't seem to carry this. Even "The Store" has it.

Actually I made the DDL for this cake, a request from Lydia's nanny, so the balance, I made into ice cream.

Dulce De Leche Ice Cream, No Maker Recipe

140gm Dulce De Leche

3 egg yolks

200ml whipping cream

250ml fresh milk

1 empty vanilla pod (or use ¼ vanilla pod or 2 drops of vanilla extract)

1. Bring milk whipping cream and empty pod in a saucepan to a boil on medium heat. Let it sit for 5 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, beat egg yolks with sugar. Put in DDL and mix until well combined.

3. Fish out vanilla pods and pour ¼ of hot cream mixture into egg mixture. Whisk it immediately to prevent cooking. Pour in another ¼ and whisk. Lastly pour in the balance of cream mixture and whisk.

4. Sieve mixture back into saucepan. Cook on medium low heat until mixture thickens and coats the back of the spoon (I measured and it was 75C, definitely hot enough to kill salmonella). Do not bring it to a boil or else you’ll get gritty ice cream.

5. Pour everything into a bowl, let it cool down. Put in freezer.

6. When a ring of ice has formed, bring it out and whack it with your hand held mixer. Put it back into the freezer.

7. Repeat the whacking and freezing a few times until the ice cream is very thick and creamy,

8. Spoon ice cream into freezable containers (Tupperware freezermates) and freeze until hard.

The warm wind was blowing hard when I was taking pics on my window sill, and darn!!!

My ice cream started to melt in a blink of the eye.

I blinked too much that day anyway, cos the wind was blowing straight into my face while taking pics!!!

Chocolate Orange Hazelnut Tart

I bought this bottle of Grand Marnier after seeing so many recipes using this. And this is my first bake using Grand Marnier.

I’ve been trying to clear things in my fridge, and when I saw this recipe , I just knew this will be made very soon, to clear the half eaten chocs in the fridge. So soon that it was the afternoon itself.

Actually I didn’t plan to make this so soon after I saw the recipe, but when I went to the baking supplies shop looking for white choc chips of which they ran out of, I then asked for hazelnut, and hahaha, I made this instead. That baking supplies shop in KK is just walking distance from my house. Altho it’s small, but the ingredients there are quite complete, I mean, don’t go there looking for rye flour or mascaporne cheese or vanilla beans, but cake flour, bread flour, pau flour and other common flours are all there, flavourings (whatever essences and colouring they have), nuts like pecans, pistachios not to mention common stuff like almonds and walnuts of course. That small shop even carries couverture chocolate!!!!! Imported from Indonesia. Now, I no longer need to shop like crazy(baking goods) when I go to KL. Well not that Ipoh doesn’t have baking stuff, but one shop in Ipoh is superhard to find parking, and another shop is selling flours at RM4.80/kg, of which is 30% more than other shops, and everything in the 2nd shop is more expensive. I only go to the 2nd shop only if I’m in a rush of ingredients, if not I won’t go there.

So, this recipe makes 16-18 tarts, I think, cos I used 15 cases and they were all so so full!!!!!
But that was all that I have in my freezer.

Chocolate Orange Hazelnut Tart
16-18 cold tart cases filled with your favourite short crust pastry (I used my egg tart crust, or you use the almond galette pastry recipe)
90gm butter
150gm soft brown sugar
2 large eggs
210gm very finely chopped hazelnut
1 Tbsp orange zest (ran out of orange and was lazy to buy, so I used the tangerine that has been sitting in my fridge for the longest of time)
100gm chopped dark chocolate (had a few bars of half eaten dark chocs in the fridge, and one of them is a hazelnut dark choc, what a nice addition)
2 Tbsp Grand Marnier or any other orange liquer

1. Preheat oven at 170/180C
2. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add in eggs, one after another, beating well after each addition. After both eggs are in, beat for 2 minutes on high.
4. Add the chopped hazelnuts, chopped chocolate, orange zest and liqueur to the bowl and combine all the ingredients
5. Spoon filling into cold tart cases and level the surface.
6. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes(lower shelf) or until surface of filling is set and golden.

Chocolate Enigma Cake

It’s Mike’s Birthday (last month) and every year, it’s going to be chocolate. When I saw this cake on Hearty Bakes, I totally loved how dark it looked and it seemed I can smell the chocolate from the screen, very very delicious looking. I’m not really an all chocolate girl, but I do eat chocolate once in a blue moon. But my hubby lurves this dark looking confectionary that I’m just so so with. Any chocolate cake, he’ll say, hmm,.. now this is what I call cake. Hahahaha!! So, how can I not make him chocolate cakes for his birthdays ??

I also had a can of black pitted cherries and I might as well use that to fill the cake, since the cake is rather short Well, I baked the cake in a 9 inch pan rather than a recommended 7 inch..
But when I opened the can of cherries, the colour is totally not what I expected. So, I’ve learnt my lesson not to buy Red Man’s canned cherries. The syrup didn’t even cover the fruits! In the end, I threw in some cubed strawberries into the filling. Might be weird to have an adult looking cake with some bits of strawberries in it, but, it’s nice to have some fresh fruits in it.

And I also copycatted Hearty Bakes in the way I decorated this cake. Just hop to this post  of hers and you can see how much I copied from her. Her cakes all look so well made.

Bitter Choc Chiffon
Adapted from Hearty Bakes

Ingredients:

(A) 100g Bittersweet chocolate (chopped)
10gm butter

(B) 5 egg yolks
20g sugar

(C) 40ml water

(D) 60g Cake flour
10g black cocoa powder (it looks like charcoal powder)
1/2tsp baking powder

(E) 5 egg whites
½ tsp cream of tartar
40g sugar


Choc Ganache:
100g Whipping cream
100g Dark Chocolate

Frosting:
400gm dairy whipping cream
3 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp gelatin
1 Tbsp water
1 cup chopped strawberries



Method:

Cake
1. Sieve Cake flour with cocoa powder and baking powder. Set aside
2. Preheat oven to 170deg C
3. Double boil to melt (A). Stir till smooth
4. In another bowl, whisk (B) till pale in colour
5. Add in melted choc (A) mixture, add (C) stir till combine
6. Add in (D), fold till mixture well-mixed.
7. In another bowl, whisk whites(E) till frothy, add cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks and add sugar. Whisk till stiff peaks
8. Fold gently 1/3 whites with chocolate mixture
9. Fold the balance of whites
10. Pour batter into 7" cake pan (I used 9 inch springform pan)
11. Baking time around 40mins
12. Insert skewer to check if cake is done
13. Overturn cake tin to cool cake
14. Unmould cake

Ganache
1. Break chocolate and put into a bowl.
2. Bring cream to a boil, stirring all the time, it's ready when it has small bubble on the side.
3. Pour scalded cream onto chocolate and let it sit for 1 minute.
4. Stir until smooth. Set aside.

Frosting
1. Freeze bowl for at least 15 minutes before use. If using stainless steel bowl, prepare and ice bath for use later.
2. Place water in a heat proof bowl and sprinkle gelatin onto water. Let it sit for 1 minute and melt it in the microwave(high for 30 secs) or over a hot pan of water. Let it cool down.
3. Remove frozen bowl from freezer (place in ice bath if stainless steel bowl) and pour in cold whipping cream.
4. Beat on low speed until it starts to thicken then increase to high. When cream has reached soft peaks, put in sugar and beat until almost stiff. Pour in melted gelatin and beat until stiff.
5. Use immdiately to frost.

To assemble
1. Slice cooled cake into 3 layers
2. Place 3 Tbsp of ganache over the bottom layer and spread evenly. Put 1/2 cup of cream over bottom layer and spread. Sprinkle half the strawberries over.
3. Take another piece of cake and spread 3 Tbsp of ganache and another 1/2 cup of cream. Then put the creamed layer on top of the strawberries on bottom layer.
4. Spread 3 Tbsp of ganache onto the 2nd cake layer (now on top of bottom layer) and then repeat step 2 and 3. Now you will have 3 layers of cake sandwiched with 2 layers of filling.
5. Spread more cream all over cake and freeze the cake for 10 minutes
6. Prepare a piping bag with a 3 mm plain nozzle. Pour in all the remaining ganache.
7. Remove cake from freezer and pipe ganache to cover cake sides and lastly top with Ferrero Rodnoir.
8. Chill for few hours before serving.

Verdict:
Frankly, The cake was wonderful when it was unchilled. Lovely and chocolatey. Soft and moist. But once it was chilled, the cake somehow turned dry. Maybe it was due to the melted chocolate content that made it harder when cold. But when the cake was left overnight, the moisture from the strawberries seeped into the cake, and made it much better. I strongly recommend that some sort of fruits be added into the filling to avoid the dry mouthfeel when the cake is eaten chilled.
Mike said the cake is nice, and the only thing not nice is the Ferrero Rodnoir. He told me to use Rocher next time if I ever want to use Ferreros for his cakes. The Rodnoir somehow turned chewy after being chilled for some hours.