CNY Bake – Walnut Cookies!

Chinese New Year – Bull started on the 12th February and normally last 16 days. My mum normally makes the traditional ‘Nian Gao’ but she didn’t feel like making it this year because we couldn’t celebrate with all of our families due to the UK lockdown. I wanted to bake something for CNY so I made some ‘Walnut cookies’ from Rasa Malaysia’s Blog, it has been awhile since I have been to her blog as I used to receive her email newsletters but maybe when the GDPR kicked it, I forgot to opt in again! Normally, I would make peanut cookies but the boys are allergic to peanuts so I tend not to use them in baking or cooking anymore just to be on the safe side. Luckily, it is not too serious because if they do touch it or eaten peanuts by accident, their mouth would be abit swollen and they would develop hives which would be itchy, but I would just need to give them some Piriton medicine and they will be fine! 🙂

These cookies are so easy to me and most of the ingredients, you should have already got in your store cupboards. The dough is very soft so when you roll it into balls, it gets quite crumbly, but you will just need to roll it more and eventually, the texture would be smooth! I did weigh each ball in the end because when i was doing it free hand, it was like the size of a golf ball! Lol!

In the end, one batch of this recipe makes 30 cookies. They were super delicious, very nice crumbly melt in the mouth texture! My mum was well impressed as she mentioned that it could’ve been brought from a Chinese bakery shop!! 🙂

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Feb 21 Veg Dish – Pancake Day – Korean Side Dishes

Happy Pancake Day! As it’s Pancake Day, I thought I would write up the recipe for the Kimchi Pancakes and Cucumber Salad for my vegetarian February dish! 🙂 Last year back in February, I went to a Korean Cooking course and loved it! I leant a couple of dishes and thought I would try making some of the side dishes by myself. I love attending live cooking lessons and meeting new people in the classes. Also, the teacher gives you great cooking/baking tips and you learn so much rather than through a virtual experience. Hopefully, when the COVID-19 situation calms down and we can be more social and events can take place, I would love to attend more lessons to gain more cooking/baking skills. At that moment, i have got so many gift experience vouchers that I am unable to use due to all the lockdown and restrictions we had last year so hopefully later on the year, we are able to use them!

I made two sides: Kimchi Pancake – Kimchi Jeon and Cucumber Salad – Oyee Muchim. Both of these are very simple to make and doesn’t take long to prepare! The recipes are using basic ingredients that you can find in your store cupboard, the only thing that you need to buy is the Kimchi which can be found easily in the World Food section in the grocery stores. I am pleased to say that both dishes were delicious and flavorsome and it turned out really well!

Kimchi Pancake ingredients – Half cup chopped kimchi, half cup chopped spring onions, half cup batter (made of 1/3 plain flour, 1/3 corn flour, 1/3 panko breadcrumbs), 1x tsp chilli powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 sugar, half cup of cold water and 1x tbsp vegetable oil. You might want to have a sprinkle of sesame seeds to finish on top.

Dipping Sauce – Mix 1x tsp of soy sauce, 1 x tsp vinegar, 1/2 tsp chilli flakes, 1x tsp spring onion and 1/4 tsp sugar.

Method: Put in and mix all the ingredients in a bowl except the oil. Heat the oil in pan, once well heated, pour and spread the mixture. Press thin and make a round shape and flip it over when the bottom is well cooked. Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top and serve with the dipping sauce.

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Cucumber Salad ingredients – Half a cucumber, 1x tsp soya sauce, 1/2x tsp sesame seed oil, 1/4x tsp sesame seeds, 1/2xtsp chilli powder (you can add more chilli if you like it hot), 1/2x tsp minced garlic and 1/2x tsp chopped spring onions.

Method: Cut the cucumber into half moon shape, 5mm wide and put into a bowl. Mix everything together except for the sesame seeds as you want to add this at the end when you are serving your dish. It is best to make it in advance so that you can chill this in the fridge and for the cucumbers to marinade. You can always add more to the marinade so just taste it and see what you need to make it delicious! 🙂

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Valentine’s Day Bake!

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!! 🙂 In the UK, it is lockdown for us so no restaurants are opened for sitting in, only take aways are allowed! I decided to go with the good old fashion steak for dinner with asparagus, mac and cheese and some torte made by mother in law!

I picked up the Asda Good Magazine – Feb Issue last week and they included dessert recipes for Valentine’s. I was going to make their Red Velvet Brownies. At first, I was going to make this with the boys but reading the whole recipe, you had to melt the white chocolate twice and there was alot of mixing. I just thought they wouldn’t have the patience and I didn’t want them to be near the hot bowls. It would be better for me to do it myself and I will bake with the boys next week because it’s their half term!

The recipe can be found here, I changed the quantities of the caster sugar, so only using 150g caster sugar as the bake would be sweet enough with the white chocolate and I ended up using the whole bottle of the red food gel as it was only tiny!

I was pretty happy with the appearance of the brownie before baking as it looked pretty with the swirls! So, when it came out of the oven, the white chocolate looked brown, don’t know if I over baked it as it didn’t look like the picture from the magazine! Lol! I was hoping that it would taste better than it looks! I actually baked it for longer because after 35 minutes, it still looked abit raw!

The boys loved the brownie, it was crunchy at the top and moist inside! You can only have 1 piece as it is quite rich! 🙂 I think next time, i will make it with even less sugar and try to swirl the white chocolate more into the mixture so it doesn’t just stay at the top! 🙂

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Croissant Bread Pudding

My parents in law went to Costco and they brought us a big box of pastries which only cost a fiver! So cheap but there were so many! I managed to give some away to my friend and we ate some ourselves aswell. But, only me and my husband was eating them as the boys don’t like it unless its from ‘Costa’!! Lol! I find that they go stale quite fast and I didn’t want to throw them away as it seems such a waste!

I found a recipe from a blogger called – Unicorns in the Kitchen which is like bread and butter pudding but made with croissants instead so that I can use up all the stale croissants. It was better than I expected, even my husband was surprised! You can find her recipe posted here. So simple to make as all you need croissants, eggs, milk, vanilla extract, sugar and chocolate chips. I didn’t make the Sun Butter drizzle in the end as I thought it would be sweet enough especially with the chocolate chips! It was very delicious and yummy and if i had left over croissants again, I would definitely use this recipe again!

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