Peanut Cookies Making

Last week was long weekend holiday, we had five days off after taking off on Friday, I really enjoyed the holidays and have my Chinese New Year Cookie making over the weekend, peanut cookies was one of them.

 

I baked two batchs of peanut cookie, the first batch wasn't look nice because the cookies flatten and cannot have the normal peanut cookie's shape that we have during Chinese New Year, but which doesn't make me feel satisfation. So, I continue with second batch at night to adjust recipes according to my feeling and I finally have my peanut cookies in good shape though I think it was a little bigger than the cookies that I wanted, anyways it was correct recipes. However, I will try to improve my recipes next time by reducing some sugar and make the shape smaller.

 

Here is recipes that I got from internet.

 

Ingredients

140g peanut

140g cake flour (all purpose flour is good for this as well)

30g corn stratch

100g sugar (can adjust this according to personal favourite)

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

120g peanut oil (I adjust the quantity myself on my second try)

1 egg

 

Direction

1. Bake peanuts in oven until peanut's smell spread out, remove peanut's skin and blend them with food processor until it is powdery.

 

2. Put peanut powder, cake/all purpose flour, corn stratch, sugar, salt, baking power and baking soda into the mixing bowl to mix them evenly. Mix peanut oil together with flour mixture and mix them with hand evenly. (I tried to pour peanut oil slowly myself and feel firmness of mixture until I satisfied)

 

3. Make the flour mixture into small piece (follow the size you wish, I would prefer smaller) and put them on parchment paper to avoid cookies stick on pan.

 

4. Stir egg evenly and brush them onto cookies pieces. You may put on a peanut for decoration.

 

5. Bake them in 170C preheat oven for 15 minutes.

 

Tips:

Leave cookies cold on pan before remove them as they are too soft to avoid crack.



 

My failure product, taste is fine but shape doesn't meet my requirement

My well shaped product, but size is a little bigger

Toh Soon Cafe

Lately, we's like to search for Penang eateries and I found a famous cafe online, it was introduced by my friends few months ago but I forgot, this cafe visited by our Penang CM Lim Guan Eng, I think this is the reason makes it famous.

 

The shop should hard to find, it is located at a small lane along of Campell Street, when you are walking/driving along Campbell Street from the entrance gate, you just need to keep on looking to your left hand side. It should be on the first small lane on left, and there you can find a lot of people waiting to serve or standing by the table for their turn.

 

We arrived to the cafe at around 9:15am and there were a lot of people standing in queue to wait for their seat. Seeing so many people, SL asked me to decide whether wait or leave (I know he doesn't want to wait), and I choose to wait, it took about 30 minutes to wait for a table available for us, and there were people to come, their customers seem never stop.

 

Due to too many customers, waitress didn't really notice us and we waved to her for about 10 minutes until our order get placed, then there was another waiting period for our order served. While waiting for our order, we decided to have a pack of Nasi Lemak on table because YY recommended it, but I asked SL to choose the spoon carefully because I witnessed those spoons dropped by waitress accidentally to dirty land and she picked them up again to place on the table for customers collection. Anyways, I don't like their Nasi Lemak because it is too spicy to me.

 

After about 15 minutes wait, our order served but they forgot my drink, I saw tables around us all were having steamed bread but I remembered YY told me they famous with toasted bread, I don't know what's happened with their toasted bread, but I had no complain since everyone takes steamed bread as well. We ordered a peanut butter and a kaya bread with two eggs, I think their peanut butter is quite special which is different with normal peanut butter. Their bread reminded me my young time because it is old time bread, it is not replacible by Gardiner or Hi-5. However, I don't really enjoy steamed bread because it tasted weird to me, I still prefer toasted bread.

 

In conclusion, we think their bread is just normal and we can't find any reason that makes them famous except it visited by CM Lim before.

Cafe detail:

Cafe name: Toh Soon Cafe (多春茶室)

Address: near to 184 Campbell Street, 10100 Georgetown, Penang.

Opening hour: 8am - 6:30pm (closed on Sunday)

 

Toh Soon Cafe

  

Nasi Lemak

Our peanut butter steamed bread

 

Our kaya steamed bread

 

Our eggs

creepe making

During New Year holiday, I don't want my Year 2012 ended with demotivated emotion and wished to spend my holiday more meaningful, therefore I decided to make creepe because I remembered creepe that we took at Humble Beginnings.

 

I learnt the way to make the dough for creepe from a friend's blog because she looked made a successful creepe. However, I didn't follow her way to make creepe's cream because I got some stock left in my freeze last time when I tried to make macarron.

 

Over all, my creepe tasted fine and SL like it, but I need to have some improvement next time to have it thinner, this actually is challenge because that need to make sure the creepe won't break during turn over the creepe.

 

Here is my recipe for creepe.

 

Ingredients

120g cake flour

10g corn stratch

2 eggs

30g fine sugar

450g milk

 

Directions

1. Sift cake flour and cornstratch together in to a large mixing bowl, then mix milk, eggs and fine sugar in to the mixing bowl and whisk them to be well mix.

2. Sift the flour mixture twice to separate unmixable part.

3. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each crepe. Tilt the pan with a circular motion so that the batter coats the surface evenly.

4. Cook the crepe for about 2 minutes, until the bottom is light brown. Loosen with a spatula, turn and cook the other side. Leave it cold.

5. Repeat to cook until finish use of flour mixture.

6. Overlap creepe with prepared cream (jam can also be used here) every layer.

7. Put the prepared creepe into freezer to let creepe in position.

 

The cream that I prepared long ago

Flour mixture

 

Cook creepe with pan

 

Wrap the prepared creepe and rest in freezer

 

Oh, my creepe

Humble Beginnings

Few months ago, we went to Strait Quay for Popular Book Fair and I found a new cafe there for tea time, which called Humble Beginnings, they specialised in selling creepe, this is my first time to know this cafe. However, I found out recently in a friend's blog this brand actually existed for several years, but it started with online order and now they only newly operate a cafe in Strait Quay.

 

The cafe was quite full with people, I think a lot of people like creepe, and we only ordered a slide of mango creepe for tasting. Due to too many customers, waiter forgot our order and we waited for quite some time, this made SL unhappy.

 

After a while, waiter sensed SL's emotion and replace our order and offered to treat the creepe on cafe's bill, this made us felt less upset but we insisted to pay the bill ourselves as we understood they were busy.

 

For the mango creepe, I like its taste and it is soft, every layer is thin and meltable. If there is opportunity to return to Strait Quay, I would revisit the cafe for other favours.

 

Humble Beginnings Detail

Website: http://www.humblebeginnings.com.my/

Opening Hour: 12pm-10pm (cafe), 10am-7pm (phone order)

 

In front of Humble Beginnings



 

Humble Beginnings' Menu

Our mango creepe

Thong Lek's Fried Fish Bee Hon

That day, we bought a book talked about Penang food and it recommended fried fish bee hon from Thong Lek Hawker Stall. However, we couldn't find Thong Lek Hawker Stall when we drive along Macalister Road. Therefore, our first search was ended up with dissapointment.

 

After we searched through online, then we found that Thong Lek Hawker Stall was actually redecorated and renamed to Yummy Cottage, I knew Yummy Cottage when we were doing food hunt last time, but didn't know it consists a famous Fried Fish Bee Hon.

 

Then, we visited Yummy Cottage to try its fried fish bee hon and we found the stall remains its name as Thong Lek. Besides fried fish bee hon, they also sell fried fish stomach and they also claim their koay teow soup is instant make, I ordered fried fish (RM4.50 a plate) and fish stomach (RM7 a plate) for ourselves.

 

Truely, their fried fish is really crispy, fried fish stomach is especially crispier but it was with some fish bone attached, we found their meats are crispier because they fried their meat at least twice, they refried it on their business day. Overall, I like crispy taste of fried fish stomach but SL prefer fried fish as it's convenience.

 

Yummy Cottage detail

Address: 97, Jalan Macalister, Penang.

Opening Houe: 7:00am - 1:30pm (closed on Tuesday)

 

Stall of Thong Lek Fried Fish Bee Hon

 

Fried Fish Stomach 

Fried Fish Meat

 

 Bee Hon Soup