second round peanut cookies

After shared my peanut cookies with some friends and collected some comments from them, so I decided to have my peanut cookies a second try for improvement version.

 

Here are comments that I collected:

1. cookies are too big.

2. peanut taste too less.

3. peanut wasn't blended small enough.

 

Besides, I felt troublesome on removing peanut skin, so I decided to buy peeled peanut this time and this saved me a lot of energy and time.

 

Actually, making process was almost same with my first making, but I made some small adjustment on ingredients and make the cookie pieces smaller.

 

Here is my formula:

400g peanut

250g all purpose flour (I increase peanut quantity and reduce flour)

unmeasured peanut oil, I put it according to my hand feeling, it only needs to bind flour mixture together, I think I used less oil than last time.

about 50g corn stratch

around 200g sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

 

However, there is still some defect on my cookies after compare with my friend's. Frist, I thought my cookies are small enough until I saw my friend's because hers are smaller and cute, but I am satisfied with my size this time because it can be done within 1 bite. Second, my peanut flour is still not powdery and they still consider a bit rough, I think this is my food processor limitation, I might need to borrow my friend's blender for a try next time :)

 

My cookies before bake

Hot from oven

Comparison between my first and second batches

Cookies in bottles

 

Pineapple Tart Making

In my memory, peanut cookies and pineapple tart are two main chinese new year cookies, therefore I decided to make them this year. Between these two cookies, I think pineapple tart is more time consuming because I need to prepare for pineapple filling first, then only make the dough.

 

Here's my recipe.

 

Filling preparation:

Ingredients:

250g blended pineapple

150g sugar

1 table spoon lemon juice

 

Direction: put blended pineapple, sugar and lemon juice into a pot, cook the mixture until densed and in golden colour, leave them cool for use later.

 

Dough preparation:

Ingredients:

250g butter

375g all purpose flour

5 tablespoons corn stratch

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons icing sugar

3 egg yolks

a little ice water

 

Direction:

1. Sifted all purpose flour, corn stratch and icing sugar twice, then add salt and put the flour mixture in fridge for at least 30 minutes.

 

2. Cut butter into small pieces and mix into flour mixture, mix them well with hand until like cookies crunch.

 

3. Mix in egg yolks slowly until mixtures are well mix. Add some ice water into mixture, and form a dough.

 

4. Put the dough into fridge for about an hour.

 

5.  Squeze a long surface out of a pineapple tart mould, put the prepared piniapple filling on the surface and roll it.

 

6. Brush egg mixture onto pineapple tart, bake them in preheat 170C oven for 15-20 minutes until them yellowish.

 



my pine apple tart 

Pineapple tarts in bottles

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

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

cinnamon swirl bread

It was long time I didn't bake till now and it was a long holiday last Friday, so that I want to make our breakfast over the weekend, then I started baked a cinnamon swirl bread.

Well, that was not my first time to bake this bread but I felt the most satisfied with the end product this time because it tasted softer, I think this due to I used a powder which so called bread softener. This is my first time using bread softener and I seen it in supermarket, then give it a try, result was quite nice and my bread stayed soft for several days.

Honey sponge cake

That day, I was in mood for doing some baking, so I decided to bake a honey sponge cake, I got cake flour this time, so that it tastes softer this time.

Materials:

6 eggs

150g fine sugar

2 tablespoons milk

60g honey

150g cake flour

Size:

1 20cm x 20cm x 8cm square mould (make by thick cardboard, covered with aluminium foil)

Direction:

1. Place mixing bowl in 50C heated water, mixed the egg on that.

2. Mix fine sugar with egg at highest speed.

3. Distach egg mixture when it reach 40C.

4. Continue mixing egg mixture with high speed until it grows and clear drop from mixer (about 6~7 minutes).

5. Heated milk until 40C and mix in honey.

6. Mix the milk and honey mixture 2~3 times into egg mixture, until the mixture fully grows.

7. Mix in stiffed flour into egg mixture for 2 times, mix it with low speed for about 30 second until flour is fully mix.

8. Pour the mixture into mould from higher position.

9. Stir mixture with a chopstick to balance bubbles in mixture.

10. Bake the mixture in oven at 170C for 10 minutes, then lower temperature to 150C for another 45~50 minutes.

11. After cake is baked, wrap it with wrapping plastic immediately.

12. Put the cake upside down and remove the mould.

13. Remove aluminium foil until cake is fully cold.

14. Store the cake in a plastic back to avoid dehydration for a night for better taste.

Here is my honey sponge cake