Black Forest Cake

On Eid Adha, my husband's pengajian held a family gathering. I was assigned to bring cake (as usual; I got a nickname "bakery" from my pengajian). And some of the wives requested something chocolatey like a blackforest cake or a mud cake. There's actually a mud cake that I've been really wanting to try from The Great Australian Bake-off book, but since a mud cake look too plain, I went for a blackforest cake instead (even tho I'm not that fond of blackforest). 

I used a recipe from Allrecipes.com. I got soooo many compliments with the cake. My friends said the cake is not too sweet or too milky-tasting. And when I shared the recipe, another friend of mine said, "it looks really easy to make". Indeed! You don't need to cream butter and sugar, which is a lot of time saving.

INGREDIENTS:

Cake:

• 2 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 baking soda
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp vanilla essence/extract

Cherry filling:

• 2 (450 gr) cans pitted cherries
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 tsp vanilla essence/extract

Frosting:

• 3 cups whipping cream
• 1/3 cup confectioner's sugar

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans (I used square pans).
2. Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla essence/extract and beat until well blended. Pour the batter into prepared pans.
3. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool cake in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes.
4. Drain cherries, reserve 3/4 cup juice. Combine 1/4 cup of the reserve juice, cherries, and sugar in a saucepan. Combine the other 1/4 cup of reserved juice and mix with cornstarch. Heat the saucepan and stir just until the sugar dissolves. Then add the cornstarch mix and cook until it thickens (use high heat if you don't want most of your cherries to break apart). Turn off the heat, then add vanilla essence/extract.
5. Combine whipping cream and confectioner's sugar in a chilled bowl. Beat with mixer at high speed until stiff peaks form.
6. Assembling: Split the cakes into halves. Crumb one of the halved layer for decorating the sides (I didn't do this, I just saved the layer to make a mini blackforest, as pictured in this post). Brush the layers with the last 1/4 cup of reserved cherries juice to moisten the cake. Spread 1 cup frosting on a layer and top with cherry topping. Repeat process for the second layer. Top with third cake layer and frost sides and top of the cake. Shave some dark cooking chocolate, sprinkle it around and on top of the cake and decorate the cake with the remaining frosting.

Source (with small changes in directions).

Bubur Ayam (Chicken Porridge)

The bubur ayam (chicken porridge) idea came when I had leftover cakwe that I had bought from an Asian grocery. Turned out that cakwe from Asian grocery is not like what I had expected. The appearance is the same with cakwe Medan, but the taste is totally different, meh. 

The bubur ayam recipe does look like a long list, but it's worth the work. Especially if you're badly craving for it, hehehe.

INGREDIENTS:

Porridge:

• 300 gr of jasmine rice
• 2 litres of water
• 3 cm ginger (or about 2 tsp crushed ginger)
• 2 sticks of lemongrass

Chicken:

• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 5 garlic cloves
• 3 cm ginger
• 1 whole chicken
• 1 1/2 litres water
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp white  pepper
• 3 garlic cloves, for frying the chicken

Soy sauce:

• 1 1/2 tbsp kikkoman sauce
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1/2 tsp anchovy sauce
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil

Serving:

• Finely chopped celery
• Fried red onion
• Pickled radish
• Sliced cakwe

DIRECTIONS:

1. Porridge: Mix all the ingredients together and cook it in your multi cooker / rice cooker according to the direction. If the porridge came out too dry, you can dilute hot water and stir until you get the porridge consistency that you want.
2. Heat vegetable oil and sesame oil in a pan. Saute 5 sliced garlic cloves.
3. Boil water, add in chicken, ginger, and sautéed garlic. Cook until chicken becomes tender. Drain the chicken and cut into dice pieces. You can save the broth in the freezer for cooking later.
4. Saute 3 finely chopped garlic cloves, add the diced chikcen, add white pepper and salt.
5. Soy sauce: Stir well all of the ingredients together.
6. Serving: ladle the porridge into a bowl, sprinkle cakwe, chicken, and pickled radish on top. Garnish with finely chopped celery and fried onion. When you're about to eat, add 2-3 tsp of soy sauce and mix all the porridge. If you find it not salty enough, you can add more soy sauce.  

Crepes

Eating crepes always makes me happy. This recipe is often my go-to whenever I crave for some light snacks. It's very easy to make and so yummy as well! I found this recipe from Beth La Manach from "Entertaining with Beth" in Youtube. I definitely recommend you to try, as I have been making this over and over again.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups milk
• 4 tbsp melted butter

DIRECTIONS:

1. Whisk together flour, sugar, and salt.
2. Mix in the milk to the dry ingredients and whisk until the batter is smooth.
3. Add the well beaten eggs, mix to combine.
4. Sprinkle the melted butter. Mix well.
5. Heat non-stick pan and dab with bit of oil.
6. Pour the batter and quickly spread around the batter in the pan by rotating the pan.
7. When the sides begin to turn golden, scrape the sides. Then turn it over on top of cutting board and tap hard on it to get the crepes to come off of the pan. 
8. Spread your favourite filling onto the crepes and fold into quarter circle.
9. Dust some powdered sugar on top.

NOTES: I upgraded the sugar amount to 2tbsp for a tad sweeter crepes.

Source

Mexican Rice

OMG, I can't believe it has been more than two months since I last posted something here *shame on me*. When I was about to post this recipe, suddenly the card reader refused to read my SDHC *darn-all of the pretty pictures were in there*. It took me quite a while (too long) to get a new card reader. Also, I've been busy prepping for my store opening at Etsy, inshaaAllah, and taking some free online courses to refresh my brain. So, that pretty much sums up why I haven't been able to post anything here. But I did, though, tried some new recipes; but it wasn't worth the upload... so... meh.

Anyway, I will just post what I had already drafted last month before the card reader incident happened. So, here it is:

On the 29th night of Ramadhan I pushed myself to do the last i'tikaf while I was having a severe sore throat. And the next day, I succeeded in losing my voice. Since then my throat hasn't gotten better. I didn't prepare anything festive and special for Eid. I just went around from one open house to another, hehe. I did manage to make opor ayam (by hubby's request) on the 10th of August, tho, but I was still feeling unwell so I didn't have the chance to take serious pictures and blog it.

Oh ya, this Ramadhan I participated in Indonesian Foodblogger cooking challenge (view my entry here) with the theme "noodles". I submitted my mie Aceh recipe and alhamdulillah it made it to the top 10! I didn't win eventually, but at least getting a place in the top 10 in my first attempt (out of 30 participants) is pretty impressive :). I can't wait to try other people's noodle recipes because they all look so yummo!

Today I want to share a Mexican rice recipe. I was browsing the internet yesterday and came across the word "Mexican rice". Hmm... I got curious and searched for a recipe. After reading the ingredients, I said to myself, "This is easy! I can make use of my quite-old-but-never-used cast iron pan as well". I called my husband in the last minute to get me a bunch of coriander leaves (how I wish I have a herb garden!). I adjusted the recipe with what I had in the kitchen. If you want to check out the original recipe, scroll down until the end of this post!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 can of crushed tomatoes
• 1 medium onion
• 3 green chillies
• 2 cups of jasmine rice
• 1/3 cup of olive oil
• 4 minced garlic cloves
• 2 cups of chicken broth
• Salt
• 1/2 cup of coriander leaves, minced
• Lime

DIRECTIONS:

1. Process tomato and onion in blender until smooth. Measure and reserve exactly 2 cups (I forgot to measure it and just dunked in the whole thing into the pan). Discard excess.
2. Remove seeds from 2 green chillies. Mince flesh and set aside. Mince the remaining green chillies for later.
3. Wash rice thoroughly with cold water and rinse. Do this around 2-3 times.
4. Heat oil in oven-safe pan with tight fitting lid (I used cast iron pan) over low-medium heat. Drop a few rice grains, if they sizzle then it's ready. Add rice and stir fry until rice is light golden and translucent, about 6-8 minutes.
5. Add garlic and 2 minced green chillies; stir constantly until fragrant.
6. Stir in broth, pureed mixture, and salt. Increase heat and bring to boil.
7. Cover pan and transfer pan to oven. Bake in 190 degrees Celsius for 30-35 minutes. Stir well after 5 minutes.
8. Stir in the minced coriander leaves and the remaining minced green chillies.

This Mexican rice taste very nice. It is like some sort of tomato rice and the coriander leaves gave it that extra fragrance and unique taste. Hubby liked it and gave a thumbs up! We ate it with accompanying fried egg.

NOTES:

• The green chillies flavour didn't really come out, to be honest, so it's a bit missing that "chilli" (not hot) taste. Maybe using real jalapenos is best or maybe adding green bell pepper can work too.
• I used 1 block of chicken bullion in 2 cups of water. Just use accordingly to your chicken bullion instruction and adjust it to the recipe's chicken stock measurement.
• Don't be afraid to mix in a lot of coriander leaves! Because it really makes this rice taste sooo good. I was a bit afraid of mixing in the whole 1/2 cups of minced coriander leaves, but regretted it at the end that I had not put more!
• I don't really know how to properly serve Mexican rice, but having it side-to-side with grilled chicken or fried egg would be really nice!

Source