Gluten-free Garlic Flatbread

I have been preparing breakfast at home and bring it to work daily for the past year. In order to moderate my weight and geared towards healthy eating, I try to avoid bread and gluten food for breakfast. Therefore, I will search for gluten-free baking goods and other foods to be taken for breakfast.

I wanted to prepare hummus for breakfast, but do not want to have carrot or celery sticks with it. So I found this gluten-free flatbread. It was easy to make and taste good with my homemade hummus. I will try again with other gluten-free flours to see if it can hold up. Otherwise, this is great as appetizer or snacks.

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Recipe for Gluten-free Garlic Flatbread, modified from Bigger Bolder Baking.

Ingredients:
115g Almond flour, fine
115g Tapioca starch
350g Coconut full fat milk/cream
1/4 tsp Rock salt, fine
1/2 tsp Garlic powder
Some chopped cilantro

Coconut oil for frying

Method:
1. In a large bowl combine the almond flour, tapioca starch, salt, garlic and cilantro.

2. Add in the coconut milk and whisk to combine until you have a smooth thick batter. 

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3. Heat a small non-stick pan over medium heat. Add in the coconut oil and brush it around the pan.

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4. Once the pan is at an even, moderate heat, spoon 1/4 cup of the batter into the pan, allowing the batter to spread out, it should be roughly an 4-inch circle (although you can make the flatbread large or smaller if desired).

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5. Cook the flatbread on the first side until tiny bubbles begin to form around the outside. Flip the flatbread and allow to cook on the other side for about until golden and brown. Remove from the heat and transfer to a rack. Repeat this process until all of the batter is used. I made about seven 4-inch size quite thick flatbreads.

6. Serve the flatbread while warm and crisp. I had mine with homemade hummus.

7. Cover and store leftover flatbread in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Microwave or heat up before using.

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Flourless Almond Chocolate Cake

Happy New Year! 
May 2018 brings you good health, more bakes and more sharing!

This has got to be one of the best flourless chocolate cake I have baked and ate. The cake is chocolaty and soft, without feeling too much of the almond. The texture is smooth with bits of ground almond. This is not those dense thick chocolate kind of cake. It's light and soft. I was really satisfied with this cake. I made blueberry coulis to top the cake. However, my sister commented that she preferred the cake without the blueberry coulis. Nevertheless, this cake is easy to prepare and good to the last bit.

Recipe for Flourless Almond Chocolate Cake, adapted from Food52.
(Makes a 10" cake with 1 1/2" height)

Ingredients:
250g Ground almonds (lightly toasted)

250g Couverture chocolates, 76% cocoa

250g Unsalted butter

140g Caster sugar

Freshly brewed espresso (approx 25g), let it cooled slightly

6 Large eggs, separated

Blueberry Coulis (Optional)
250g Blueberries
2 Tbsp Sugar

Method:

1. Line a removable base 10" round pan.
2. Preheat oven to 150ºC.
3. Place the chocolate in a glass bowl set over a bain marie (double broiler, or a pot of simmering water).
4. When melted, remove the bowl from the heat and add the butter, stirring with a spatula to help it melt and mix. 

5. Add in the cooled espresso and stir well.
6. Then add the sugar and the almond meal, stir to incorporate.

7. Once the mixture is no longer hot, add the egg yolks and stir to combine.
8. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites with beaters to soft, fluffy peaks.

9. Fold the whites gently through the chocolate and almond batter.

10. Pour the batter into the cake tin, smooth over the top and bake for approximately 40mins or until the top appears dry and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out with a few moist crumbs attached (not wet batter). It is important not to overcook this cake so that it retains its wonderful moist consistency.

11. Let it cool completely in the tin before removing. Dust with powdered sugar (if desired).

12. For blueberry coulis: Cook the blueberries and sugar together in a pot. Let it simmer and stir constantly. Cool slightly before topping on the cake.

Coffee Almond Cookies

Today is Chinese New Year (CNY) eve. My usual CNY goodies bakes will be pineapple tarts and almond cookies. As years passed, I find myself baking less and less cookies. Mainly because my family members are more health conscious and decided to eat less goodies, and also, I've become lazier. Was it no demand equals no supply or vice versa? I'm not so sure too.

With some sliced almonds on hand, I decided to try Wendy's Coffee Almond Cookies as it looks really good. The cookies were thin, crispy and tasted good with the almonds. They were really nice.

Recipe for Coffee Almond Cookies, adapted from Table for 2... or more.
(Makes for 2 small canisters)

Ingredients:
2 tsp Nescafé instant coffee
1 tsp Hot water
1 tsp Coffee extract

150g Salted butter
50g Brown sugar
1 Egg
200g Plain flour
50g Corn flour
100g Icing sugar
30g Full cream milk powder
100g Almond flakes, toasted

Method:
1. Mix instant coffee, hot water and coffee extract and stir to dissolve.
2. Sift plain flour, corn flour and icing sugar together. Then mix in full cream milk powder. Set aside.
3. Cream butter with brown sugar for about a minute on medium speed. Add in egg and beat until combined. Pour in the coffee mixture and beat until combined.
4. Add in flour mixture and mix until combined. Fold in almond flakes and mix until combined.
5. Spoon the dough into a full lined 8 inch square pan. Press down the dough and cover with another piece of baking paper. Fold down the overlaps and apply some pressure to level the dough. (I spooned it into a lined plastic container.)
6. Chill for 2 to 3 hours.

7. Preheat oven to 160(fan)/180C. Line 2 large baking trays with non stick baking paper
8. Remove chilled dough from fridge and cut into 4 long bars. Cut the bars evenly.

9. Arrange the dough slices with some space allocated for expansion. Keep balance of dough in fridge if not baked immediately.

10 Bake for 15­-17 minutes or until the edges take some some colour.
11. Let the cookies cool down and store them in air tight containers.
Wishing everyone
新年快乐, 猴年大吉, 红运当头, 心想事成, 岁岁平安!

Saturday Preview

Thanks to Pei Lin who took the effort to organise a blogger's potluck gathering tomorrow. As she will be in town for our National Day holiday, she suggested for a few of us bloggers to meet up. It looks like quite a successful event even though we have not attended it. Judging by the warm responses that she got from us, she must've been encouraged!

Some of them were very decisive on what food they want to bring to the gathering. It took me a long long time to decide what I want to prepare for my blogger friends. Most of them can bake really well. After much consideration, I decided to make Almond Cream with White Fungus for them to try. I learnt this from a workshop previously. This has been one of my favourite dessert since.

Shirley has already provided us with the sneak preview of what she will be bringing to the potluck party. I can't wait to try. I'll be one of the lucky blogger to be able to try her wonderful cooking skills.

I've also made some nuts to give to my new-found friends, who share the same passion as me. I hope they will like it. Isn't it nice to form a small "community of practice" for bakings?  Watch for more posts coming up which will include all the mouth-watering food prepared by the food bloggers. Till then, Ciao!

How much can you achieve in a day?

How much can you achieve in a day, assuming you don't have to do housework? I wonder what do employers do when their maids are taking their day off on a Sunday. It was my helper's day off today. She was really kind to help me to settle the children's basic needs (like preparing breakfast and bathing them) before going out. That left me enough time to do my Yam Cake in the morning. I had some frozen yams from PH previously and thought I might as well use it for my yam cake. I didn't really follow the recipe exactly, and so, I think the yam cake didn't turned out that well. Fortunately, it's is edible!



While the yam cake was steaming, I spent time with my twins to do some fondant moulding. Quizzine has very kindly did a step-by-step guide for Grace and myself on moulding bumble bees. So I thought I might as well do it with my children. As the more we mould, we ventured into moulding other stuff - fruits and pizza. Finally, here was what we did.




After lunch, we went to Kitchen Capers to buy some stuff. Gina was there, preparing for her demo class at KC. Then we came back for my children to rest as my daughter was not feeling well. While they were on their "independant" mode, I had the chance to do some bakings. No prize on guessing what I baked! It was pound cakes again. This time, I decided to add chopped almonds to the pound.



After baking, I prepare ingredients for dinner. When my helper is not around, I'd prefer to cook very simple dish - fried noodles. It's good and it's easy. My hubby and myself are great fans of noodles!


When I was taking my dinner, then I realised how tired my feet was! It just feel so good to be seated and resting!!

Simple and Good

Ever since I've started on some "pro" baking, I've not baked those simple and good treats - muffins! Muffins are actually very simple, doesn't need a mixer, just use whisk or spatula. I wasn't bothered with muffins all these while because I wanted very much to use my Kenwood mixer! Since I've already gotten myself some good and expensive mixer, might as well make use of it right? Hahaa... That was when, muffins are long forgotten.

Thanks to Anna for sharing her muffin recipe with me, I thought I might as well go easy with baking on a weekday. I tried baking an almond and chocolate chip muffins. It was really easy, and it turned out to be very fragrant and yummy! I used to love muffins a lot, but have forsake it for cupcakes. Suddenly, I realised I've fallen in love with muffins again! It's just a simple and good treat to bake and eat!!

Double Choc Chip Almond Cookies

Feeling a bit "itchy" on my hands to bake this evening, I chose an easier recipe to "entertain" myself. Elyn's Double Chocolate Chip Almond Cookies seemed to fit what I was looking for. At least it's something that I don't really like, so that I don't have to eat them. I usually bake to give away. So this seemed to be it! In less than 45mins, all were done and completed! Didn't that just met my objective? ;)

Saturday Bakes

It's Saturday again. Lately, I seemed to be baking "dough" related food. Cookies, quiches & tarts! These were what I did for Saturday!

1. Almond Cheese Tart
This recipe was extracted from Kitchen Corner. It looked really good. Unfortunately, I didn't do it well. Firstly, for the blending of the dough, instead of "bread crumbs like", mine were "watery". I added so much more flour to it. And when I blind baked it, it shrunk! When I saw that the crust was still usable, I proceed to make the cream cheese. Then I decided to halve the recipe. But ended up by puttin more cream cheese but less sugar & everything. I proceed to bake the tart. It turned out very beautiful physically. Unfortunately, it was tasteless! Crust was bland, cheese was bland. Neither sweet nor sour. Aiyoyo... it was a failure from the start! :p


2. Quiches
I made bacon, broccoli & mushrooms quiches for lunch. I used the crust from Rei's blog. It was really crispy and nice.


3. Valrhona Double Chocolate Chips Cookies
I tweaked the recipe a little from Joy of Baking. Instead of adding white chocolate chips, I added dark chocolate chips. As I've never been a fan of white chocolates, it was quite difficult to find it in my inventory. I baked this because my son kept asking me to bake "Subway" cookies. He likes this cookies that I had baked.

Almond Meringue Cupcakes

I had quite a lot of egg whites left in the fridge from my lapis cake some time ago. So I thought of baking this Almond Meringue Cupcakes, extracted from Cupcakes Galore.

Recipe
Ingredients:
100g ground almonds
150g sugar (I use 140g)
5 egg whites (I put 200g egg whites)
pinch of salt
85g whole almonds, toasted & coarsely chopped
Icing sugar for dusting

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 170C.
2. Mix ground almonds and 50g of the sugar together. Set aside.
3. Beat egg whites with salt until they turn opaque. Gradually add remaining sugar and continue to beat whites until they are stiff and form glossy peaks.
4. Gently fold in ground nut mixture, using a whisk. Take care not to overmix.
5. Fill the cupcake moulds with the mixture. You can use a piping bag to do this if you wish, if not, just heap the mixture into the moulds.
6. Sprinkle the toasted nuts over the meringues, pressing them in gently. Lightly dust with icing sugar.
7. Let the meringues rest for 10 minutes and then dust them again with icing sugar and let them rest another 10 minutes.
8. Bake for 25-30mins or until they are golden brown and firm to the touch. Cool before unmoulding.

Notes:
(1) This mixture makes 36 regular cupcakes.
(2) You can replace gound almonds with ground hazelnuts or have a mixture of both.
(3) First tray of meringue cupcakes, I didn't wait for the 10mins & 10mins before baking. I put it into the oven once the oven is ready.
Subsequent trays, it was delayed for more than 20mins though. The stiff meringues will slowly be more liquid.
(4) These meringue cupcakes can be eaten as is, served with fruit salad or ice cream or used with other desserts.

Crazy Busy Week!

This week is really crazy & busy! My domestic helper went back for her home leave for two weeks. So I'm now a Part-Time maid! But somehow, I cannot stay away from baking. Just had to find time to do some baking or some other stuff. So here it is.

New Venture I: Coconut Ice Cream.
I wanted to make mango ice cream, but I spilled my mango puree!!:'( So I ended up with Coconut Ice Cream.

Creamy mix before freezing.

Smooth as silk. Looks really like ice-cream.

Texture is really ice-cream! Yummy. Rich & thick.

Recipe extracted from Yochana's Cake Delight, Coconut Gelato.

Repeat Venture II: Breads

Same old breads.

New Venture III: 100% Almond Cupcakes (Gluten free)

I topped it with almonds nibs instead of frosting as in the original recipe.

Recipe extracted from Cedele.

Take a break!

Took some time off from work and went over to Bangkok last weekend. That was my break from work and baking. It was a fantastic three days two nights shopping & massage trip! However, the trip ended up with a 2hrs plus flight delay. We were in the airport before 5pm and the plane only took off at 10pm!! What a waste of time! By the time we reached Singapore, we were so dead tired! Almost like suffering from jetlag! :(

I tried a chocolate tart in BKK airport. Thought of baking something similar on Tuesday (since I was on child mc). Couldn't find a chocolate tart recipe, so ended up baking Almond & Pine Nuts Tart.

A 9" Almond & Pine Nuts Tart.

Topped it with whipped cream.

Cross section of the tart. Generous serving of pine nuts.

Recipe adapted from "Pastry Cook" by Catherine Atkinson, page 205. Will share this recipe with you.

Ingredients:
115g butter, softened
115g caster (superfine) sugar
1 egg, plus 2 egg yolks
150g ground almonds
115g pine nuts
3 tbsp chocolate ganache (original recipe calls for 4tbsp seedless raspberry jam, but I use chocolate ganache).
icing sugar, for dusting (I omitted this)

For the pastry:
175g plain flour
65g caster (superfine) sugar
1/4tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
115g chilled butter, diced
1 egg yolk

Methods:
1. To make the pastry, sift the folour, sugar, baking poweder and salt on to a clean, dry cold surface or marble pastry board.
2. Gradually work the flour mixture into the butter and egg yolk, using just your fingertips, until you have a soft pilable dough.
3. Press the dough into a 23cm/9in loose-based fluted flan tin (quiche pan). Chill for 30 minutes.
4. Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light, then use a wooden spoon to beat in the egg and egg yolks a little at a time, alternating them with the almonds. Beat in the nuts.
5. Preheat the oven to 160C. Spread the chocolate ganache evenly over the pastry base, then spoon in the filling.
6. Bake for 30-35mins until golden, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the tart comes out clean.
7. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool, then carefully remove the side of the tin, leaving the tart on the tin base. Dust with icing sugar and serve with whipped cream.
Note: I didn't use a loose-based fluted flan tin. So I had to cut out the tart before I can remove them.

Chocolate Almond Torte for sale (Flourless)

Baked gently in a water bath that gives this intense chocolate torte a beautiful soft texture that almost melts in your mouth. Additional of almond makes the cake unusually moist and give it the subtle fragrance of nuts.

Size - 8"
Price - S$48.00
Order 4 days in advance. Self collection.
Contains - Ground Almonds, Eggs & Rum. (Flourless)
Note: Design may varies.

Chocolate Almond Torte for Christy

Christy's birthday won't be till 25 March. But she insisted to celebrate on 8 March as 15 March will be her BIG GRAND day and thereafter, she'll be away for her sweet honeymoon! So she won't be around on 25 March. She wanted berries cake. I can't find any good recipe with berries. So I thought instead of the usual sponge cake with berries, I baked a torte and placed strawberries on top for her. I was glad she like it! :)

The Chocolate Almond Torte baked specially for Christy.

Cross section of a slice. Although it doesn't really looked smooth, it's very RICH!

This is my first attempt at Torte. And the verdict was: GOOD! :)

Almond Chocolate Tartlets for sale

Crispy tartlets filled with smooth chocolate topped with whole almonds. For people who appreciate crunchiness!

12 pieces per pack - $8.40
MOQ - 2 packets
Order 4 days in advance. Self collection

Almond Cookies for sale

Lightly toasted almond nibs in buttery crispy cookies.

1 tub (approx. 200gm) - S$12.00
MOQ - 2 tubs
Order 4 days in advance. Self collection.