Black Pepper Bak Kwa 黑胡椒肉干

I took great interest when I saw this recipe online - Black Pepper Bak Kwa. I've tried the normal Bak Kwa before from Sonia's blog. I thought it will be interesting to make a Black Pepper version. If there is a chilli version, I would very much want to try it too! The bak kwa is sweet and has a subtle black pepper taste. It is really nice, something different from the normal bak kwa. I will strongly encourage you to try if you are adventurous. I did some modification to the method to make it easier.

Recipe for Black Pepper Bak Kwa 黑胡椒肉干, adapted from Epicure Asia.

Ingredients:

1.5kg Minced pork (I use pork loin and ask the service staff to mince)

380g Sugar

5 tbsp Light soya sauce

5 tbsp Fish sauce

5 tbsp Hua Diao Jiu 花雕酒(Chinese cooking wine)

2 tbsp Black pepper, crushed

1 tsp Five-spice powder

½ tsp Red colouring powder (I omitted this)

½ tsp White pepper powder

½ cup Honey, diluted with 4 tbsp hot water to make a runny glaze

Method:

1. Combine the minced pork with all the ingredients (except honey) in a deep dish. Mix the ingredients in a circular motion until the red hue is even, about 15 minutes. The mixture should be of a slightly gluey consistency. Cover the dish with cling wrap and refrigerate for one day.

2. Using a fork, spread the meat mixture thinly (about 5mm).

3. Place the bak kwa in a preheated oven of 160°C for 15 mins. 

4. Remove and let it cool slightly. Then cut into desired shapes (squares or rectangles). Meanwhile, switch the oven to grill and turn the temperature to 220°C.

5. Brush with with honey and grill for 8 mins or until the edges start to char slightly and caramelised. Remove the tray from the oven, turn the meat over and brush with honey.

6. Continue to grill for another 8 mins. Remove and let it cool completely before serving.

I'm submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #39: CNY Rock and Roll! (January 2014) hosted by Food Playground.

Pork Jerky Cookies (香脆肉干饼)

This post is sponsored by Liv butter. Try Liv today!

I'm reposting this Bak Kwa Cookies using Liv butter. 

Recipe for Pork Jerky Cookies (香脆肉干饼)
Makes approximately 122 mini cookies
(fill 2 canister containers)

Ingredients:

250g Liv unsalted butter, soften
70g Icing sugar
1 Whole egg
1 tsp Vanilla extract
400g Plain flour
A pinch of salt
150g Pork Jerky (bak kwa), mini diced 

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
2. Add the egg and beat till well incorporated.
3. Add vanilla extract and mix.
4. Add the flour and bak kwa, and mix thoroughly.
5. Use a scrapper to cut out into small sizes, and shape it accordingly.
6. Placed it on a baking tray, spacing out evenly.
7. Egg wash the top to get some golden colour.
8. Bake at 180C for 16-18mins, or until it turned golden.

Note:

• Last year when I made this, I rested the dough in the fridge for at least 30mins. This time, I rolled it immediately after mixing. I realised that by resting the dough in the fridge, it produced a more refined crispy taste.
• After mixing the dough, it's still very soft. However, it is still manageable to roll them up.
• After baking, the cookies were crunchy. However, after a day, it turned slightly softer. It didn't taste like those "soften (lau hong)" kind though.

You may hop over to Anncoo & DreamersLoft's blog to view their cookies too!

I am submitting this post to Chinese New Year Delights 2013 hosted by Sonia aka Nasi Lemak Lover.

Homemade Pork Jerky, 肉干

My baked food for last week didn't turn out well. I was very busy at work and was stressed over the tight deadlines. I thought I could distress by doing some baking. Unfortunately, my bakes didn't turn out well.

I made a Black Sesame Butter Cake earlier in the week and it turned out to be hard and almost tasteless. I made an Olive Ciabatta and the dough was too wet and dense. It was still edible though. The only more presentable bake was the Pork Jerky, or known as Bak Kwa in Singapore.

When I saw Sonia's post earlier this year, I was very tempted to try it myself. However, as I don't know what kind of meat is good for making this Pork Jerky, I didn't attempt this. Fortunately over the weekend, I saw that "Porkee" lean pork was on sales at our local supermarket, I thought of trying out the recipe. If it didn't turn out well, at least the cost of making it wasn't so huge.

As it turned out, the meat was quite soft despite the fact that it was a little too thick. The overall taste was nice, as commented by my children. However, I found it lacking of some "char siew sauce" taste though the kind of caramelized taste was there. Actually, it wasn't too difficult to make. It was rather pleasing to see the end result. I'm re-posting the recipe for my personal reference.
Recipe for Homemade Pork Jerky (肉干), adapted from Nasi Lemak Lover.

Ingredients:
500g Lean meat (from Porkee), chopped and cut until almost like minced
100g sugar

1 tbsp Light soy sauce
1/2 tbsp Chinese rice wine (omitted because I ran out of it)
1/2 tbsp Fish sauce
1 tbsp Mushroom sauce (or oyster sauce)
1/2 tbsp Dark caramel sauce 
1/8 tsp Chinese five spices powder 
A dash of Pepper
1/2 tsp Rock salt
2 tbsp Honey

Method:

1. Put all ingredients together in a big bowl and mix well. Blend and stir the mixture in one direction until the meat becomes gooey. Important to mix them till gooey, otherwise the meat might break out. Cover and store in the fridge for several hours.
2.Spread the marinated pork thinly onto a paper-lined baking tray using your fingers.
3. Bake at pre-heated oven at 160C for 15-20mins. Remove from oven. Increase the oven temperature to 240C. At this moment, there will be a mixture of the meat and its juices on the baking tray. Leave them as it was.
4. Wait till slightly cooled, cut into your desired size and shape using a pizza cutter, and placed them back on the same baking tray.
5. Grill (top heat only) at 240C for 10mins, remove from the oven, flip over to the other side, and continue grilling for 7-9mins or until golden brown with slight burnt.
6. Once done, let it cool and enjoy!

Bak Kwa Cookies

I've read and saw many bak kwa cookies and was very tempted to try it. When Doris recommended me the pineapple tart crust from Zu's kitchen, I reckon I could use the dough, modified it and turn it into Bak Kwa Cookies. So here it is. The cookies is crispy with chewy bak kwa bits. Trust me, it gets very addictive! Be sure to control yourself!

Recipe for Bak Kwa (肉干)Cookies
Makes approximately 122 mini cookies
(fill 2 canister containers)

Ingredients:

250g SCS Salted butter, soften

70g Icing sugar

1 Whole egg

1 tsp Vanilla extract

400g Plain flour

130g Bak kwa, mini diced 

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
2. Add the egg and beat till well incorporated.
3. Add vanilla extract and mix.
4. Add the flour and bak kwa, and mix thoroughly.
5. Put the dough in a plastic bag, roll it out evenly.
6. Refrigerate it for at least 30mins until firm.
7. Use a scrapper to cut out into small sizes, and shape it accordingly.
8. Placed it on a baking tray, spacing out evenly.
9. Bake at 180C for 16-18mins, or until it turned slightly brown.

Sunday Bakes

We invited my in-laws' to my place on Sunday. Parents-in-law, Brother-in-law & Sister-in-law. I was busy baking and preparing for the dinner on Sunday. Whenever we had guests over, whether it's my family members or friends, I felt obliged to bake and make something nice and good for them. And it's not just one item, it has to be at least two or three items. I also felt pressurised to make special foods. Okay, maybe what I made is normal, but all these really took some planning to accomplish.

These were the foods I did, in chronological order of when it was accomplished (morning or afternoon).

1. Cranberry Cheesecake: I adopted the recipe from All That Matters' Blueberry Cheesecake. I replaced Blueberry with Cranberry. It was the first time I tried making no-bake cheesecake and found it more tedious to make than those baked ones. I'm not sure if I will attempt this again, though it's quite nice. :)


2. Bak Kwa & Cream Cheese Buns: As usual, I had to bake some buns, for our breakfast on Monday. Since I still have quite a big block of cream cheese in the fridge, I've decided to bake some cream cheese buns. They taste really nice and good. Unfortunately, the following day, the buns were quite tough. I blamed it on the "expired" yeasts. :p


3. Rosemary & Olive Oil Baked Rice: I marinated chicken breasts meat with chopped fresh rosemary & olive oil. Then I fried my rice in olive oil, added the chicken pieces, french beans, fresh button mushrooms, raisins and more chopped fresh rosemary. Topped them with mozzarella cheese and baked them in the oven. The rice was really healthy & tasty!


4. Mashed Potatoes: Recipe from my sister. She baked this before and my family loved it. And because my hubby kept asking me to make this, we had bought a baking dish specially for me to bake this. Although I have used the baking dish many times, I've not baked this mashed potatoes dish. The potatoes were boiled, then mashed. Cauliflower were blanched and added to the potatoes. I also cut some smoked ham into it, added some black pepper and cream. Topped them with mozzarella cheese and baked it. This dish was a sellout!


5. Garlic Breads with Rosemary: Chopped garlic finely, mixed with chopped fresh rosemary and add butter. Mixed them up and spread on hotdog buns. Grilled them till crispy. Another sellout!


6. Chicken & Ham Quiches: Quiches are pretty easy to prepare. My quiches consisted of shredded chicken pieces, smoked ham, fresh button mushrooms and cauliflowers. I cooked them before distributing them into the blind baked crusts. I mix cream, milk and eggs and pour them over the mixture to "hold" them together. Topped with sliced tomatoes to give them a more colourful look.


You see, actually planning for a meal is not too difficult. Many ingredients can be "shared"-cauliflower, rosemary, smoked ham, button mushrooms etc. However, time factor is important as each dishes have to be prepared in sequence, not concurrent as my oven can only bake so much. As busy as I can get, I'm really enjoying them. Otherwise, I would not have suggested dinner at my place right? ;)

Birthday Cupcakes

It seemed that I've been quite busy with work lately that I just didn't have much time to do baking or to post them up. I tried macarons again, but didn't make it again. The reason for me try again was because I still have one tub of egg whites in the fridge. So I took up the courage to try again, as I was thinking, if I failed again, I still can try since I can "afford" the whites. Wrong start! Thus, my macarons cracked, and no feet! *haiz*


My sister requested me to bake chocolate cupcakes for her birthday. Since she has always been a great fan of my cupcakes, I obliged. I had to combine her birthday with my brother in law's birthday since they wouldn't be available next week. Interestingly, I "embedded" two heart-shaped chocolates into two of the cupcakes and made them find one each. Fortunately, they managed to find it on the first try, otherwise, I want them to finish up all the buttercreams on the cupcakes. I was kind enough to make only 10 buttercream toppings and the other 8 with chocolate ganache.



After more than one month without baking breads, I just had to bake breads today. I also desperately wanted to use up my bak kwa (which I can only bake like once a year after CNY?). So bak kwa buns were my first batch of bread for the year 2009!

Breads

My colleague told me about putting cheese & sugar on the bread will be nice. So I decided to try, and plait up my breads.

Baking the big cheese & sugar loaf.

This is the smaller version of the cheese & sugar bread.

Baked browned cheese & sugar loaf.

The varieties included cheese & sugar and bak kwa breads. Finally used up my bak kwas.

This was how the inside of the bread is like. I think it's very soft and nice. My successful attempt!

This was the bak kwa bread. Looks soft & nice too!

Recipe extracted from my baking school.

What's in my tarts?

Didn't feel like baking up a storm on Saturday after a couple of failed tries on sponge cake. So, I decided to bake tarts (from the leftover dough in the freezer).

Baked tart shells of two sizes.

Upclose with the crispy tart shells fresh from the oven. It was handmade, therefore, it wasn't uniform. :p

These are chocolate with Bailey's Irish creme caramel tartlets.

Pastry cream with Grand Marnier Orange.

Pastry cream with payaya bits (non alcoholic!)

Chocolate with Grand Marnier Orange.

Mini tartlets from left to right: pastry cream with Grand Marnier Orange, chocolate with Grand Marnier Orange & pastry cream with payaya bits.

Cross section of the chocolate Creme Caramel tart.


I baked breads on Friday evening. Didn't turn out to be as soft as I want them to be. There were bak kwa, kaya, Nutella chocolate & red beans.

Different Kinds of Breads

I tried another recipe for sweet dough buns for bread, but wasn't as soft as it was meant to be. Could be that I added a little too much water than required. Nevertheless, the taste was still pretty good!

The dough proofed so much after the next day!

Awaiting to be placed into the oven to bake.

First batch of breads being baked.

A mixture of ham & cheese, sausage and bak kwa breads.

Packed them ready to be given out.

Cross-section of the ham & cheese bread the morning after.

Cross-section of the bak kwa bread the morning after!

Recipe extracted from Baking Mum.

Baking my Bak Kwa Bread

This is my first time baking breads after my baking course. Not too bad though!

After mixing the dough, cling wrapped and proof for about 15minutes. I need to proof for about 1 hour as it was quite hot today.

Weigh your dough and shape it, then leave to proof again. This time, I proof it in the oven instead.

After 25mins, I rolled it out like swiss roll and placed my cut bak kwa onto it and roll it up.

These are my rolled bread dough with bak kwas.

These are proofed in the oven for about three hours. See how big they have "grown"!

Baking in the oven. Transforming the dough into REAL breads!

These are my blackist breads.

Although it looked blackist, but the taste was really good! It's sweet!

See the cross section of my bread, it has bak kwa pieces inside. Sweet sweet, yum yum!