Taiwanese Macaron 台湾牛粒

Yield: 8 x 6cm round macarons

I was craving for BreadTalk's Kawa Ichigo, which is a small cake with two macaron-like sponge cakes sandwiching a layer of mascarpone cheese and strawberry jam centre. To replicate, I borrowed the recipe from a Taiwanese macaron and substituted the expensive mascarpone cheese by cheaper whipped cream. Not a bad try. My family all love it 😍

Ingredients

1 egg white

Pinch of salt
25g fine sugar
1 egg yolk

5g milk
2g condensed milk

30g top/cake flour

About 2 tbsp icing sugar for dusting

Filling
40g whipped cream
2 tbsp strawberry jam

Directions

1. Mix 5g of milk and 2g of condensed milk in a small dish. Set aside.

2. In a dry, clean and oil-free small mixing bowl, whisk egg white to frothy. Add in a pinch of salt and gradually add in the 25g of fine sugar in course of whisking.

Whisk till reaches firm peak stage.

3. Whisk in the egg yolk.

Continue to whisk till reaching ribbon stage.

4. Sieve and fold in 1/2 of the flour.

Mix in the milk mixture from Step 1, followed by the remaining flour.

Use a spatula to give a thorough mix.

5. Pour the batter into a piping bag fitted with a 1-cm round nozzle.

6. Pipe the batter onto a silicone baking sheet, leaving about 2cm gaps in between.

7.  Dust a good amount of icing sugar over the piped batter.

8. Bake at lower rack of the oven, set at 170°C for about 15 to 20 minutes, or till the edge starts to brown.

Let the macaron shells cool down before removing them from the baking sheet.

9. Match the macaron shells to its comparable size shell to pair up.

10. Drop a small amount of strawberry jam onto the centre of a macaron shell.

Pipe a ring of whipped cream round the strawberry jam.

Place the other matched macaron shell over.

11. Store in the refrigerator and serve it cold 😋💖

Whipped Cream

1. Keep a tall mixing cup and a balloon whisk in the freezer for about 20 to 30 minutes before use.

2. Pour 40g whipping cream into the cold mixing cup and let the cup stands on an ice pad.

3. Whisk the cream till reaching almost soft peak stage, using the "Turbo" speed of an handheld blender. The process took about 2 to 3 minutes.

Add in 4g icing sugar.

Continue to whsk at "Turbo" speed till the cream starts to thicken. Reduce the speed to "4 to 5" on the speed dial, and continue to whip till reaching firm peak stage.

Do not over-whip the cream! Or, it will turn into butter and whey.

4. Transfer the whipped cream to a piping bag fitted with a 1M nozzle and keep in the refrigerator till needed.

Recipe modified from Taiwanese Macaron with Raspberry Buttercream

Watercress Honey Drink 西洋菜蜂蜜茶

I first tried this mild sweet tea in a Hong Kong style cafe in Chinatown. It is a good idea to salvage the discarded stems of watercress and brews them into a nice glass of vegetable honey tea. If you like watercress soup, you will like this tea, but in a sweet version 😊

Ingredients

You may change the ingredients and quantities according to your preference :)

The remaining stems of a bunch of 200g watercress
1000ml water
1 blade pandan leaf
1 honey date
1 seedless red date

4 dried longans, optional
some rock sugar to your taste
some honey to your taste

Directions

1. Keep the discarded stems of the watercress. Wash before use.

2. Add all the ingredients, except the rock sugar and honey, to a pot. Bring to a boil.

3. Add some rock sugar and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for about 10 minutes and turn off the heat.

4. After about 30 minutes and the temperature has reduced substantially, add in about 1 to 2 tbsp of honey to your taste.

5. Strain and enjoy the drink warm or cold 😋

Hand-kneaded Japanese Milk Bread 手揉日式牛奶面包

I have tried different Japanese milk bread recipe. The interesting factor that attracted my attention was the hand-kneading pattern of this recipe. The recipe really gave a nice and springy texture bread 😀

Yield: 3 loaves of bread in a 26x10x7.5cm narrow base pan

Raw dough weight: 446g

Ingredients

240 (300)g Japanese bread flour

25 (25)g fine sugar

3 (3)g fine salt

2 (4)g instant dry yeast

80 (220)g fresh milk*

75 (0)g water

30 (0)g natural yeast, 100% hydration

20 (30)g unsalted butter

Original recipe quantity in green.
* Original recipe uses low-fat milk

Directions

1. Mix fresh milk, water and natural yeast together. In a mixing bowl, mix Japanese bread flour, fine sugar, fine salt and instant dry yeast together. Dig a well in the dry ingredients, and pour in the milk mixture.

Stir the ingredients in one direction till they formed into a lump that pulls away from the wall of the mixing bowl.

Knead the dough till smooth.

2. Spread out the dough and add 20g of unsalted butter to it. Take a 5-minute break to let the butter softened.

Combine the softened butter to the dough

and knead into a smooth dough.

3. Place the dough into a mixing bowl, spray some water over,

cover and let it proof for about 1 hour or till it double in volume.

4. Turn out the dough to a floued work top, flatten the dough, and divide into 3 portions. Shape the doughs into balls, cover and let them rest for about 15 minutes.

5. Take a dough and roll it into about 1 cm thick.

Fold the two longer sides to the centre.

Roll up the dough, starting from the shorter end, and pinch at the end to seal.

Place the rolled dough into a 26x10x7.5cm loaf pan, pre-coated with butter. Spray some water

cover with a tea towel, and let it proof for about 40~50 min,

or till the dough reaches the rim of the loaf pan.

6. Start to pre-heat the oven to 180°C, and dust some bread flour over the dough

7. Bake at lower rack of the oven at 180°C for 10 minutes, reduce the temperature to 170°C and bake for 25 minutes.

End of baking.

8. Invert out the bread immediately after leaving the oven.

Let the bread cool down completely before cutting. Enjoy 😋