Okonomiyaki (Japanese Pancake) 日式烧饼

Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) is one of our favourite food. This bring memories back to London again because London is not only a shopping heaven. It is also a cosmopolitan city gathered with people from around the world so basically you can find anything (authentic or fusion) you like in London. Japanese is one of the cuisines we like the most among all. There are many nice restaurants (family size or fine dining) hidden around London and the most famous places to find nice Japanese food would always be Golders Green, Swiss Cottage and city centre like Soho and the back streets in Oxford Circus. 

Okonomiyaki is made using a mixture of vegetables, meat or seafood and batter. In the restaurants you can normally find the choice of toppings like pork, shrimps, crab sticks etc. When we make it at home we would just see what we have in the refrigerator. Like this time we only have some mushroom frankfurters and fishcakes so we have them in our pancakes. No matter what fillings you have, it works perfectly with the sauces and trust me you will have an awesome satisfaction after eating this ^^ I always cannot resist to eat more lol

Ingredients: (makes 2 large pancakes serve 4-6)

1 bowl cabbage (finely sliced)

1 bowl onion (finely diced)

1 bowl plain flour (150g)

1 bowl water

2 frankfurter sausages (sliced)

2 pcs fishcakes (sliced)

1 egg

4 tbsp cooking oil (2 tbsp for each pancake)

1 tsp dashimoto (bonito powder)

1 tsp mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)

1 tsp sake (Japanese cooking wine)

1/2 tsp salt

some white pepper to taste

Dressing:

Mayonnaise

Okonomiyaki Sauce

Aonori (seaweed powder)

Bonito flakes

1. In a large bowl, add flour, water dashimoto, mirin and sake, stir until well mixed and no lumps. Add cabbage, onion, egg, sausage and fishcake slices into the batter and stir to make sure all the ingredients are coated with batter.

2. Heat a pan at medium heat and add in 2 tablespoon of cooking oil. Add in half of the mixture and fry until golden brown on one side. 

3. Flip the pancake over and fry the other side until golden brown. (This step is normally done by my husband who normally toss the pancake over easily. If you cannot toss it, transfer the pancake onto a plate and overturn it into the pan ^^)

4. Serve the pancake onto a plate. Squeeze the mayonnaise over the pancake in zig zag line and followed by the okonomiyaki sauce (follow the mayonnaise line). 

5.Sprinkle some seaweed powder on top of it and finish it up with loads of bonito flakes. 

Done and serve hot!

Halloween Pumpkin Chocolate Cake

Halloween has just passed and I hope everyone has enjoyed their Halloween parties with their coolest costumes and had loads of sweets.

I still remember how much kids in the UK like Halloween and they always seems cannot wait until the day is arrived. They come in a bunch in the evening (you know the day gets dark fairly early in the end of October in the UK) knock on your doors and you better have some sweets prepared for the 'Trick or Treat''. If you are lucky like me and my house mates in London, we met some really cute kids, some in their costumes and some with masks. They said thank you and continue their Trick or Treat happily to the neighbours after receiving your sweets. If you are unfortunate like one of my friends who lived in a rough area in Liverpool when he was still a student, kids knocked on the door and he greeted them with some Snickers chocolate bars. You would not expected this, the kids said they want a fiver instead (a five pound note). My friend just shut the door and went back to his room. The next day morning when he come out of the house, his door has a few cracked eggs on it and left a mess in the entrance lol

Well there is not much Halloween atmosphere in Malaysia especially in my family. However I wanted to spice up our lives sometimes and wish to bring back some UK memories to my husband and me, I decided to make a Halloween cake. I started to google for recipes and I found these fun and easy recipes on www.joyofbaking.com. I am not baking expert but I really like the texture of this cake and the soft and indulgent chocolate frosting.

Meringue Ghost Recipe

Makes 30-35 Mini Meringue Ghosts

Ingredients:

2 large egg whites 

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

100g caster sugar

1/4tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat over to 100°C. Line baking paper on a baking tray. 

2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites on low and then medium speed until foamy. Add cream of tartar in and continue the beating until the egg whites forms soft peaks.

3. Add the sugar into the egg whites a little at a time (at least 3 times) and beat until the mixture becomes very shiny, fluffy and holds very stiff peaks.

4. Add in the vanilla extract and fold together using spatula until well combined.

5. Get a piping bag with 7/16" (about 1cm) plain round piping tip and fill all the meringue mixture into it. If you do not have those you can use a large freezer bag like me after filling all the meringue mixture into the bag, cut one of the bottom corner into about 1cm diameter.  (If you do not have a large enough freezer bag then use the one you have and refill it until finish, no big deal on that ^^). Try your best to press the filling down towards  the bottom and make sure there is no air in there. Twist the bag to compact the filling.  

6. Hold the bag straight, pipe the meringue onto the baking paper. Hold the same position until you are satisfied with the size of the base (I made a roughly 3cm base), lightly pull back a little and continue piping on top of the base, make a slightly smaller hill and pull back a little and continue piping until you form a 3-4cm high mound. Stop pressing the filling and pull off lightly to for a tail light 'Ghost hair' ^^.

7. Bake the meringues for 70-100 minutes until they are dry and crispy. Simply touch it with your fingers, if they are still sticky, you need to put it back to the oven and continue baking.

8. Turn off the oven and leave the meringues in the oven. Leave the door open ajar to let the meringues finish drying for several hours or overnight. 

Ghost Eyes Recipe

Ingredients:

1tbsp plain flour

2tbsp water

some colouring powder (I used yellow and red)

1. Mix all the ingredients well in a bowl and and transfer half of the mixture into a separate bowl.

2. Add some colouring powder into each bowl of mixture, adjust the colour to your preference (basically just a little pinch of colouring is enough as the colour will turn darker when it is cooked).

3. Heat a non-stick pan at medium heat, no oil needed, add in a spoonful of each colour of batter and cook until it sets. Do not flip over. Remove the pancake from heat and let cool to room temperature.

4. Cut the eyes using straw and poke it out using toothpick or skewer.

5. Melt a small piece of cooking chocolate over a pot of simmering water.

6. Apply some melted chocolate onto the 'eyes' using toothpick to form eye balls.

7. Using a tweezer or toothpick, apply a little bit of the chocolate onto the meringue and stick the eyes onto it.Done! ^^

Pumpkin Chocolate Cake Recipe
8inch mould

Ingredients:

4 large eggs

200ml vegetable oil

1tsp vanilla extract

300g caster sugar

350g mashed pumpkin/canned pumpkin purée

220g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1/4tsp baking soda

1/4tsp salt

1tsp ground cinnamon

200g chocolate chips

1. Skin and seed the fresh pumpkin if you are not using canned pumpkin. Cut into small chunks and steam for 30-35 minutes. Remove from heat and remove excessive water. Mash the pumpkin with potato masher and let cool to room temperature.

2. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease an 8" tin.

3. In a large mixing bowl, add in eggs, oil, vanilla extract, sugar and beat until combined.

4. Add the mashed pumpkin into the mixture and beat until everything combined.

5. In a separate bowl, add in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices and stir to mix well using a fork or whisk.

6. Sieve the in the flour mixture into the pumpkin batter and beat until combined.

7. Add chocolate chips into the batter and stir to mix well.

8. Pour the batter into the baking tin and bake for 60-65 minutes. Remove from oven and insert a skewer into the cake and pull out. If the skewer comes out clean the cake is cooked. If it comes out wet, place the cake back into the oven and continue baking for about 10 minutes.

9. Remove the cake from the oven and let cool for 20 minutes. Remove the cake from the tin and let cool to room temperature (this may take a few hours).

Chocolate Glaze Recipe

Ingredients:

160g semi sweet chocolate 

40g unsalted butter

11/2 tbsp light corn syrup

1. Chop the chocolate into pieces and add into a stainless steel bowl. Add butter and syrup into  the bowl and melt over a pot of simmering water. Stir occasionally until the chocolate all melted and the mixture is well combined.

2. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

3. Pour the glaze over the cooled pumpkin cake. Use a mixing spatula or an icing spatula (if you have it) spread the glaze around the top of the cake and let it flow down the sides from edges.

Pumpkin Lamp Recipe

Ingredients:

100-120g sweet potato (orange fleshed)

10g unsalted butter

2tsp sugar

a pinch of salt

6-10 chocholate chips

1tbsp melted chocolate

1. Skin and dice the sweet potato, steam for 35-40 minutes.

2. Remove from heat and mash using a potato mash until the texture becomes soft and fluffy.

3. Add in butter and a pinch of salt, mix well before it cools down.

4. Let cool to room temperature.

5. Wet your palms and get some mashed potato, shape into little balls and press it lightly with your thumbs and forefingers. 

6. Repeat step 5 until the number of the pumpkin lamps reached. (you can eat the left over mashed potato, it is yummy ^^)

7. Draw cheeky or spooky pumpkin faces on the potato balls with melted chocolate using toothpick. Be careful do not press too hard you might scratch the 'face' lol

8. Place a chocolate chip on top of each potato ball to form the pumpkin stems.

Now you have everything ready and all you need to do is to arrange the meringue ghosts and pumpkin lamps on the cake to your preference. Lightly press the items onto the frosted cake to make sure it will not slide away and you are done. Refrigerate the cake for at least 1 hour to let the frosting set and here you go a lovely cake is ready for the Halloween party! ^^ Me and my husband had loads of fun in making the meringue ghosts and drawing the pumpkin faces. He took so many nice pictures during the process too. We had a lovely Halloween and hope you guys enjoy it too ^^

Homemade Honey Lemon

Finally I have decided to have Home made Honey Lemon as the first recipe for my blog. This is very easy to make hence I found it really helpful in curing sore throat, very soothing especially in the hot season.

I first found the recipe on internet and modified the amount of ingredients according to my experiments. 

Ingredients:

3 Lemons
1000ml Honey (I used Australian Capillano Honey)

3tsp salt

1 glass/plastic container

1 Wash the lemons.

2. Place one lemon into a clean plastic/freezer bag, add in some salt and scrub the lemon for at least 2 minutes to remove dirts and wax on the skin. Repeat this step on every lemon. (This can avoid your palms to be over scrubbed XD)

3. Rinse off the salt and pat dry with clean cloth/kitchen towel.

4,5. Thinly slice the lemons and place in a dry dish.

6. Arrange one layer of lemon at the bottom of the container and pour a layer of honey on top of the lemons.

7. Repeat step 6 until the lemons are finished. 

8. Pour in the remaining honey until the container is full.

9. Lid on, label the container with date and refrigerate the honey lemon for 3days. Take it out, use a non-metal spoon to stir from bottom to top. This is to get the honey at the bottom and the lemon juice on top to mix well together. Lid on again and put it back into the fridge.

10. Repeat step 9 for at least 2 times until the 10th day. 

11. Use a non-metal spoon, stir it again from bottom to the top. Get a slice of the lemon into your favourite mug and get 1 spoon of the mixture of honey lemon. Add in some luke warm water and stir well. Tasty soothing honey lemon drink is ready to be served ^^

The honey lemon can be stored in the fridge for at least 1 month without any contact with water so make sure your hands and spoon are dry every time you try to stir or get the honey lemon.