Baked Swirl Mashed Potato

I think most people love mashed potato especially when the potatoes are creamy hot with some crispy bacon mix together with it. Mmmm, that's just so deliciously good. However, just the other day I was watching AFC channel and saw the chef preparing a different method of serving mashed potato. It's Baked Swirl Mashed Potato. I wasn't sure what he called it but this is what I will call it. *lol*

Baked Swirl Mashed Potato

It's actually not tough to prepare this great lovely food. As this is very light, you can be having it non-stop like a snack. Doink love it a lot and in fact he didn't realise it was made of potato. He simply enjoyed it and putting it one by one in his mouth without realising that he was finishing all the potatoes really quickly. *giggle*

One by one waiting to be executed by Doink and I

Well, this is how you prepare this simple dish.

Firstly, you boil the potatoes till it's soft. Than mash them up. Season it with salt and pepper. Than add in an egg yolk and beat it with a mixer till it's smooth. Spoon the potato mixture into a piping bag and swirl the potato mixture on to a pyrex that is brush with butter on it. Gently brush the top of the pototo mixture with butter. Bake it for about 20 minutes or till the top part is a bit brown. And your potato is ready to be served. Deliciously good, tasty and smooth. Of course, you can experiment putting in some bacon, herbs, cheese although I'm not sure how the taste will turn out to be like. Let me know how the taste is like if you have try adding additional ingredients in it.

Light and Tasty Potato

It's definitely one of the items I will prepare again. This is another potato dish to serve to your family and friends rather than the usual mashed, baked or roast potato. Give it a try and I'm sure you will be loving it.

Profiteroles

A profiterole or more commonly know as cream puff in Malaysia is a pretty popular choux pastry. This pastry is baked into small round puffs that are served cold with a chocolate sauce usually drizzle over the top. Of course, different people prepares the pastry differently. I remember that there was a period of time where people were crazy over cream puff.

The first time I ever tried a profiterole was when I was studying in UK living in Halls of Residence. They had the choice of profiterole and some cakes to choose from. That was the first time I ever lay my hands on such a beautiful dessert especially when the cold cream inside melts in your mouth with the awesome beautiful chocolate sauce accompanying it. Oooh... I could still remember how it taste like.

I knew Doink misses those beautiful profiteroles and all these years I did not have the chance to make any for him to savour. That's because I never felt that it's an easy dessert to prepare.


Oooh... sinfully delicious with the cream

Just the other day as I was browsing through my favourite recipe book, I came across the profiterole recipe. The picture of the beautiful dessert looks tempting. So without hesitating, I decided to try baking this lovely cute choux pastry.

It isn't really that difficult to bake it but I have to say that I'm still having difficulty preparing the pastry. I somehow feel that there is something lacking in it. Can't figure out what. Oh well, I guess I'm pretty ok with my first attempt.

After preparing the pastry, you just need to put the cream in between the pastry and drizzle some beautiful good quality chocolate sauce over the top and the profiteroles are ready to be served immediately.

Note: never attempt to put the cream in too far in advanced because this tends to make the pastry soggy.


Beautiful profiterole couple

It's definitely a dessert I will be looking forward to bake more. If I ever gonna have any house party or something like that, this will be a dessert I will love to serve it to the guest provided I managed to figure out how to make a perfect pastry.

Italian Carbonara Minusing Off The Cream

I remembered myself preparing Angel Hair Alla Carbonara and Egg Fettucini Carbonara using those sinful cream to cook it for my deary Doink and he loves it a lot. As usual, a typical sinful dish is always a favourite to Doink.

However, I had an Italian friend who told me that a true authentic Italian cuisine recipe for carbonara spaghetti does not use cream. It's a tremendous simple and yet tasty recipe cutting off the additional calories from the cream.

When I found out about the truth that carbonara does not incorporates cream, I was excited to prepare the dish for Doink using the true authentic Italian recipe.


Love the bacon

The ingredients required for this dish is spaghetti, pancetta/bacon, olive oil, eggs, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste.

However, this dish didn't turned out that great the first time I cook it. I didn't manage to cook it correctly when I put in the eggs which made the dish has little lumps of eggs on it. Anyway, the taste was still quite good.

I will definitely try to cook this dish again. I love this dish as carbonara is my favourite and knowing that cutting out the cream still makes this dish as great as it is will enable me to enjoy my meal without worrying too much about my waistline. Hehe....


Simple dish

Let me perfect my recipe and I will share it with you all once it turns out better.

Potato, Eggs, Onions....

I was not well for the last whole week and I even had a hard time getting out of my bed. The moment I try to get up, my head spins and it hurts so badly and fever kept on coming back even after I take panadol. That's how sick I was. I could not even stare at my laptop for more than 10 minutes. Sigh!!!



But Cutie is now finally getting better. Able to move around and Doink was being really sweet to take care of me and brought me to MCD yesterday to get my favourite choco top as I haven't been having any appetite to eat anything for the whole week. Thanks Doink!!!



So anyway, here is another dish which is also my first time preparing it. It's actually called Spanish Omelette. It's actually a potato omelette which can be served as tapas. All you need is three, inexpensive ingredients - eggs, potatoes, onions - to transform a simple and yet tasty dish.

Eggy and potato



2 potatoes

1 large onions

4 eggs

salt and pepper



Firstly, you will need to slice the potatoes and onions thinly. Then add about 1/3 cup of olive oil and slowly pan fry the potatoes and onions for about 20 minutes till it softens.



Then beat about 4 eggs, add salt and pepper to taste. Add the cooked potatoes and onions together with the egg and mix well.



Add the potato and egg mixture on a round pan and cook it with medium fire. Cook it with patient. When there is no liquid egg left on the top, turn it over to cook the other side. Cook it for about 2 minutes.



Transfer your Spanish omelette on to a plate and sprinkle some parsley on the plate (optional) and serve.





That big slice is mine!



This is a delicious dish to prepare and Doink loves it since he loves potatoes so much. I will definitely make this dish again. This time I will make sure that I make a thicker Spanish omelette. *lol*

Poached Pears with Chocolate Sauce

This is a simple dessert that one can prepare for thier loved ones and also to those who doesn't eat much fruits. Hehe... Here, fresh pears are poached in a sugar syrup and it's complement with a smooth, dark chocolate sauce, crunchy toasted almonds and also cold, creamy vanila ice cream drizzle with more heavenly good chocolate sauce. *drool*


Poached pear with Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients
4 firm, ripe pears
125g sugar
1/2 zest of lemon
1 lemon juice

Chocolate Sauce
75g dark chocolate
100ml double cream
75g butter

To serve: Toasted almonds and vanila ice cream

1. You will need to pour 900ml water into a medium saucepan and add caster sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice. Bring it to boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
2. Peel the pears, leaving them whole, and scoop out the cores from the bases. Add the pears into the sugar syrup. Reduce the heat and cover the pan to simmer for about 20 minutes until the pears are tender.
3. Once done, set aside to cool.
4. To prepare the chocolate sauce, put the chocolate, double cream and butter in a saucepan over a gentle heat until melted. Stir until smooth. Set aside to cool.
5. Pour the choclate sauce on to a plate and put the poached pear in the centre of the plate. Top it some toasted almonds Then scoop a generous amount of ice cream and place it next to the pear. Drizzle additional chocolate sauce over the ice cream.

Toasted almonds

Some people like to poach the pears with some spices like rosemary and cinammon while others like to poach it with red wine. It depends on individual preference. As for Doink and I, we normally prefer some simple pleasant dessert that doesn't give too much different kind of flavour to our tastebuds.


Ice cream... yummy!!!

This is an absolutely tasty and the toasted almonds give some extra crunchiness to the whole dessert served. It's definitely a dessert I will prepare again for Doink.

Prawn Pasta

I just love cooking but at times when I'm in a rush, I just don't know what to cook for Doink. I face that problem quite often as I always want to cook something different for him.

Anyway, I kinda like this type of moments at times as it makes me crack my head and think of cooking a simple yet delicious meal for him. So this time round I made a perfectly simple and tasty prawn pasta. I have gotta tell you that this dish is perfectly simple to prepare with a short amount of time.

Yummy prawns. My favourite!

All I need is:

olive oil
garlic
1/4 of a lemon
salt, pepper
basil
parsley
medium sized prawns
pasta
parmesan cheese

1. Cook the pasta as per instruction on the packet.
2. First, you will need to fry the garlic in the olive oil. Don't burn the garlic. Then you add the prawn into the pan and stir fry it till it's cooked. Squeeze the lemon. Season with salt and pepper. Add some basil to the pan.
3. When your pasta is ready, drain it (but save some of the pasta water) and mix the pasta together with (2). Add some pasta water into it if you find it a bit dry.
4. Place the pasta on the plate. Add some parsley for garnishing and sprinkle some parmesan cheese. Tadah, your perfect yummy delicious meal is ready in just 10-15 mins.

Deliciously good!

I absolutely love this dish. Doink enjoyed it a lot. And I believe I will be cooking some simple pasta dish rather than those typical sinful carbonara pasta. Oops, think Doink won't be happy to find out that. *lol* Think he still enjoys his tasty streaky bacon fry till it's crisp together with the creamy mushroom sauce. *drool* Guess I'm also having cravings for carbonara pasta now... hehe...

More strawberry and peach desserts...

Here are more desserts that I had prepared with the strawberries and peaches. So I prepared desserts which Doink requested: strawberry shortcake.

Shortcake is actually dessert made with the sweet biscuit also known in British English as a scone. So I baked some scones and prepare some so-called strawberry shortcake for Doink. Just add some cream ontop of the scones and placed the strawberries over the scones. Then pour some strawberry juice over it. And it's ready to be served. *drool*


Strawberry shortcake

Of course I also prepared peach shortcake. As for peach shortcake, I just placed the peach over the cream and cut some strawberries to place round the plate as decor.


Peach shortcake

I notice today's shortcakes are not made with a shortcake (i.e. biscuit) but a base of sponge cake. In fact, I have tasted some strawberry shortcake using sponge cake selling outside and it actually taste very good.

With some remains of sponge cake that I had baked for my trifles, I decided to make a few small slices of strawberry shortcake using sponge cake. Cut the sponge cake into halve, then place the cream and strawberries on top, and later put the slice of sponge cake over it. For me, I pour some strawberry sauce over it to be served straight away to Doink to savour so that it has more strawberry flavour in the sponge cake. It tasted good with the soft sponge cake.

Shortcake in a base of sponge cake

It's really good and sinful. I absolutely love it. Darn, I now gotta go run a few miles to burn off those calories. How I wish good food are zero in calories. Oh well, gotta be happy that at least I have the opportunity to be savouring yummy food. So I shall stop complaining :)

Trifles

Strawberries one of the beautiful, yummy fruits around. And strawberries go well with anything: cream, chocolate sauce, cakes, more cream and even on its own. *drooling* When I made the Banana chocolate muffin, a few people will find that strawberries and chocolate will be a better combination.

Strawberries... Ooh la la!!!

Doink has been requesting to feast on trifle. As usual, with his sinfulness tastebuds, he just loves these types of desserts. *lol* So I plan to make him some simple strawberry trifle.

Trifles are superbly simple to make and it all depends on how complicated you want it to be. To make things simpler, I just bake a lemony sponge cake. While baking them, I just prepare the strawberries. I cut them into cubes and add some sugar into the bowl and mix them. Leave it in the fridge for about 30 mins. You will notice that there will be some strawberry sauce at the bottom of the bowl after that.

Lemon sponge cake with jam

Once the cake is ready, let it cool down. Then cut them into cubes form and spread some jam in between the sponge cake and placed it right at the bottom of a trifle bowl. I did not want to make a big trifle so instead of using a trifle bowl, I used shot glass instead. Later I pour some orange juice into the shot glass so that the cake will absorb the liquid. Then I place the strawberries on top of the cake. Here comes the most delicious and sinful part of the trifle; CREAM!!!! Just put as much cream as you like over the strawberries. Pour some strawberry sauce over the cream and it’s ready to be served. Oooh, that’s just so lovely.

Strawberry trifle

At the same time, I also made some peach trifle. Instead of using strawberries, use peach. Both taste equally good and it all depends which fruit you prefer more.

Peachy trifle

Oh ya, you can also add some jelly over your trifle. But to me, this is good enough. Hehe….Or should I say, I’m just too lazy to add more stuff when the food taste yummy!!!

I’m definitely craving for more now. Will make more the next round for Doink and mini doinks too. Hehe…

Happy 9th Anniversary!!!

Just want to drop a short post to wish a Happy 9th Anniversary to Doink. Yup, 9 years with Doink but I only started feeding him about 4 years ago. *lol*

And there will be many more happy years to come for the both of us and many more updates for you guys to read.

Once again, Happy 9th Anniversary!!!

Banana + Chocolate = Heaven!!!

I don't know why but somehow banana and chocolate goes together quite well. So I decided to make some banana muffins with chocolate chips for Doink to savour anytime of the day - breakfast, tea time, dessert or even supper.


Cutie muffins

These muffins are easy to make but I face a problem with it as the muffins does not rise much. *sigh* Guess I have to experiment on the recipe...


Piggy muffins

I was having so much fun making these muffins that I decided to make them into little piggie faces just to put a smile on Doink's face. He will give me that cutie smile whenever he sees me making something cute or funny. *lol*

And me of course wanting to make it a little more yummy and sinful for Doink added vanila ice cream to the warm banana muffin. Oooh... ice cream + banana muffin is really good and doink absolutely love it.


Ooooh.... yummy...

I made some extras and put in the freezer to keep it so that Doink and I can have it anytime. Now I feel like getting another one. *grin*