Chocolate Chip Cookies : คุ๊กกี้ช็อคโกแล็ตชิป

I've tried a couple of recipe of chocolate chip cookies before. They were (to mein own opinion) just so-so, but this one is absolutely the best. The cookies have wonderful flavor with pretty crispy texture. Anyway, I think the size of my cookies might be too large because I feel full after eating just a piece of them. Well, I got only 18 cookies from this dough. No wonder!

Ingredients : for about 20 cookies

• 170g all-purpose flour
• 1/3 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 100g butter
• 80g granulated sugar
• 50g brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 100g semisweet chocolate chips
• 80g cashews, roasted and coarsely chopped

Methodes

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line the baking trays with baking paper. Mix together flour, baking powder and baking soda, 2 times sifting. Mix sugar and salt together and set aside.

Cut butter into cubes and put in the mixing bowl. Whisk the butter with electric mixer until smooth. Gradually add in a mixing of sugar and beat until the sugar is used and the mixture looks creamy. Add in egg and vanilla and mix well.

Whisk in flour just until incorperated, do not over mix. Finally, mix in chocolate chips and cashews.

Form the dough into a ball in a size of walnut and flatten that the dough is about 1cm thick (mine were too flat). Lay on the prepared baking tray and baked in a the preheated oven about 12 minutes or until golden brown. Take the tray out from the oven and let the cookies cool about 2 minutes on the tray. They remove the cookies from the tray and lay on the wire rack to completely cool.

Mango Mousse Cake

Ingredients for cake for 18cm springform

• 50g cake flour
  
• 1 tbsp. milk powder
  
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
  
• 2 large egg whites
  
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 large egg yolks
• 40g granulated sugar
  
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
  
• 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
  
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  

Methods

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line the bottom of cake pan with parchment paper. Combine the cake flour, milk powder and baking powder together, sifting and set aside.

Beat egg whites with salt until foamy. Gradually add in 20g sugar and further whisk with high speed until stiff peaks form. After that, put egg yolks and lemon zest in anather bowl, whisk about 30 minutes and gradually add the rest 20g sugar, whisk with high speed about 1 minute , add in oil and vanilla. Keep beating until yolks are thick and pale. Then carefully fold in the foamy egg white.

Sift about 1/3 of flour mixture over the egg mixture and fold in carefully with a whisk until incorporated. Sift a futher 1/3 of flour into the batter and fold in, then the rest of flour mixture. Pour the batter in the cake pan and spreading the batter from the middle to the side with spatula. Put it in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes. To test if the cake is ready, just press the finger lightly on the center of the cake, if it spring back, that's mean, it's should be so far.

Take it out from the oven and immediately removing from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool. Divide the cake into two equal pieces. Then lay one sponge sheet at the bottom of the pan.

For the mango mousse

• 100g cream cheese
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice
• 50g granulated sugar
  
• 4 sheets unflavored gelatin
  
• 150g whipping cream
• 200g mango puree
• 8 sticks mango
  

Methods

Whisk cream cheese wht lemon juice and sugar until smooth. Soak gelatin sheets in cold water and let stand for 10 minutes. Pour out the cold water and gently squeeze the water out of the gelatin sheets, pour in about 2-3 tbsp. hot water and stir until dissolved. Let slightly cool for 1 minute, then add in gelatin in the cream cheese mixture, mix well.

Beat whipping cream with high speed about 2 minutes or until soft peaks form. Fold in the cream in cream cheese mixing. Finally, mix in mango puree.

Pour half of mousse mixture on the prepared pan and place the other cake layer on the mousse. Lay mango sticks around the side of the pan and pour the rest of mousse mixture on the cake, use spetula to smooth across the top. Freeze about 30 minutes before glanz.

For mango jelly

• 100g mango puree
  
• 50 ml orange juice
  
• 15g granulated sugar
  
• 2 sheets unflavored gelatin
  
• Fruits as favor for decoration
  

Soak gelatin sheets in cold water and let stand for 10 minutes. Put mango puree and orange juice in the pot, mix in sugar and place the pot on the medium heat until hot but not cook. Remove from the stove and stir in soft gelatin to completely dissolve. Let stand for awhile to cool, then pour over the mousse. Chill the fridge for at least 6 hours to set. Finally decorate with fresh fruits.

Kare Raisu : カレーライス

There're many kinds of red curries I used to cook. One of them is Kare Raisu (Japanese curry with rice) and it's my favorite. It tastes somehow milder and a bit sweeter than typically Thai red curry. Easy to cook but really delicious. By the way, if you are a vegetarian just leave out the meat and add more vegetables.

Ingredients

• 300 g chicken breast/beef/lamb/pork
• 1 large onion
• 1 carrot
• 50 g apple (about 1/2 apple)
• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 200 g potatoes
• 1-2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 650 ml water
• 60g curry sauce mix (approx. 3 cubes)

Instructions
Cut the meat into large cubes. Peel an onion, carrot and potatoes, then cut into large cubes. Peel apple and cut into smal cubes. Cut bell pepper in long strips.

Heat vegaetable oil in a pan on medium heat. When the oil is hot, put cubed meat in a pan and fry approximately 3 minutes or until light brown. Take the fried meat out from the pan and put in a pot.

Stir fry all vegetables in the pan about 2 minutes. Shortly stir in apple cubes and add into a pot. Heat on medium heat and add water. Cover the pot and bring to boil, then turn to low heat and simmer about 30-45 minutes or until meat is tender.



Break the curry cubes into small pieces and add into the mixture. Constantly stir until completely melted. Continute simmering about 5 minutes under permanent stirring.


Serve hot with rice or Tonkatsu. This curry tastes even better if you cook in the morning and eat for dinner or cook in the evening and eat in the next day. You only have to warm before serving.

Isn't it easy to cook Kare? If you're curry's fan, you really have to try it yourself.

Strawberry Swirl Cheesecake

My husband loves strawberry swirl cheesecake. In the past week i had to bake it 2 days consecutively. Anyway I always use a 18cm springform and we gave half of the cheesecake to the parents, so the rest wasn't too much for him.

For the pastry crust :
20g butter
1/2 egg yolks
15g granulated sugar
2-3 drops vanilla extract
50g all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F. Whisk together butter, egg yolk, sugar and vanilla. Then add in the flour just until it mixed. Roll out the pastry about 3 mm. thick and fit for the cake pan's bottom, cut the dough and place the rack in the center of oven, bake the pastry crust about 10 minutes or until it's getting brown. Remove the crust from oven and let it cool completely. Reduce the heat to 175°C/350°F

For strawberry puree:
100g strawberries
10g sugar
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tbsp. corn starch

Blend all ingredients together and pour through a fine strainer in a small pot, press the pulp intensely with the spoon. Place the pot of the strawberry puree on a middle heat untill cooked. Let it cool at the room temperature.

For cheesecake:
300g cream cheese
50g sour cream
70g granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
1 egg
1/2 yolk, the rest from the crust
100 ml whipping cream
20g corn starch
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl stir together cream cheese and sour cream until smooth. Add sugar, eggs, mix well. Then add all the rest ingredients and stir just until combined, pour half of the mixture over the cooled crust in a pan.

Drop about teaspoonful half of strawberry puree over the cream cheese mixture and pour the rest of mixture cover the puree. Drop the rest of puree over the mixture and carefully swirl with the skewer.

Place the pan in a middle of the oven and bake by 175°C/350°F about an hour or until it set in the center. Let it cool completely in a pan on a wire rack, then refrigerate at least 2 hour until firm.

Remove the cheesecake from the pan and cut in pieces to serve. It was reall fresh and delightful. You've to try it.

Kaiserbrötchen : ขนมปังไคเซอร์

I've tried to bake "Kaiserbrötchen", the typically German bread for breakfast in the past week. The first try hadn't turned out as I hope since the crust was quite thick and the texture wasn't fluffy and tender enough.

The photo above was my first homemade Kaiserbrötchen. Maybe, you can see how thick the crust is. I was quite disappointed with the result. Anyway, it was eatable. The second time that I baked this bread, I left the seeds out and the bread came out better than the first time. Too bad that the quality of the photos I took was really low because it was quite dark and the neon light is never the best for taking a photo.

And this was the third try. Finally I've done it. My Kaiserbrötchen was perfect as I expected. The crust was thin and the texture was real tender and pfuffy just as what I bought from the bekery. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I usually eat this bread for breakfast, topped with butter, marmalade, cheese, salami, ham and so on.