Red Bean Paste Dessert

I have never really like red bean paste dessert, probably a result of food that uses mass produced, ready-made red bean paste from which are more often than not, overly too sweet and with no bean taste in them. These are usually not pure bean paste, but a mix of red bean paste and other cheaper ingredients, usually root vegetables such as potato which gives a similar paste like texture.

While preparing sweetened red beans for the restaurant’s la chendol dessert the other day, I found myself with a large bowl of beans left at the bottom of the pot that was too soft for my purpose. I decided to keep them and make a red bean paste dessert the next day.

Upon Aunty D's suggestion, I bought lily bulb, lotus seeds and white fungus. These ingredients needed to be washed, and the latter two, soaked and boiled in sweetened sugar syrup. Once cooked till softened, I drained them out and kept the syrup aside.

The red beans are then blended to a smooth paste, adding the syrup set aside earlier. All the ingredients are then put together with more water added to achieve a thick soup consistency. This is then brought to a boil, with extra sugar added to achieve a mild sweetness.

The end result? A hot Chinese dessert which I absolutely fell in love! This red bean paste dessert is called '莲生贵子', a play on the ingredients' name. A popular dessert often served at wedding banquets due to its auspicious annotation.




The red bean paste soup, with cooked sago, lotus seeds, white fungus and lilly bulbs.



Plated Dessert at the Restaurant

Friends have been asking me what kind of desserts do I make at the restaurant where I work? After much delay, I finally have gotten these nice photos to show, courtesy of my Chef, who is also the owner of the restaurant.

I have to clarify here that not all of these dessert are my own creations. The first three desserts listed were already on our menu before I worked there. For those of which ideas originated from me, I had a lot of pointers from my Chef on plating, which is a very new skill to me, and also taste pairing. To which I would like to take this opportunity to thank him. THANKS Chef M!, for giving me a chance to work with you and to learn new things.

So here are the delicious sweet treats, beautifully presented :)

Chendol Cream - Chef's creation and one of restaurant's signatures.

  

Sago Melaka - a traditional dessert at the restaurant. What makes ours special is the thick, fragrant, caramelised gula melaka syrup which one can never have enough of, including myself!

Banana Caramel Pudding - steam banana cake served with vanilla ice cream is a all time favourite for the old and young. Am proud to help make the cake softer and more fluffy.

La Chendol - I love the traditional chendol dessert and felt the need to serve our own version in the restaurant, on top of our modern one - Chendol Cream, and it MUST come complete with the green jelly, red beans and attap seeds. Thus, I created a new ice cream, chendol, which is a concentrated version of the traditoanl shaved ice with it's syrup mix. It turned out to be another of our popular dessert and as for myself, I can just eat the ice cream on its own, over and over again, ever day if I can have it!

Frozen Durian Soup - another of my favourite, with a big dollop of pure durian puree on top of a scoop of delicious D24 durian ice cream and crunchy feuilletine in a special concocted syrup.

Jackfruit Log with Raspberries - simply love this combination of sweet, tangy jackfruit icecream with coconut sable, roasted coconut and sour raspberries!

Jackfruit Fritters with Coconut Ice Cream - love this dessert and it's presentation, which is very fine dining style. Takes a fair bit of time to prepare but stunning and delicious outcome!  

Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream - this is an all pumpkin dessert that includes ice cream, soup and caramelised cubes within. A definite hit for pumpkin lovers including myself! 

Banana Fritters - a different take on our local goreng pisang and my very first fried dessert, which sometimes gives me heart attacks as the chilli batter falls off before the banana goes onto the plate.

Chocolate Parcels - this is another of my favourite presentation which is also the hardest to prepare. Chocolate ganache wrapped in spring roll skin, tied with vanilla pod skin and fried till crispy. With each bite, molten chocolate oozes out, paired with vanilla ice cream, it is a match made in heaven!

Cheesecake? - named by Chef because it taste like one and looks like one. This is actually a Grand Marnie panna cotta paired with raspberry jelly and crumble on top. I created this for the white and red colour layers for the Christmas holiday season.

Chocolate Tarts Trio - original, rum & raisins and curacao with candied ginger. This set was created specially for Christmas take-aways.

Bombe Alaska - a dessert that I never thought possible in our small set up but am proud that I made it! 3 layers of luscious ice cream (banana, chocolate, chestnut) covered with meringue and drizzled with warm rum. Unfortunately, we are unable to serve it flaming like the photo here, which is done here purely for photo effect.

 

Little Hall of Fame

One day, I received a call from one of my favourite magazine, Food &Travel, asking for a photo of myself. It is to be published together with a recipe I had sent it to them for a recipe swap contest few months back. How excited I was! Having my very own recipe published in a food magazine!

To much waiting, that issue finally came out, without me realising it, even though I had been waiting all those while. A friend had alerted me through text messaging, saying that my photo was a full page. I had a big laugh when I finally saw it myself. Nope, it was not the photo of me that was printed in full page, much to my relief actually. It was a photo of the ice cream which the editorial team had made, based on my recipe.

I had created that ice cream recipe for my friend's two angels, one whom had multiple food allergies, dairy being the main group of food. The full story of this is printed as a short intro to the recipe. The success of this recipe is a great encouragement for me to search, modify and to create more wonderful treats for the angels, and also to all who have similar diet concerns.

The full page photo and the recipe as printed in the magazine.

Chinese New Year Cookies

Chinese New Year never seems complete without the traditional pineapple tarts, which strangely, is more oftten eaten during this time of the year than not. Having stopped baking them for the last 3 years due to my hectic F&B training and work, I embarked on my largest scale baking this year, to make up for the long abscene and also because my aunties, cousins and close friends have been asking for them.



Pineapple Tarts - my usal open face type



On top of cooking all my pineapple fillings, I also tried out new cookies, including Kuih Bangkit which is my long time favourite. Sadly, those bought outside are a really far cry from the melt-in-mouth version which my late god-grandmother used to make. Naturally, I missed them and one of my greatest regret in life is that I never had any chance to learn any of her baking skills. All the more so as she is of peranakan heritage and they are famed for their authentic dishes and kuih.

As expected, the pineapple tarts never fail to meet my standard, so did the new almond and orange cookies. The kuih bangit, however, though looked pretty nice, failed the taste and texture test. They are not frangrant enough and way too hard! Looks like I need to search for a new recipe and also change the method of preparation.

  


Orange Cookies in star shape with orange peel on top



Almond Cookies in spiral shape with almond nips on top



Kuih Bangkit - love the peach blossom shape but taste not fragrant enough while texture too hard

 

Special packaging with auspicious stickers

 

Mocha Walnut Cheesecake, by Accident

Cheesecake is one of my favourite, whether the bake or non-bake type. For the former, I love them in creamy dense and strong flavour, but not overly rich. For the latter, I like them creamy smooth but not overly airy, which is a sign of too much whipped cream.

I've baked American cheesecake a couple of times. This time round, decided to combine two of my favourite flavour, coffee and walnut. I am never a coffee drinker, due to my caffeine intolerance and a small strong cuppa is enough to keep me awake whole night. However, over the years, I have grown to like it as a flavour in my dessert

I did my usual digestive biscuit crump base, flavoured my cheese mixture with freezed dried instant coffee, and incorporated the chopped walnuts into the batter before pouring over the base. As with most cheesecake, I baked it in a water bath, watching it carefully to adjust temperature and to add additional water in the water bath when necessary.

The cake turned out beautifully, except for a crack in the middle of the cake during the last stage of baking!! My heart sank, seeing the line across my beautifully cake. Somehow, I felt a strong urge to cover that ugly line. After much thinking, I decided to make a chocolate ganache and pour over the whole cheesecake while still in its mould. As I unmould the cake after chilling, I realised it was a beautiful three layers from the side view, much to my delight!

The chocolate, coffee, walnut, or rather, the mocha walnut cheesecake turns out to be much, much better than I had expected. Am so well pleased with it that I would like to include it as one of my signatures!!





The layered pattern as seen from the side. The chocolate ganache sits on top of the original coffee walnut cheesecake, but eating the three layers together creates a nice explosive of flavour in the mouth.