Cendol (Tapioka Bubbles Drink)

I have been talking about making it since two month ago, but keep postponing. I'd already had all the ingredients needed, still no desire to make it. Eventually last Monday I made it for my friend's birthday party. People loved it as the weather was warm outside.

Ingredients:
To make bubbles:
- 1 package of hunkwe powder
- 70gr of rice flour
- 35gr of tapioka flour
- 4drops of pandan essence
- 200ml of water
- 400ml of boiling water
- 1Tbsp of sugar
- pinch of salt
- ice cubes and cold water in molding pot

To make coconut milk mix:
- 1can of coconut milk
- 100ml of water
- pinch of salt

To make sweetener:
- 2blocks of palm sugar
- 3Tbsp of brown sugar
- 180ml of water
- 4 pandan leaves

Optional adding:
- 1can of jackfruit in syrup, discard the syrup, cut into small pieces
- 1can of grass jelly, cut into small pieces



In a bowl, dissolve hunkwe powder, tapioka and rice flour, sugar and salt with water. Add pandan essence and mix it well until all color distributed evenly. Prepare the boiling water on stove. While boiling, add the flour mixture little by little and stir it instantly and continuously until thickening and boiling again. Prepare the molding pot with ice cubes and cold water inside. Then pour the hot thick mixture and press it using a wooden laddle, so that the mixture will come out of the holes and form bubbles. The bubble which drops into cold water and ice cubes will harden and would not stick to each other. Do it until all done. Keep it aside.

In a small pot, mix well coconut milk, water and salt. Bring it to boil. Put it aside.

In a small pot, bring to boil water. Add pandan leaves. Then add palm sugar and stir it well until all dissolved. At last add brown sugar, stir it until all dissolve and wait until boiling again.

To serve, in a glass, put some bubbles, jackfruits and grass jelly. Then add coconut milk and the palm sugar sweetener. Stir it well. Add some ice cubes as it is good to serve it cold.

Pandan Marble Cake

After the first trial and everything turned out good, I confess that am addicted to baking. And since I still have some self raising flour and eggs and all the stuff I need for making marble cake, two days ago I made this pandan marble cake for my friend's birthday. The taste was good but the texture was not as smooth as the first trial. I suspect, the cold egg made the difference. Next time I do making cake again, I better let the egg stands for awhile and reaches room temperature before mixing it with other ingredients.

Ingredients:
- 150gr margarine (leave it for awhile at room temperature)
- 75gr sugar
- 3 egg
- 50ml fresh milk
- 130gr self raising flour
- 1tsp of baking powder
- 3 drops of pandan essence
- 1/2 tsp of extract vanilla



In a mixing bowl, mix margarine and sugar under medium speed until smooth. Add the egg one by one while mixing and then add milk. Continue to mix for awhile. Add the vanilla and then flour and baking powder, continue to mix until you get a fluffy mixture. Divide the mixture into 3, add pandan essence to the one third of the mixture, stir it well with a spatula until color distributed evenly. Put it aside.
Prepare the loaf tin by greasing it with margarine. Pour the first one third of the yellowish mixture into the tin. Then the green pandan mixture and lastly the other one third of the yellowish mixture. Make a line movement from one side of the tin to the other end using a fork. Bake for 45minutes to 1h at 300F until done. Take it out of the oven and let it cool off, then cut into the desired thickness. Serve it with a cup of tea or coffee.

Martabak Telor

This week has been a busy week for us, as we are ready to pack everything up and leave by Friday. We are looking forward for a new challenge and big change in our life. Busy packing up means cleaning up and getting rid of what is inside the fridge and freezer. I had to find idea of what to cook with limited choice of ingredients every day for the whole week. Since I still had some ground beef and spring roll skin, I decided to make this yummy martabak telor. I used to have it from street vendor in Jakarta Indonesia. Bianca loves it...she is just like me, she eats it with steam rice.



Ingredients:
- 300gr of ground beef
- 6 green onion, chop thinly
- 6 cloves of garlic, chop thinly
- 4 cloves of small red onion, chop thinly
- 3 egg
- 1tsp of fish sauce
- 1Tbsp of oyster sauce
- 1/2tsp of curry powder
- 1tsp of ground white pepper
- spring roll skins
- salt
- sugar
- oil for frying



In a pan, saute garlic and onion until fragrant. Add the ground beef and stir it while cooking, until change color. Add fish sauce, oyster sauce, curry powder and pepper, stir it well. Adjust the taste with salt and sugar. Continue to cook until the meat tender. Keep it aside and cool it off.
In a mixing bowl, beat the egg with fork. Add the green onion and then the meat. Stir it well until all distributed evenly.
Take one of the spring roll skins and place it on a cutting board or flat plate. Put one spoonful of the filling mixture on it. Roll it up and form an envelope shape. Glue the margin with water. While doing it, prepare the oil by heating it up in a frying pan. Deep fry the envelope in the hot oil under medium high heat until golden brown. Flip it over and wait until the other side turns to golden brown too. Take it out of the oil and drain the oil by placing it on paper towel.
Do it again and again until all done. Serve it warm with fresh chili paddy.

Marble Cake

To be honest with you..this is my very first time doing baking from scratch myself. I'd never baked before, except when I was teaching food processing lab back in 2002-2003, but never in my own kitchen. On Friday I urged myself to start doing it, I wanted to make something delicious yet easy to make with a very little risk of failure. Melanie encouraged me to start doing it with this marble cake, she convinced me that I would never fail to follow this simple recipe. Beside I was also drooling when I saw the picture of it on her page.
Yes, finally I did it and she is right..I can do it! Thank you Mel...My husband loves the cake that he asked me to bake another loaf the next day.

Here is the recipe from her:

Ingredients:
- 150gr margarine (leave it for awhile at room temperature)
- 75gr sugar
- 3 egg
- 50ml fresh milk
- 130gr self raising flour
- 1tsp of baking powder
- 2 tsp of cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp of extract vanilla


In a mixing bowl, mix margarine and sugar under medium speed until smooth. Add the egg one by one while mixing and then add milk. Continue to mix for awhile. Add the vanilla and then flour and baking powder, continue to mix until you get a fluffy mixture. Divide the mixture into 3, add cocoa powder to the one third of the mixture, stir it well with a spatula. Put it aside.
Prepare the loaf tin by greasing it with margarine. Pour the first one third of the yellowish mixture into the tin. Then the cocoa mixture and lastly the other one third of the yellowish mixture. Make a line movement from one side of the tin to the other end using a fork. Bake for 45minutes to 1h at 300F until done. Take it out of the oven and let it cool off, then cut into the desired thickness. Serve it with a cup of tea or coffee.

Sweet and Sour Fish Fillet (Ikan Asam Manis)

This is a typical menu in many Chinese restaurant in Indonesia. I used to have it whenever I dined in there back then. I still had one whole Tilapia in freezer. Last Tuesday early in the morning, I took it out of the freezer, thawed it and started the smelly job-filleting the fish in the afternoon. In the middle of cooking I found out that the tomato paste which I'd kept in fridge was rotten. Thus I chucked it into the garbage and replace it with lime juice and plum sauce. It was a bright idea, the food turned out to be delicious...even my little Bianca surprised me by asking to have some more rice with it.


Ingredients:
To make the fish fillet:
- 1 whole Tilapia, use the fillet, cut into small chunks
- salt
- ground black pepper
- lime juice
- tapioka flour
- oil for frying

In a bowl, put the fish fillet and drizzle some lime juice. Add salt and pepper and mix it well. Cover all the surface of the fish with tapioka flour and then deep fry it in hot oil under medium high heat until golden brown. Place it in a serving bowl.

To make the sauce:
- 2 carrot, peel off the skin and cut into matches shapes
- 1 green bell pepper, discard the seed and cut into thin long shapes
- 6 cloves of garlic, chop thinly
- 4 cloves of small red onion, chop thinly (supposed to be onion, but I did not have it)
- 4cm of ginger, crack it pestle
- 1 tomato, cut into 12 pieces
- 2Tbsp of plum sauce
- 1Tbsp of lime juice
- 1Tbsp of oyster sauce
- 1Tbsp of fish sauce
- salt
- sugar
- ground white pepper
- water
- 1Tbsp of tapioka flour, mix it with a little bit of water
- oil for saute

In a pan, saute garlic, onion and ginger until fragrant. Add tomato and continue to saute for another 2minutes. Add cut carrots and bell pepper, stir it well and continue to cook for 5minutes. Add plum sauce, lime juice, oyster, fish sauce and water and mix it well. Continue to cook until boiling. Add salt, sugar and pepper to taste. At last pour the tapioka mixture and stir it immediately until thicken.
To serve, pour the sauce on top of the fried fish fillet. Eat it with warm steam rice.

Potato Doughnuts (Donat Kentang)

Doughnuts have become my sweet comforting snack since I was a little kid. My mom used to make it for me. Normally I do not like sweet stuff, but doughnut is an exception. Surprisingly enough, I love the very sweet Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnuts which were introduced to me when I was living in Sydney, Australia. One of these days I came across Widya's kitchen where she made potato doughnuts. I was so impressed with the smooth shapes of the doughnuts. Then I asked her if I can have the recipe. It's so nice of her that she sent me the recipe on email. Thank you Widya...
Two days ago, I decided to make it (after a long waiting coz the cough which I had before..I did not want to make it worse with frying stuff). I started early morning, but still I did not have enough time for I had to rush to go to the dentist on time. So I left the un-kneaded dough on the table. I got back from the dentist only to find very crumbled dough (coz I'd already add the egg yolks but did not have time to knead it). I had to spend extra energy for kneading in order to produce smooth dough. Thankfully, it paid off..the doughnuts were so good, the whole family loved it.
Btw, I used only half of the original recipe, but then I made mistake when adding the egg yolk and milk, it was a bit too much. So the recipe which I am gonna share is what I really really used, including the mistake I did. Still it's good though...


Ingredients:
A:
- 275gr all purpose flour
- 38gr full cream milk powder (I used baby formula)
- 5gr yeast
- 50gr sugar

B:
- 100gr potato, boil, peel off the skin and mash it until smooth, cool off the temperature

C:
- 3 egg yolks
- 80ml fresh milk

D:
- 2Tbsp of margarine
- pinch of salt

Topping/Glaze:
- dark cooking chocolate
- chocolate sprinkle
- icing sugar


Mix well the ingredients A in a mixing bowl. Add the cool mashed potato. Add the ingredient C (this was the point when I had to run to the dentist and left the dough) and then knead it by hand until it is not sticky. Add ingredients D and knead it again until you get a flexible dough. Cover the bowl with a wet cloth and let it stand for 20minutes until you get good overrun. After 20min press the dough to release the trapped air. Take small amount of the dough and make ball with palm hands (coz I do not have doughnuts mold) and place it on a cutting board which was prepared by layer it with a little bit of flour. Do it again and again until all done. Let it stand for another 20minutes. Make a hole in the center with your pointing finger. Deep fry it one by one in a hot oil under medium low heat. While frying, use a chopstick and make circle stirring movement on the center hole. Flip it over and fry until golden brown.
Place it on a plate and cool it off. When it is cool enough, dip it into melted dark cooking chocolate and then add some chocolate sprinkles or just simply dip into icing sugar.

Note: the recipe is good to make 15-20medium sized doughnuts.