fruit cheese pies !

*note* this post is exactly like strawbunny's :)

so recipe of the week is... *drum roll* FRUIT CHEESE PIES ! or tarts if u'd prefer, it's really up to you what size u wanna make.


A
300g flour
1tsp baking powder
100g castor sugar
1 tsp salt
150 butter
2 eggs

Mix all dry ingredients together then rub in butter to form bread crumbs

B
500g cream cheese
400g icing sugar
4 eggs

C
800ml water (400ml peach juice and 400ml water) 8 tsp agar-agar powder 180g castor sugar

Decoration for Pie
36 pieces of grapes
1/2 can peaches (halves)
50g of strawberry slices
(basically any fruits u desire to be on ur pie.. other suggestions include mangoes, kiwis, etc)

Method
1. mix in beaten eggs to ingredients A by hand to form dough. place dough in plastic bag and refrigerate for 2 hours (or freeze 1/2 hour)
2. Take dough out and roll between 2 plastic sheets to form a round base for the pie tin
3. take out plastic on top of pastries and dust pastry with flour. spread flour evenly. cover with plastic and overturn.
4. grease pie tin (if aluminium pie tin, unnecessary to grease)
5. take off plastic sheet on top and place the unfloured side onto pie tin and press down to fit nicely in pie-tin.

Filling
1. cream cheese and icing sugar at medium speed for two minutes.
2. Add egg to the mixture
3. Pour into dough base and bake at 170C for 25 minutes (or until brown). Leave to cool for 20minutes.
4. Take out pie from oven and arrange fruits on pie. i tend to put the outer-ring of fruits first and work inward from there.
5. Pour agar-agar powder mixture over fruits and leave to cool in refrigerator till set.

i had a bit of leftover pie crust so i made a fruit tart in a muffin tin. comments i had from my eaters said the tart looks prettier but it does not have as much taste as the large slice of pie. maybe i just need to put extra cheese filling, hmm.




and if you've got any left over agar-agar like me, you can use that to make a fruit jelly! yum!


as you can see from my photos, my crust is too thick :( i'll hv to work on that. nxt round, it will be AWESOME :)

ok, back to work.. more to come when i feel like it ! no ideas as yet on what my new recipe of the day/week/month/year is gonna be.. maybe an easy to do creme brulee ! we'll see


till then, toodles!

and you will never keep a diet in our house

as i'm sure everyone who visited strawbunny blog can see that it has been dead for sometime. i blame it on the author touring europe so anyway, i decided to rescue it from somewhat total boredom with a guest post.

oh and i dual-posted it coz, well, hey, my hardwork! lol

this time, not grudgingly allowed by strawbunny (;

German Pop-Up Pancake

• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup flour
• 6 eggs
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• dash salt
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence
  
• Preheat oven at 400*F

The key to this recipe is to blend the ingredients together with a blender or food processor. Whisking it works but it doesn't turn out as smooth. Grease a muffin tray and half-fill each compartment.


Bake for 15 minutes, or until puffy and golden on top. If greased properly it should pop right out. Top up with strawberry jam (i find homemade strawberry jam taste tonnes better than the ones you buy off the shelves) and whipped cream.

to make strawberry jam, cut 250g of strawberries into small cubes and mix throughly with 250g of caster sugar in a pan. let it sit for an hour then add juice of half a lemon/orange and boil on a slow fire for 1 and a half hours or until it is thick and syrupy. add a bit of gelatin powder to make it more firm.

other serving suggestions include topping the puff pastry with whipped cream and adding ur favourite fruit.


Another favourite snack of mine is cheese baked oysters. paying 17 bucks for half a dozen of measley oysters causes havoc on my wallet so the best compromise is to make my own (;

Cheese Baked Oysters

1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened
4 lg. cloves garlic, finely minced
4 tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
Fresh ground pepper to taste
mozzarella cheese
two mushrooms and slices of ham, cut into small pieces

a half dozen oysters

Preheat oven to 425*F. Thoroughly beat softened butter, garlic, parsley, mushrooms, ham and pepper with wooden spatula. Apply garlic butter mixture to oysters and sprinkle mozzarella generously on top. bake for 7 minutes. Serve garnished with a wedge of lemon.

made the pancakes for jien and kenneth this morning. and yes, it's homemade strawberry jam coz ms. jien lim doesn't like jam unless its made from real fruit. ken had to leave before i finished but at least jien seems to have enjoyed the pancakes loads, teehee. sorry vin! i make for you next week ok, promise! but at least u're on falls creek having tonnes of fun, not stuck down here like us, *sobs*sobs*

oysters were for our appetizers last night. sigh, after fatty left i kinda feel somewhat pointless hence turning back, once again, to baking.

anyway, yea, whatevs. i'm gonna get my life up and running again!
may the force be with fattening food,
cheers~

smoothies

as weird as this post is, it's actually about smoothies (;

so as my dear housemates know, my new 'in' thing is.. smoothies! it all started out with kenneth's surprise birthday party and i've never looked back since.

HAHA, actually, it's usually coz i forget i bought fruits and i'm forced to do something with em or risk them going bad, but hey, at lesat its FRESH fruits!

anyway, i got some comment on my tagboard from a passerby about making smoothies and though i dont' use set recipes, here goes =)

photo courtesy of jien

Banana Smoothie
three bananas, broken into pieces.
1/6 cup milk
1/3 cup juice ( i used berri's apple, mango and banana breakfast juice)
2cups of vanilla icecream
1/6 cup cream
2 tablespoons vanilla yoghurt
3 tablespoon of pineapple juice (or crushed pineapple so that there are some crunchy bits in the smoothie)
2 scoops of mango sorbet
1/2 tray of icecubes

and.. you just blend everything together and wal-laH!! banana smoothie (;
recipe works with oranges as well. will wait till other berries are back in season before i try other things.
yes, it taste pretty good but its definitely bad for your health. look at the icecream and miscellaneous other unhealthy stuff in there! passerby, if you're looking for health goods, please, stick to boost. and yes, it takes a lot of ingredients but that's probably because there is a vast collection of unhealthy goods in my fridge so when it comes to making stuff, it's not a problem (;

as i said earlier, there isn't a set recipe, mostly i go by taste, adding any additional ingredients as i go along.

have fun with smoothie making (;
refreshing drink to have, even in the winter.
may the force be with smoothies,
cheers~

fyi, vin, no more emoing at me already ok! me loves! (;