21 Jan 18 (Sun) - Salted Egg Bittergourd and Durian Butter Cupcakes

Was tidying up my drawer of recipes last weekend when I saw a newspaper cutting on a recipe called "Salted egg white bittergourd". Recalled that I still had two salted eggs sitting in my fridge so went to Giant supermarket last Friday to get two mini bittergourds. As white bittergourd is hard to come by, I had to settle for the green ones.

Followed the recipe as closely as I could, however, I didn't know what is red finger chilli nor green bird's eye chilli so I replaced with three red chilli padi instead. And because I didn't have enough garlic, so I added a shallot. Was happily cooking and excited to see the whole dish coming together nicely. After I had assembled the dish on a serving plate, then I realised that I had forgotten to add a dash of ground white pepper at the end of the cooking. Oh well... Not sure how soft the bittergourd was supposed to be for the dish, mine still retained some crunchiness which I rather like. Taste-wise, fortunately, it still tasted good without the ground white pepper. Heh.

In the short write-up that accompanied the recipe, it was mentioned that the dish goes well with rice or porridge. Therefore, I cooked some brown rice porridge and added some seaweed that I bought from my last Okinawa trip to eat as lunch. What a healthy meal.

Still had some leftover durians in the fridge and decided to use them to bake durian butter cupcakes since the durians weren't of very good quality. The preparation was easy and very happy that the cupcakes turned out very well. A good start to the first bake of the year. Ate one while it was still warm together with a dollop of chilled durian and it was heavenly! My healthy meal was, therefore, spoiled by the unhealthy dessert. LOL.

Durian Butter Cupcakes (Makes 5)

Ingredients:

58g self-rising flour 63g butter - soften 43g castor sugar

pinch of baking soda                                                      63g durian flesh                                                      1 egg

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 160 degree celsius

2.  Place the butter and sugar in a large bowl and whisk till light and fluffy

3.  Add egg and beat thoroughly

4.  Stir in durian flesh

5.  Fold in self-rising flour and baking soda

6.  Fill cupcake cases till 2/3 full with cake batter

7.  Bake for 18 minutes or until cooked

8.  Do the toothpick test, if the toothpick comes out clean, transfer the cakes to a wire rack and allow to cool

9.  Serve cakes with dollops of chilled durian or eat them on their own