22 Jul 20 (Wed) - Castella Sponge Cake

Have been practicing baking this cake since my first attempt back in early-June and failed many times over. Took a break from it for the past couple of weeks and decided to attempt it again.

Baked a one-egg portion cake based on the recipe from the first attempt using a smaller baking tin and baked in an oven. Then adapted the baking time (i.e., 1hr 15mins) and method (i.e., bake at 130 degree Celsius with water bath, aluminium foil over the baking tin and drop the cake a few times after taking out from the oven) from another recipe I found on the Facebook group "Home-cooked Delights 家常便饭" page.

One-egg Portion...

... with height about one small yogurt cup.

Happy to say that the result was satisfactory. The top of the cake was still wrinkled but at least not too brown or burnt. The cake managed to rise fully without sinking after taking out from the oven.

19 Jul 20 (Sun) - Pan-fry Salmon on Rosti with Chicken Ham Spring Onion Egg Roll

Craved for salmon so cooking it again. Have potato and chicken ham to clear so squeezed my brain for ideas. In the end, decided to just have fun with whatever ingredients I have on hand. Turned the potato into rosti, pan-fry the salmon and cooked the chicken ham with spring onion and egg to make into egg roll.

14 Jul 20 (Tue) - Lemon Yogurt Cake with Sakura

Have been practicing on baking castella cake for a while now but still unable to quite get it right. Felt a bit disheartened and decided to bake something familiar. Dug out the Lemon Yogurt Cake recipe and added some salted sakura that I have in the pantry. Now I will have cakes for afternoon tea over the next couple of days.

12 Jul 20 (Sun) - Teriyaki Salmon, Roast Eggplant and Egg with Sesame Sauce

Have not cooked salmon for a while. Bought a big piece recently and decided to cook it with teriyaki sauce. Bought some mini eggplants too but have never cooked them before. Googled on how to cook eggplants and most of the recipes were on steaming them with garlic and soy sauce. Searched further and found a couple on roasting eggplants.

Gave one of the roasting recipes a shot but the eggplants did not turn out as expected. Instead of becoming crispy, they were soft even though I flipped them over half way through cooking as instructed in the recipe. Fortunately, they were not soggy so it was not too bad. Taste-wise, I guess I can develop a taste for eggplants now.

06 Jul 20 (Mon) - Stir-fry Kimchi Pork Belly (Second Attempt)

Was not happy with the Stir-fry Kimchi Pork Belly that I cooked last month and so decided to give it another shot. This time round I managed to cut the pork belly into thinner slices and did not marinate them before cooking.

Instead, all I did was stir-fry the pork belly slices for a few minutes before adding kimchi, a dash of light soy sauce and rice wine. Turns out to be even better than the first attempt. So I guess cooking without recipe sometimes works better than following one blindly.

21 Jun 20 (Sun) - Stir-fry Kimchi Pork Belly

Watched this episode from "I Live Alone" featuring Song Seung-heon where he cooked for his friends when he was filming on Jeju Island. One of the dishes was stir-fry kimchi pork belly and he seemed to just really cooked with just the kimchi with pork belly and no other seasoning. It looked easy enough and I thought of trying it out myself. It was a few weeks ago and I finally got the chance to try the dish out today.

Bought a slab of pork belly from the market and sliced it myself. My knife-work needs more polishing. Tried my best to cut as thin as possible but still not thin enough I think.

Googled a bit about the dish and most recipes called for the pork belly to be marinated with light soy sauce and rice wine. In addition to marinating the pork belly, some recipes called for gochujang (Korean chili paste) and gochujang (Korean chili powder) to be added while stir-frying the dish. As I have neither the gochujang nor the gochujang, I just marinated the pork belly with light soy sauce and rice wine.

The cooking steps were simple. Just add in the pork belly to stir-fry for awhile till half-cooked and then add in the kimchi to cook till the meat is done. Taste-wise, I think the marinate overpowered the kimchi taste. Maybe next round I will not marinate the pork belly and also to use the shabu-shabu sliced pork instead. Nevertheless, it is still a taste of Korea. Hahaha...

After I was done with that, I went on to make the castella sponge cake again. This time round, I made them as cupcakes instead but forgot to lower the temperature some more compared to the previous round and hence, they became wrinkled again. Will need more practice.

13 Jun 20 (Sat) - Castella Sponge Cake

There has been a lot of posts on castella sponge cake lately on the Facebook group "Home-cooked Delights 家常便饭" page. My sis also makes quite a mean castella sponge cake using her airfryer. So follow their footsteps to try and make one. Found this recipe that bakes the cake in a rice cooker and gave it a try last week.

Unfortunately my cheap rice cooker wasn't able to bake the cake well. It kept jumping from the cook function to the keep-warm function. In the end, the edge of the cake rose well but the middle didn't. The fortunate thing was that at least it wasn't too dense in the middle either.

Not satisfy with the result and gave it another attempt today. This time I only played with one egg portion and baked in an oven. I tried baking it at 150 degree Celsius for 18 mins. As usual, the cake rose while in the oven and sank after it cooled down resulting in wrinkles. I guess I should have baked them as cupcakes instead because the cake turned out to be very short.

Wonder if it would be better if I bake it at 140 degree Celsius for longer time say maybe 20-25 mins. Shall try again.

Whole cake

One slice

26 May 20 (Tue) - Marble Butter Cupcakes (2nd attempt)

Attempted this recipe the second time with the suggestions received previously. The cakes didn't crack this round but they still sink and created wrinkles. Oh well... at least some improvements from the first round. Shall attempt it again to try and get cakes with smooth top.

11 May 20 (Mon) - Mini Chocolate Croissants

There have been many posts on using frozen prata for a lot of pastries on the Facebook group "Home-cooked Delights 家常便饭" page. Since there are some frozen prata sitting in the freezer, decided to also jump onto the bandwagon.

Experimented by making mini chocolate croissants. The result was rather good.

10 May 20 (Sun) - Honeydew Sago

There were a lot of soy milk in the fridge and the honeydew bought recently wasn't sweet. So what to do to finish all these items? Honeydew Sago dessert! Googled for a recipe to use as a base to follow and found this recipe by Roti & Rice.

Improvised to suit my needs and the result was a refreshing dessert just nice for a hot, hot day.