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Desserts and Sweets

Viewing posts from the Desserts and Sweets category

12 Apr 2024

Pie Susu Bali

By Faizah

I was browsing through my photo gallery looking at my Bali holiday photos, when I came across a photo of the pie susu (milk pies) we got as ole-ole (souvenirs) from there.

Suddenly I had a craving for pie susu, so as always, nak makan, buat sendiri. I looked at a few recipes on Youtube that seem to get good reviews, and after a couple of tries I found one by Nyonya Liem to be the right one for me. The recipe is well-written with exact measurements, the filling to pastry ratio was spot on with no wastages, and I particularly liked that it uses more premium ingredients and doesn’t cut corners.

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14 Nov 2022

Che Nom’s Lepat Pisang

By Faizah

Achievement unlocked: lepat pisang!

I generally love bananas and every form of dessert or snack we can make with bananas, and lepat pisang is one of my favorites. The thing is, this Malay kuih isn’t as common as some others, and quite often the ones I get are quite disappointing.

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19 Sep 2020

Pais Jagung Sabah

By Faizah

Rudy bought another batch of delicious jagung susu, and we still had a few left when Kak’mbang suggested that we make pais jagung, a sweet steamed corn-based kuih wrapped in cornhusks. What an idea!

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03 Mar 2018

Weekend Cooking: Air-Fried Caramel Banana & Coconut Spring Roll

By Faizah

Kak’mbang and I were just chilling out one day talking about food (because why not), and she mentioned this yummy looking recipe she found on a random can of F&N sweetened condensed creamer.  Only the ingredients list was on the can, but spring rolls stuffed with bananas and grated coconut and drizzled with sweetened creamer? Heck yeah!  The recipe was a bit of a treasure hunt to find, buried somewhere on F&N’s website, and last I checked the website no longer works, so I’m glad I have this written down here.

The original recipe was for regular fried spring rolls, but since Mummy is trying to watch her fat intake (as should I -_-), my version is air fried, and the results were still so so amazing.  I highly recommend using pisang mas because of their wonderful sweetness and fragrant banana flavor, but just use whatever type you have on hand.  Because the filling is rather wet, I separated 12 spring roll sheets upfront to speed up the wrapping process, and while working on one sheet, I covered the rest with a damp towel to prevent them from drying out.  I also rolled the spring rolls a bit tighter to get more layers and prevent them from bursting.

Guaranteed to be a hit among kids and adults alike.  Try it out!

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25 Feb 2018

Make Your Own: Caramelized Biscuit Sauce

By Faizah

Have you guys ever tried Llaollao frozen yoghurt?  It’s absolutely divine when you have it topped with their signature Lotus caramelized biscuit sauce. Must. Try.

Aizat gave me the brilliant idea of stuffing plain roti paung with Lotus Biscoff Spread, which is pretty much the same thing used in Llaollao’s biscuit sauce.  The reason I love Llaollao’s froyo so much is because the rich, sweet biscuit sauce went so well with the tangy creaminess of the froyo, so I decided to simulate this wonderful flavor combination by also adding a cube of cream cheese on top of the biscuit spread.

While waiting for the rolls to finish baking in the oven, a thought occurred to me.  The filling is so fancy, yet the rolls look so plain on the outside.  What if I drizzled it with the caramelized biscuit sauce to jazz things up a bit?

Since pretty much everything can be found on the internet nowadays, I looked it up and found a recipe by The Cafe Sucre Farine.  I cut the recipe by a lot, and subbed with ingredients I had on hand, but the results were quite amazing.   I botched it a bit and heated the Biscoff Spread together with the rest of the ingredients instead of stirring it in at the end, which may have effected its texture, but I’m not sure.  Will try to get it right the next time.

Glad I still have quite a bit leftover after drizzling the rolls! Need to get some ice cream to use this sauce as a topping…

My original creation: Roti paung with cream cheese and Biscoff spread, drizzled with the caramelized biscuit sauce.

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13 Jan 2018

Weekend Cooking: Apple Cider Doughnuts

By Faizah

Post turkey dinner I had a lot of apple cider left over, and was wondering what to do with it.  I can’t remember how I stumbled upon the idea of making doughnuts with apple cider, but now that I have, why didn’t I think of this sooner??

There are quite a few recipes out there. Fried ones, baked ones, and after reading through the reviews I decided on the version I found on Taste of Home.

I ran out of brown sugar when making these, so I ended up using some red sugar as well.  I find that red sugar adds a richer taste to the doughnuts, perhaps closer to the taste of palm sugar, which was nice.  The recipe also called for a ginger-sugar coating, but I decided to make mine with apple cider glaze.  I need to finish off that carton of juice in the fridge!

It was also my first time deep frying something in a pot on the stove.  Previously I’ve always weaseled my way around this by either using an electric deep fryer or an air fryer, or by asking Kak’mbang to help me out with it (yeah. terrible, I know).  When I was making this, everyone in the house was taking an afternoon nap.  I didn’t want to bother Kak’mbang again, so I decided to suck it up and do it myself.

Turns out, it wasn’t so bad after all.  I did overbrown the first batch or so, and I didn’t realize that I was letting the oil get too hot, but in the end I got a batch of excellent, tasty doughnuts.  No scary oil spills, no Captain America shield (my rice cooker pot lid) needed.

These doughnuts are best eaten fresh, as it will have a nice crunchy crust as you bite into it.  Over time the texture will resemble more like soft cake bread.  Do not skip the glaze, the doughnuts have a subtle apple and spice flavor on their own, but with the glaze the amazing brightness of the apple cider really shines through.

Try it out!

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25 Nov 2017

Weekend Cooking: Khaliat Nahal (Beehive)

By Faizah

To me, cooking is a way to destress after a long week slogging at the office.  Making bread, however, is what I find most enjoyable.   When a bread recipe appeared in Saudi Food Eman’s Facebook feed, I knew I had to try it ASAP.  I mean, bread stuffed with cream cheese and drizzled with syrup? Sign me up!

Because I was adamant about using my breadmaker for this, I had to make a few adjustments to the recipe.  I didn’t notice that the recipe uses a lot more yeast relative to the flour (which was really silly in retrospect, but ah well that’s how we learn), so after letting the Dough cycle run its full course, my dough literally looked like foam.  While I managed to save the dough by adding more flour, the bread turned out heavy and had a strong yeasty taste.  At this point, I still didn’t realize that the cause was my overproofing the dough. I instead blamed it on the plain flour I used, and switched to bread flour for my second attempt.

While the dough was a lot less wet this time around, and the bread was a lot fluffier, the yeasty flavor remained.  Finally it dawned on me that I was using the same amount of yeast but a little more than half of the flour compared to my roti paung recipe.  Since the whole point of using a ton of yeast is to cut down prep time, I must have been letting the dough sit for far too long.  I then realized waiting for my normal breadmaker Dough cycle to fully finish isn’t suitable for this recipe, so I simply let the machine do just the kneading and took it out right after, without resting the dough.  True enough, this dough rises so fast, the earlier rolls doubled in size by the time I finished working on the last few.

The results? Lovely rolls which were bite sized and fluffy, with no unpleasant yeasty taste.  I also loved the amazing combination of exotic flavors and textures.  Creamy cheese inside fluffy bread, topped with crunchy, herby black seeds (habbatus sauda) then drizzled with sweet syrup infused with the distinct flavor of saffron.  I just couldn’t stop eating this.

Try it out!

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07 Jun 2017

Ramadan Cooking: Air-Fried Banana Spring Rolls With Nutella Drizzle

By Faizah

I bought a bunch of pisang mas last weekend, and they were quite green then so I thought they would last a while.  By mid week they’ve started to become overripe, so Kak’mbang asked me to try out this recipe by Chef Kamarul from his book, Resepi 30 Minit Chef Kamarul.  Overall recipes from his book look super simple yet promising in terms of yumminess, and I really do need to use up those bananas, so I gave this a go, with a few small changes.

Mummy doesn’t really like deep fried foods, so I made mine using an air fryer.  I used red sugar instead of brown because it gives a richer flavor, although it does melt really fast and makes the bananas quite wet.  Here’s a tip – be sure to separate out the spring roll sheets upfront, so that you can quickly assemble the spring rolls and chuck ’em in the air fryer.  I made the mistake of (sloooowly) peeling the sheets as I went along, and because my banana mixture was wet, the first few that I assembled became rather soggy and burst during the cooking process.  I also saved some time by using simple Nutella instead of making my chocolate sauce from scratch.

The results were lovely.  The spring roll skin crisped very nicely in the air fryer, and the sweetness of the filling was just nice, letting the natural flavor of the bananas do most of the talking.  A good snack ready to eat within 30 minutes!

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