Delicious Chocolate Banana Cupcakes

I had to put delicious up there in the title because it was delicious.  I used my marbled banana chocolate cake recipe and made it into chocolate banana cupcakes.  I invited few friends for a play date and decided to make something for coffee/tea in the afternoon.  I made this along with some chocolate chips cookies and I just realized all my snack have chocolate chips in it!

The cupcake was soft, moist, chocolaty and tasted like banana.  Truly delectable!  I added chocolate chips because my girls loved them.  I had to stop them from eating more because this was meant to be shared. ;)  At the play date, I noticed that all the kids would pick out the chocolate chips to eat first, my girls included. :)  If you like my recipes, put this on your to-try list, you won't be disappointed.

I saw this butterfly silicon cupcake cups at Target and had to buy it, it was 6 for $1 at the Dollar section, how cheap.  It was so cute too and I regretted I didn't pick up the flower silicon cups for the same price, as when I went back, it was all gone. :(  I guess you paid for quality too, this had some broken pieces and the silicon was pretty thin, but it's usable.

Chicken Noodle (Shells) Soup

Evy was diagnosed with ear infection recently.  It was her first and since she didn't complain about her ear ache, I had no way to know.  It got worst when her ear infection caused her to have high fever and coughs.  Finally we took her to see her pediatrician because we thought she might have flu or H1N1 because the fever was high like 103.7'F.  Then, it was diagnosed to be ear infection resulted from stuffy nose and caused the high fever because it was already inflamed.  She was given antibiotic for 10 days.  How magical was the antibiotic, just one dose and she was feeling much better.  I gave her the ibuprofen for the fever and pain as well.  Just like the pediatrician said, she would be herself and ready to go to school again.


I thought she was suffering from flu and wanted her to drink more fluid and lighter meal.  So, I created this chicken shells soup for her.  I only had shells pasta at home thus the used of shell pasta.  I added mixed vegetable so that she could have some veggie in her diet.  This will definitely be something I would cook when someone is not feeling well at home.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast.  This week host is Aqua from Served with Love .  Do go and check out her delicious pasta round up tomorrow, March, 19th! 

Five Years Old

My blog is five years old today.  It feels like just a blink of an eye but I have been blogging for five years! It showed how fast time has passed.  I started just to share pictures of my home cook food and it blossomed into sharing my recipes to the world.

I was just sharing pictures and making friends in a food forum and one by one almost all of us started to have a food blog of our own.  Some have stop blogging through these years and some are still going strong.  Lots of fabulous blogs have emerged these past 2 years too and new food blogs have been created every day.  I don't know how long will I be blogging because no one can predict the future.  But I will still blog because it is my hobby and cooking is what I do almost every day and baking experiments in the kitchen such as creating new recipes is what I like and do best.  Furthermore, I cannot let my avid readers or fans down, I recognized some readers have been following me through all these years (before Edda was born), here I would like to say thank you to you.  For those who haven't, you are welcome to join me in Facebook by being a fan and feel free to share or drop comments and get involve.

Here to many more great years of blogging and happy 5th birthday Little Corner of Mine.  This name was created with the thought that in the whole wide world of Internet space, there is this little corner of mine which belongs to me.  But this little corner of mine has become public and hope it keeps on blossoming with your help.

Happy 5th Birthday! 

Healthy Brown Rice

My mother in-law had been telling me to eat brown rice for couple of years but had been ignored. But slowly I did manage to incorporate some brown rice into our diet by mixing it with white rice. Recently I have been seeing the light on brown rice in the United States, brown rice finally got his fame and recognition after all these years of preferring refined white rice.  Brown rice was a poor people food back then because only the rich can afford to buy the refined, processed and fragrant white rice.  When people have more money, they expect a better quality and refine food.  But by doing that, they are actually eating a less healthier food because refine food means a lot of the naturally good for you thing has been taken away by further processing.  Processed food has added coloring, preservative, trans fats and terms that I don't know how to pronounce in it.  So, now we learned that the minimally processed food is still the best for you, the best is to cook the food yourself at home with fresh grocery.  Avoid refined food and go for whole wheat, brown rice, lots of different colors of vegetable, beans, nuts, extra-virgin olive oil, fruits, herbs and spices.  It is easy to eat healthy and healthy food can be delicious.  I am switching to brown rice because it is the right time to do so but I still keep some white rice for cooking my nasi lemak and porridge.  As I don't think the nasi lemak (Malaysia fragrant coconut rice) would taste like nasi lemak if brown rice is used.  The trick in cooking brown rice is you need to add more water, almost like double the white rice water amount.  For my rice cooker, for 2 cups of white rice, I used 2.5 water level.  But for cooking 2 cups of brown rice, I need to use 4.5 water level.  Then, your brown rice will be soft and more easily digested (this is for cooking short grain brown rice).  For long grain brown rice, for 2 cups of rice, I used 3.5 cups of water.

Red Beans & Black Glutinous Rice Sweet Soup

This is one delicious sweet soup I discovered by accident.  I was planning to cook some red bean soup with orange peels.  And then I remembered my mom used to add a handful of white glutinous rice with hers.  Some people added some dried longan too.  But I did not want the dried longan in my sweet soup and while trying to take out my shell pasta to cook noodle soup, I spotted my black glutinous rice.  I was thinking why not I used the black glutinous rice instead of white since it was considered to be healthier.  So, I used the black glutinous rice along with my red beans and dried orange peels and set my slow cooker to low and was really surprised at how tasty it was the next day.  It was so delicious that I would cook this way often from now on.

I love to cook red beans and black glutinous rice in my slow cooker overnight, because I will be rewarded with a soft and gluey and delicious sweet soup in the morning, without fail.   I liked mine soupy thus I added a lot more water.

Golden Ingots

 

Sorry for the bad pictures because it was taken at night.  I saw this Golden Ingots at Daily Affairs and decided to give it a try.  It was really an interesting idea and very suitable for Chinese New Year.  The bottom layer was fried beancurd puff (taufu pok) and topped with meat ball of sort. 

I prepared it in the afternoon and took an un-fried version.  The natural lighting made the food looks so good.  Too bad I was just too lazy to fried some just to take the finished products for this post.  I used ground pork and water chestnut for mine with my own seasonings.

Evy & Edda March 2, 2010

 

Sharing pictures of my girls I took recently.  The weather was really nice and they wanted to play outside so I let them played on the deck.  I let them blew bubbles and drew on the deck.

Oh, I am squeezed sister!

Evy happily drew all over our deck.  Luckily it was washable chalks, so drew and expressed all you want!  Ugh, what my little sweetie doing, still holding her peace signs.  LOL!

Special Rice Dish

What so special about this rice dish? Special as in the cooking method is different, it took two steps. One is stir-frying the rice first, you can add in eggs for eggs fried rice, or leave it plain, just soy sauce and garlic. I left the rice above plain because I just had eggs fried rice the day before. Then, you prepare a white sauce dish to pour it on top. The white sauce dish can be shrimps with frozen mixed vegetable, or fish with Chinese green (chai Hsin) like above, or scallops with beaten egg white, basically anything you can think of. Serve it as one dish meal. I have a similar fish recipe here if you want to take a look. 

Because of the sauce laden on the eggs fried rice, it made the rice soft and can be easily digested by elderly people or young children.

Fried Bee Hoon or Vermicelli

 

My simple lunch on Sunday.  I don't normally cooked dishes and rice on weekends.  Usually it would be something simple like fried noodle (any variety) or fried rice.  We had something special today because I saved some jicama beancurd rolls for ourselves like what you read on my last posting. Simple fried bee hoon like what you get at the night market in Malaysia can be satisfying, simple like only fried with bean sprouts. I don't know what is the charm of this simple fried bee hoon, do you know?  Or perhaps it was just something we used to have when we grew up.

Delicious fried bee hoon!  I recommend the Elephant brand bee hoon and also Wei Wei bee hoon.  These brands of bee hoon/vermicelli are thin and won't break easily when stir-frying.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast. This is my first entry for the new year 2010.  Wow, it has been a while.  This week host is non-other than Ruth herself, do go and check out Once Upon a Feast delicious round up on March, 5th! It is also the Third Birthday of PPN.

Jicama Beancurd Rolls

 

This is my jicama beancurd rolls.  I made some of these to bring to my friend's party and save two for ourselves.  The filling is my mung kuan char or stir-fried jicama.  This mung kuan char consisted of jicama, carrot, woodear, garlic and dried shrimps, season with salt, sugar and chicken granules, very simple.  Then, I wrapped it with the beancurd sheet.  I made a mistake as I dipped the beancurd sheet in water, you are only supposed to soften it with wet fingers.  So, the end result was not as crispy.  Also funny looking skin texture.

It changed the beancurd skin texture and when deep-fried, it was not as crispy.

One of the roll burst opened when frying.  So lesson learned, never to immerse your beancurd sheet in water to soften before rolling, just wet it with your fingers.  I knew that but still decided to try it out because my beancurd sheet won't seal with cornstarch mixture.  Alas!  now really learned my lesson.  I made lots of mistakes in the kitchen too, I made mistake and learned from it, only then I can improve myself.  :-)

Rose Konnyaku Jelly

How you like my twin Koi fishes?  Spotted my mistake yet?  I made a mistake here when I made thing without thinking.  I should have pour some konnyaku liquid in the mold first before I added in the mixed fruits.  I just added the mixed fruits into the mold and pour in the konnyaku liquid and let it set.  So, the end result, not as pretty and some of the mixed fruits fell off when unmold.  Oops!

If you want my rose flavored konnyaku jelly recipe, you can get it here.  The rose flavored is really great, I loved it because it reminded me of the rose drink that the Malay served in Malaysia during Hari Raya.  Here nian nian you yu to all of us!

Shrimp Ball Mushrooms

Sharing a picture of a dish we had on Lunar New Year 1st. day.  I had to confess I didn't make this.  We paid $25/person to dine a 9-course meal in a Chinese restaurant with some Taiwanese friends.  This was one item served on that day.  We couldn't finish all the food and this was what I brought back along with white chicken, sauce duck, crabs and mei chai three layers pork. :P

But I can tell you how it was made, it was pretty easy actually.  The top was shrimp balls, the bottom was Chinese mushroom.  First, you minced the shrimps or processed it in a food processor, then you seasoned it with salt, white pepper, rice wine (or however you would like to season it) and shaped it into a ball shape big enough to place on top of your soften Chinese mushroom.  Afterward, you steamed it until cooked, probably about 10-15 minutes.  You can cut some broccoli for garnish.  Quickly boil it in salt water to briefly cook it or you can cook it in the microwave.  Garnished the broccoli around the round plate and placed the cooked shrimp ball mushrooms in the middle.  Then, you can prepare the white sauce to pour on top.  As for the white sauce, heat up a pan, add in chicken stock and let it boiled.  When boiling, add in the cornstarch water mixture to thicken and stirred in some chopped scallion, removed from heat.  Pour the thicken sauce on top to serve.  Enjoy!

Bak Kua (Chinese Pork Jerky)

Bak Kua, my all time favorite when I was a kid and now too.  Love to sandwich it in bread and have it as breakfast.  This is also one favorite for Chinese New Year, people give this as gift in Malaysia.  They also served this for people who visits their houses.  When I moved here, bak kua was non-existence.  All I found that was similar to this is American beef jerky which I couldn't stomach.  Then, four years ago, I found a very easy bak kua recipe shared by a fellow blogging friend.  I tried it and loved it and have been making it all these years.

 

This recipe is so easy to make and trust me it is really good.  The above has about 1lb. of ground pork, I thought I might be able to share with my friends until my hubby spotted it.  He never dared to try the bak kua I made all these years (he thinks it was yucky so more for us) and suddenly he came and grabbed a piece to try and kept coming back for more and more.  Needless to say, any food that he set his eyes on, will be gone in no time.  He only left few pieces for my girls and I.

Gong Xi Fa Cai & Xin Nian Kuai Le!!!

I want to wish all my readers a Happy Chinese New Year and may this new year brings you prosperity, health, happiness and things that you wished for.  I am off to celebrate Chinese New Year eve reunion dinner at auntie Lily's house.  Yeah I know I am lucky because I get to eat her Yu Sang and all the cookies she made for Chinese New Year. 


Go home and have a reunion dinner with your parents, family and relatives.  Nothing spread joy more than having your loved and closed ones close by and have a feast together.  Sharing food, laughter, stories and fun together.  Have a good one you all and enjoy all the 15 days of Lunar New Year.

Valentine's Day Cookies

Chinese New Year falls on Valentine's Day this year so we see some of the Chinese New Year cookies this year were made into heart shape.  I didn't plan on making this cookies actually but I was left with some pineapple dough from making the Nastar.  So, I rolled out the dough, cut it with a lovely heart shape cookie press and put the middle with raspberry preserved.  Valentine's Day needs some red color right?  So, raspberry or strawberry preserved was the best choice for me.  Lovely isn't it?

Be careful not to put too much preserved in the middle as it would spilled out during baking.  But it was still okay, just scrape off the spill preserved when cool.  I baked them in preheated 350'F oven for 12 minutes.  I didn't apply egg wash on them because I didn't want to ruin the look of the raspberry preserved.

Here wishing all my readers a Sweet and Happy Valentine's Day and a Prosperous and Healthy Lunar New Year!!! 

Pineapple Tarts 2010

These pineapple rolls were also called nastar.  This was the first time I made a successful nastar actually because previously I just couldn't roll the pastry out from the nastar molds that I bought.  It was so hard that I just gave up.  When I went back to Malaysia in 2008, I saw another plastic nastar mold with a push stick to push the dough out, I quickly grabbed one.  And it worked!  It made my life so much easier with this new tool.

I spent the whole afternoon and only managed to produce 59 nastars, like shown above!  Like I said before, this was one cookie that took time to make and could be finished in on time.  My pineapple pastry and short-cut jam recipes can be found here. 

This pastry is soft and melt-in-the-mouth type. Some were not as pretty because after a while I just wouldn't be bother anymore.  :P  Great thing is it is just for home consumption.

Below is the picture of the mold I used to make this pineapple rolls.

Stir Fried Roasted Pork Belly with Dark Soy Sauce

My mom used to cook this for us with the leftover roasted pork (siew york) when we were little. This is definitely a childhood memory dish for me. I love love roasted pork belly when I was young, I remember whenever we go to the chicken rice stall, I would request for siew york. And then when I was in my teenage years, I started to be more health conscious and hardly ever touch any pork fat and chicken skin anymore. And when I moved to the States, in a small town with hardly any Asian population, there was no roasted pork belly in sight. It was something that you couldn't buy with money. Luckily now I live an hour away from Denver, so roasted pork belly is selling in most authentic Chinese restaurants and easy to come by. We still eat it sparingly as frankly it is not a healthy food choice at all. But it is a childhood dish so once in a very long time is acceptable for me. Recently my hubby bought a big slab of roasted pork from Denver and we had some leftover, so I slice it thinly and made this delicious dish.

Note:
Yeah I don't know why the people don't know how to slice the roasted pork like in M'sia/S'pore. We sliced it so nicely thin and arrange it so nicely for the customer (we can see the roasted skin, layers of fat and meat). But here, they just simply chop it however they want and in disorganized big pieces that I couldn't see all the layers and meat. Now I know, we have to cut it ourselves when order it again.

Kuih Bangkit 2010

My kuih bangkit for 2010.  Same old recipe but using a new cookie cutter.  Too lazy to pinch pattern also.  I wonder how people got energy to make tons to sell?

Recipe can be found here.

Step by step pictures guide here.

Cornflakes Cookies without Flour Take 2

With the advice from youfei, I used honey instead of sugar to help it bind.  I added dried cranberries and walnuts to make it healthier but this is not a healthy cookies because it is packed with butter.  The butter made it really fragrant and when baked, it was really crispy.  This recipe is for those who seeks it, enjoy!  The sweetness is just nice, not overly sweet.

You can add any dried fruits, roasted nuts, chips for baking or anything you can think of  to make it uniquely yours.  Now I know what to make to bring it for Evy's classmates, the chocolate version would be ideal for little kids.  Without nuts, just raisin and cornflakes so all kids can enjoy it.  ^o^

Chocolate Covered Cornflakes Cookies

From the boo boo of my previous post, I created this Chocolate Covered Cornflakes Cookies.   This is a yummy cookie.  Almost like my chocolate clusters yet a bit different.  Since some of the cornflakes cookies that I made early won't stick together, I have resorted to use chocolate to bind them together.  I couldn't waste a bowl of fragrant buttery and crispy cornflakes mix.  Chocolate is excellent especially in this cold weather (super cold winter here), I don't even have to store it in the refrigerator.

Closer view of the cookies.

My two trays of cornflake cookies, now finished, all in our tummies. :P

Ok,  back to the draft on this cornflake cookies, if I failed again, more chocolate one will be created.  Even though the chocolate ones are delicious, but this plain one has it own place in our hearts, even my girls who love chocolate wanted to eat this too, Evy said both were good.  To me, this is more suitable for warm weather as chocolate will melt if it's warm. 

Cornflakes Cookies without Flour

If you are my avid reader or someone who have tried my Chinese New Year cookie recipes, you should know I have been making cornflakes cookies for years. The one that uses flour and oil/butter. This year I wanted to try something different. Cornflakes cookies without flour and I am still experimenting with the recipe. Let me perfect it first before I share it with you because I am having problem for some to stick together. I ended out creating another version of this cookies, the chocolate covered cornflakes cookies which is equally delicious if not more.



Sharing pictures of this delicious treat for now. Recipe will be share once I perfected it. First, I need to go buy more cornflakes cereal.

Green Curry Paste Cookies

I had been thinking...whether to create new Chinese New Year cookie recipes for 2010. I came across Laksa Cookies last year but never tried it. 1) Living aboard good laksa paste was hard to come by. 2) I am too lazy to make my own paste (too much extra work just to make a cookie). And then it kind of strike me that I knew a good Thai green curry paste and in fact I had it at home. So, why not make a Green Curry Paste Cookie instead of the Laksa cookie for us who live overseas? Hence, this cookie was inspired by Laksa cookies and I was eager to try it out. So, sharing with you my tried and tested Green Curry Paste Cookies. This cookie is crunchy and very spicy! Definitely for adult who likes it spicy. And of course tasted like Thai green curry! 

Pandan Sesame Pizzelle Cookies

This is a new Chinese New Year cookie recipe I invented for 2010. I didn't know how to name it so I just name it as it because this cookie is baked in a pizzelle maker. It stays crispy after it's cold and it stays that way which I like because I didn't want to bake or toast it again. This was a recipe I accidentally created last year but it was a plain version. For this year, I added pandan paste and additional white sesame seeds. Since the majority of the flour used was rice flour, to me it tasted like rice cookie with the fragrant of coconut milk, sesame seeds and Screwpine leaf (pandan). Edda loved this and has been asking for it everyday.

Chicken Rice Dinner

The spread of our Chicken Rice Dinner using Prima Taste premix. I heard a lot of great thing about Prima Taste Hainanese Chicken Rice from bloggers and readers alike but never got a chance to try it. My chance finally came when I received a packet as a gift from a relative from Singapore. My review: I really liked it, super easy to make and the taste was pretty authentic, really cut down a lot of labor work because I didn't have to make the chili and ginger sauces.


The white chicken. Tender, soft and moist with the fabulous sauce. I used two chicken thighs.


Baked chicken for my hubby who won't touch white chicken.


Chicken rice cooked with sauce provided.


The leftover chicken broth from cooking the chicken and rice. Just add some green, soft tofu and seasonings to create a soup.

All I needed to buy for this dinner were 4 chicken thighs, 1 English cucumber, some scallions, 1/2 block of soft tofu, some nai pak (Asian green) and rice.

Sweet Lily Buds and Lotus Seeds Soup

This is a pretty common Chinese sweet soup in Malaysia. I know I didn't like this soup when I was little or when I was back in Malaysia. It is just not my thing especially the lotus seeds and lily buds, not something that youngster would like. But as I got older, my taste bud changed as I am more into healthy food these days or food that would provide benefit to my body as to the opposite. I came into this soup again and the benefits of drinking this simple soup really changed my mind about this soup. This soup is said to be supporting heart, nourish kidney, fight memory loss, insomnia, loss of appetite, nourish brain especially for students or white collar workers who need to use brain to think a lot and anti-aging. I believed in Chinese medicinal soup for prevention and overall body wellness so I guess I will cook this sweet soup frequently from now on. Yeah, I thought my girls wouldn't like this soup but surprisingly they both loved it, even finishing all the lotus seeds, longan, wolfberries and lily buds I gave them. I seriously thought they wouldn't eat the lotus seeds and lily buds like when I was young.

Vietnamese Fried Springrolls (Cha Gio)

We loved Vietnamese fried spring rolls (Cha Gio). I loved the texture and crispiness of fried rice paper, it added a touch of difference from the usual fried Chinese spring rolls or egg rolls. It was quite pricey to order it in a restaurant as it costs about $2 a piece. So, I decided to make it at home. I got to put more ingredients in my filling as usually what we got at a restaurant was filled with minimal ingredients. It was definitely a treat but I hated that my hair smelled of fried oil afterward.

Baked Chickpeas/Garbanzo Beans

I love this canned chickpeas, it provides such a convenient for me. I have since used it in stir-fried, my version of Japanese curry and baked it as snack. Sharing with you the crispy snack version. You can create your own seasoning mix for the chickpeas as well. A healthy and easy snack for your afternoon.

Chicken with Dried Tofu Knots

While shopping at the Asian market, I saw this interesting dried tofu knots. It looked like the dried beancurd sticks but tie in a knot. I wanted to buy but hesitated because I never eaten or cook with this before thus I passed it up. Then, months ago while spending a night at my friend's house, I was introduced to this by her mother in-law. I learned a few cooking tips from her MIL as well and she told me I only need to soften this with cold water and not the hot water. She made Bak Kut Teh (Malaysian Herbal Pork Ribs Soup) with this tofu knots and I had a chance to try it. Needless to say I loved it as I love anything made with tofu, as it is healthy! So, recently while shopping at the Asian market in Denver, I bought few packets of this to cook at home. This is good as a side dish for steamboat/hotpot too.

Minced Meat Noodle

I bought some packets of fresh Pho rice noodle (the noodle that served in Pho soup, Vietnamese beef noodle soup) thinking I can serve it with chicken soup. But I don't normally like to serve the same thing often which brought me to think of another way to serve this fresh noodle. As my readers know, I love Korean drama and almost in all K-drama, there have this so-called Jajangmyeon (炸醬麵), homemade hand pull noodle with dark black bean sauce made by Korean Chinese. So, I had this idea of making my own Chinese version of Jajangmyeon with this Pho noodle. I didn't have the Korean black bean paste, chunjang so I made my own version of dark sauce. The end result, we totally loved it! Evy said it's so yummy, when are you going to make it again? Well, wait til I buy more noodle first, I told her. This is definitely a new noodle dish that I am going to make again for my family.