Kuih Keria (Sweet Potato Doughnuts)

It’s so hard to get really good kuih-muih (local desserts) these days. Gone are the days where you can just walk out from your house and to the makcik’s stall across the road for some delicious kuih. Sure you can easily get them at the shopping malls but honestly they are so awful tasting and not to mention EXPENSIVE! Imagine paying close to RM1 for a tiny piece when last time you could easily get 3 pieces for the same amount. Although making kuih is quite a tedious work, but better than buying for something that make you go “arggh doesn’t taste nice at all and what a waste of money!'”  

And since Ashley’s going for her enrichment classes on weekdays I try to make a dessert or baked goodies during that 2.5 hours of free time so that we could have it for tea or she could bring to school as her snacks. And seeing that I have some sweet potatoes and gula melaka (palm sugar) at home I decided to make my all time favourite, Kuih Keria. It’s like your regular doughnuts only difference it’s made from sweet potatoes minus the yeast and it’s deep fried then coated with sugar syrup. I prefer the ones coated with gula melaka rather than the usual, white sugar but you can always use the former if you don’t have gula melaka at home.  

You Need  

300grams of sweet potatoes (about two medium sized)

1/2 cup of all purpose flour (plus extra for dusting)

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of cinnamon *optional  

a pinch of salt enough

oil for frying

For sugar coating 

1 tube of gula melaka or 1/3 cups of white sugar 

3 tablespoons of water 

How To 

1. Peel, wash and cut the sweet potatoes into cubes. Steam and once cooked, mash them.

2. Sift flour and baking powder together and combine all the ingredients. Knead to form a smooth dough.

3. You can either roll the dough out to 1 inch and use a doughnut cutter or you can shape a ping pong size dough into a ball, flatten it and make a hole in the middle using your finger like a ring

4. Heat oil in a wok, deep fry the doughnuts over medium flame till golden brown. Dish out and drain.

To prepare the sugar coating  

1.Place the sugar or gula melaka and water in a small heavy-based saucepan and heat gently until sugar melts. Careful not to caramelize the white sugar, you only need a thick sugar syrup not caramel syrup.
2. Add in the fried kuih keria, coat well. I tried to cool the sugar coated doughnuts on parchment paper, HUGE MISTAKE as the doughnuts sticks to it luckily I managed to get the doughnuts onto a plate.  

Cooking Tutorials
 Ingredients
How To
 

P.S Do forgive my ugly looking doughnuts, had a pretty hard time trying to shape them.

Sambal Ikan Bilis (Anchovies in Chilli Sauce)

The other day I asked on my Facebook Fan Page “What makes a great Nasi Lemak” and almost everyone who commented agrees that it’s definitely the sambal and rice that made you lick your plate or in my case my fingers clean. It’s very common to have many versions of sambal, some may like it slightly sweeter or spicier, some like it with lots of oil or some prefers their sambal on the drier side just like how my wonderful mommy makes hers. And now that I'm staying on my own I try to replicate her great sambal but sad to say I failed miserably only because I was impatient while cooking the sambal. Yes you have to be real patient when cooking sambal because you have to stand over the stove stirring the chilli paste over slow fire for hours until you sweat buckets the paste is properly cooked and you’ll get the best sambal ever. The kind that make you drink glasses of iced water but at the same time you just couldn’t stop eating it. And another reason why her sambal is so yummy is because she do the whole works ; boil dried chillies, cut and de-seed fresh chillies, pounds the chillies shallots using mortar and pestle and she’s very patient. 

Anyway during my earlier attempts, I cheated by using chilli paste which is readily available at most supermarkets and wet markets and even though the sambal turns out nice but it’s not as nice as mom’s. It’s only recently I decided to take the plunge and make sambal from scratch so when my mother in law said this to me “Your sambal is as good as your mom’s” only I realized that all the effort made is worth it especially when your in-laws praises your cooking eh. Although there’s nothing wrong in using chilli paste  like in the recipe I shall share with you all after this, do try to make the chilli paste from scratch which the recipe I’ll post up soon.  

You Need
2 cups ikan bilis (anchovies) , soaked and washed
1 large onion, sliced
5 tablespoon chilli paste
8-10 shallots, pounded
oil for frying the anchovies (leave about 5 tablespoons of oil for the chilli paste)

Seasoning
1 inch of belacan (those in blocks) or you can use 2 teaspoon of belacan granules ( toasted in a pan for 5 minutes over medium heat )
1/2 tablespoon of sugar or more to taste
1 pingpong size tamarind paste (mix with 1 cup of water, strain and keep aside the mixture liquid and discard the seeds)

How To
1. Heat oil in a wok, stir-fry the anchovies until crispy and golden brown. Drain the anchovies on kitchen paper towel and set aside.
2. Saute pounded ingredients, chilli paste and belacan until fragrant. Add in big onions and tamarind juice and stir-fry well.
3. Keep on stirring over low heat until oil starts to ooze out and at this point you have to be careful, don’t overcook otherwise your sambal would start to burn. Add in the sugar and tweak according to your tastebuds. Stir in the anchovies.
4. Dish out and serve with your favourite dish or Nasi Lemak with Ayam Goreng Berempah.

Enjoy!
Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients
 

How To

French Toast

When we were young my mom would always make this for us to bring to school or for breakfast. Back then I didn’t know it’s French Toast, I thought it’s my mom’s special creation of sweetened condensed milk with egg and bread, with a slight saltiness from the butter. And it has such a wonderful aroma and nowadays when I make this for my little girl which happens to be her favourite snack it brings back fond memories of me and my mom during my early childhood days. It’s a pretty simple recipe and you can have many variations of French Toast which I’ll share one of them with you in this same post.  

You Need
1 egg
2 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
a pinch of salt
butter
3-4 slices of white bread

How To
1. Break egg into a wide,shallow plate and beat lightly with a fork. Add in the remaining ingredients except for the bread.
2. Over medium-low heat, heat non stick pan with a thin layer of butter or margarine.
3. Place the bread slices, one piece at a time in the plate and let the bread soak up the egg mixture and turn to the other side. Make sure both sides are well coated but don’t let it soak too long otherwise the bread would turn out soggy. You want the French Toast to be light and eggy not soggy*.
4. Transfer bread slices to pan.heating slowly until bottom is golden brown. Turn and brown the other side.
5. Serve and enjoy on its own or you can have them with maple syrup.  

Cooking Tutorials 

Sweetened Condensed Milk

  

Cinnamon & Vanilla French Toast

You Need
1 egg
2 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup milk
a pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
butter
3-4 slices of white bread**
powdered/icing sugar

How To
1. Break egg into a wide,shallow plate and beat lightly with a fork. Add in the remaining ingredients except for the bread.
2. Over medium-low heat, heat non stick pan with a thin layer of butter or margarine.
3. Place the bread slices, one piece at a time in the plate and let the bread soak up the egg mixture and turn to the other side. Make sure both sides are well coated but don’t let it soak too long otherwise the bread would turn out soggy. You want the French Toast to be light and eggy not soggy*.
4. Transfer bread slices to pan.heating slowly until bottom is golden brown. Turn and brown the other side.
5. Serve and enjoy on its own or sprinkle some powdered sugar on top.

Cooking Tutorials



Note
* To prevent from soaking the bread too long, what I usually do is when I turn over the slice of bread cooking on the pan, brown already on one side then I’ll place the white bread slice into the egg mixture. So when I dish out the cooked French Toast, I’ll transfer the soaked bread to the pan.
** You can substitute the white bread with slices of baguette/French Bread 

Ayam Goreng Berempah / Spicy Fried Chicken

This post shall kick-start a mini series of recipes in making the well-known national dish, Nasi Lemak (Steamed Coconut Rice with condiments). I’ve been putting on hold in posting up the recipes for the Nasi Lemak, Sambal, KangKung Belacan (Stir-fry Spicy Water Spinach/Convolvulus) and of course Ayam Goreng Berempah/Spicy Fried Chicken only because that I didn’t know where to start or how to post them, whether to squeeze everything in a long blog post or to separate them in parts plus it doesn’t help when I have about 200 recipes YET to be posted.

So today having some free time and of course taking a short break from Project D-Clutter, I decided it’s time to get this long overdue recipes up on my blog. And since I have a few requests for this recipe, I shall start with the Spicy Fried Chicken before moving on to another equally popular dish, Sambal.

You Need

4 chicken drumsticks/pieces
2 cloves garlic (finely crushed)
5 shallots, pounded
1 inch ginger, grated
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, pounded 
1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon coriander seed, pounded
1 tablespoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons cornstarch/all purpose flour
Oil for deep frying  

How To
1. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients including the chicken pieces.
2. Mix well and leave to stand for at least an hour or overnight if you can. I prefer to leave my marinated meat overnight so that the meat can absorb more of the wonderful flavours from the marinate.
3. Heat oil and deep fry for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Make sure you turn them from time to time.
4. Drain the chicken on kitchen paper towels. Serve and enjoy!

Note

You don’t have to use both the spices’ seed and powder , you can use either one whichever available for you. I prefer to use both powder and pounded seeds because I love to bite on the bits of pounded spices and also the crispy parts of the shallots with flour and egg mixture whenever I have my fried chicken.

If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, you can use a blender for the shallots, ginger and grinder for the dry spices.

Next up, recipe for Sambal Ikan Bilis 

Marble Loaf Cake

Last week I promised my little girl that I’ll bake something for her and I did but the Banana Chocolate cake failed miserably that I gave it to the dog, and he didn’t even take a bite! So today, after I sent her to school I went home and looked for an easy recipe from one of my favourite book 'Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today' by Betty Crocker. I usually stock up my pantry with the must-haves or basic ingredients (in this case – flour, butter, caster sugar, vanilla essence, baking powder, cocoa powder) just if I feel like baking or cooking something, I don’t have to drive out just to get the things for a particular dish. Although the baking time is longer than I’ve expected it wasn’t much of a problem as I was also preparing lunch hence I could keep an eye on the cake while cooking.

The cake turned out be really nice and this time, following tips and advices from friends, I placed aluminium foil on top of the cake to prevent it from burning and my cake didn’t crack much so YAY!!   

Adapted from Pound Cake recipe 
(Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today)  

You Need
3 cups all purpose flour *
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt 2 cups caster sugar**
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
5 large eggs
1 cup milk or evaporated milk
 
How To
1. Heat oven to 170 °C. Grease 9 x 5 inch loaf pans with butter, lightly flour.
2. In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, beat sugar, butter, vanilla and eggs with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl occasionally. Beat flour mixture into sugar mixture alternately with milk on low speed, beating just until smooth after each addition. Add cocoa powder to into one bowl of plain mixture, mix well and pour the remaining batter into pan.
3. Spoon alternate spoonfuls of the plain and chocolate mixtures into the lined loaf tin. Use a skewer to swirl through the mixture in the tin to marble it lightly, but don't over-mix it or the marbled effect will be lost. (I was busy making sure my porridge doesn’t boil over the stove that I forgot to swirl the mixture before putting the pan into the oven).
4. Bake for 1 hour, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for 20 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely for 2 hours.

Note
* Don’t use self-rising flour 

** I cut down on the sugar, instead of 21/2 cups of granulated sugar.