No-Frills Recipes ... cooking, baking & excerpts on travel

One of the best ways to make use of leftover egg whites is to make Almond Bread.  I really like to munch on this crispy and nutty 'bread' and it's wonderful as a snack or to temporarily ease hunger pangs.  This recipe is adapted from my 'Almond Bread' post  and I just reduced the amount of nuts and improvised with a mixture of dried kiwi and pineapple to enhance the taste and give these crispies more colour.

This is the first time that I'm using sweet potatoes in a curry and was very eager to see how this would fare.  The curry turned out to be rich, not heavy with a slight sweet, creamy onion sauce that just melts in your mouth and most important, it was well received by my family members.

O smanthus  aka 'Gui Hua' are tiny golden yellow flowers that impart a pleasant and sweet smelling fragrance which can be detected from afar.  My first encounter with this flower was during my trip to Hangzhou, China.  Our tour group was taken to some historical museum and I was standing under a tree full of beautiful golden little flowers which were very fragrant.   Out of curiosity, I enquired our tour guide and was told that, that was a "Gui-Hua' tree  which also brought to my mind the popular 'Gui Hua Gao' that was often mentioned as one of the sweet delicacies that only the ancient Chinese emperors and their royalties could enjoy. Other than tossing some dried Osmanthus into my Pu-Er tea I was looking for some other ways to make use of these tiny weeny flowers.   What next, but to surf the net to find out.  I  was glad that I stumbled  upon  Vivian Pang's   post on  Brown sugar 'Gui Hua' chiffon cake....

H erbal Jelly ~ Gui Ling Ga o literally translated means 'Tortoise Jelly' is one of my family's favourite desserts.  It's much more economical to prepare this at home for you'll need to fork out between Rm 9 to Rm 11 for a bowl of this cooling dessert in any of those herbal tea outlets.  This soothing jelly, served chilled, is supposed to be able to help reduce our body heat, helps to get rid of toxins and is believed to be good for the skin thus culminating a healthier complexion.

This recipe was taken from Wen's Delight , Mini Marble Mocha Cake   who had modified the recipe from Sonia's Marble chocolate cupcakes post.  I tweaked it a bit by adding green tea powder, reduced the chocolate powder as I was afraid that the amount would make the cake bitter.  Also added more milk to the chocolate mixture as I found the consistency a bit stiff. The result? Moist and flavourful mini loaves with a wonderful combination of greentea and chocolate flavour.  

I'm sure that many of you food lovers have heared of Cola chicken wings which as the name implies, has coca cola in those wings.  But I've cooked mine with Sarsi, with leftover sarsi from  Sarsi Bundt cake  and hence 'Sarsi chicken wings' came into being.   Don't misjudge these skinny undernourished looking wings, they're free range chicken wings that's why.  These are more lean but they're tasty, finger-licking good and can be served as finger food or as a snack.

I was inspired by Ann to attempt this Italian Apple Cake as I was hooked when I saw the layers of apple in her cupcakes.  I didn't make cupcakes though but pour all the batter into a springform pan to make a whole cake instead.  I waited eagerly for the cake to cool before cutting it up to see how the apples will appear and was delighted with the result.  Thanks for sharing this recipe, Ann.

This steamed chicken dish is very easy and quick to prepare and minimum effort is needed to get this served on the dining table.  For those who have no inkling of what 'foo yue' is ..... it's fermented beancurd or sometimes people refer to it as Chinese cheese.   It has a pungent aroma and cheesy flavour.  Fermented beancurd comes in two colours, red and white.   The former is  usually cooked with meat while the latter is normally used to flavour vegetable dishes.