SHF #61: Sweet Comforts - Round Up

The recently concluded Sugar High Friday hosted by Kate of A Merrier World have been compiled and rounded up. Check Kate's round up here on the desserts that you turn to for comfort.

I've submitted an Apple and Persimmon Crumble for this event.

SHF #61: Sweet Comforts - Apple and Persimmon Crumble

Geezz, I can't believe it that the last time I participated in Sugar High Fridays was in July 2007... wow that's so long ago sighh 2.5 years! That was SHF#33 and now it has reaches #61! Anyway, it's time to pick up the pieces. This round is hosted by Kate of A Merrier World. This round she picked desserts that you turn to for comfort.

For us in Malaysia, we're so blessed with so many local sweet desserts that we can turn to. From ice cold cendol, air batu campur, the various kuih-muih, tong shui (sweet soups), gulab jamun, kulfi and so forth; well on top of other foreign desserts that are available. We're never short of them! However, for comfort sweet... nothing beat a warm apple crumble topped with cold cold vanilla ice-cream! As the vanilla ice-cream melts and meld into the crispy crumble and soft fruits... it's just soooo Heavenly!



Since persimmon is abundant at the moment, I added some to my apple crumble, hence making it a Apple and Persimmon Crumble. Making a crumble is the simplest and the recipe... well just throw in what you have or fancy as one does not need to follow the recipe. I've based the crumble recipe on Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2's Apple and Blueberry Crumble. The fillings were roughly based on her Apple Pie recipe.

Apple and Persimmon Crumble

Crumble:
75g butter, soften
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
handful of chopped walnuts

Place all ingredients except walnuts in a bowl and mix to combine.

Fillings:

(A)
3 medium sized persimmon - skinned, deseed and slice into thin wedges

(B)
7 apples - skinned and slice, Granny Smith would be the best since I've a lot of Fuji apples, I've used those
1 tbsp water
1/3 cup sugar, I've used brown
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp ground cinnamon, use less if you're not a fan

To make the filling, place the apples and water in a pan over medium heat. Cover and simmer, shaking the pan occasionally, for 5 minutes or until just tender. Drain and cool completely. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon.

Once cool, add in the persimmon and mix thoroughly. Place in heatproof dish.

To assemble, place the crumble all over the apple and persimmon. Bake in preheated over at 180C until the crumble became dark golden and crisp which is about 30 - 45 mins (recipe mentioned 55 mins but I think it's a tad too long) depending on your oven.

I served here with my homemade Lemon and Passionfruit Gelato.



Thanks Kate for hosting!


Check out my previous entries:
Sugar High Fridays #11 - Coffee
SHF#12: Cooking up Custard
SHF#13: The Dark Side
SHF#15: Sugar Low Friday - Banana Muffins
Sugar High Friday: Ginger it Up!
IMBB27 + SHF20 = The Joy of Soy
SHF#31: Neutral Territory - Longan Royale
SHF#33: Tropical Paradise - Mango & Nata De Coco Konnyaku Jelly

Sugar High Friday #33: Tropical Paradise Round Up

Mary of alpineberry, the host if this round of Sugar High Friday had posted up her round up of this event. Do check out all the 41 delicious tropical paradise recipes!!!

I've submitted a Mango & Nata De Coco Konnyaku Jelly for this event.

Technorati Tags: sugar high friday + shf

SHF#33: Tropical Paradise - Mango & Nata De Coco Konnyaku Jelly

This round of Sugar High Friday is hosted by Mary of alpineberry with the theme Tropical Paradise. It will be totally be unforgiven if I did not enter this round of SHF since the country I'm staying in, Malaysia, is practically a tropical paradise the whole year round.

Bearing in mind with the heat at this time of the year, I decided to make some konnyaku jelly with some cubed mangoes, nata de coco that came in a can with mango juice.

Easy peasy with a pack of konnyaku jelly powder (I used Jim Willie's brand) and the suggested amount of sugar on the packet. Mix them well together and set aside.

I've some cubed mangoes and drained nata de coco on hand. Place these into individual jelly moulds.

The nata de coco that I've gotten came with mango juice. So I added some water to it until the amount specified on the packet. You can use more mango juice if you want but make sure you cut down the amount of sugar used. Let it come to a boil in a pan and lower down the heat. Slowly add in the jelly powder and sugar mixture by the tablespoon and stir after each addition. Once done, quickly spoon them into the prepared jelly moulds. You'll need to work fast here as the konnyaku jelly sets pretty quickly.

Let them cool down before refrigerate them. To serve, just use a sharp knife and give it a gentle slide on the side to remove them from the moulds.

And there you go, a tropical mango and nata de coco konnyaku jelly for this round of Sugar High Friday. Thanks Mary for being a wonder host. Looking forward to the round up.

Technorati Tags: Sugar High Friday + shf

SHF#31: Neutral Territory - Longan Royale

I just realised I have not participate in any of the monthly cooking events since last June! It's time I get my lazy bones cracking again... I saw this month's Sugar High Friday event on Is My Blog Burning. This month's theme is pretty unique, in terms that participants need to create desserts in shades of white! This round is hosted by Tara of Seven Spoons who is a first timer in hosting such events. Do check out her blog for the round up on 25 May 2007.

Actually participating in this event is just an excuse to recreate the Mango Royale I made recently. I just couldn't get enough of this dessert! Enough said but then I can't get white coloured mangoes, can I? The next best option - strawberries, ain't white either! Sighhh... so I checked my larder inside out and found a couple of canned longan in syrup. Looking at the longan on the label gave me an idea to try out this dessert since the fruit came within the shade of white.

Tweaking the recipe posted by Sassy, I've replaced the mango with drained canned longan and used Tiger brand plain biscuit instead of digestive biscuits. I kinda like the milky flavour of this biscuit which worked well for this recipe.

Here's the result of my creation... Longan Royale, topped with more drained longan.



Tasted just as good as Mango Royale but I think mango version is still the best! Do let the dessert defrost a bit otherwise the frozen longan can be a bit chewy. Thanks Tara for hosting this round of Sugar High Friday!

Mango Royale

Ingredients :
1 k. of fresh ripe Philippine mangoes
1-100 ml. can of sweetened condensed milk
2-250 g. packs of all-purpose cream
10-15 graham crackers (depending on the size of your container)

Cooking procedure :

I used two medium-sized rectangular plastic freezer containers for my mango royale.

Cut the both sides of the mangoes down the middle. You won’t be using the little meat attached to the seeds (we ate them while we were making the dessert). Take each mango half and, using a big spoon, scoop out the meat from the skin.

Line the container with whole graham crackers. Cut a few pieces of crackers, if necessary to fit along the sides. Repeat with another layer. Top with mango halves.

With a wire whisk, blend together the cream and sweetened condensed milk. Pour over the strawberry-topped crackers. Cover tightly and freeze for at least two hours or until firm.

Ref: Connie Veneracion (Sassy), Mango Royale, Pinoycook.net

Technorati Tags: sugar high friday + dessert

IMBB27 + SHF20 = The Joy of Soy

Yippeeee two-in-one-event again... saves a lot of time. Thanks Reid for being so thoughtful ahahaha. This round of Is My Blog Burning? and Sugar High Fridays is hosted by non other than Reid of 'Ono Kine Grindz. It's ingenious to match both events with the theme of soy. Soy is so versatile that it can be used for savoury or sweet dishes. It is so commonly used in Chinese cooking ranging from soy sauce, soy milk, beancurd in all sorts of types, bean sauces etc.

Actually my post stemmed from my previous Sugar High Friday: Ginger it Up! entry where I ranted that I've tried unsuccessfully to make steamed ginger-flavoured milk curd. Mike of Foodcrazee sent me a recipe he had gotten from Stefanie in Jamie Oliver's forum shortly after that and I managed to curd the milk successfully on my first attempt. I did not manage to post up the entry until opportunity came when I saw IMBB27 + SHF20 = The Joy of Soy announcement on 'Ono Kine Grindz a few days back. Thank you so much Mike & Stefanie for sharing the recipe.

Fresh Milk Curd is a popular dessert found in Hong Kong and some parts of China and having tasted them in Hong Kong made me craves for them but sadly I can't seems to find one that tasted as good as those in Hong Kong. Hence my many attempts to recreate the curd came about. Somehow the different variation that I've tried did not manage to curd until I tried this one. This recipe called for the use of soy milk instead of milk, maybe my next attempt I'll try to use fresh milk instead. I would also need to tweak the recipe by adding more rock sugar and ginger juice. The curd was light and silky with a subtle hint of ginger almost like tau foo far (soy milk curd served with syrup. Hubby gave thumbs up.

Here's Stefanie's recipe:

Fresh Milk Curd with Ginger

3 cups fresh unsweetened soy milk
2 large, fresh eggs
1 tbsp ginger juice (I used young ginger)
Seeds of half a vanilla
pod or 1/2 tsp good quality vanilla extract
3 pandan leaves, knotted (I’ve omitted this)
1/4 to 1/3 cup crushed rock sugar

Warm milk up in a pan with vanilla, pandan leaves and sugar. Leave to steep for 1 to 2 hours. Remove leaves, whisk in rest of ingredients and strain into ramekins. Steam over very low heat for 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the size of your container. Don't be impatient, and turn up the heat, it will result in a tough exterior.

Thanks Reid for taking the trouble to host both events.

Technorati Tags: IMBB27 + SHF20 + ginger + soy milk

Sugar High Friday: Ginger it Up!

This month's installment of Sugar High Friday (SHF) is hosted by Ruth of Once Upon A Feast - Every Kitchen Tells Its Stories. She had cleverly picked ginger to be included in our creation. I've thought of making steamed ginger-flavoured milk curd but I was still unsucessful after many cartons of milk wasted to perfect the recipe some time back. We had to literally drink up the ginger-flavoured milk concoction instead. It tasted all right but after many cartons I guess enough is enough. I could have make a sweet potatoes in ginger syrup but nahh it's way too simple.

I searched through the net for some inspiration and this came to me... Ginger-flavoured Lychee Sorbet. Hmmmm nyaammm nyaaammmm... seems pretty easy to fit into my schedule plus I have many cans of lychees in my larder given to me during Chinese New Year. I don't really like lychees so what better way than to turn them into another form.

All I did was placed all the lychees into a container and poured some of its syrup from the can. Grated some ginger (amount according to your liking) and squeezed the juice into the lychees. Then I used my hand-held blender to whizz them up. Cover and place in the freezer. Once it's frozen, I break the ice up and whizz it with the hand-held blender. For finer ice, freeze it up and whizz it again. Serve with some lychees on top. As easy as that.

Sorry for the lousy photo quality. It's hard to photograph whitish stuff. For the original recipe, check it out at Kuali. I kinda like the subtle hint of ginger in this sorbet which is not too sweet. Great for a person who doesn't really like ginger nor lychees hahaha...

Thanks Ruth for being such a wonderful host.

Technorati Tags: SHF + ginger + sorbet

SHF#15: Sugar Low Friday

This round of Sugar (not) High Friday is hosted by Sam of Becks & Posh. Sam had came out with this theme after toothing all the sweet stuff during Christmas. The challenge this time is not to use any processed sugar for desserts. Substitutes for sugar such as honey, maple syrups, fruit syrups etc are welcomed.

I wasn't really sure if I could have make it this round since I have been super busy with work and all the running around to shop and get things done for Chinese New Year celebration. Anyway, during my free time, I browsed thru my cookbooks and I had a tall time finding one dessert that do not use any processed sugar at all! Actually I was toying around about using gula melaka (palm sugar) but I couldn't find anything easy and simple for me to squeezed into my busy schedule. I nearly gave up until I saw a really easy peasy recipe for Banana Muffins in Nigella Lawson's How o Be A Domestic Goddess. Best of all, this recipe uses NO sugar at all. Wooohooo... but then again can muffins be considered as dessert? Heck, never mind, this is sweet ain't it?

In between my baking frenzy of cookies and cakes, I made up a batch of these muffins. It's really really simple, just melt the butter, honey and vanilla essence. Mixed in mashed bananas before pouring into flour, baking powder, bicarbonate soda and cinnamon powder. Stir gently and pour into muffin tray lined with paper cups. Bake in the oven and voila... a healthy no-sugar version! I won't print the recipe but you can get it from HERE.

The recipe called for 2 bananas, however, I wasn't sure how much exactly to put in since the bananas found in Kuala Lumpur are usually way smaller in size as compared to the Western countries. So I just guesstimated and oh boy... BIG mistake... too much and the wet mixture was simply not enough to bind the dry mixture. I had to rescue the mixture by adding more honey. Luckily I've used natural (unprocessed) honey which is not too sweet, otherwise I would have ended up with sickly sweet muffins.

Darn, I found out in Chubby Hubby that the recipes in this book are often inaccurate. His wife made a batch of this and he found them a bit bland. As for my verdict, I think the recipe ought to be refined further to achieve the right consistency. Due to my little disaster, the muffins came out slightly on the dry side. Taste wise they were ok especially when more sweet bananas are added just have to make sure to use more butter and honey.

Thank you Sam, once again for hosting SHF.

Tagged with: SHF # 15 + Low Sugar

Round Up: IMBB#21/SHF#14: Cookie Swap

UPDATED 5th December 2005

Jennifer had posted the first half of the cookie swap round up. Head on to The Domestic Goddess for Part One. Meanwhile we'll have to wait for Alberto to post up Part Two by tomorrow.

Head on to Alberto's Part Two of the cookie swap round up for more cookies treats! Altogether there were hundreds fo cookie recipes to be recreated for this festive season. Remember to cast the vote for 3 of your fave cookies.



Click here for the recipe of my Crunchy Jumbo Snickers Cookies and please go check out all the yummilicious cookies and start casting your votes!

IMBB#21/SHF#14: Cookie Swap

I'm so glad that this month's Is My Blog Burning and Sugar High Friday are having a joint event - a virtual cookie swap! A brilliant idea by Alberto (originator of IMBB) and Jennifer (originator of SHF) . My schedule is pretty packed but luckily I managed to chance upon a very easy to bake cookie recipe on an old copy of Home Cooking magazine which I'm gonna share here. It took me about an hour to get everything done, including the washing up.

The recipe called for 4 bars of Snickers where I've used 2 bars each of peanut and almond. I've also cut down on the sugar. I've about 100g of plain flour left, so I substituted the rest with self raising flour and cut the baking powder to 1 tsp instead. The following is the original recipe...

Crunchy Jumbo Snickers Cookies

Ingredients:
4 Snickers chocolate
bars
125g caster sugar
140g butter
185 plain flour
2 tsp baking
powder
100g quick cooking oats

Method:
Preheat oven to 170C and grease a large cookie tray.

Sift flour together with baking powder and add in oats into mixing bowl.

Combine butter, sugar and Snickers bar in a pan and stir over medium fire until melted. Add to flour mixture and stir to combine. Divide mixture to 12 portions and arrange on prepared tray.

Bake for 15-18 minutes. Cool on tray before removing.

Notes: Have to work fast to assemble the dough onto the cookie tray else they all crumbled up and difficult to be shaped into a solid chunk. I suspect it's due to the high sugar and caramel content of the Snickers and also maybe because of this, the cookies turned rock hard the next day but it was so crunchy on the same day they were baked. They're still edible though and my mom enjoyed the bite. Even my boiboi likes it a lot. I've no idea why everyday on the dot at 7.00pm he would go near where my mom kept her cookie jars and request for some of those cookies. This happened everyday for the past 3 days!!!! Strange eh??? Okie, maybe reheating them in the oven before eating might be able to crunch it up a little. The texture is like the Chinese biscuit - Hup Tou Sou (walnut biscuit).

Even though I've cut down the sugar content, they're still pretty sweet, so I'll need to cut down further which I forgot how much, oh dear hehehe. Do adhere to the "Cool on tray before removing" bit as the cookies were kinda soft when they were out of the oven but turned solid after cooling down. Ohhh... they smelt so nice... so hard to resist a bite during cooling. Tasted fantabulous... like Snickers hehehe minus the sticky caramel. The next round, I'm gonna cut down the oats and add in some chopped nuts for more bites. The nuts from the bars are simply not enough.

I was supposed to bake another type of cookies I sampled at Kakak's open house recently, Arab Biscuits. I've all the ingredients but I have finished up the flour baking this batch of cookies plus I'm a little busy now. Will bake them later. It's something like ghee/sugee biscuits. My boiboi popped one whole biscuits into his mouth!!!

Thank you Alberto and Jennifer for the joint effort in holding this cookie swap. Oh yeah thanks to Jennifer too, she have 12 copies of Cookies Sutra to be given away. Apparently there is a contest for the most number of votes received. All you (participants and non-participants) have to do is read through the round-ups which I'll link up later, then choose your top three favorites and email Alberto/Jennifer before 8th December quoting the recipe and which blog it appeared on. The top twelve most selected entrants will get a copy of the book each. So hurry and submit your fave cookies recipe!!!

SHF#13 & IMBB#20 Round Ups

Kelli of LOVESCOOL hosted SHF#13: The Dark Side and here's the round up to this event.

Kitchen Chick hosted IMBB#20: Has my blog fallen? and she have separated the round ups into two - savoury and sweet.

Check them all out!!! Thanks to both our lovely hosts.

For this month, it's going to be extra special. SHF and IMBB will be jointly hosted by the originator of both events, Jennifer and Alberto. We're going to do a virtual cookie swap! Yay, how appropriate with Christmas and Chinese New Year coming soon in the next few months.

The theme is "Cookie Swap" and the weekend for this joint IMBB-SHF is Friday 25th – Sunday 27th November. It's time to heat up the oven for some baking!

SHF#13: The Dark Side

This month's Sugar High Friday is the 13th installment which is hosted by Kelli of LOVESCOOL. Since this is the first anniversary edition, Kelli had picked dark chocolate as the theme in contrast with the first edition where white chocolate was the theme. SHF has gone a long way since Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess started it. Check out what cooked up the past one year here.

Actually I was like hesitating in participating cos I've hardly have any time to cook up anything these days. What more when my boiboi was sick the whole of last week. So that explained why there are more outside food review recently hehehe... Anyway, I found a simple (yeah "simple" is my middle name kekeke and "easy peasy" is my other nickname) recipe in about.com where I can cheat my way out.

I've made Pain au Chocolat, apparently a French bakery favourite. It's merely chocolate wrapped in puff pastry. Got the recipe here by Debra F.Weber but I did it according to my way. Of course I've used frozen puff pastry, otherwise there won't be any entry by me. Substituted the chocolates with dark ones. Cut up dark chocolates into pieces and rolled out pastry. Cut the pastry where the height was enough to cover the chocolate pieces. Placed one piece of chocolate on the edge of pastry and rolled up tightly, completely enclosing the chocolate piece.

Placed the rolls on a baking sheet, seam side down. This is very important cos I didn't really heed this and some of the pastry puffed up on the side. Not a very pleasant sight okay but still tasted the same plus guinea pig didn't complain. Brushed with egg wash and sprinkle with some sugar. Baked in pre-heated oven until golden brown.

Yeah it was that easy. Thanks Kelli for hosting.

SHF#12: Cooking up Custard

Time flies and we're moving into the next installment of Sugar High Fridays (SHF). This round, the host, Elise of Simply Recipe have picked Cooking up Custard as the theme. Okay, initially I thought I would be having a tough time preparing something for this event as I'm pretty occupied of late. Anyway, I managed to come across a super duper easy recipe on this theme. Well as usual I did something Asian instead, Thai to be specific. It's usually available for dessert in Thai restaurants.

So what's cooking???

Tadaaa...


So what's cooking inside the pumpkin eh?? It's Pumpkin Custard, a popular Thai dessert. I was going through my recipes and chanced upon this easy peasy custard recipe. It's really so easy that I'm typing in the ingredients off my head now. Here's the recipe:

Pumpkin Custard

about 1 kg whole pumpkin
6 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup coconut cream (I managed to squeezed out 3/4 cup from one grated coconut, otherwise substitute with those canned ones, pati santan in Malay)
100g brown sugar [also known as red sugar (gula merah in Malay) not the typical brown sugar for baking, adjust according to your taste]

Cut off the pumpkin top (the part with the stem) and retain it as a lid but do not cut too big an opening. Scoop out all the seeds and pulp, leaving a thick layer of flesh inside. Wash and rinse, then pat dry the inside.

Beat eggs, salt, coconut cream and sugar together with a hand whisk. As the brown/red sugar are pretty lumpy, strain and pour the mixture into the pumpkin. Cover it with the cut-out lid.

Place the pumpkin in a steamer and steam for 30 to 40 minutes or until custard is firm and pumpkin is tender. Test with a skewer, then cool and put in the refrigerator to chill overnight. Remove and cut into thick wedges and serve.

Note: I think I've over steamed the pumpkin hence the pockmarks on the custard plus the pumpkin is kinda too soft but luckily it wasn't mushy. As I was busying feeding my boiboi his lunch I did not checked the pumpkin when it reaches 30 minutes of steaming. I left it till way past 45 minutes. The top portion that looked lighter in colour is slightly harder in texture than the bottom portion.

Overall, it tasted good and even my fussy guinea pig gave it a thumb up. I brought some to my office and my colleagues gave me unbelievable looks when I passed them the sliced Pumpkin Custard. They didn't believed that I actually made it myself thinking it's a complicated recipe hahaha... they too were overwhelmed by it. One of them, a guy whom I never knew can cook promised to make one for us soon. We shall wait then...

Thanks Elise for hosting this round of SHF. Can't wait for the round up and see what the rest of the world have cooked up.

UPDATED 19th September 2005: The efficient Elise got her round up posted. 70 entries for this 1st Anniversary version!

Announcing the IMBB Launch Cook-off and SHF#12

We've just barely submited our blog for IMBB#18 and SHF#11, and here we are receiving announcement for the next installment hahaha... wooohooo so many events in fact but I doubt I'll have much time this month for any submission. Will only try if I've some time.

Check out Is My Blog Burning (IMBB) new look. It was officially launched today and they're having a launch party. In celebration of the launch, BEER is picked to be included in the recipe or as long as beer is involved hahaha even as a drink to accompany your dish. Quick! Whip up your pots and pans and cook it out. Don't forget your beer and submit your entry by 2nd September, YES!!! Hurry!

I won't be participating this round, no access to my kitchen as I'm at my parents' place.

Elise of Simply Recipe had announced this month's Sugar High Fridays (SHF). She had picked Cooking up Custard as the theme. Great...!!! Flavours magazine had just featured on custards recently. (Silly me, it was on caramel not custard, sorry hahaha getting old.) Time to whipped out those yummilicious custard recipes. Closing date is 16th September 2005.

Sighhh... I doubt I could make it for this event too... but I'll try. Darn!

SHF#11 Roundup - A handful (or two) of coffee beans

Ronald of lovesicily have posted the roundup on the recent Sugar High Fridays #11 - Coffee. 48 entries altogether, am certainly still on an all time high...

Thanks Ronald for taking time to host this installment. Looking forward to the next one...

Sugar High Fridays #11 - Coffee

This is my first time participating in Sugar High Fridays (SHF) which was started by Jennifer of Domestic Goddess. This month will be the 11th installment of SHF... and the host this round is Ronald of lovesicily who incidently is the creator of Is My Blog Burning (IMBB) and Does My Blog Look Good in This? (DMBLGiT?) . He had picked Coffee as this month's theme. Whoa, first we have Tea for this month's IMBB and now we have Coffee, hehehe... so is chocolate next???

Sighhhh did you know that I can't drink coffee... since 1996. Prior to this I could but just suddenly, I can't. Don't ask me why... I won't be able to answer that. After drinking a cup of coffee, my stomach will churn like a front loading washing machine. Next, I feel dizzy and on a high as if I've downed THREE Long Island Tea! So cheap huh to get me high? Just one cup can cause such ruckus in my body. Till now, I've never dared drinking a cup but sometimes I'll steal some sips hehehe... Did you know that there isn't any designer coffee then in 1996, I missed out on all those delicious and expensive coffee concoction but I've no regret hehehe cos I still get free smell each time I drop by those outlets.

All right, for this SHF, I'm gonna submit this Coffee Ice, a recipe I found in a very old copy of HerWorld (a popular ladies magazine in Malaysia/Singapore). As I was stirring and mixing whilst checking the recipe out... I find it kinda boring, just coffee, milk and sugar. The next thing I knew, I grabbed hold of my stool and climbed up my kitchen shelf to reach for the bottle of Kahlua ahaks *super sized grin*

In went the Kahlua one tablespoon and two and three... tasting the liquid with each addition. I stopped at the sixth but feel free to add more if you like more uuummmpphhhh!!! By then I was already on a sugar high as I could not resist drowning the mixture by the teaspoon.

I was so worried the mixture won't get into the freezer hahaha so in went the whole container. I check on it after a few hours and stir the mixture up. Placed the container back into the freezer whilst I licked the spoon clean. I left it over night before I whizz the frozen mixture with my handheld blender. I popped it back into the freezer as it seems to be slightly on the soft side. Repeated a few times till the mixture is fine.

And here it is... served with some Kahlua over it. It tasted superb, yes, I ate the whole cup... no dizziness, no stomach churning... phew... but later that afternoon, I had a mild headache and I had the mother of all headaches later that night. Well, I've no idea whether it's caused by this delicious ice or because of the hot hot weather (it's so hot that the ice melted quickly in the cup, hence, the next round I freeze the cup before serving which did the trick) in KL but what the heck... I'm gonna eat more of this!



"Spiked" Coffee Ice

2 tbsp instant coffee granules
100ml hot water
5tbsp castor sugar (more or less according to taste)
500ml fresh or UHT milk
6 tbsp Kahlua (optional, more or less according to taste)

Dissolve coffee in hot water and stir in sugar. In a container with cover, combine coffee mixture with milk. Pour in the Kahlua and stir to mix. Place inside the freezer until frozen to a slush. Spoon coffee slush into a blender and whizz to break up the ciy mixture. Alternatively, my lazy way was whizz with my hand-held blender, muahaha, this thingy is a very handy gadget. Pour mixture back to container and freeze for another hour or more. Repeat process several times until a finely textured ice is achieved.