Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

I saw a recipe on Woman´s Day about making your own vanilla ice cream.. thank goodness for my instinct, i reduced the amount of condensed milk! Else I´ll have a toothache today!

This is the original link:

http://www.womansday.com/recipefinder/vanilla-ice-cream-recipe-wdy0812

All you need are 3 ingredients... 

2 cups heavy cream

10 oz condensed milk

1 tsp vanilla essence or in my case vanilla bean pods so that i get those lovely black speckles

Add all the ingredients in a mixer bowl and whisk until stiff. Pop it in your freezer and you get vanilla ice cream! Simple and so cost effective!!

Mille Crepe Cake

Before I left for Jakarta 2 weeks back, I attempted at making Mille Crepe Cake... a no-bake cake filled with custard layers... it was a feat alright! It took me 24 hours from making the batter, the filling, letting the batter rest, cooking the crepes, layering it, chilling it and finally after all that I can taste the fruit of my loom!

Firstly you need to make the crepe batter. You have to rest the batter for at least 8 hours or overnight preferably. Resting the batter somehow makes a more pliable and tender batter.

90g butter (melted until it turns into a soft brown colour and set aside)
3 cups milk (heat until steaming not boiling and then set aside to cool)

In a mixer, add the following ingredients and mix on medium speed:-

6 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
a pinch of salt
100g sugar

Slowly add the cooled milk and melted butter into the mixture. Store in a container and chill overnight or for at least 8 hours. Start making the crepes the next day by brushing a little oil and about 1/3 cup of batter each time ( I started with 1/4 cup but it didn´t cover my pan completely). You will get approximately about 20 crepes. Set aside. Some people layer each crepe with parchment paper but mine didn´t stick to one another.

Now... time to make the cream du jour... homemade pastry cream that I had to make doubled the amount because the kids kept coming in and asking if they could ´try´a spoonful! A spoonful ended up being a bowl and next thing I knew my custard cream is gone!

2 cups milk (bring to a simmer)
1 tsp vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean pod (scraped and boil with the milk)

Cool the milk for 10 minutes before adding to the eggs

In a saucepan, whisk the following:-

6 egg yolks
1/2 cup cugar
1/3 cup sifted cornflour

50g butter (soften to add in LATER after the mixture cooled down)

Then whisk in the warm milk vigourously and place pan over low heat and continue whisking until mixture thickens. Remove from heat and cool. Add butter and mix throughly and chill.

2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar

Whisk until stiff peaks and fold into the custard cream. I popped it in and out of the fridge as it was a warm morning and i could feel the custard cream melting. Assemble your cake layer by layer... one layer of crepe, a layer of cream until all is gone... maybe next time i shall make 1.5 times the custard because i like thick layers of cream... thats just me though... once the last layer of crepe is set, i sprinkled some sugar and caramalized it with a torch, piped some cream and strawberries and dust with icing sugar.. voila... bon appetit!

Yangnyeom Tongdak or Korean Spicy Sticky Chicken

I was craving all things Korean lately! I dream of eating ssam with grilled garlic, kimchi and all the variety of banchan and galbi guee .... aarrggghhhhh

So yesterday I felt like having some fried chicken wings and what better way to appease my cravings than to make the sticky spicy and sweet Yangnyeom Tongdak.. like any pre frying mis-en-place.. just season your raw wings / drummets with salt and pepper... this recipe calls for about 1kg of wings.. so if you are frying more, make double batter and sauce...

Once your seasoned chicken is salted and peppered, add the following ingredients onto the chicken and mix with your hand...don´t be afraid to get it dirty.. thats the only way you can get it well coated.

Ingredients:-

1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sweet rice flour (chapssal) or if its hard to find, use plain rice flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
1 egg

Make sure every piece of chicken in well coated and deep fry for 5 minutes, remove and let it rest. Continue frying your other batches. These chicken needs to be fried TWICE!!

Once the earlier batch of chicken has cooled down, refried them until golden brown. The purpose is to ´harden´ the batter so that it is ultra crispy. You may not know this but in Indonesia, most of the fried chicken recipes call for double frying.. sometimes tripled for cripy paru or fried lungs!!

What you can do while waiting for the re-fried chicken to be done is to do the sauce.. it is simple... in case you have no clue what is gochujang, its a spicy fermented chilli paste thats used in kimchi and most banchan (side dishes). Its even used in cooking bibimbap.

4 cloves of garlic (minced)
1/3 cup tomato ketchup
1/3 cup corn syrup
1/4 cup gochujang (hot pepper paste)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Sesame seeds
Oil

Sautee the minced garlic in oil, ad once golden, add in the ketchup, syrup, gochujang and vinegar. Simmer until thick and bubbly. Add in your twice fried chicken and coat it with the sauce. Sprinkle sesame seeds and enjoy while its hot.. You can eat it as a side dish or for me, hot steaming rice, some kimchi is enjoy to make me happy... 맛있게 드세요 ..mas-issge deuseyo !!

Cheesy Turkey Ham Soft Rolls

These are supposed to be a recipe for just simple plain soft rolls but since the kids love cheese and turkey ham, i stuffed the middle with it.. of course the options are endless, hotdogs, tuna, cheese with sugar ...

Ingredients are :-

1 cup warm water
1/3 cup milk powder

Mix warm water with milk powder in a mixing bowl.

1 packet of instant yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter (softened)
1 egg (small)
1 cup flour

Add the yeast in the warm milk , stir and add the rest of the ingredients and knead on low speed using a dough hook for about 2 minutes.

1 cup flour - 1.5 cup flour

Fillings - slices of turkey ham and shredded cheddar or mozzarella 

Add another 1 cup flour  and knead with the dough hook for another 5 minutes. If the dough is still wet, add the balance flour bit by bit but not more than that half cup.

Pull out the dough hook and grease the sides of the bowl with oil so that it doesn´t stick when the dough rises. Cover and let it rise until dough is doubled.

Once dough has risen, dust your working area with flour and punch down the dough and roll out your dough into a circle. If you have a pizza cutter, cut the dough into even slices.

Take each slice of dough, add the ham and cheese and roll inwards starting from the edge to the pointy part of the triangle.

don´t worry if you triangles aren´t perfect... mine wasn´t ! ha ha Place them on greased tray or you could use parchment paper.. let it rise for another 30 minutes (i only let it rise for another 10 minutes because it was a hot day yesterday!) and bake in the oven for 15 minutes on 170 degrees .Once the top is golden brown, remove from the oven and glaze it with melted butter.