doooo-nuts

Man, has it been forever since I was here? I do apologise, because my sister (whose camera I used to take food pictures) started loading the pics onto her computer, which I can't access from here. I'm now using my dad's digital camera, but I'm not complaining.

Short post today, because I really shouldn't be online at all, and should be studying for exams next week. But I think this deserves a post. =)

My mother made doughnuts today; those cinnamon and sugar coated, deep-fried beauties. They came out amazingly soft, and crunchy and fluffy and indescribably fantastic freshly made. I seriously recommend everyone to go home and make some right now. You'll be doing yourself a favour, I promise you.

 These are for the kids at my training today. The glace is just some chocolate spread, not Nutella though.

The recipe for these lovelies comes from Tandaco Dry Yeast booklet, and it's proven to have quite a few good recipes to try.

Doughnuts
Makes 20.

Ingredients:
2 sachets (14g) Tandaco Dry Yeast
4 C plain flour
2 tsp salt
1/4 C sugar
1 1/3 C warm milk
90g melted butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
oil for frying

Method:
1. Mix dry ingredients including yeast in a large bowl. Add milk, butter and egg. Mix well to form a soft dough. Knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.
2. Place dough in a greased bowl. Cover and leave in a warm place to rise until double in volume. Approx 40-45 mins.
3. Knock down the dough (punch fist once into the centre). Knead for 1 minute. Rest dough for 5 minutes.
4. Roll dough to 5mm thickness. Cut circles with an 8cm round cutter and remove centres with a 4cm round cutter. the centers can be kneaded together and rolled out again. Place circles on floured baking trays. Leave in a warm place to rise for 20-25 mins.
5. Deep fry at 190 C for 1-2 minutes on each side until golden.
6. Toss in cinnamon sugar (made of 1/2 C castor sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon). Allow to cool.

I know the whole process seems quite long and tedious, but my mother was done with it in about 4 hours. Try it and you won't regret it!

Northbridge Bakery Tour

There is a place in the city which I believe all cities have; an area populated mainly by Asians. I tend to go there quite often, considering how I am Chinese, but only to hang out with friends and get bubble tea (aka. super asian drinks). However I disregarded the fact that Northbridge also held lots of small shops selling oriental style cakes, buns and desserts, and before that day I had been to lazy to investigate. How wrong was I.

Only when my sister's friend from Brisbane came over for a long awaited visit did my sister and I get up off our computer chairs and take her to the city. She also had a soft spot for asian sweets so that is where we took her. See, it's not only me who is obsessed with this stuff, right?

I will try remember all the places we went to in order, which began with a visit to Regent Cakes.

This was a sneaky picture I took of the bread and bun display they had. Considering how I didn't feel any confused looks in my direction, I would think that they were used to fanatic food bloggers coming to their store. I've yet to try all the buns from this shop but I'm sure I will if I keep coming back at this rate. This time I didn't buy anything but our Brisbane friend bought one of the lovely cake slices on display at the counter. 

Mmm... you're pretty... <3

After walking a bit more we went to find Corica Pastries but it was closed, typical of when we go there. Nevertheless they have the most amazing apple strudel... my mother used to bring it back from work and we'd all feast on large slices of it.

For a treat we took said friend to Icey Ice where they sell the smoothest, fluffiest snowy ice desserts. You'd think that eating shaved ice was boring, but in fact I find the process of eating almost as fun as the consuming part. 

 

Here we have strawberry at the back, milk with chocolate sauce and green tea at the front. Our friend was hooked at the first mouthful and constantly raved about it our entire trip. The next day we succumbed to temptation and visited again. :)

After the little break we went to Esther's Cake Shop and drooled looked at the selection of breads and cakes. 

 

 

Is that actually all covered in mango...? *__*

Getting a bit peckish again (which is completely inevitable on a food tour) we went into another bakery along the same street as Esther's (by the way, all the these bakeries are around the same area, since we walked all the way up the road to each one). Stupidly I'd forgotten to note the name of the shop, probably because I was staring at the cakes in the display again. We all sat down and ate the cakes our friend and I bought.

Oh no the name has deserted me again... I think it was a strawberry cheesecake of some sort? This one was mine and it was lovely, with the cheesecake complimenting the sweet strawberry jam swirls nicely.

This was our friend's, and from the look on her face I'd say she enjoyed it too, except that it was a little too sweet for her taste. 

After our afternoon tea we continued walking through Northbridge until it was about time for dinner. Since we were already in the city we decided to dine at a popular Korean place, Took Begi Restaurant. Unfortunately it ended up being more popular than we first anticipated and we had to wait outside for a while. When we got a seat it was at the window, which allowed the people waiting in line to stare in at our meal and press their faces so close to the glass that it was an invasion of personal space. But nonetheless the food was great, and that was what really mattered anyway.

 

  

This was my sister's meal, which was half-frozen noodles in soup. I kept staring at it the entire time, but she reassured me that it was delicious. I guess I'll have to trust her on that because it certainly looks interesting. 

The three of us returned home exhausted and very well fed from a day surrounded by food. I'd suggest to anyone who's maybe in the neighborhood or is deciding to come down to Perth (the isolated city) to visit these places and more. And if anyone has any information on the bakeries or products that I didn't reference please inform me, thanks. :)

Mini food tour of Vancouver and Hong Kong

Well on my holiday my sister and I racked up approximately 1200 photos, and a significant number of them were involving food. But you'd be bored if I showed all of them would you? We were fascinated by the different vegetables and products that we went a bit crazy remembering them. The people at Save on Food must have thought the worst :).

I have several pictures that I can display, and more will go up when I find where I saved the other ones. First off, my mother, sister and I traveled to Hong Kong as a stopover flight to Canada. We could only stay there 2 1/2 days, so we had to pack every bit of excitement into them. And I think we succeeded, considering how we were so exhausted that I actually managed to fall asleep on the flight in Vancouver. While in Asia we saw many convenient bread and cake stores; this was the first I saw and I just had to go in and buy browse. :)

The shops all had beautiful peach cakes on sale. :)

We walked past countless markets and street shops; selling almost everything you could think of. This sight was one that we became well accustomed to by the end of the three days.

We went to a fancy-looking restaurant and were very surprised to find everything very affordable. The food was yummy too~

The appetizing entree.

My choice - Thai Style Pork Neck Fried Rice, 58 HK.

My sister's choice - Singapore Shred Chicken Laksa with Thai Noodle, 58 HK.

And my mum's dish - Boneless Haianese (excuse the incorrect spelling) Chicken with Lemongrass Rice, 68 HK.

Now onto Vancouver, which I stayed at for nearly a month with my father. Nothing much to report about that, but it was a good holiday and I liked Canada.

Of course, my family being asian meant that we'd search for good asian ingredients at Chinatown. Gosh, it felt like we were back in Hong Kong!

Is that a...yes it is, as my sister and I were horrified to discover.

Okay, how about something nicer?

Much better.

This delectable place is the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory somewhere in the city of Vancouver. I was dying to buy one, even though I don't like toffee apples.

Cutie.  :3

For the few days of Christmas we went to the beautiful snowy wonderland of Whistler. It was amazing; even though I didn't go skiing or dogsleding (though I did snowshoe and it was tiring but really enjoyable) I was content with just playing with the abundance of snow on the side of the road. Sad yes, but I'm easily amused. :)

The first meal I had there; a panini with coloured corn chips. Yummy and very filling.

Our modest Christmas Eve feast; turkey and some tom yum soup with rice.

Look at those delicious long white mushrooms...mmm, my favourite.

And that is the end of the post! I'll try to find those missing photos, and post what I've been up to in the kitchen soon. Hope you all hope a great Christmas and New Year!

of walks, rain and bread

Today was a special day and for that my family went out for lunch at a chinese restaurant. We were celebrating my sister's 20th birthday even though it isn't until another few days and so the importance of the outing was lessened, however it turned out to be quite a productive day.

I haven't been sure exactly what I should be putting in this blog, and now I've decided that I'll at least share some food news from the bakeries and shops in my area. Mind you, I do not live in a very populated state and there are few stores that I know of, but I'm doing my best to find them all and report them here.

One of the things that I found strangely interesting was one of the restaurant's desserts: This was sago with coconut milk and watermelon on strawberry and lime flavoured jelly. I must admit, this kept me busy for a while just playing with the mixed colours.

And it was quite yummy at the same time.

After lunch we went strolling around the city and visited a small oriental bakery named Regent Cakes. I wanted to look inside the Corica shop (where the most heavenly apple strudels are made) but they had already closed by midday. Here are some pictures of the breads and cakes they sell there:

From left to right: a crumbly pineapple custard bun, a soft cream bun and a glazed custard butter bun. The pineapple flavour wasn't very strong however the cream was very nice, while the butter bread tasted true to its name. I would have to say that the cream bun won the competition this time, but overall they were quite good selections.

I believe this is a wild berry cake slice, which is my favourite from that bakery so far, and a sweet Holland tart, which was quite average.

I love opening their doors and walking close to their kitchen where the warmth and the aroma of fresh buns reaches your nose...

I asked specifically to go to the local spice shop in order to find some cocoa nibs for my sister's birthday cookies. She's hasn't much of a sweet tooth (sometimes I wonder why we're related) but figured that if anything a chocolate recipe with authentic cocoa beans would be best. Personally I didn't even know there was such a thing as a 'nib', but I went along with it anyway.

We searched, high and low and everywhere in between-- but they didn't have it, and we didn't know any other spice store in the city. Unfortunately I had to scratch that particular cocoa nib cookie recipe and opt for her second preference; a chocolate-y hedgehog slice. I purchased some dutch cocoa powder for this even though my mother is convinced that it will make no difference. I wouldn't know either but its got to be better than supermarket cocoa powder right?

More on the promised hedgehog slice, my sister's upcoming birthday and some pictures of my past baking experiences (gulp) in the next post~