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My homemade moon cake from my first attempt

I cannot believe how simple I can make this at home. Making Bing Pi Moon cake is so easy nowadays since we can always use the premix. A bit of kneading to do though (and with shortening, it is a bit quite oily and messy).

Ingredients you can get from bakery supply shops are:

• 1 pack Mooncake premix @ Rm8.80 (I used brand: BAKER’S ONE)
• 1 pack White Lotus filling @ RM29.90 (I used brand: HOY KEE)
• 70g shortening
• Some ice water
• Flavouring – fresh squeezed Pandan Juice
• Flavouring – mashed dragon fruit (you can see biji-biji on them)
• Mould – Plastic Bing Pi Mould (most easiest to use)
• Mickey Mouse cookie cutters

Method to make Bing Pi dough (instruction on the package itself)

1. First you need to add the shortening and ice water to the premix
2. Knead till you feel its elastic
3. Cover and let it rest in fridge for at least 30mins

As for the filling-roll them into balls.

First time I bought White Lotus. Very expensive but this brand is very good because it is not sweet at all.

Cheaper options will be red beans / lotus paste if you just wanna play with it. You can even use any paste you like or make your own paste if you have the time.

How to shape the mooncake

1. Divide ready cold dough into balls. Press them flat.
2. Wrap the filling with your dough.
3. Shape them into balls before putting them carefully into your mould.
4. Press them out (if you use mooncake mould) or carefully remove it from the cookie cutter after you stamp the face

Many recipes you see on book call to measure the dough (about 60% dough, 40% filling) but I did not measure them because my mould sizes vary. Just agak-agak.

My perfectly shaped moon cake

The experience was really amazing. Never I though I would be able to make my own moon cake as pretty and perfect as above. We did not get it right when we tried it initially, but since the dough is so flexible, we can always reshape it into a ball (try your best to keep the filling inside) and try to stamp print again.

My Mickey and Minnie Bing Pi Moon cake

If you are using cookie cutters like this, it is really not that easy because the filling would run out when you need to shape some parts to Mickey’s ears. However, if you do not get it right for the first time, you can always roll it back into balls and slowly reshape them into the mould again.

Though the ingredients are quite pricey, still it is cheaper to make your own  because you get more and can give away these beautiful moon cake as gifts to your friends.

*Si-beh shiok* Macam playing play-doh with your kids eh!

Steps

1. First, pre-cut the ingredients in the first picture.

2. Place the shaped rice on your left, facing IN down. Then pressed it and apply with the mayonaise.

3. Place the triangle shaped cut-out egg omelette and crab stick on it in picture 3.

4. (not in picture) Holding the Bottom Left Hand Corner Seaweed touching the middle of the seaweed. Then wrap it up into a BIG triangle.

In the end, we got a pretty Temaki Sushi:)

I finally have my own printer! Can’t believe printers are so cheap nowadays. I just bought a normal HP Ink-Jet 2 weeks ago from Jusco, and is good enough for me to print my labels, my invoices and occasionally some pictures of my kids.

I saw some wireless printers available in the market and was wondering if they would create one where we can insert just memory cards.

But since hubby found a place to put it, there is no reason to spend unnecessary.

Extremely fattening yummy-licious Cheese Cake from Tong Kee

I am not a fan of cheese cake but I think this Cheese Cake from Tong Kee is really good. If I remember correctly, it is about the size of 6″ in diameter, baked and sold in it’s aluminium foil pan for only Rm12 or so. There are a few flavors, some with big nice juicy blue berries and some with apple chunks in it.

I got the plain one and I love it!!

I recently just bought a new website template for Mama Patch. I have been waiting too long already to have a proper website for my home business and I think it is time to get a proper one. Unlike custom template, this template is a ready made and it looks rather clean with lots of white area and some olive color lines.  It is something similar with the document management software from Dokmee.net, and I hope it manage my order and invoices well.

While I was searching online on how to make the Hong Kong Chee Cheong Fun, I came across this article submitted in a forum. Hence I extracted and copied here to as below for my record:

There are various types of sauces for Chee Cheong Fun.
Mix and boil the ingredients over low heat till liquid is reduced.

Hong Kong Style Sauce
Sweetened soy sauce, Sesame paste,
Hoi Sin sauce, Sesame oil
Spring onions, Minced dried shrimps
http://www.asianonlinerecipes.com/

Simple Hawker Style Sauce
Sesame Oil, Soy Sauce, Sesame Seed

Dark Sweet Chilli Sauce
1 tbsp Chinese Barbeque Sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sweet chilli sauce
1 tbsp sesame seeds (toasted)
spring onions (chopped)
fried shallots
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Market/7 … ngfun.html

Penang Style
Sesame oil
‘he ko’ (prawn paste), ‘ti chiao’ (sweet sauce) and chilli sauce, topped sesame seeds, peanut
http://lingzie.com/chee-cheong-fun-macalister-lane/

Ipoh Style
Sweet sauce, chilli sauce, minced pork, mushroom, dried shallot,
sesame seeds and pickled green chilli.
http://foodie.parisbeaverbanks.com/2007 … heong-fun/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipoh_cuisine

Oyster Sweet Sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
3 tbsp soy sauce
1-2 dash of sesame oil
1/2 cup of boiling hot water
http://yummymummyrecipes.blogspot.com/2 … ngfun.html

When late MIL was around, she used to prepare this Hokkien Popiah dish whenever we go home. There will be so much to do to prepare the cooking ingredients because we need to shred and cut up everything finely.

Ingredients late MIL use would be:

• Sengkuang (Jicama), shredded
• Carrots, shredded
• Cucumber (for garnishing), shredded
• Tau fu pok, finely cut
• Fish cake, finely cut
• Minced meat, marinated with some oyster sauce
• Shallots, finely chopped/shredded
• Garlic., finely chopped
• Dried shrimp, pounded
• Soy sauce
• Salt, sugar and pepper to taste

Method:

Saute basic ingredients, then add on all the vegetables. Cook and leave to simmer (occasionally stirring) over the fire till soft.

And because this dish was usually prepared to replace our meal, and since there will be so many of us eating, late MIL had to make a BIG kuali. Of course SIL would help out because it is really tedious to prepare the ingredients.

My first attempt of Ju Hu Char

When Siew Pheng told me about this Ju Hu Char dish she makes, I suspect it was almost the same as MIL’s popiah.  Cooking this dish is not difficult for me because I am so used to cook late MIL’s popiah. The only difference is that Ju Hu Char has shredded dry cuttlefish added. Siew Pheng also suggested to add one finely cut soaked dried mushroom.

Ju Hu Char – my dinner tonight

The only difference is that we usually eat our Hokkien Popiah with the normal Popiah Skin from the wet market ( I still could not find any good one from here) or the frozen ones whereas Siew Pheng suggested eating this with fresh lettuce or ‘Sang-Choy’.

Ju Hu Char with some gravy for rice

Hubby love the crispiness of the lettuce going together with this dish. However I feel the taste a bit bland when this dish goes with lettuce. Still prefers to eat this like this or with the popiah skin (with some sweet black sauce or cili sauce)!

Another great recipe shared by Siew Pheng here:

Ingredients :
600g Spare ribs (cut to small pieces)
150g Yam (peeled andcut intochunks)
1 potato (peeled and cut into chunks)
1 Cucumber (peeled into chunks)
1 Tomota (cui into wedges)

Marinade:
1/2 tsp Salt, dash of sugar
1 tbsp Cornstarch
1 tsp Sesame oil

Seasoning:
6 tbsp tomota sauce
3 tbsp chilli sauce, dash of salt.
1/2 tbsp sugar, 100ml water.

Method:

1) Mix spare ribs with marinade and marinate for 30 minutes. Deep-fry in hot oil until golden brown and cooked. Dish and drain.

2) Deep-fry yam and potatoes separately until golden brown. Dish and drain.

3) Leave 1 tbsp oil in wok, pour in seasoning and stir well.Add in all the ingredients and stir-fry until well mixed. Dish up and serve .

Can’t wait to try it out!

Siew Pheng (she can cook Chinese Food really well!) from our Tuesday playgroup surprised us with a very special dish last week. She called it Milky Chicken but I guess changed the name to the title above. Cook with quite lots of ginger, this dish is also very suitable for confinement.

Recipe shared by Siew Pheng

Marinade for Chicken

• Light soya sauce
• White rice wine
• Sesame oil
• Abalone sauce
• Dash of paper
• Chicken (I used 3 thighs, deboned)

Pounded Ingredients

• Ginger
• Shallots
• Garlic
• 2 stalk Lemongrass (serai)
• Sesame Oil

Sauce

• Salt
• 1 can Evaporated milk
• Dash of sugar

Method

1. Marinate chicken at least for 1 hour
2. Blanch in hot oil and leave aside  – I skipped this step
3. Saute pounded (or you can also chopped them finely) ingredients till fragrance
4. Add in chicken and seasoning to taste

*Update 9/8/2011: Finally I managed to try out this dish. Instead of just mincing the ingredient, I still prefer to pound them (well, that’s what Kakak is for in the kitchen!)

Verdict: The gravy taste heavenly because of the evaporated milk used plus lots of pounded ginger. Although it is a bit spicy, QQ loves this dish. She put a lot of the gravy on her rice while I just scoop the gravy and eat like that. We love it, and certainly will whip up another dish again soon….Yummy!!!!

Hubby have been talking about wanting to start up his own online business from home. It relates to premium food so storage and shipping would be quite troublesome. He did mention about using storage like the steel drums at drumsofsteel.com to ensure the freshness during shipping though.

But anyway, I do not think he would have time for that now that he comes back so tired everyday. Definitely not easy to manage 2 jobs at a time right?