Tag Archives: butter

Gnocchi Gratinati Con Mozzarella (Baked Potato Gnocchi with Mozzarella)

Recipes, Western 10/06/2013 Leave a comment

Gnocchi are considered to be a type of dumpling and they are extremely soft and light. I know nuts about them before I came over to Australia. Two years ago I was at an Italian restaurant at Lygon Street in Melbourne and decided to try the dish with the cute name called Gnocchi Gorgonzola. It was pleasantly tasty. The second time I tried gnocchi was at Sapore, a one hat restaurant at St. Kilda. The gnocchi was absolutely divine. They were lighter, fluffier and softer compared to the ones at the previous restaurant.

I enjoyed gnocchi so much that I decided to make it at home one day. At that time, I was too lazy to make the potato gnocchi myself so I bought the pre-made ones from the supermarket and mix it with my homemade sauce. It was clearly a bad choice as I barely touched the dish. The sauce was OK but the problem lay in the store bought pre-made gnocchi. They tasted appalling and due to the high flour content, they were super tough, gluey and tasteless.

Last weekend, I decided to re-visit my gnocchi dish and this time I did not take any shortcuts. I made everything from scratch and it was extremely fruitful and rewarding. Be careful not to add too much flour to prevent it from being too heavy and hard. The thick and dense tomato sauce combined with the melted cheese enveloped the pillowy soft gnocchi creating a silky smooth sensation in your mouth. The sauce is simply marvelous. Simple yet packed with flavor.

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Indonesian Layer Cake

Cakes, Bakes & Desserts, Recipes 23/12/2012 1 Comment

Indonesian layer cake has been a favorite of mine since I was young. My aunt who used to own a cake shop would give my mom a square of this layer cake every Chinese New Year and it would be gone in no time (thanks to me :P). This cake has a lot of eggs and butter in it and therefore it’s very rich and moist. I never thought of baking this cake until my bestie, Mei asked me if I could make it as she loves it too. She did warn me that the process is extremely tedious and truthfully, IT IS. My advise is, do not attempt this if you do not have a whole afternoon to yourself. The cake needs to be grilled layer by layer and it’ll take at least 2 hours to complete. No doubt it is very time consuming but extremely rewarding in the end. 😀 This cake not only tastes delicious, it looks impressive as well. Hence, Mr. D and I decided to bake this cake to give it to our dearest neighbor and friends as a Christmas gift.

There are many different recipes available on the internet, each using different quantities of egg yolks and egg whites. Some of the layer cake recipes have condensed milk in them. After going through all of the recipes that I’ve gathered, I finally decided on Poh’s version as hers has the least number of egg yolks. Furthermore, I’m a fan of her cooking. I love watching her cooked in MasterChef Australia Season 1 and after that, she has her own cook show which shares a lot of great recipes. Her Indonesian layer cake recipe calls for five spice powder but I was not too comfortable using it in cake as five spice powder is normally used in savory dishes especially to season meat. Hence, I replaced it with all spice powder.

Our first attempt failed as we over beat the egg whites and under beat the butter causing the layers to delaminate due to incorrect batter consistency. We tried baking it again this afternoon making sure that we followed every step carefully. And, we were glad that it worked out well this time. We were extremely pleased and proud of the end result. The cake is just stunningly good, both flavor and appearance!

IngredientsThis cake consists of 9 simple ingredients.

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