Apple Cake

I like my cake to have some substance and bite with the softness. That is the reason why sponge or chiffon cakes are not high on my list of favorites as I find them just too airy  and empty like biting into sweetened cotton wool. The same applies for my bread too.

This apple cake recipe is adapted from the big blue book from Terri. I like that it has so many of my favorite things in a bite and with such simple and easy steps to follow. I don't do much cake baking as I am all thumbs when come to decorating it and the task of washing up after the baking and icing is just too daunting to consider. I salute all the blogs I visit that do such beautiful work of art with their cakes, truly inspirational (if only I can overcome this  disdain for cleaning up...). So only easy recipes end up in my kitchen. 

With most recipes, I would tweak the ingredients (especially the sugar content and for this recipe I more than halved the amount!) until I fine-tuned it to suit my palate (like doing it over and over for a whole week until I ran out of friends and foes to push the cake to). 

I don't have any problem with the taste of the cake (can't go wrong with this divine combination of apple, walnuts, raisins and maple syrup) but the texture was just not ideal as it was dry and too crumbly. 

In my first attempt, the cake turned out like rock buns and if I had given them to any of my friends they would surely be my friends no more.

After much persistence and perseverance, I finally get it down to this truly down-to-earth goodness with a solid but soft and moist texture which I think is blog-worthy. Here goes...

Apple Cake

100 g butter, softened

230 g all-purpose flour

1 t baking powder

1 t bicarbonate of soda

1/2 t cinnamon powder

70 g brown sugar

1/4 cup maple syrup

3 eggs

1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup raisins, coarsely chopped

2 cups coarsely grated apple

a pinch of salt

**make sure all ingredients are at room temperature**

Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and line (a must-do or you wouldn't be able to get the cake out of the tin) a 20cm (7 in) baking tin.

Mix butter, sugar, eggs, maple syrup and cinnamon together to combine well.

Sieve flour together with baking powder and b. soda into the butter mixture. Fold in the flour.

Stir in the nuts and raisins.

Spread mixture (the consistency of this batter is much thicker than, say, a normal butter cake batter) evenly into the lined pan.

Bake about 40 - 50 minutes. 

Cool cake on a wire rack.

Cut into cubes and serve them plain (the way I like it) with a cuppa tea or coffee, .

If rajin (diligent) like me ;p, frost cake with maple syrup or this gorgeous cream cheese frosting.

The only reason I frosted this last cake was just to coax someone, anyone to eat the cake! My family just about have had enough of my apple cakes. I think I'll have to wait out a year or so before I could do this recipe again. 4 in a week is too much, you think?

For maple frosting:

90 g butter

160 g icing sugar

1 t maple syrup

Mix all ingredients together until light and fluffy.

Home-made Yogurt with Mango

Mango season is here once again. These are from Ben's garden, probably the last because they moved and sold the house along with the mango tree (that got to be one of the hardest thing to part with). As these mangoes are super sweet, I love to eat it with yogurt. 

For this yogurt I used a low-fat milk powder but you can use any fresh, UHT or even soy milk (I've never tried it, a friend did and it worked fine but with a soy milk taste of course). The yogourtmet is used as a starter for the yogurt. If unavailable, substitute with a tablespoon of any unadulterated fresh yogurt. 

If possible, get it from an Indian restaurant that serves yogurt, as most of those sold in supermarkets are processed with sugar, preservatives and thickening agents.

Prepare the milk powder as per instruction on the package. 

Here I used 3 cups of water with 1 cup milk powder. 

With milk powder, the thicker (more fat content) the milk solution the thicker consistency yogurt will turn out. 

The milk should be warm and not hot to the touch (about the same temp as the milk for feeding babies).

Stir in the starter.

Pour into sterilized glass containers. 

Keep them covered but not airtight.

Place them on a baking tray with about 1/2 inch of water.

Preheat oven to slightly below 50C. 

Switch off the oven and put the tray in.

Leave for 3-6 hours. 

By 3 hours the milk should be firming up and set like custard. 

The longer it is left in the oven the more acidic (sour) it gets.

So, if you don't like the yogurt too sour put it into the fridge as soon as it set.

If the milk do not set by 6 hours it means the bacteria (culture) in the starter is dead and no yogurt is produced. Get another new batch of starter and start all over again. 

Keep a tablespoon of the newly formed yogurt aside in a small clean container in the fridge as starter for the next round of yogurt making (it should be used within a month). I was told some Indian restaurants have yogurt starter that originated more than 40 years ago! 

Great for cooking curry dishes (lighter than coconut milk and love the tangy taste it gives to the dish), as salad dressing and cooling drinks (just mix 2-3 tablespoon of yogurt + a teaspoon of honey + 1/2 a glass of drinking water with a handful of ice-cubes... so refreshing).

For breakfast or dessert, serve it with any fresh or dried fruits, add some nuts or muesli for crunch and honey for sweetness. Prefect for these hot and humid weather we are experiencing now.

Jo

Sabah's very own Longans

Local longans from Tuaran

These longans are a cross between the old local ones we grew up with that were small, sweet, juicy with very thin flesh and the big fleshy ones from Thailand.

They are sweeter and juicier than the Thai breed and the only lacking is crunchiness in the texture of the flesh but the juiciness more than made up for that.

They are the same size as the Thai's and with thick succulent flesh. Very impressive. Now, I hope we get enough from our own backyards so that we don't have to import anymore of those laden with preservatives .

Longan (龍眼-dragon's eye)

Words failed me here, so I'll let this picture speaks for itself.

Jo

Mangosteen - the queen of fruits

The electrician who was rewiring some lights in the renovated bathroom brought some of these fruits from his kebun (farm) in Papar, a small town about 40km from Kota Kinabalu. According to him this year's mangosteen harvest is so abundant it exceeded the demand and the price for one kilo is only about RM2 and still dropping. Good news for us mangosteen lovers!!

This is how the queen of fruits are served in Japan! Very befittingly so. It certainly looked so much more refined and elegant as to how we would get at the flesh but I find it so much more troublesome and that it requires a knife.

I had so much fun taking these pictures and took so much time that nobody wants to eat the fruits anymore. So I sat down with a dessert fork and imagined myself in Japan!
Wonder how much they (the Japanese) have to fork out to eat one of these.

This is how we open the beauty...

Remove the stump (that was actually the flower). Press softly on the sides until it cracks open.


Voila! Here is the melt-in-the mouth flesh of the mangosteen.

Look at the five raised brown ridges, that translates to five segments of flesh inside. Smaller and more ridges would meant more and smaller flesh inside. The number of ridges a fruit has at its bottom corresponds to the number of segments you will find inside the fruit.

Oh, this KING of fruits..

Driving past Sembulan market yesterday (another one of those mini markets I roam), K pointed at some fruits at the corner stalls and I glanced over. What I saw almost made me jump out of the car and he had to make an emergency stop (the car behind almost kissed us and I got that look that could kill). Dashing out, I almost dropped my camera (Leanne had to take over the photo shooting) and these were the cause of all that trouble...

Jungle durians!!

I grew up in Tamparuli, a small town about 40 km from KK. We grew up with these and when fruit season came by we skipped meals and had them for lunch and dinner.

The durian season has been here for a month or so but every time I passed by stalls that offer all those huge looking fruits, I shuddered. Why, you might ask, since I am so crazy about durians . Well, those big fruits just don't taste like durians to me. And after so many episodes with fruits that had an inch-thick, pulpy, bland and odourless flesh (I actually felt so nauseous after just one seed), I was put off durian for a long while.

And finding these spiky jewels fired up my obsession with the fruit again. Oh, the fragrance and the sweet velvety texture of the delicious flesh....

This little fruit is about the size of a 'sepak takraw'- small rattan ball but look what was in store for us inside...

I wouldn't even attempt to describe the sensation of eating this but every mouthful was followed by...sighs of pure joy...



Look at these heart-shaped darlings...we love you too!!!

Another local species that we love...

Its flesh is thinner, softer and much sweeter.

We bought six fruits. It was so good that I actually sneaked back to the store after having savored the first fruit upon reaching home. The store owner gave me a big knowing grin and asked, "Sudah habis? (Already finished?)". Feeling like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar, I lied, "Belum, kawan minta beli (Not yet, friend asked to buy)". Don't think she believed me at all. The pile of fruits that was there two hours ago had almost vanished. What was left were smaller fruits, but I still came away with 5 gorgeous looking midget kings.

The best way to eat this king of fruits is squatting on the floor with many durian-crazy friends and family. My sister Mui was supposedly on a diet and would just taste one or two seeds but the tasting turned out to be one or two seeds from every durian that was opened! So satisfied (or guilty) that she vowed this would her only durian session for the season...we'll see!

Jo

The pomelo

The pomelo

Chanced upon this pomelo in the Tanjung Aru market and figured it deserves a post of its own.

Pomelo is the largest of the citrus fruit and is native to South-East Asia especially Malaysia and Thailand. Its botanical name, Citrus Grandis, speaks for its size. It has a fragrant skin and an inch or so of a pillow-soft pith that protects its delicious flesh. It is the 'great grand daddy' to the popular grapefruit of the west (which is a cross between pomelo and orange).

This treasured fruit is a must-have in most Chinese households to welcome the lunar new year for it symbolises abundance and good fortune. Come eve of the lunar new year will find most households using the pomelo leaves as an essence in their bath water. We love the fragrance that permeates the whole house when the pomelo leaves are being boiled (1-2 sprigs of the leaves bundled along with some stalks of lemongrass). Everyone from the very young to the old will then uses the scented water as they bath to rinse from head to toe as an act of cleansing to start anew (and smells good) for the coming new year.

There are two good reasons why this fruit deserves a special post. Firstly, it is one of our favourite fruits, eaten chilled as is or as salad. Secondly, this particular fruit (pic above) is an original. Yes, the old fashion fruit whose genetic makeup has not been tampered with (yet!). We pray that that will not happen. They are getting very rare and so far, this stall is one of the few places (also in certain tamus) where we can still find them and that, only once a year because the fruiting is seasonal. Today, there are many hybrids of this fruit. Most pomelos that we get year round are from trees that has been genetically engineered - many of the famous Tenom's fruits fall under this category. Still cannot get use to those super-sweet, near-odourless, soft-flesh pomelos.

This pomelo has light pale yellow transparent flesh. Its flesh is firm and taut, and one bite sends the tangy sweet juices bursting in the mouth. Don't you just want to sink your teeth into these?

So succulent and juicy...

Our tv snacks

I bought four from the stall. Leanne and myself finished off the largest one (pictured above). K had one all to himself. There is only two left now but not for long... regrets not having taken the whole lot from the stall. Think I will have one all to myself....

Pomelo rinds can be used to make candied peel. Placed in a decorative container or bag, they will make a thoughtful and unique gift.

Jo