Cakes and Cookies – Page 4 – The Occasional Cook

Meringues with my new toy

August 11, 2016March 3, 2021 7shasha7

After so many many many many years, I finally got my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

So my friend dropped by and we decided to test out the mixer. I had no butter, no flour and the cream cheese in the fridge had long expired. So what to do with plenty of eggs and sugar? Make meringues!

The mixer was beautiful! My egg whites turned to clouds in record time. We divided the mixture into three bowls. One was mixed with vanilla essence and chocolate chips. The second one was simply pink food colouring. And the third was lemon oil and yellow coloring. In an extremely low temperature oven, we baked it for hours! My friend couldn’t wait so the next day, I gave her two jars of them. The best were the lemon meringues!

I am going to experiment with merouand flavours soon because I think they make for very pretty gifts. 🙂

Chocolate Cookies

April 9, 2014 7shasha7

Need I say more? Except that I’m a proud Mama. It tastes good though some are slightly burnt. She’ll take over this blog one day. 😀

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts, Malay, Singapore

Durian fritters

February 20, 2014March 3, 2021 7shasha7

An easy tea time staple in Malay homes will be the jemput–jemput pisang or banana fritters. I remember an aunt who married an American and then moved to Wyoming. She told me she made these for her neighbours and they loved them. They were also tickled by the literal translated name. Jemput means invite and so she’d tell them ‘banana invite-invite.’ When I got older, I learnt that jemput also means to take a small amount of something. So basically it means small amounts of batter.

That afternoon I decided to make a variation using durian. The Southeast Asian king of fruits so despised by Westerners (and some locals too!)

I took the flesh out from its seed and added some plain flour, a tiny bit of brown sugar and a pinch of salt. Then fry small amounts of the batter in hot oil. It was a success!

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts

Chocolate chip cranberry cookies

February 2, 2014February 2, 2014 7shasha7

I decided to make cookies one day. Following not very closely the Hershey’s recipe at the back of the pack. I prefer using all town sugar rather than the mix of castor sugar and brown sugar. The result was not a sweet cookie-perfect for us since we all don’t have a sweet tooth.

The recipe

21/4 plain flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
250g butter
3/4 x 2 brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
Cranberries
Almonds and hazelnuts
Chocolate chips (2 packs)

breakfast, Cakes and Cookies, Desserts, Sides

Super soft buttery buttermilk biscuits

January 5, 2014January 5, 2014 7shasha7

This morning I wanted to use some leftover buttermilk. So I made biscuits. This time round I was determined to make them like KFCs or Texas chicken.

In a bowl I added 2.5 cups of self raising flour then grated 100g of French butter and rubbed the mixture in. For good measure, I added a bit more butter to the crumbly mixture. Then quickly I stirred in the fridge cold buttermilk. Do not over stir. The mixture was wet but just nice to be scooped with my ice cream spoon. Drop them onto greased trays and pop into a hot oven (190 degrees).

I made two kinds. After the first tray, I added shredded cheddar and black pepper to the remaining mix.

The result was super moist biscuits. Even after six hours, they were still soft and not dry. Of course, it’s best to pop them in the toaster first. Drizzle with honey or eat with butter and jam. Yum!