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This is a recipe sketch, implying that either we haven’t found the right proportion of ingredients, or that we’re too lazy to measure, or that it’s easy (and almost nothing can go wrong!). You’ve been warned! Now enjoy…
 Black forest cake
We just made this black forest cake. Well, actually, we’re not sure whether it can pass as a black forest cake. Hopefully. We used chocolate rum cake as a base, a dense cake with rich chocolate flavour and intense rum and vanilla aroma (we’ll post a recipe for this soon). We also used a chocolate ganache glazing, roughly 1 to 1 scalding heavy cream to chopped milk/dark chocolate ratio. The filling was whipping cream and canned cherries, lined with the ganache. We glazed the side and top of the cake with the ganache, and topped it with whipped cream and cherries. Finally, we sprinkled it with shredded chocolate. Yummy!
This is an extremely, extremely quick pancake recipe utilizing self-raising flour for simplicity. I was totally inspired by Yotsubato manga, where the 5-year old Yotsuba was trying her best to cook her pancakes (with many, many spoilage). Well, obviously I didn’t expect mine to turn out as nice as it did the first time around, but it did! Each pancake looks and tastes awesome. (: Oh, and did I mention that I learned when to flip the pancake from Yotsuba?? Oh, and I like the pancake bottom-side up for some reason, I guess the bubbles were looking really pretty. Ying loves it top-side up, like McD’s breakfast pancakes.
Makes 10 pancakes
- 1 cup self-raising flour
- 1 cup fresh milk
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- vegetable oil (for frying)
- Pour flour, milk, egg, and sugar together in a bowl and whisk vigorously. The batter should be pretty smooth (with some granules). Leave the batter sitting for 10 to 15 minutes to let the self-raising flour does its wonder.
- Heat a lightly oiled griddle in medium heat.
- Pour about ¼ cup of the batter in the middle of the griddle. Don’t worry about the shape, just pour at one single point, it will roughly turn out to be circular.
- Watch the pancake bubbles. When the bubbles start bursting (and the side looks drier), flip the pancake. The top side should be nicely browned now.
- Cook for another 20 seconds and lift it off the griddle.
- Repeat the last 3 steps until you run out of batter.
It is normal for the first pancake to cook less evenly (and may turn out too dark or too light). So don’t worry about it.
Some toppings suggestions: a spoonful maple syrup or honey, lightly buttered and sprinkled with sugar, blueberry or other fruity jams, chocolate rice, a dollop of ice cream, and, my favourite, whipping cream.
Read more for photos »
This is a pretty quick and dirty cheatsheet for a nice stir-fried glass noodles. Much of the flavour is really up to your own taste, so feel free to adjust the ingredients as much as you want. Love it!
Serves 3-4 people
- 300 g glass noodles
- 6 shallots, minced
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
- 1 medium potato
- 5 pieces chicken nuggets (or similar product; unprocessed meat is even better, but I’d not be a cheater that way, would I?)
- 4 tbsp light soy sauce or shoyu
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 1½ tbsp granulated sugar
- 4 tbsp tomato sauce
- a pinch of salt
- lots of ground white pepper
- vegetable oil
- 1½ cup warm water
- Soak the glass noodles in tap water for about 10 to 15 minutes.
- (If you’re using nuggets or processed meats) Fry the chicken nuggets until golden, slice them afterwards.
- Peel and cube the potato and fry them until slightly golden.
- Heat about 3 tbsp of vegetable oil in a wok on high heat. Fry shallots for a minute. Then add garlic and stir-fry for another 15 seconds.
- (If you’re using unprocessed meat) Slice the meat to bite-sized pieces and stir-fry until no longer pink.
- Add both the fried cubed potato and sliced chicken nuggets and stir fry for another 15 seconds.
- Add the glass noodles to the wok and immediately add water. Reduce the heat to medium.
- Add all the sauces (soy sauces and tomato sauce), sugar, and salt. Add lots of ground white pepper. Ground white pepper will add a slightly spicy flavour characteristic of my stir-fried glass noodles, so be generous with it.
- Stir-fry until the water is reduced completely. Taste the noodles and adjust the flavouring as needed.
- Increase the heat to high and stir-fry for another 45 seconds to 1 minute. This step will add a slightly caramelized flavour to the stir-fry so don’t skip the step.
- Serve immediately.
I like my glass noodles shorter, so I typically stir-fry the glass noodles vigorously. The glass noodles will typically break to shorter pieces and, as added benefits, the ingredients will mix really well together. You can choose to stir-fry the noodles more gently to prevent it from breaking, but that requires much more finesse than this way. ;)
If you have some sweet soy sauce, you can replace the dark soy sauce and some sugar with the sweet soy sauce for better, more caramelized flavour.
You can complete the first two steps in a single batch of frying to save time.
This recipe is a simplification of my more complicated semur recipe. Semur uses minced beef as well and not so much of a cheat than a real recipe. However, it takes much longer to cook and sometime I’m just lazy and will opt for this recipe instead. I will be posting the recipe for semur the next time I manage to cook it.
Acknowledgment: This is an original recipe.
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