Home cooked with love

BunnyBoi came over yesterday and we had oven roasted salmon & asparagus for lunch! :))

I'd wanted to do a crispy skin but soft meat but the skin was burnt really badly as the flame we used was too hot and too much oil was used for this dish. 

Overall I love love baked salmon and I'm glad that BunnyBoi enjoyed this meal we both prepared together. We'll cut down on the oil in future! 

Next, we both successfully baked a chocolate ganache cake for our first attempt!! 

I got the recipe from joyofbaking.com and it's really a "mix-in-the-pan-cake". 

I altered the recipe to my own preference as her recipe is really toooooo sweet.

Ingredients include: 

- 195g all purpose flour

- 50g caster sugar

- 25g unsweetened cocoa powder

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

- 1 teaspoon baking soda 

- pinch of salt 

- 240ml warm water 

- half a lemon, squeezed

- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence 

All we did was to add the ingredients listed 1 by one and then manually whisk it! 

By the time it was of a consistent texture, we lined the cake pan with butter and flour, and pour the mixture in!

Oh and before that we had to preheat the oven to 180deg Celsius and placed the cake pan in the centre of the oven for 35 minutes. The toothpick inserted in the centre came out totally clean!!! 

Due to time constraints, we cooled the cake at room temperature for 30mins, and proceeded on with our chocolate ganache frosting.

Chocolate ganache ingredients:

- 1 whole bar of Van... Baking chocolate 

- 1/3 of Bulla thickened cream

- 1 tablespoon room temperature butter 

Melt the ingredients over a double boiler and adjust thickened cream to your liking. 

Once time's up, pour chocolate onto cake and freeze for 30mins. (We later learned from BunnyBoi's mum that it can be cooled in the normal fridge section to harden)

And..... Viola!!

I've always wanted to bake with my boyfriend and I'm so so glad that it's you that I'm doing it with. I'm looking forward to many more cookings and bakings with you honey. I love you. <3

Happy anniversary once again!

Met the boy last Friday to celebrate our anniversary and I can finally say that I've tried Just Acia! 

We ordered creamy chicken & salmon teriyaki pasta + chawanmushi to share and I'd wish that the salmon fillet was a thicker slice. Overall, I think that the teriyaki and cream sauce don't really go well together. Its still a good meal with BunnyBoi anyway! :)

"You're the one I run to, the world I belong to. You're still the one I want for life."

No bake oreo cheesecake

I had a sudden craving for cheesecake after browsing Instagram and hence I went to do this yesterday! 

I didn't want to use gelatin so I substituted it for condense milk and in the end it didn't turn out well. Shall use gelatin in future!

Also, I followed the wrong recipe! Lolol the website that I followed uses 3 packs of cream cheese but I only used 1, in the end the oreo cheesecake turned out SUPER DUPER SWEEEEEET.

Here are the ingredients I used, and overall I spent S$14.30 in total! 

*P/s: As I was craving for oreo I used up all the Oreos for this no-bake cheesecake.

For the base :

- 6 packs oreo with white cream removed - finely crushed

- Melted butter 25secs in microwave or double boiler 

For the filling:

- 5 1 tablespoons sugar

- 1 tablespoon condensed milk

- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

- 250g / 1 block of Philadelphia cream cheese @ room temperature

- 1 pack of oreo, white cream removed - crushed lightly using fingers 

For the topping:

- 5 packs oreo, white cream removed - finely crushed as done for the base

Here's the step by step pictorial!

For the base:

First, I placed the oreos in the bag and used a hard object to smash it. You could use a food processor too but that calls for more cleaning up and water & electricity wastage, but the crumbs would definitely be finer. Hahaha and that's #rexmyboy feeling down as he wasn't able to eat them oreos. 

Afterwhich, melt the butter in a microwave for 25secs, or using stove. Initially I placed it for 1minute and it turned brown! So I did for 20secs, and 10secs and this was what came out:

With the butter melted, it's time to gradually mix it into the crushed oreos! The texture you should be looking out for is "wet sand". Notice I didn't discard the white cream straight away as I placed some of them together with the cream cheese filling. 

Time to line them onto the tray! I used a rectangular 2x7" metal tin as that was the only container I can find at home. I lined it with aluminium foil as I read that it's much easier to remove the cake and indeed it was! 

Oh and another point to note is to use a flat object to firmly press the crumbs down as it serves as a base for the cake. If not done well, or if the crumbs are not fine enough, you will notice that the base cracks easily.

I placed it in the freezer for 1hr30mins before adding the filling onto it. 

For the filling:

Using a mixer, combine sugar, vanilla essence, oreo bits and cream cheese and beat till smooth.

Then place the filling onto the pan & top with finely crushed oreos.

Gently tap the pan onto the table to remove any air bubbles and freeze again for 3-6hours. 

 

After 2 hours, I went to check on the cake by placing a toothpick into it and it didn't come out clean, hence I froze it till about 4 hours later....

Because I didn't use gelatin, the cream cheese tend to melt easily once it's out of the freezer and hence I went to slice the bars into bite size pieces. 

It's the next day today and the cheesecake were still in the freezer, though it is harder to chew now, but it's still edible!

Apart from my first attempt being too sweet and omitting gelatin, I will definitely follow the recipe carefully in future! :)