Marble Cake - Again!

A friend's birthday was last week, but didn't have time to make a cake on that special day.
So instead I made one a belated one.
I baked marble cake, and used butter cream for the topping.

Marble Butter Cake
source: QL Kitchen

Ingredient
225g butter
225g sugar
225g self raising flour
4 eggs
6 Tbsp milk
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla

Method
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
Add in vanilla and the eggs one at a time, beat well.
Alternate 3 Tbsp milk and flour into the mixture.
Divide the batter into 2.
Leave one plain while the other add the cocoa powder and 3 Tbsp of milk.
Mix well to combine.

In a lined and greased cake tin or loaf pan, spoon in the mixture accordingly,
you can either put four small dollop of batter in the tin or
layer it, two spoon full of each batter at a time.
Either way the cake looks good.
Use a bamboo skewer and zig zag a pattern before baking.
Bake at 180 C for 1 hour.

Once cake is cool, you can either leave it as it is or spread the icing.

Butter cream icing.

Ingredients
125g butter
70g shortening
80g icing sugar
2 Tbsp of condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla.
 Food colouring.


In a clean bowl, cream the butter and shortening until turns light and fluffy.
Add the vanilla.
In two batches, add the icing sugar into the butter mixture.
Once well mix, add the remaining icing sugar, continue beating,
The mixture is smooth and spreadable.

Spread onto cake and decorate as you like.
Happy Baking.

Aglio Olio

Aglio Olio with seafood

Pasta...mmm either you love it or hate it.
To some pasta is only spaghetti bolognaise, but truthfully there is huge variety of it and sadly
not all are available here in our currently windy and sunny Malaysia.
Oh the winds, let me take a break from talking about pasta.
I lobe it! I really do. Clothes dry like super, super fast. I love the feeling of it gushing about, blowing already messy hair all over the place LOL Curtains flying, doors slamming - involuntarily of course!
But on the down side, dry leaves and rubbish like snack or sweet wrappers fly into the house from the road side, not to mention the sand and small pebbles.
More house work, more cleaning to be done *sigh* Just one of those things that has to be done.

Let's focus on more happier and yummier things like this Aglio Olio with seafood.

Aglio Olio means, garlic and olive oil, and in the true sense that is what it is, warm pasta tossed with garlic fried in olive oil, just sprinkle some freshly chopped parsley and eat.

But pasta lovers will beg to differ and say that there are a several versions and one of the popular one is with sea food. You can also substitute it with chicken, I've even seen on restaurant menus, fillets of fish!
All in all it is up to your taste buds and preference.
Here I used prawns and squids, but clams can also be added.

I just wanted to share with you my version of Aglio Olio with Seafood - spicy version!

Aglio Olio with Seafood.

Ingredients
1 packet of spaghetti (500g)
Boil for about 8-10 min, toss and set aside.
The water must be boiling before you put in the pasta.
Ensure there is enough water or the pasta would stick to each other.
The pasta doesn't needs to be cooked long because it is going to be cooked again later.
So, al dente is okay.

olive oil
5-6 cloves of garlic
5-10 cili api /bird's eye chili (add or lessen depending on your tolerance for chili)
250g fresh prawns
250g fresh squid
1/2 tsp of dried mixed herbs (optional)
freshly chopped parsley
1 Tbsp dried chili flakes
salt and pepper to taste.

Method
In a food processor minced the chili and garlic or just smash them in a pestle and mortar.
In a wok pour in about 5Tbsp of Olive Oil and over med heat fry the garlic and chili until fragrant.
Careful, the garlic burns easily.
Add in the seafood or chicken, stir fry until cook. The prawns turn pink, the squid and chicken white.
Season to taste before taking them out and set aside.

This is to prevent the seafood from over cooking and becoming tough.

Add in the spaghetti and mix to combine with the chili and garlic mixture.
At this point, you can add salt and pepper.
Stir gently as not to break the pasta, add the mixed herbs if using and dried chili flakes.
Add the cooked seafood and cook the pasta until warm through.
It depends if the pasta is a bit dry add some water.

Lastly, drizzle some olive oil and sprinkle the parsley over the pasta before plating up!

Best eaten warm but cold is good too. Just pop into the mircowave for a few minutes to warm it up for later!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Like anyone else who love chocolate that is, I can never resist a chocolate chip cookie.
I love them, with nuts, without nuts, with oats and even the double chocolate ones.
I think I've baked hundreds of these chocolatey nuggets but never tried the what I call white ones.
White because the biscuit is light in colour and the chips can be seen.
The recipe that we have is double chocolate, so the mixture is dark due to cocoa powder and lots of chocolate chips. The white bits would be the nuts. It is kinda hard to tell when it is ready and more than once I burnt these delectable cookies due to my carelessness!!

As always I was browsing blogs and sites looking for something else when I stumbled across a recipe on BBC Good Food. It was called Vintage Chocolate Chip cookie, now with a name like that who wouldn't want to take a peek at what it is about.

I read through the recipe and found it easy enough, I had almost all the ingredients. I didn't have any chips so I chopped away at a block of cooking chocolate instead, the result as you can tell from the dark patches on the cookie was very satisfying. I intend to just use chunks the next time too.
The masses enjoyed these very much and I have a feeling I will be making them several more times.

The recipe doesn't call for any nuts, although they did say you could add some. I added about 1/2 a cup of chopped walnuts to the mixture. I divided the dough into two, leaving one as it is and the other I added 1/4 cup of oats. The masses couldn't decide which was better but loved both versions.

No heavy machinery required, a wooden spoon is sufficient. Use a hand stand if you like.
This batter is rather wet, so I suggest if you don't want to get your hands dirty use a  ice cream scoop or two spoons. I just used my fingers and 'agak-agak' the size of each cookie.

The recipe, should you want to try is as follows:

Vintage Chocolate Chip Cookies
source: BBC Good Food

Ingredients
150g butter
80g castor sugar (I only added 50g)
80g brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
225g all purpose flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt (I didn't)
200g chocolate chips or chunks

Method
Cream butter and sugar until creamy.
Add the egg and vanilla, beat some more.
Gradually add the flour and mix well.
Lastly fold in the chocolate chips or chunks and if using, the nut/oats.

Drop the cookies, using spoons or ice cream scoop onto a greased oven tray.
It spreads so don't put them so close.
Bake at 180 C for 20 min.

Enjoy the cookies with ice cream or on its own.


Happy Baking!