january: lisa’s berrimisu

Firstly, I apologise for the lateness of this post. I’ve been lucky enough to be travelling the world the last couple of months, so it’s been difficult to catch the time to create a dish for the blog. So for that I’m sorry.

Tiramisu is a classic dessert, loved and craved by many. Unfortunately, due to my aversion to coffee (I’ve never tasted it, as I intensely dislike the smell), it’s not a dessert that I can ever eat. My solution? Create a berrimisu!

It’s quick and easy to put together, and perfect for Summer. It showcases the gorgeous berries that are available in this season, and your guests will be wow-ed by the colourful presentation. Boom! Maximum impact with minimal effort. They won’t be able to resist coming back for seconds. Also, it can be prepared early in the day, so your time will be freed up for other things later. All you need to do is remove it from the fridge and serve.

I admit when I picked the theme for January, I already had a dish in mind to make. And then the time caught up on me. After returning home between trips, I found I only had a few weekdays “free” (when I was actually at work during the day), and the end of January quickly came and went. I didn’t make this dish this month, but I have made it many times before. Get the super simple recipe here.

I did do some other baking this month though – one of my uncles celebrated his 60th birthday last week, and I was in charge of the birthday cake. Easy, except that the party was held in Penang, Malaysia! So I took all my tools on holidays with me, as well the majority of the ingredients, and this is what I created for my music loving, guitar fanatic uncle :

Happy baking everyone!

january: anna’s 5 ingredient apple ginger crisp

I made this dessert to end a steak dinner with friends over the weekend. It’s really quick and easy to make and no advance prep is necessary. It takes around 10 minutes to prepare and 30 minutes in the oven, which after a big meal like a steak dinner, is a good amount of time for your guests to digest and be ready for dessert!

Along with the apples, sugar, flour and butter, the obvious fifth ingredient would have been cinnamon, but I wanted to do something a little different so I went for ginger instead. I had planned to grate the ginger and mix it in with the apples, but the ginger in the supermarket looked extremely dry / old. So I just used ground ginger and mixed it in with the crumble topping! It made the recipe even easier!!
You could use other types of fruit as the base or even use a combination. If you can sneak a sixth ingredient into your trolley, then a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side makes this dessert even better!

Find the recipe here

january: jasmine’s red bean dumpling dessert

It is Lunar New Year’s eve today, so I thought I would make something traditional to celebrate the day with K and little A.

Sweet dumplings are traditional desserts that we have on the last night of each lunar calendar year. They symbolize that the year is complete and that we are ready for a new beginning. Growing up, my mom would make this for us as a late evening dessert.

Even though you can buy these frozen from all Asian grocery stores, the home made version is  better and very easy!

The filling of the dessert is typically red bean, black sesame, peanut butter or taro. I decided to make red bean dumplings because red bean is K’s favourite. The dumpling itself is made of glutinous rice flour and water. The dessert soup base is made from palm sugar and ginger in water. I also added some sweet potato to the dessert to give it a different texture from the gooey red bean dumplings. (Just made it to 5 ingredients (red bean paste, glutinous rice flour, ginger, palm sugar and sweet potato).

We had these after dinner before little A went down for bed at 9p. We really stretched her bedtime tonight because we really wanted to enjoy dinner and dessert together as a family :)

On a separate note, I have to let you know that this is going to be my last post as a regular BSS contributor. I am constantly finding myself time challenged nowadays balancing work and family. I now understand the dilemma that working mothers go through. K and I also have additional challenges to being parents because little A is anaphylaxis to dairy and eggs and allergic to soy, wheat, peanuts and fish. I am going to step away from BSS for a while to focus on finding and trialling more recipes that I can try for  little A. With her allergies, the types of solids we have been giving her have been limited and as she grows older (now 17 months), she will need to try more foods. Helping little A with her food challenges is going to be my focus for the next little while.

I hope to be able to contribute to BSS again in the near future as a guest contributor :)

Happy Lunar New Year everyone. May your next Lunar year be filled with health, joy and happiness :)

january: kerri’s mini pavlovas

Living in Asia for the past few years, it’s been strange to me that so many people have never heard of pavlova, let alone eaten one! And when you see the expressions on their faces when they try it for the first time? Priceless. You just know they think they’ve been missing out on something amazing all these years :)

I love pav. The crispy meringue shell hiding the soft, fluffy centre. It’s the shell that I love the most, so the version I make has more shell and less soft centre. I love making it too, because it is one of the easiest things to make, is impressive to people on so many levels… and even moreso living abroad, reminds me of home. You can top it with just about anything you want, my favourite topping being cream (of course!), berries and (big) drizzles of chocolate ganache.

26 January is Australia Day so of course, we had to celebrate. So we had some Aussie friends over for some lamb and pav! I went a bit more traditional with my topping for this occasion, with fresh fruit and passionfruit. {But I still ate the leftovers with chocolate ganache!)

I often freeze egg whites when I make / bake recipes that involve only egg yolks. So if you get into the habit, you’ll always have egg whites on hand to whip up a pav whenever you want. Trust me, people will love you for it :)

You can find the recipe here. It is for a full size pavlova but includes instructions for mini ones.

#22 january: take 5

Happy New Year and welcome to BSS 2014!!

Our first theme for the year is The 5 Ingredient Fix! We can only use up to 5 easily accessible ingredients in our creations this month! Handy for times when we need to whip up something quick when guests might drop by unannounced or when we don’t have time to put into an elaborate sweet. So stay tuned and see what we come up with!