Sweet potato cream

Another seasonal vege that I love, Sweet potatos!

I made sweet potato cream in the same way as the pumpkin cream. Sweet potato is very similar to pumpkin when it's cooked, so as I said for pumpkin cream you can use it for pretty much for anything.

I usually make a batch of sweet potato cream and freeze certain amount in small containers so I can take one out when I want to use it for my breads, cakes or desserts.

This time I made mini sweet potato mont blanc for morning tea time. Look at these tiny tea cups! I got them from IKEA kid's section... I think they are supposed to be toy? They're super cute anyway...;D

Ingredients:

Sweet potato (after cooked) 700g

Double cream 80g

Demerara sugar 60g

Salt 5g

Butter 50g

Cinnamon 1/2-1 tsp

1. Peel the sweet potato skin. Cut in small pieces. Put them in a microwave safe bowl. Cover the bowl with cling film and cook for 10 minutes or until the sweet potato is soft.

2. Put the sweet potato in a blender and make a smooth paste.

3. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until they're mixed together well.

Have you tried my Pumpkin cream yet?

Pumpkin tart

Another day with pumpkin;) I made a very rich and creamy pumpkin tart using my pumpkin cream (it's the same cream I used for the pumpkin cream bread).

I kept two pieces for Mr and I and shared other pieces with Andy's mum and dad and neighbours.

The bright orange smooth filling and well baked sweet pastry with a hint of cinnamon was such a comforting treat in an autumn afternoon. Yum yum yum...

Oh... Halloween is coming soon. Why not try it then?
Ingredients:

Sweet pastry 1 (See here)

Pumpkin cream 500g

Sugar 150g

Salt pinch

Cinnamon powder 1/2 tsp

Vanilla pot seed 1/4tsp

Egg 3

Flour 80g

Crème fraiche 180g

1. Prepare the sweet pastry. Line the pastry on a 9 inch tart tin. Prick the bottom of the tart case with a fork. Rest it in the freezer.

2. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Make the filling. Beat sugar, eggs, salt, cinnamon and vanilla together.

3. Sift flour into 2 and mix.

4. Add pumpkin cream and creme fraiche into 3 and mix well.

5. Take the tart case out from the freezer and pour the filling into the case.

6. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 60 minutes.

Pumpkin cream bread

It's this time of the year again! It's the pumpkin season! I love autumn. There are so many foods in this season that I love. Pumpkin is definitely one of them.

The other day I found a really cute pumpkin in a shop. For a couple of day the pumpkin was my baby's best friend and then came back to me in the kitchen. I decided to turn Mr pumpkin to a nice smooth pumpkin cream.

This silky and creamy pumpkin paste is so versatile that you can use it in breads, cakes, any other desserts but also nice to eat as is!

Here is how to make the pumpkin cream:
Ingredients

Pumpkin (after cooked) 700g

Double cream 80g

Demerara sugar 60g

Salt 5g

Butter 50g

Cinnamon 1/2-1 tsp

1. Peel the pumpkin skin and take the seeds away. Cut in small pieces. Put them in a microwave safe bowl. Cover the bowl with cling film and cook for 10 minutes or until the pumpkin is soft.

2. Put the pumpkin in a blender and make a smooth paste.

3. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until they're mixed together well.

4. Get creative! Use in bread, cake, ice cream, anything you like or eat as is.:D

I made some pumpkin cream bread. Not only did I add the pumpkin cream in the bread dough but also I put the cream inside of the roll. The dough turned bright yellow and had nice soft texture. The sweet cream oozed out when I bit into the roll.... Heavenly...

I finished baking those rolls late last night and had to have one because it smelt so nice and one taste bite was certainly not enough. I didn't care what time of the night it was... It was that tasty...

I also made "Ducks" (which became "deformed ducks"... and "Booboo pig". ;D

Ingredients:

Strong flour 250g

Plain flour 250g

Yeast 7g

Egg 1

Milk 140g

Butter 50g

Sugar 50g

Salt 5g

Pumpkin cream 200g

Extra pumpkin cream to put inside.

Egg for egg wash

Pumpkin seeds to decorate

1. Put all the ingredients in a standing mixer and knead for 10 minutes.

2. Cover the bowl with cling film and rest the dough until it's doubled in size.

3. Take out the dough on a floured surface and divide into 16 pieces and make balls. Let them rest for 10 minutes.

4. Roll out each ball and place a tablespoon of pumpkin cream in the middle. Seal the dough tightly and place the roll on a baking tray with the sealed side facing down.

5. Rest the dough again until it's doubled in size.

6. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Egg wash the top of the rolls and put pumpkin seed on top.

7. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 20 minutes.

Medal cookies for Robin Hood event

It was a busy week in the WOS kitchen last week since I was making medal cookies for the weekend's Robin Hood event. These special cookie were given to the kids who scored three gold at Deben Archery Range "Have-A-Go".

Apparently the event was a great success and over 100 cookies were all gone on the first day! Amazing!

Hope everyone enjoyed a fun archery experience as well as a sweet reward. ;D

Key lime pie

I (and Lana) made individual key lime pies for Andy who looked after Lana while I was busy preparing the cookies (I will talk about those cookies on the next post).

These were also for Andy's mum and dad who looked after Lana while Andy and I went out for dinner two of us alone for the first time in 6 months!

Thank you very much from me and Lana. :D

Ingredients;

Lime 4

Condensed milk 397g

Egg 2

Cream cheese 70g

*Base

Digestive cookies 80g

Sugar 25g

Butter 50g

Italian meringue

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Put digestive cookies and sugar in a plastic bag. Smash them finely.

2. Melt butter and put it into 1. Mix well.

3. Place 2 on the bottom of a cake tin evenly. Bake 2 in the pre-heated oven (180ºc) until it's golden. Cool it down.

4. Meanwhile prepare the filling.

5. Mix lime zest and egg together.

6. In a different bowl mix together condensed milk, cream cheese and lime juice.

7. Combine 5 and 6. Pour the mixture into the base.

8. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until it's set. Cool in the fridge.

9. Add meringue on top and put the pie in the oven (120ºc) to colour the meringue.

Have you seen my lemon meringue pie?

黒あん・白あん (Black bean paste, butter bean paste)

As I said on the previous Sesame pudding post, I'm going to share how to make black bean paste (黒あん, Kuro-an).

So..., it's pretty much the same as Azuki but this time I used freshly grated palm sugar.

Ingredients

Dried black beans 250g

Palm sugar (grated) 150g

Salt pinch

Water

1. Soak the beans overnight.

2. Put the beans in a large pot with enough water to cover the beans. Bring it to boil.

3. When the water is boiled, pour the water away and replace with fresh water. Bring it boil again.

4. Turn the heat down. Add sugar and salt. Simmer until the beans are soft.

5. Mash them in the way you like. 

I also made butter bean paste which is called 白あん (Shiro-An). All you need to do is to change the black beans to butter beans and you'll have a nice white bean paste. ;D

Those bean pastes can be used in cakes, puddings, biscuits... but also nice as is... So, I made little Kuro-An balls and Shiro-An balls for my after dinner treat. Yum yum yum;D

ごまプリン (Sesame pudding)

Since Andy is away, I decided to have another Japanese treat for myself. This time, Sesame pudding;)

This Japanese style pudding is super easy to make. In fact it's the same process as the green tea pudding I made the other day but with different ingredients.

I added a couple of table spoon of sesame paste instead of green tea powder and replaced soy milk to water (if you want the pudding to be richer, then using soy milk is perfectly fine). To make the pudding even more Japanesey, I put some black bean paste (I'll post how to make it soon. For now, here is a similar one...Azuki) and dates syrup on top.

....!....!!...!!! This was good! Really good! This is the kind of dessert I could easily have every day. Aah, I'm lucky that I have one more left in the fridge for tomorrow... aah, what a pudding...