Chocolate Souffle

Souffle? Yes, a dear friend took me to a tiny Thai restaurant on Yonge and Sheppard, and it was there that I had a taste of my first Chocolate AND Vanilla soufflé. We shared, I didn’t eat all of it myself!... Your probably wondering why a Thai restaurant is serving soufflé, I don’t know either but it was GOOD.  Unfortunately this was my first time having soufflé, so I can’t compare it to any other.  I was determined to make it at home, but I have heard several horrible myths on how difficult it is to make them... For example, soufflé can easily deflate when you take it out of the oven, they may not “puff” up in the oven, or even spill over.  I began my research looking through online recipes, compared several methods and watched a few youtube videos.  I was convinced that Chef Gordon Ramsay had the easiest and reliable recipe. 

I created Ramsay’s Passion fruit & Banana soufflé from Youtube.  The problem was that I don’t like bananas and I can’t find Passion fruit this time of the year... so I looked in my pantry, I noticed chocolate chips, done!  Chocolate soufflé was what I made!

I used Gordon Ramsay’s recipe, but I did make a few minor changes with the ingredients. 

 

Yield 6

Equipments:

Ramekins

Pastry brush

Electric mixer 

Ingredients: 

Pastry Cream:

150 ml milk

100 ml cream

3 egg yolks

3 ½ tablespoon sugar

1 ½ tablespoon flour

1 cup chocolate chips

Egg whites:

6 egg whites- Room temperature

3 tablespoon sugar

Garnishes:

Side of icecream

Dusting of powdered sugar

Ramekin preparations:

1.        With room temperature butter, use a pastry brush and cover the entire inside of ramekins with butter

2.       Pour a tablespoon of sugar into the buttered ramekins and roll the sugar around to completely cover the ramekin. 

Pastry cream

3.       Put ramekins into fridge

Directions:

1.       Warm cream, and milk on stove.  Don’t let boil

2.       In a bowl, add egg yolks and sugar, whisk together

3.       Add flour to eggs and sugar mixture, and whisk together

4.       Pour half the hot mixture into the egg and flour mixture and whisk quickly.  No lumps

Slowly add sugar

5.       Pour the mixture from the bowl back to the pot of hot milk and whisk quickly

6.       Turn on the heat, medium, and continue whisking till the mixture is THICK, turn stove off and put aside to cool 

7.       In the microwave, warm white chocolate chips till all melted.

8.       Pour melted white chocolate to the COOLED pastry cream and mix together

9.       In an electric mixer, whisk 6 egg white

10.   When the egg whites begins to turn white, SLOWLY add sugar

This is what stiff peaks look like!

11.   Whisk till stiff peaks

12.   Add half of the whipped egg whites to the cooled pastry cream and slowly combined

13.   Add the remaining half of the egg whites and fold everything together.  CAREFULLY so that it doesn’t lose volume.  Don’t over mix!

14.   Pour into ramekins, fill it to the top!

15.   Bake for 15 mins

16.   SERVE IMMEDIATELY!

  

Fill to the top

Not too warm, don't want to cook the eggs!

 

Note: Room temperature egg whites will whip up fluffier and higher volume. 

Tip: If you forget to leave your eggs out to room temperature, just put them warm water.  

 

This may seem complicated, but just watch Gordon do it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4MewNvc5Y  and you will see that it’s pretty easy and fast to do!  

This was such a success, warm custardy centers and crispy outsides..... Next time I think I will make White Chocolate Vanilla Bean Souffle!

 Stay Tuned!

Beef Brisket Noodle Soup

It certainly is chilly out!  It snows here and there -- the weather is constantly averaging -6 degrees. Brrr... In order to be kept warm, time to stew something! One of my favourites is the Chinese Beef Brisket Rice Noodle Soup!  Many of you know of the infamous Wonton Noodle Soup, but personally, I love Beef Brisket with fresh Ho Fun Noodles. If your Chinese, or ever had Beef Brisket Rice Noodle Soup, you will love this version!  This recipe was verbally given to me by someone who I see every few years and had not demonstrated the cooking techniques behind this lovely creation.  

Hmmm, the taste...... it a cross between a western beef stew, and Chinese Beef Brisket Noodle Soup.  There is tomato paste, onions carrots and beef just like western stew, but it also has star anise, cinnamon, cubed beef briskets and a touch of curry powder that adds an Asian flare?!!?... I don’t know if this is making any sense! hahahaha   Oh, and the soup is a much thinner broth and not as thick as the western style. 

None the less, it’s extremely good.  If I choose to make it as a main course (lunch or dinner), steaming some vermicelli noodles, bok choy, and ladle the broth and brisket as a hardy meal.  Not to mention, garnishing with cilantro and green onion for extra added flavour.  I usually have it in the afternoon as a soup for an afternoon snack :).

This pot of beef brisket stew ideally can serve up to 6 people. I only live with one other person so I would freeze it in Tupperware and pull it out whenever I’m feeling lazy to cook!  This way I can easily reheat the soup on the stove and able to enjoy it throughout the week! Also, this stew takes at least 2 hours to stew, so it’s a quite a long wait!

Good chunky pieces

Equipments:

Large pot

Ingredients:

1 lb Beef Brisket – cut into chunks (trim off the fat, but make sure to leave a good amount because it’ll help make the beef more tender and juicy)

2 large onions- chopped

2 bay leaves

1 cinnamon stick

2 star anise

1 rock sugar (size of 2 marbles) – can purchase at any Asian supermarket. 

2 carrots- chopped not too small, size of brisket

3-4 ginger- thinly sliced

1 tablespoon curry powder

3 tablespoon tomato paste

900 ml beef stock
2 cups water

This gives good flavour!

2 tablespoon oil

Garnish:
Coriander
Green onions

Directions:

1.       Add oil to the hot pot, high heat

2.       Add brisket to pot cook, brown the meat, (crispy edges) for approximately 5 mins.  (This adds flavour)

3.       Change to medium heat and add onions

4.       Cook onions for another 5 mins while stirring and scraping off the brown bits in the bottom of the pot

5.       Add tomato paste and curry powder, stir so everything is coated in tomato paste

Add that stock and water!

6.       Turn heat back on high, and add beef stock, water, ginger, cinnamon,  Star anise, bay leaf and rock sugar

7.        Put lid on pot, and cook on LOW heat

8.        Boil for 1 hour on LOW heat, then add carrots (the brisket takes a 

       longer time to cook before it get tenders, that's why I add the carrot in

       an hour later so it doesn’t melt into the stew. 

10.     Cook soup for a total of 2-3 hours

11.     Salt and pepper 

12.  Garnish with coriander and green onions 

Optional:

Vermicelli Rice Noodles.  You can buy these at any Chinese supermarket.  I bought mine at Loblaws Superstore

Tip: Freeze the leftovers if you want to have this soup on a later date.

Note: I added vegetables at the end. I used what I had in the fridge at the time, which were green bell peppers, and mushrooms.

Yum!

Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups Cookies

mmmmm.. Check out those mini peanut butter cups!!

I love Crunchy Cookies.  I enjoy the chewy ones now and then, but I personally love crispy crunchy ones!  I have been experimenting with baking cookies lately, and I finally succeeded! This all actually happened while I was browsing random videos on Youtube, and I encountered an Alton Brown’s Cookie episode “Good Eats S3E6P1: Three Chips For Sister Marsha”. I have been watching his show since I was a little girl. He is one of my favourite celebrity chef! 

The following recipe was inspired by Alton, and I highly recommend watching that episode. It’s really entertaining and educational!  He makes three types of cookies- crunchy, cakey, and chewy.  I kind of deviated from the three recipes, just to experiment and add my personal touch. 

Yield: 36

Equipments:

Parchment paper
Baking sheets
Electric mixer

Ingredients:

2 Sticks of unsalted butter –room temperature

2 ¼ cups of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ cup of sugar

1 ¼ cup of brown sugar

1 egg

2 tablespoon milk

1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups of mini peanut butter cup 

Directions:

1.       Preheat oven to 375 F

2.       Put butter sugar and brown sugar into mixer, whip at high speed (Cream together) 1 min-ish

3.       Back to low speed, add egg, milk & vanilla until all is combined

4.       Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda

5.       Slow speed again, slowly add the sifted ingredients

6.       Change back to high speed until all incorporated

** it is important to change/start the speed of the mixer on low because the high speed will rebound anything you add back onto your face and all over your counter, creating a MESS!

7.       Add peanut butter cup chips

8.       With your hands, roll into balls

9.   6 per baking sheet

10.       Bake for 10 mins

11.       EAT!

Bake, bake bake..!

Tip: You don’t have to bake all the cookies at once, what I do is bake one batch (which is 6 cookies) and put the rest in the fridge.  I take the dough, put it in plastic wrap, seal it up, and put it in the fridge.  So whenever I want warm, fresh cookies, just take the dough out, and bake it!!

Note: It doesn't have to be mini peanut butter cups, you can use chocolate chips!

Next time I will attempt Alton’s The Chewy! Looking forward to that!!

Mint Chocolate Meringue Cookies

Mint Chocolate Meringue Sandwich Cookies

Christmas is just around the corner.  LITERALLY! And pot-lucks are generally pretty popular for gatherings.  Originally I wanted to make Macaron cookies, the colourful one, the ones that you see floating around the internet lately..                                                                 

How hard could they be! I was wrong…. They aren’t very hard but it requires almonds which I don’t have.  By-the-way, It was 9pm and I wasn’t going to go out in the snowy night to buy almonds.  Yes I could purchase it the next day, but I had the craving to bake THEN and THERE!!!  I originally thought they were Meringues filled with icing then sandwiched together, they are more complicated than that, so I decided to stick to my original thought and do this instead.=)

 

TA-DA!

 Super Easy Mint-Chocolate Meringue Cookies

Yield 24

Utensils:

Piping bag and tip (if you don't want to spend money on this, just use a spoon and spoon it onto the baking pan)

Parchment paper

Baking Pan

Ingredients:

Meringue cookies

3 egg whites

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup of sugar

¼ cup of powdered sugar

1 teaspoon Corn starch

Icing filling:

3 tablespoon store bought icing

½ teaspoon mint extract

Directions:

Meringue

1.       Pre-head oven 250 degrees

2.       With an electric mixer, or you can do it manually with a whisk and a bowl, whisk egg whites and cream of tartar

3.       Whip eggs on high speed

4.       Add vanilla extract

5.       Slowly add sugar while whisking, one table spoon at a time

6.       Stop when egg whites reached stiff peaks

7.       Add corn starch and powder sugar into mixture and fold to combine

8.       Fill piping bad with meringue and pipe onto a baking pan lined parchment paper

**you can pipe the meringue fairly closely together, approximately an inch apart from each other, they don’t expand very much.  Unlike cake.

9.       Bake meringue for 1h-1/2 hours

10.   Cool for 30 min

Frosting Filling

1.       Mix chocolate frosting and mint extract ~ easy!

Assembly

1.       Spread chocolate frosting and sandwich together!

Tip: if you like, you can add food colouring to the meringue.  I added red food colouring but I don’t think I added enough as seen in my picture above.  =(

Mini Lasagna!

I have never made Lasagna before.  I've seen it done numerous of time on the Food Network but never attempted it, even though I looove to eat it.  Why haven't I made this before? Don't really know... but may be because it looks like A LOT of work.  However, one day as I was watching an episode of Chef At Home by Chef Michael Smith he made a Lasagna which he called Speedy Lasagna that inspired me!
Okay, I lied, I guess another reason why I never made Lasagne is because I am scared of the leftovers..... I would be eating Lasagne for days!  BUT I came up with a solution!  BY USING RAMEKINS! Yes individual Lasagnas, so cute and personable.

The best part is that I made a few extra and plastic wrapped it, and put it in the freezer for a later date. So when I do feel for Lasagna, I just pull it out of the freezer and bake it in the oven!

The following recipe was inspired by Michael Smith but I tweaked it. IF you want the original recipe click SPEEDY LASAGNA

Utensils:

Small ramekins

Ingredients:

Quick Tomato Sauce:

700ml (1 Jar) of tomato sauce (your brand of choice)

1 lb Ground Beef

1 Onion- peeled and chopped

3 table spoon of olive oil

2 cloves of garlic

Optional- I like to add vegetables into my tomato cause for the extra health factor!

   ½ zucchini, cut into small cubes

   1 carrot, cut into small cubes

   2 stalks of celery cut into small cubes

   7 white mushroom- slice

Cheese sauce:

1 egg, lightly beaten

3 tablespoon cream

½ cup of ricotta cheese

½ cup of Parmesan cheese

2 cups of grated mozzarella cheese

Salt and pepper

Pasta:

Lasagna noodles

Directions

     1. Cook Pasta

Follow the directions on the box but make sure that the noodles are not completely cooked through. The noodles will continue to cook when you bake it in the oven. Remove noodles and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking process and drain the water. Set noodles aside flat.

Tomato sauce:

1. In a hot pan, medium heat, add olive oil, minced garlic, and chopped onions and cook for 3 mins.

2. Add ground beef and sauté till cooked.

3.(If you choose to add vegetables.) Add carrots, celery, mushrooms, zucchini, and cook for 5 mins.

4. Add tomato sauce, stir until simmer

5. Salt and pepper

6. Turn off stove

Cheese sauce:

1. In a bowl, combine egg and cream together

2. Add ricotta, Parmesan, and mozzarella, salt and pepper and mix well

Assembly:

1. Preheat oven 375 F

2. Take the sheet of pasta and cut it into square so it fits into the ramekins

3. Put one table spoon of tomato sauce into the bottom of the ramekin

4. Put one square sheet of noodle into the bottom of the ramekin

5. Add 2 tablespoon of tomato sauce on top of the pasta

6. Add another square sheet of pasta on top

7. Add 1 tablespoon of cheese sauce on top

8. Add pasta

9. Add tomato sauce

10. Add pasta

11. Finish with another spoon of sauce

12. Finished with Parmesan or Mozzarella or both cheese

Repeat steps with other ramekins
 **Only bake the Lasagna that you will be serving and put the rest in the freezer. 

Bake for 15-20 mins

Serve hot and enjoy!!