Conversions Guide For Square And Round Cake Tins

I recently have some enquiry about how to calculate recipe ingredients as well as converting the ingredients for various sizes of cake tins. I was very blessed that my baking buddy, Grace taught me how to do a calculation on it.

On top of this information, I also manage to find that ingredients required for a round cake tin is approximately 25% or 1/4 lesser than a square cake tin.

Easy Conversions Guide For Different Sizes Cake Tins

Formula as below:

(Size of New Cake Tin/Size of Original Cake Tin)*Volume of Original Recipe

Easy Conversions Guide For Square and Round Cake Tins

An easily remembered conversions guide for square and round cake tins would be the following:

Answer 1.
A round cake tin will hold approximately 25% or a 1/4 less than a square tin

and

Answer 2.
Use a round cake tin that is one size larger than a square tin for a given recipe
Therefore, we can make a simple quick comparison chart (in inches) for adjusting a recipe from a square to round cake tin or visa versa.

5″	4″
6″	5″
7″	6″
8″	7″
9″	8″
10″	9″
11″	10″
12″	11″
13″	12″
14″	13″
15″	14″
16″	15″

Hope this information can help every readers of my blog including myself.

Desiccated Coconut Gula Melaka Chicken Wings

I joined a Facebook group named "Singapore Home Cooks" which hold many challenges weekly, This is the 4th week that they are holding it, the theme was "Chicken Wings". This is an ingredient that many home cookers will use in almost their daily meal like me. I decided to give it a try on a recipe using gula melaka. Gula Melaka is normally an ingredient used in dessert only till recently my friend, Rita, told me that she ate Gula Melaka Chicken Wings in a Nyonya Peranakan Restaurant with her family. According to her, it was tasty but too sweet.

With the inspiration from what she had mentioned and my unawareness of the actual taste, I take a risk to try cooking this dish. As we all know that coconut is always a best partner of gula melaka therefore I planned to combine this two ingredients together with chicken wings to work out a dish.

Here it is, first trial of this recipe.

Desiccated Coconut Gula Melaka Chicken Wings

Recipe attached as below:

Ingredients

3 pcs Chicken Wings
1 tsp Salt
2 tsp Soya Sauce
1 pinch Grounded Pepper
1 tsp Ginger Juice
Cooking Oil (enough to fry the chicken wings)

Coating

100gm Plain Flour/All-Purpose Flour
1 egg
100gm Desiccated Coconut

Sauce

45gm Gula Melaka, crushed
15ml Water
25ml Coconut Milk
10gm Butter
¼ tsp Salt

Method

1. Season the Chicken wings with salt, soya sauce, grounded pepper & ginger juice for 2 hours or overnight.
2. Coat the chicken wings with plain flour then egg & lastly with dessicated coconut.
3. Deep-fried it till cooked.
4. Add the gula melaka & water in a thick bottomed pot and cook until gula melaka melted. Keep swirling the pan so that the sugar can cook evenly.
5. Once the gula melaka is boiled, take it off the heat and add butter. Stir until it's completely melted into gula melaka.
6. Next, add in the coconut milk and salt and whisk in until you have a consistent sauce.
7. Add in the chicken wings & coat well or you may choose to drizzle it over the chicken wings.
8. Serve & Enjoy !

*Note: 

• You can choose to increase the amount of ingredients for sauce as it can be store in refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. 
• Serve it on a cake, in a cake, over ice-cream, tarts, crumbles, pancakes, brownies, waffles, toast, granola.

Fried Carrot Cake - Black

Fried carrot cake is one of the foodies in my growing up life as breakfast or tea-break or supper no matter it is black or white. Being loving it so much and seen many homemaker cook this at home.

Recipe out there are always for large portion of 2 pax and above. Therefore it is really hard for me to follow when I just need just 1 pax amount. After a few try, I finally found the right amount for each ingredients to dish up an amount just nice for 1 pax especially like myself with a small consume ability for each time.

Carrot Cake for 1 pax

Recipe attached as below:

Ingredients

150 gm carrot cake (store bought)

3 tsps chai po, minced (also known as Preserved Turnip/菜脯)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsps cooking oil
1 - 2 tbsp of Black Sweet Sauce (depends on how dark you like to have it & the type of black sauce you use)

½ tsp homemade sambal chilli (add more if you like it to be more spicy)

Method

1. Soak and wash the chai po then set aside.
2. Minced the clove of garlic and set aside.
3. Heat the wok with cooking oil. Add the carrot cake and cut up the carrot cake while stir frying for about 5 mins. Scoop into a bowl and set aside for later use.
4. Add chai po and garlic into the remaining oil in the wok and stir fry till fragrant.
5. Add back the carrot cake and stir to mix then add 1 tbsp of black sweet sauce.
6. Add in the beaten egg, ½ or 1 tbsp of the black sweet sauce together with the chilli. 
7. Enjoy it !!!

I personally have a preference of ingredients. If there is time allowance, using homemade carrot will taste even better. But if you do not have the time, no worry, you may buy the ready made carrot carrot from most of the supermarket like NTUC Finest, Sheng Siong.

Ready-made Carrot Cake Pic 1

Ready-made Carrot Cake Pic 2

I also like to use Kwong Cheong Thye (KCT) Black Sweet Sauce as it is able to give me the same taste as those carrot cake sold out in the hawker centre. you can purchase it from it's retail outlet in aljunied or some supermarket like NTUC Finest do carry. 

Black Sweet Sauce by KCT

Bittergourd Mi Soya Noodle Soup

Baked Chocolate Mooncake 2014

烤巧克力皮月饼

The 1st time I saw Ann Low posted her baked chocolate mooncake, I was attracted to it because it is chocolate & the recipe do not required egg wash. Therefore I decided to try it once I bought the ingredients.

By using Valrhona Cocoa Powder, it had enhanced the flavour of the mooncake. I love it very much. I also added glitter on the mooncake since it does not required egg wash.

Thank you Ann Low for sharing the Baked Chocolate Mooncake recipe.

Recipe attached as below:

Ingredients

60gm Plain Flour
60gm Hong Kong Flour
20gm Valrhona Cocoa Powder
90gm "Lyle's" Golden Syrup
30gm Peanut Oil
½ tsp Alkaline/Lye Water

180gm Coffee Lotus Paste
180gm Milk Tea Lotus Paste

Method

1. Mix sugar syrup, peanut oil and alkaline water together thoroughly.
2. Sift plain flour and cocoa powder in a bowl. Make a well in the center and pour sugar syrup mixture. Using a rubber spatula to mix and form to a soft dough. Cover with a cling wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.
3. Divide the coffee lotus paste and milk tea paste into 13 portions, 15gm each. Wrap the milk tea lotus paste around the coffee lotus paste.
4. Divide dough into 13 portions, 20gm each and roll into balls. Wrap the dough around the lotus paste.
5. Roll it into ball and dust with some flour. Press firmly into mould, un-mould and place on a lined baking tray.
6. Bake at preheated oven 180°C for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and rest mooncakes to cool for about 15 minutes. Then bake the chocolate mooncakes again for another 10-12 minutes.
7. Leave mooncakes to cool down completely before storing into an airtight container. This mooncake can be eaten immediately with the crispy or wait for about 3 days for the mooncakes for skin to soften (回油) before serving.
8. Enjoy the mooncakes with a pot of your favourite tea!

Enjoy It!

Steamed Chicken with Essence of Chicken

I had many bottles of "Essence of Chicken" left. I still do drink them occasionally but not as often as 3 times a week during my schooling day in University. 

I decided to try to make use of it in my cooking. Here it is, the 1st trial with steam chicken. It enhanced the taste of this dish. It is healthy and people who do not like to take Essence of Chicken by itself can try this cook so that you will eventually drink the essence and build/maintain your health thru your meal.

Steamed Chicken

Recipe attached as below:

Ingredients

¼ chicken (portion of whole chicken) or 2/3 drumsticks or 4/5 chicken wings

A handful of wolfberries

8 red dates

1 pc of Dang Gui (optional), I miss this out as I'm lazy to go & buy.

half a bottle of chicken essence (any brand)

Seasonings

¼ tsp Salt
½ tsp Hua Tiao Wine
a pinch of white pepper

1 tsp of ginger juice

Method

1. Wash the chicken clean & tap dry with kitchen towel.
2. Season the chicken with the above seasonings for 30 mins to an hr.
3. Pour half a bottle of chicken essence & steam for 20 to 30 mins.
4. Enjoy while hot!

Double-Boiled Chicken Wing In Coconut

A year back, I saw Zoe Tay (Mediacorp Artiste) cooked a chicken soup in coconut but I cannot find the recipe online via Google (maybe I'm bad with search). I wanted to try it long ago, yet either I do not have all ingredients or I do not have the time to do it.

We the bad weather bad due to the haze caused by neighbouring countries recently, I decided to use my sixth "cow" sense to cook the soup myself. Out of my surprise, my sixth "cow" sense for today was sensitive enough. It was a success soup tonight as one of my dinner's dish.

I will like to share this yummy soup with all my friends and fans of my blog. It is really worth an effort to cook this soup. Do give it a try.

Ready after 2 hours of double boiled

A bowl of serving of the soup

Recipe attached as below:

Ingredients for the dish

Ingredients

1 pc     Coconut
4pcs     Chicken Wings
10gm   Wild Red Dates
10gm   Ginger
5gm     Wolfberry
5gm     Dry Mushroom
3gm     南杏北杏 [North Almond (Bitter) + South Almond (Sweet)]

Seasonings

¼ tsp Salt
½ tsp Hua Tiao Wine

Method

1. Wash and tap dry the chicken wings with kitchen towel then season with salt for 30mins.
2. Remove the seeds of wild red date.
3. Soak the mushroom, wolfberry, wild red date with warm water.
4. Cut the mushroom, ginger into slice.
5. Open up the coconut & retain the 100ml coconut juice.
6. Stack the chicken wings with all the ingredients alternately into the coconut shell.
7. Add in hua tiao wine and coconut juice.
8. Double-boiled it for 2 hours.
9. Enjoy while hot!

Below are the details step in pictures.

Season with salt

Soak the mushroom

Remove the seeds and soak 

Soak the wolfberries

Cut the mushroom

Drain the wild red date

Drain the wolfberries

Cut the ginger into slices

Give 南杏北杏 a rinse

Stack all the ingredients and add coconut juice

Add Hua Tiao Wine & Double Boiled