Ming's Home!

Ming arrived home at noon, one of the first to return home from Australia for the year -end holidays. Late Nov to Feb are the fun months here, when the kids come home to party and fill up the drinking joints. With Christmas, New Year and Chinese New Year in between and final term holidays for the local schools too, it's a time to chill out not just for the kids but for us parents too. KK actually becomes young and lively. I love this time of the year when the kids come home and the family is complete. Can hardly wait until my girl comes home in 10 days.

The plan was to eat out but Ming requested a Chinese meal at home with lots of veg ("The only Chinese veg they have in Coles is pak choy and chinese cabbage.") and a soup ("The only meat good for making soup is beef. Australian chicken and pork give an awful smell to the soups.") I am lucky that my family loves home-cooked food and I am pleasantly surprised that unlike most kids here, who prefer western food, my kids love Chinese food and all kinds of cuisine. I think the trick is to make sure you cook both western and eastern food. Most kids who crave for western food probably do that out of pure craving because their moms do not cook enough western food. I know of a Chinese kid who only eats western food. I find it strange and pitiful.

Dinner was very everyday home-cooked Chinese dishes, made with whatever was available from my fridge and garden.


Kampung chicken with young bamboo and winter melon soup. The winter melon was from my backyard.


MIL came with her Lion Heads.


Ming wanted "the angular fish that is crispy". Lucky for me (and him), I had some stocked in my freezer. Black pomfret is heavenly when wok-fried until crispy and doused with light and dark soy sauce.


A cold dish of silken tofu and century eggs.


Fried okra with dried shrimps, the okra from my garden.


MIL brought her soy sauce kampung chicken, a little lean but the sauce was great.


Kai lan with beef fillet, the kai lan from my garden.



Two more dishes were steamed minced pork with salted eggs and a veg dish of hard bean curd strips. Nothing deep-fried and lots of greens from my garden. Dessert was juicy jambu (rose apples, Ming's fav fruits) and papaya. I was surprised when he said "I miss fruits, Australia doesn't have much fruits" because most of our fruits are imported from Australia and whenever I go to Australia, I enjoy their fruits. "There's strawberries, blueberries, peaches, nectarines..." "Strawberries and all those berries aren't fruits, mom. Jambu, guava, papaya, bananas, pineapple and mangoes are fruits." Oh. I am guessing that most guys don't consider berries as fruits too.

Old-Fashioned Butter cake

Ah, butter cake. Who can resist a really good butter cake, made with real delicious butter with a texture that's not too spongy or too dense. I know many butter cake lovers out there love the old-fashioned butter cake made simply with eggs, sugar, flour and butter without separating the eggs. But I'm now convinced that without the addition of cake stabilisers like Ovalette, it is nearly impossible to get a very good butter cake that is dense yet soft if you don't whisk the egg whites separately. Ovalette is an important ingredient for commercial bakers because with it you can throw everything into the bowl at the same time and the cake will always come out very fine and soft. But what is a food purist to do?

We fight back the use of artificial food aids with quality ingredients and tedious steps such as separating the eggs and whisking the whites for air and volume, and beating the butter and sugar until they are light and fluffy. We use the best butter for creaming, and that means canned butter like Golden Churn and Wood Dunn. Wood Dunn butter has been around since I was a kid and when I recently ate a friend's buttercake made with Wood Dunn butter, I ate half her 10" round butter cake, stopping only because my thighs were laughing. Canned butter is more solid than block butter, the latter melting easily in our weather. To whip butter to a fluffy state, it must be well chilled or it'll go soft before your sugar has dissolved in the butter. Chill the sugar too so that when you cream the butter and sugar together, they will hold up longer and thus fluff better. Now about the flour, you can use cake flour or just plain flour. Self-raising flour is good too, and I usually use that. I like my butter cake au natural so I don't add vanilla essence to it.

This is an old recipe handed down by friend to friend and I can't even remember who gave it to me. I checked it against the many buttercake recipes that I have and this is the simplest, most basic one that gives excellent results. You can use this recipe and add lemon juice (1 tablespoon) and grated rind from a lemon to make lemon buttercake, you can turn it into a choc marble cake but adding 2 T sifted choc powder to half the batter, or add about 8 oz melted good quality choc to make it a fabulous choc cake. You can add poppy seeds or raisins for a fun bite, and rum or cointreau for a grown up, classy butter cake.

For the die-hard old-fashioned butter cake people, you can add the eggs whole without separating them to get a denser cake. For those who want a lighter cake, take away 2 oz flour. See, it's a one size fits all cake.

This recipe is specially for MP and another reader who asked for it. Now that we are done with butter cakes, we'll be testing out several pound cake recipes (which are simple in principle but more tricky to make) next. Stay tuned.



Old-Fashioned Butter Cake
12 oz/ 360 g chilled butter (1 small can Golden Churn or Wood Dunn)
9 oz/270 g chilled caster sugar, (original recipe was 10 oz)
9 large eggs, separated*
11 oz/330 g self raising flour**, sifted
2 oz/60 ml milk***

* use medium sized eggs if you like your cake denser and add them whole without separating. Large eggs here are about 85 g each.
**or use 8 to 9 oz for a lighter cake. If using plain flour, add 1 1/2 teaspoon double action baking powder
***use orange juice instead of milk for a citrus flavored cake, or water for choc cake.

Prep: lightly grease the base of a 10"/25 cm square or round cake tin and line bottom with paper. Oven at 160 to 170 C.

1. Whisk egg whites with 3 oz/90 g sugar and 1/2 t cream of tartar until soft peaks or stiff peaks if you like a softer cake. (If you have two bowls, whisk the egg whites after you have creamed and mixed the butter mixture in step 4.)

2. In another bowl, beat butter and remaining sugar by machine until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides a few times. Check to see if sugar has dissolved before going to next step.

3. Add the yolks one by one (or whole eggs if a heavier cake is preferred), beating well after each addition and then add the liquid (milk).

4. Fold in the flour in 2 or 3 batches ( I added the flour in one go --as usual, Quick Step Terri--so it wasn't well-blended in and there were tiny holes in the cake).

5. Fold the stiff egg whites into the butter mixture until well-blended but don't over-do it or the whites will deflate.

6. Pour batter into prepared cake tin and bake 1 hr 10-15 minutes until wooden skewer plunged into middle of cake comes out clean.

Another Year

Thank you friends for the birthday wishes, messages and e-card. Yeah, I am that popular (I would like to pretend so) :D. Actually I only got 10 roses from Hub ("5 for you and 5 for your mom" he kidded. I hope he was kidding.). Why 10, I asked? He said the florist ran out of pink roses. I dunno, this guy can be pretty crafty. And 12 red ones from my lovely nieces. A nice surprise was a cake from L of Ganache fame. I was so thrilled that she remembered my birthday ("Because I read in your blog last year that you had durians instead of a cake."). L, we enjoyed the cake, especially my nieces, and they think you are the best baker in town! "Can you make it Ah Yee?" they challenged me. I told them I can only make the Jello layer.







This pretty & refreshing cake tastes more like a jello dessert than a cake cake. Hop over to Ganache and make your order. She has a long list of lovely cakes for all occasions. If strawberry jello is not your thing, try her banana choc cake. Heaven.