Sunday, January 18, 2009

CNY baking

Spoke to mom a few days ago about baking her "tasty and wholesome Pineapple Tart". When asked for recipe... she could only tell me a little, then told me that she estimated the ingredients. "pinch here, pinch there." Huh?

Maybe she is trying to hide her recipe leh........ she makes nice teochew kueh, carrot cake, yam cake, nonya dumpling, pineapple tart, kueh bangkit, 卤汤 (something like kueh chap) etc... she makes really nice food. I don't say it coz' I've grown accustomed to her cooking but it's coz' she puts in lots of good stuffs inside, sometimes she even put in herbs.

Anyway, back to the topic. I searched for a recipe in one of my baking books. I was a little confused when I compare with mom's recipe. I thought the book's recipe will taste better coz' the ratio of flour and butter is lesser than mom's. I was rather pissed and told mom "not nice also dare to write book?"

At the end of the day, I couldn't smell that same aroma from mom's kitchen so the taste is different. Mom was rather encouraging and said it's okay since I'm trying out for the first time. I didn't see the same brownish colour. So what's the problem? Mom cited that I probably used glassware to bake and my heat distribution in the oven is not from both above and bottom so my tart didn't brown at the bottom.
She started bragging "I used alum tray to bake last time. And then I do my own pineapple paste (yah, that I remember), I put in pandan leaf ...blah blah blah.....So mine taste nicer."

In 5 hours, all I had was >>
This container and another smaller container. Wah........... tiring leh! Can't imagine those homebakers who sell goodies at this time of the year. Or perhaps they're not as unlucky like me who can only bake one tray each time (and it's not that as if each tray is big)
Not that tasteful (in my opinion) but the girl loved it.
Tried the last bits of dough wrapped around pineapple.
At the same time did some chocolate chip cookies.

Packed some for mom and kept the rests for ourselves. It's one week to CNY and we haven't bought any NY goodies. Hmm.........no mood? We always buy very minimum at home (coz' nobody comes to pai-nian with us) and most the time we end up discarding them. Wasteful! So this year maybe I should bake?? Ha! Hubby has high expectation, he surely wouldn't like it.

成功 or 失败? 失败 coz' I didn't get the mom's taste. Might want to try Kueh Bangkit (with mom's estimate recipe). Hopefully I don't make it into a disaster coz' it's not easy to fry the flour.


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