Pandan cake

Ooh I have wanted to make this cake soooooo badly for such a long time!
It always seemed like it would be a whole lot of trouble with great risk of failing, but turns out it is really easy! I won't lie to you, there can be lots of pitfalls. But thanks to all those other great bloggers out there, you CAN learn from other peoples mistakes!

Ok so I've been looking out for a chiffon pan for a while now, but I just couldn't seem to find one.
So when I went to my Asian super the other day, since I knew they also sold all kinds of other household appliances, I had an eye open for it. And there it was... my very own chiffon pan. Yippie!!!

One of the blogs I follow Happy Home Baking, has some awesome chiffon cake recipes and I later found this great post on many chiffon cake pitfalls by I eat I shoot I post, so I was good to go!

I was very surprised at how fast the batter was made and how effortless it all seemed. Within no time my cake was in the oven. And it turned out soooo yummie! It was really soft and moist, with that lovely airiness that I love so much. Hmmmm, just thinking about it makes my mouth water again!

But, there are of course a few things I still need to master. Patience is not my virtue, so I have a very hard time waiting for the cake to properly cool before removing from the pan :(
This inevitably results in an delicious but not so pretty cake .Also I need to figure out how many eggs to work with. Happy Home Baker uses a smaller pan than I do, but she uses larger eggs. So I did adapt the recipe a bit (I upped it one egg) but I feel it needs a bit more work. And since my oven is not always cooperating, aka the temperatures are all over the place, I need to determine how to tune it best to get the most beautiful and delicious chiffon cake.

That being sad, I enjoyed my cake enormously! And before I knew it, it was already finished.
Here's the recipe I used, enjoy!

Glimpsey

A small glimps of all the yummie things I've been eating.

I've been so lucky to find an old Surinamese lady who is willing to teach me and my cousin the ropes in Surinamese cakes. Last week we did an upside-down-cake. It turned out a bit dark on the pineapple side due to the dark sugar we'd used, but it still looked ok. I will try it another time myself, cause we deviated a bit from the recipe and I felt it tasted a bit to eggy...

While our cake was in the oven she served us some tasty Surinamese savory pies. I have to admit it had chicken in it. But I knew she had made them especially for us, so I just couldn't bring myself to tell her that I didn't eat meat anymore.

I later continued my meat-free-meals with this tasty midnight tofu snack. Hiyayakko is so easy and I enjoy it any time of the day, but since it's a cold dish it's especially tasty in summer.

Today my sister spoiled us with some ubertasty nasi kuning. It was a welcome home diner for my mom who came back from vacation today. There was also a shrimp dish and frikadel. She really went all out. Felt so happy I could dig in as well! Hmmmm enak enak ;)

Today I also tried my first made-from-scratch chiffon cake! But I'll tell you more about that some other time. For now it's time to hit the sack ;)

Terik Tempe

Still trying very hard to not eat any meat.  And this is such a yummie vegetarian dish. Maybe not the prettiest food, but trust me it’s very tasty ;)

Ok so let me explain what exactly tempe is. Tempe is made out of fermented soy beans. On the outside it sort of looks like a block of brie cheese. On the inside you can see the whole beans. Young tempe doesn’t really have a lot of odor. However the older it gets, the more you will be able to smell the fermentation…

I had bought my tempe a few weeks ago in one of those hunger inspired shopping spree’s but I never got around to making it until today (*note to self: don NOT shop when hungry!).

I decided to make terik tempe, which is an Indonesian dish. Btw tempe is originally from Indonesia. According to the expiry date, I should have made this a few days earlier... oopsie.  Which brings me to the question: how do you know when your tempe has  gone bad? Well that’s a hard one to answer. The line between nicely fermented tempe and rotten tempe is culturally drawn. So if you’re in doubt about the state of your tempe, cut it up and taste it. If it tastes good to you, than it is!

So that’s exactly what I did. I cut up the tempe and fried it golden brown in some sunflower oil. I was a bit anxious ‘cause I really didn’t feel like going to the store again and I really really wanted to try this recipe. But fortunately it tasted a ok!

Thankfully I moved on to the recipe!

Cookie Galore

Cookies for everyone! Or so it seemed the past weeks.

I still tried that tutorial for making your own Totoro cookie cutter, but it seemed a lot easier than it was. At least to me. I wanted to try smaller cookies than the one I made with a stencil but they just didn't look like Totoro and had a lot less cute appeal :(

So I made some more with the stencil for my friend Jo, who is both a Totoro and a cookie lover! Hers are chocolate and matcha, also very yumm. After a while I got so tired of cutting everything out that I made some tricolore cookies for a quick finish.

The last batch I baked was for a housewarming gift. I decided to keep it nice and simple and just made three flavors, vanilla, chocolate and vanilla & raisins.

Can't see another cookie anymore!

Totoro Cookies!

Oooooooh just looking at these cookies makes me happy! 

I had found this great tutorial on how to make your own Totoro shaped cookie cutter. I ordered the Wilton cookie cutter set, but I just couldn’t wait. So I made my own template out of a plastic container lid and I cut out the cookies with a knife. You know just one of those containers you get when buying take away. 

I’m not going to lie to you, it took me about an hour to finish the first three cookies, but they came out perfect. They were really yummie, had a nice crunch to them and soooo cute!

I made the cookies for my baby niece, so they were made with all vegetable margarine and without eggs and milk. She didn't really seem to care too much for them (typical huh) but I enjoyed them even more (I ate them all :)

You can find the recipe here!