Waffle Donuts

I'm still in my quest for the perfect donut recipes as that's the only type of bread that my Baby FAN eat (beside ice-cream bread). So I just have to buy this waffle maker when I saw it on sale at NTUC, it allows me to make sandwiches, waffles and donuts. 

My Waffle Maker



So, I searh around the net for a recipe that calls for Donut Batter and uses donut maker but don't have much luck, stumble upon this one http://www.hungrybrowser.com/phaedrus/m031102.htm and decided that I should just give it a try. 

The Donut turns out really nice but it tasted more like a waffle then a donut.  But it actually tasted quite nice and was reall fun to eat since it's very small and cute.  My boy can eat 3 at a go.  I'm definitely going to use this recipe again but maybe next time I try using the waffle plate instead of the donut plate.

Here's how much donuts I have made with the recipe

This is the actual size of the small donut waffle

This is how the inside of the donut looks inside

 

Here's the recipe:

Donut Waffles

 

Ingredients n Directions:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 egg 
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 4 tbsp cooking oil
• 1/4 tsp salt

1. Stir dry ingredients together.
2. Add egg, vanilla, and milk and beat one minute with electric mixer or vigorously by hand. Add oil and beat one minute more. Add oil and beat one minute more.
3. Blend in the dry ingredients.
4. Preheat donut maker for 10 minutes. Pour batter into cavities in bottom of donut maker. close lid and bake for 5 minutes. Remove carefully with fork and place on grate or rack.
5. Makes 12 donuts.

Variations:

Any other extract may be substituted for the vanilla. You can also add 1/2 cup of nuts, raisins, or coconut to the batter. 1/2 cup chocolate chips may also be added. This is especially good if you add 1/4 teaspoon orange extract to the vanilla glaze.

Afternote:
I used this recipe to make waffles and it turns out quite nice and crispy.  Here's the final product.

A Colourful Cake for Mother's Day

Here's a Colourful Mango Pudding Yoghurt Cake for all mothers, Happy Mother's Day!

Saw this recipe from Happy Homebaking and I thought this is just the right cake for me to bring for my Mother's Day Celebration with my mom and family.  The original recipe called for Orea Biscuit but as we are not really orea fans, I decided to replace the crust with Digestive biscuits.  I think it's a big mistake cause the biscuits base turn soggy and it doesn't compliment well with the yoghurt pudding.  The pudding tasted quite nice with the fruits topping. Will probably make this cake again but not as a cake but a yogurt pudding dessert instead.  Here's the recipe:

Mango Yogurt Pudding Cake

(makes one 7" cake)

Ingredients & Directions:
for the biscuit base:

• 110g oreo cookies (remove cream and finely crumbled) - I replaced this with Digestive Biscuits
• 40g butter, melted and cool

for the filling:

• 300g fresh mangoes (use sweet, ripped fruits)
• juice from 1 passion fruit (remove seeds)
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 200g mango flavoured yogurt (I used peach-mango flavour)
• 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoon gelatin powder
• 60 ml water 

some fruits for decoration

1. to make the biscuit base: Place oreo crumbs and melted butter in a bowl. Mix thoroughly with a spoon until the crumbs are moistened. Press the crumbs evenly into the base of a 7" round pan (with removable base). Use the back of the spoon, smooth out the crumbs and press firmly. You can also use a glass (with a flat base) to press down firmly. Freeze the base for at least 1 hour.
2. to make the filling: Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin (without stirring). Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove the bowl from the pot and set aside to cool to room temperature. Blend mangoes, passion fruit juice, sugar, yogurt until the mixture becomes smooth. Add in the gelatin solution to the mixture, mix well. Pour mixture onto the biscuit base. Cover with cling wrap and leave to chill in the fridge over night or for at least 4-6 hours. Remove cake from fridge, unmold and decorate with fruits as desired. Keep the cake in the fridge before serving.

Healthy Dessert - Honey Lemon Jelly

As you guys might have know from my previous posts that I strongly believe in the benefit of drinking honey.  So, have been trying to get my baby girl to drink honey water the past one week as she was having a running nose and cough.  But, unlike SMALL FAN, Baby FAN doesn't seems to like to drink honey water as it is.  So I thought of making a light dessert that uses honey as the ingredient for her.  Stumble upon someone making honey and lemon gelatin, so I thought I give it a try and modify it according to my taste.  It was a hit with Baby FAN, now she will ask to eat more of the jelly thingy....Another successful, healthy snack to share with all. She now got the benefit of honey and the additional vitamin C from the lemon.  Here's the recipe:

Honey Lemon Jelly

 

Ingredients & Directions

•  Juice of 1 freshly squeezed lemon
• 3 tbs of honey (you can add more if you like it sweeter or less if you like it more sour)
• 4 level tsp of gelatin powder 
• 1/4 cup of hot boiling water
• 13/4 of cool boiled water

1. Dissolve gelatin in the hot boiling water.  Then add in the cool boiled water and mix well, make sure all the gelatin has dissolved.
2. Pour in the lemon juice and honey.  Stir and mix well.
3. Pour mixture into individual jelly cups.  Makes about 5 to 6 small cups.  
4. Put into the refrigerator and let the gelatin set.  Takes at least 3 or 4 hours.
5. Served and enjoy!
   

Baby Frittas

Tried making this Frittas for Baby FAN but I think because I don't have sun dried tomatoes, so I used fresh tomatoes instead and the frittas doesn't turn out as well and Baby FAN don't really like it. Will probably tried it again next when I get my hand on sun dried tomatoes.

Baby Frittatas (Makes 12 Baby Frittatas)

(original recipe here)

Ingredients & Directions

• 3 Large Eggs
• 2 Tbsp Milk
• 2 Tbsp Parmesan, grated
• 1/4 Cup Asparagus, diced
• 3 Sun Dried Tomatoes, packed in oil and diced (I don't have sun dried tomatoes so I used 2 fresh tomatoes, chopped it up and toasted it in the oven with olive oil instead)
  

1. Preheat the oven 375 degrees.
2. Spray or grease mini muffin tins with oil or butter.
3. Whisk the eggs and milk together. Add the cheese, tomatoes and
vegetables.
4. Add a heaping tablespoon of egg/vegetable mixture to each muffin cup.
5. Bake for 12-14 minutes.
6. Cool and serve.

Mini Vegetarian Quiche

Another wonderful recipe from Weelicious. My baby girl loves it and the best is that this quiche is so versatile. I have tried replacing the zucchini with the following ingredients like cod fish with mushrooms; salmon; beef and mushrooms and it works out quite well as well. Try it.

Mini Vegetarian Quiches (Makes 12 Mini Quiche)

(original recipe here)

Ingredients & Directions

• 2 Large Eggs
• 1/3 Cup Cheddar Cheese, shredded
• 1 Zucchini, diced or shredded
• 1/2 Cup Spinach(I used 2 cube of spinach puree instead)
• 1/4 Cup Cottage Cheese
• 1/4 Cup Whole Milk

1. Preheat over to 325 degrees.
2. Place all the ingredients in a food processor or blender and pulse until throughly combined and vegetables are in small pieces.
3. Spray or grease mini muffin tins with oil or butter. (I used those muffin cups instead so I don't need to wash up the tins later hi hi)
4. Pour a tablespoon of mixture into each muffin cup. It should fill each cup about 3/4 way to the top.
5. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden and cooked through.
6. Cool and serve.

Cheese Wafers

Was searching the web for some interesting breakfast and finger food that I can make for Baby FAN when I stumble upon this site which provided a lot of interesting and healthy food for kids, check it out, it's really cool...Weelicious

Tried making the Cheese wafers and it tasted really great, I was munching at it while putting it in the container, it has a crispy outer like a biscuit yet rather chewy and soft like wafer in the inside. Best of all it's so easy to make.

Cheese Wafers
(original recipe here)

Ingredients & Directions

• 150 grams of Cheddar Cheese
• 3 Tbsp Butter
• 1/2 Cup Flour plus additional for sprinkling
• 2 tbs of milk powder (optional, healthy extras that I added)
  
• 2 tbs of wheat germ (optional, healthy extras that I added)
  

1. Combine all the ingredients and form into a dough
2. Remove all the dough to a piece of parchment or waxed paper and shape into a thick flat circle. Cover with waxed paper and refrigerate for one hour or overnight.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
4. Open waxed paper and roll out dough on it into a 1/4 inch-thick piece.
5. Take small cookie cutters and cut out into shapes.
6. Place on a cookie sheet (preferably lined with a silpat or parchment paper) and bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool on sheet for 2 minutes before removing.
7. Serve.

Easy Sweet Potato Snack

Here's a really simple snack, healthy and nice. yum

Easy Sweet Potato Snack

Ingredients & Directions

• One Sweet Potato
• Olive Oil
• Salt to taste

1. Preheat oven to 230 deg cel.
2. Cut potato into 1 inch strips, then coat it generously with olive oil and sprinkle some sea salt to taste.
3. Place potato in oven and baked for about 15 to 20 minutes or until potato is crispy outside and tender instead. Serve warm or cool. Enjoy.

Homemade Milo and Banana Ice Cream

SMALL FAN loves Milo Ice Cream, he says that he can eat ice cream and drink milo at the same time. So instead of buying him some more commercial ice cream, was thinking of making it myself. After all, how hard can milo ice cream be? Just Milo and cream loh... Well, knowing me, will always want to make the food I cook more nutritious, so decided to add banana into the ice cream. So tried searching the web for Banana Ice Cream recipe that doesn't require me to buy an ice cream maker and stumble upon this site: Ireland Ice Cream. A cool site so, I took his Banana Ice Cream with Chocolate Shaving recipe and modified it. Wa la...here's my final product:

Homemade Milo and Banana Ice Cream
(original recipe here)

Ingredients & Directions:

• 50g sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 120 ml cream
• 100 ml milk
• 2 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 4 small ripe bananas (I used "pang jiou")
  
• 4 tbs of Milo
  

1. Combine the bananas with the lemon juice and blend or mash until smooth.
2. Place in a small saucepan, add one tablespoon sugar, and cook over low heat, stirring all the time.
3. Don’t over-cook. Once it has warmed, it should release a strong banana aroma, and that’s enough!
4. Beat the rest of the sugar and egg yolks together until thick and pale yellow.
5. Bring the milk to a low simmer in a small saucepan, add in milo and mix. Remove from the heat.
6. Beat the milk into the eggs and sugar in a slow stream.
7. Pour the mixture back into the pan and place over low heat.
8. Stir continuously until the custard thickens slightly (around 65-70C) and just coats the back of a spoon. Don’t over-heat, though, because at around 76C you will scramble the eggs!
9. Immediately remove from the heat.
10. Mix in the bananas.
11. Transfer the custard into a small container, cover, and refrigerate until cool (5C). 12. Whip the cream until it has doubled in volume (you should have soft peaks - don’t over-whip).
12. Fold the cream (gently stir) into the custard.
13. Pour mixture into a freezer proof container and freeze for 2 hours.
    
14. Then take the ice cream out and break up the ice crystal, then place it back to the freezer. Repeat this process twice.
15. Place it in the freezer, and continue to freeze until it is solid.

Verdict: The product turns out quite nice and really tasted like ice cream, the only thing with it is that I think I added too much banana, so the banana taste was really strong. Next time, I think I will cut down the banana 2 or 3 instead of 4.

My son and hubby don't like the taste of banana in the ice cream, so I made another version without the banana and I also cut down the sugar as I find the previous one too sweet. So here's the no banana version:

Milo Ice Cream

Ingredients & Directions:

• 2 tsp sugar to taste
  
• 2 egg yolks
• 120 ml cream
• 100 ml milk
• 4 tbs of Milo
  

1. Beat the egg yolks until thick and pale yellow.
2. Bring the milk to a low simmer in a small saucepan, add in milo and sugar to taste. Remove from the heat.
3. Beat the milk into the eggs in a slow stream.
4. Pour the mixture back into the pan and place over low heat.
5. Stir continuously until the custard thickens slightly (around 65-70C) and just coats the back of a spoon. Don’t over-heat, though, because at around 76C you will scramble the eggs!
6. Immediately remove from the heat.
7. Transfer the custard into a small container, cover, and refrigerate until cool (5C). 12. Whip the cream until it has doubled in volume (you should have soft peaks - don’t over-whip).
8. Fold the cream (gently stir) into the custard.
9. Pour mixture into a freezer proof container and freeze for 2 hours.
   
10. Then take the ice cream out and break up the ice crystal, then place it back to the freezer. Repeat this process twice.
11. Place it in the freezer, and continue to freeze until it is solid.

Fruit Smoothies Recipes

Have be trying to wean my baby girl off breast milk ever since she hit 9 months. But just can't seems to get her to drink formula milk. Tried all sort of brands, even goat's milk and soy milk but she just don't like it. So, tried giving her full cow's milk when she hit 1 year old but she don't seems to like it. So I tried yoghurt and she loves it. Well, don't think I can ever serve her yoghurt for 3 meals a day, so I thought maybe I can try making smoothies for her. Tried making banana smoothie as recommended by some baby food guide but it taste really yucky and my baby girl just spit it out. Also, the problem with banana based smoothies is that it will turn brown quite fast and it really doesn't look too appetising. So I search the net and stumble upon this page of smoothie recipes from nickjr.com. Tried it for my baby girl and wa lah...she gobble up half and cup at one go...yappie... this is a great achieve as I normally only manage to get her to drink the most 1 oz of formula milk each day. Here's the winning recipe:

Peaches and Cream Smoothie

• 3 frozen peaches or fresh peaches
• 1/2 cup peach yoghurt (I used 1 cup of yoplait apricot yoghurt instead)
• 1/4 cup of fresh fullcream milk
• 1/2 cup of baby apple juice

1. Blend all ingredient together and served cold. Yummy....

Check out more yummy smoothie recipes here

Muesli-Applesauce Muffins

Bought this Apple & Muesli for Baby FAN to try but she don't like it. So, instead of letting is turn bad in the fridge, I decided to try making muffins out of it. Found a Muesli-Applesauce Muffin recipe from All recipe.com, so tried my hand at making it so that I can feed Baby FAN the muffins since she prefer chewy food to mushy food now.








Here's the recipe:



Muesli-Applesauce Muffins

* 1 cup applesauce (I have one left over banana, substitute half the applesauce with mash banana)
* 1/3 cup vegetable oil
* 2/3 cup white sugar (I thought the recipe was quite sweet with the banana, applesauce and rasin, so cut the sugar to 1/4 cup and still find it sweet, next time maybe I will take out the sugar totally)
* 1 egg
* 1/2 cup water
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/4 cups muesli cereal
* 1 cup raisins

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease one 12-cup muffin tin.
2. In a large bowl, beat the applesauce, oil egg, sugar and water together for 2 minutes at medium speed.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, allspice and muesli together. Add the dry ingredients to the applesauce mixture. Beat on low speed until combined.
4. Spoon batter into the prepared muffin tin filling each cup 3/4 full. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until the tops are golden brown an spring back lightly when touched. Remove from pans immediately to cool.

Homemade Baby Finger Food: Cheese Straws

Baby FAN has been showing interest in picking things up and chewing at it. She loves to chew on those teething biscuits, the really hard type (she can chew at it for half-an-hour), recently I upgraded her to eating those softer and crumpier biscuits and Gerber's Strawberry puff, she is able to eat it without gagging. She just loves to chew on stick object, give her a spoon and she can chew at it for hours.

So, today, I decided to baked something stick-like for her, it was really easy to do, I did it in just 15 to 20 min (including baking time), it turns out really nice, the cheese give it a salty and sweet taste...yummy I ate 2 stick myself...ha ha.. Here's the recipe:

Cheese Straws

• 1 1/2 cup plain flour (I added 1 cup unbleach flour and 1/2 cup bread flour instead, oh and I added about 2 to 3 scope of formula milk powder to increase the nutritional content of the straws)
• 75g or 6 tbsp of butter
• 115g of grated Cheddar Cheese
• 1 egg, beaten (used 2 egg yolks instead if your baby is allergic to egg whites)

1. Preheat oven to 200 delgree celsius.
2. Place flour in a bowl, add butter and rub in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the grated cheese.
3. Reserve 1 tbsp beaten egg and then stir the rest into the pastry mixture. Mix to smooth dough, adding water if necessary.
4. Knead lightly and roll out on a floured surface to rectangel 30 x 20cm/12 x 8 in. Brush with the remaining egg.
5. Cut into strips and place on the baking sheets, spaced slightly apart.
6. Bake in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes until golden brown. Loosen from but leave to cool on the baking sheets.
7. Serve one or two to the baby and store the rest in a plastic box for up to 1 week.
8. Alternatively, you can freeze the sticks for up to 3 months in a plastic box, interleaved with baking parchment.

Above are a few pics of my baby FAN eating the straws.