White Chocolate Lemongrass Cookie

Recently we've been dipping our toes into the wonderful flavors of Vietnamese cuisine (see our posts on Vietnamese Beef Vermicelli Noodles and Vietnamese Deep Fried Spring Rolls...yum!)  and so quite naturally have been using a lot of lemongrass.  You have seen it before of course, that green yellow stalk that looks for all the world like the dried twig of a tree.  This humble looking woody stick has flavor magic inside it though, giving the cuisines of Vietnam and Thailand some really awesome and unique flavors.  

Well we had a wee bit o' lemongrass left over and one day, while poking around an old chocolate cookbook, what did I discover but a recipe that uses lemongrass and white chocolate together in one cookie!  Strange combination but it caught my imagination.  So we tried it.  

And what do you know, these White Chocolate Lemongrass Cookies were really quite good, the sweet mellow creaminess of white chocolate and aromatic butter complemented by the exotic citrus ginger notes of lemongrass. A definite must bake for any fan of lemongrass!

Vietnamese Deep Fry Spring Rolls Cah Gio 越南炸春捲

I have a weakness for spring rolls. Well, only the fresh ones.  And, really, who wouldn't?  When freshly deep fried spring rolls are crunchy on the outside, hot and tasty on the inside treats are so gosh darn it yummilicious!  Whenever we go to have dim sum I always just have to get a dish or two of the spring rolls.  

Since we have started (finally!) to deep fry at home for ourselves (which has turned out to both easier and more fun than we had imagined,) we naturally very quickly thought of making some spring rolls!  These are our homemade spring rolls, the Vietnamese Deep Fry Spring Rolls, also known as Imperial Rolls, Cha Gio, or 越南炸春捲, a very tasty tidbit indeed, juicy meat and veg bits all wrapped in rice paper and deep fried til super crunchy on the outside and flavorsome on the inside.  And it's pretty easy to make these!

Egg Flower Water Chestnut Dessert Soup 蛋花馬蹄糖水

I must confess to a weakness for Chinese dessert soups, known generally under the title 糖水, translated literally as "sugar water."  Simple to make yet most remarkable in their classic, enduring combinations of textures and tastes, reminiscent of home and hearth, of grandma's gentle scolding, mama's sweet kisses, warming in winter, cooling in the summer.  

As we in Hong Kong are sweltering presently under a more intense than usual summer, (it's sooo hot!) I decided to treat the family to one of my favorite Chinese dessert soup, the simple to make, delicately beautiful, cooling and crunchy Egg Flower Water Chestnut Dessert Soup, or 蛋花馬蹄糖水.

Little Girl's Pink Fondant Birthday Cake Part II

You're probably saying, wait a minute, where's the pink?  Well, the pink is on the inside of the cake, where it really counts.  This, dear readers, is the fancy and fabulous pink fondant decorated cake that I made for my little girl's seventh birthday.  

Now I would've made the outside pink too but my little girl was clear on that: no 媽媽, the outside of the cake, the fondant, should be white.  So white it is.  Oh yes and my little girl helped tremendously in the decoration of the cake, she's reminding me to be sure to mention that.  

We have already posted about making your own Homemade Marshmallow Fondant and baking your own moist and tasty Pinky Pink Soda Pop Cake and now finally we get to the really fun and exciting part, the part about decorating a little girl's cake with your own homemade fondant decorations!

Little Girl's Pink Fondant Birthday Cake Part I

 Now as lots of mamas and papas know, a birthday cake for a little girl or boy is not a straightforward thing to go about.  Every since my little girl was two years old I've been making a cake for her birthday, trying different recipes and flavors for the cake and the cake decorations (see here and here and here).  It's a hard thing to please a little one on their special cake for their special day, bless their little hearts but they can be quite critical!  

This year I decided to make a pink cake to please my girl's love of pinkness.  And I also wanted to try out my recent discovery while binge watching The Great British Bake Off (best baking show ever!) that it is actually rather easy to make Homemade Marshmallow Fondant, a play dough like edible cake decorating dough.  

Throwing all these things together, I managed to make a pretty looking Little Girl's Pink Fondant Birthday Cake, a moist tasty pinky pink cake on the inside and fabulously fancy homemade fondant decorations all over the outside.  I think this is the best BD cake I've made yet and most importantly my little girl absolutely loooved it!

Homemade Marshmallow Fondant

You would never think, looking at it, that this cake decoration is actually pretty easy to make.  It looks so fancy, amiright?  That smooth perfect cake covering.  Fun crazy shapes of whatever you desire.  The imagination of a rainbow of colors.  

Well I never thought about making any kind of cake decoration even remotely fancy like this until I found out one day (while binge watching my most favoritest baking show, The Great British Bake Off) that you can make this amazing rollable and shapable and edible cake decoration/topping quite easily from marshmallow!  That's right, marshmallow.  Who would have guessed?  

From the humble marshmallow comes forth this Homemade Marshmallow Fondant, easy to make, easy to roll, easy to shape, gorgeous to look at, an edible cake and cupcake decoration that you can use to make almost anything you can dream up to dress up that fancy cake or cupcakes you're making for a special occasion!

Three Fried Stuffed Treasures 煎釀三寶

If you've ever been in Hong Kong or Macau or Guangdong, you've probably run into these little snacks.  These fish paste stuffed vegetable treats have evolved over the years to become a popular and long standing street side snack, usually skewered to allow you to eat the snack right there in the street.  

I really love these snacks and rather mourn the fact that, nowadays, they are rather hard to find done in the old-fashioned tasty way, meaning pan fried rather than deep fried.  Most street vendors have them precooked and waiting around all day and then just stick it in the hot oil to heat it up after you order.  Um...not too fresh, nor tasty as a matter of fact.  

So we decided to make our own the traditional way, stuffed and pan fried Three Stuffed Treasures 煎釀三寶, a delectable treat that celebrates the original sweet tastiness of the fresh vegetables while a stuffing of fragrant tangerine peel infused fish paste provides just the right contrast of texture and taste.

Chili Leaves Stir Fry with Garlic 蒜蓉炒辣椒葉

One recent day while strolling through our local wet market we spotted a box of fresh tender looking green vegetables spotted throughout with the most beautiful tiny white flowers.  What the heck were these?  Never seen anything like these before.  

We found out that these lovely tender greens were the leaves of chili pepper plant.  What, we exclaimed, you can eat chili pepper leaves?!  The grumpy old vegetable vendor declared with a harumph and a sideways look that it was so.  Well, what to do but to buy a big old bunch of the fresh tender greens and take it home to do a simple and classic Chinese stir fry with garlic. 

It turns out that not only can you eat these tender leaves but Chili Leaves Stir Fry with Garlic 蒜蓉炒辣椒葉 is a simply yummilicious vegetable dish!

Candied Lemon Peel

This simple little homemade fruit candy is lemon nirvana.  There's simply no other way to describe it!  The smell of the candy, the taste of it...oh...my...lemony goodness!  Just so fresh, sweet, lemony and full of sunshine.  Soft lemony tenderness encased in a thin satisfying crunch of crisped sugar, an 'oh so heavenly!' aroma and taste of fresh lemon, a soft gleaming yellow that is just so comforting to the soul.  

This Candied Lemon Peel is just about divine in our experience, not just the best candy that we have made at home but one of the top of all the candies we have ever had.  Plus it's made from just lemon and sugar!  How cool is that?!

Sea Snails Simmered in Sake Soy Sauce 清酒鼓油煮花螺

Here's an super easy to make, cool and refreshing sea fresh dish for shellfish lovers to dream about for the hot months ahead!  We first had these lovelies in a neighborhood restaurant and were so enchanted by these tasty savory sweet tidbits that we decided to try to make it ourselves.  

Lucky for us that we live in the harbor city of Hong Kong where the fabulous local wet markets supply the intrepid shopper with endless varieties of super fresh seafoods.  And thus we were able to source out these shelled treats and make our version of Sea Snails Simmered in Sake and Soy Sauce 清酒鼓油煮花螺, the perfect summer seafood treat to prepare for a dinner or, even better, to have with as a snack with a chilled glass of wine.  Ah...those lazy summer days!