Animal Cracker Cookies

It's that time of the year when the kids are back to school...which means it's also time for packed school lunches and snacks!  And I have been that busy in my teensy tiny kitchen making all kinds of things for school lunch.  

One of my favorite things to make and pack into lunch packs are these cookies.  There's nothing to delight children more than yummilicious cookies in the shape of cute adorable animals!

So you are forewarned...it's gonna be cuteness here today!  This is our take of that favorite little cookie, classically known as Animal Crackers (tho' why it's called crackers and not cookies I have no idea), inspired by those classic Barnum's Animal Crackers, the longstanding kiddie favorites that come in a colorfully decorated box.  Do you remember eating these as a kid?  I sure do.

Homemade Chinese Wheat Gluten Mian Jin 自製麵筋

I was super duper excited to try my hand at making Chinese Wheat Gluten Mian Jin, or 麵筋, because my dearest Grandma 奶奶 used to make it for us all the time when I was growing up.  Gosh darnit if by the end of the day Grandma didn't have a huge pot full of her homemade wheat gluten, soaked through and through and juicy with fragrantly aromatic soy and spice based sauce with luscious bits of slippery cloud ear, chewy lily bud and fragrant mushroom snuggled in between.  (See Grandma's recipe for Red Braised Wheat Gluten Kao Fu 紅燒烤麩)  

We would eat and eat and eat and there still would be more for the next day and the next.  I would sneak it straight out of the fridge when Grandma wasn't looking, savoring the chilled version just as much as the hot.  (I love eating at the fridge.  Weird but true.)  

I've had it in the back of my mind for a long long time to try making the actual wheat gluten myself just like Grandma did and finally got around to it. I'm very pleased to report that making your own Homemade Chinese Wheat Gluten Mian Jin or 自製麵筋 is actually much easier than I thought it was going to be, verra verra tasty and you can make all kinds of mouth watering Chinese 'mock' meat vegetarian dishes with it.  Definitely a must have skill in your repertoire if you are wanting to go for Vegetarian Domestic Goddess!

Snow Skin Mooncake 冰皮月餅

It's almost that time of the year again, the time of the glorious harvest moon, the Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節, a right jolly time in Hong Kong that all, the children especially, look forward to.  And why not?  A beautiful fuller than full moon hung high in the velvet blackness of the night, a pass to stay up and play as late as one wants, delicately beautiful lighted lanterns and myriad glow sticks in hand, and, best of all, mooncakes 月餅 galore to eat!  

We've already made the White Lotus Paste with Double Yolk Mooncake 雙黃白蓮蓉月餅 and the amazing Five Nuts Mooncake 五仁月餅, so this year we thought we would make the Hong Kong creation known as Snow Skin Mooncake 冰皮月餅, also known as Ice Skin Mooncake, a modern twist where the traditional mooncake fillings are wrapped in a delicate, light, mochi-esque skin.

Red Braised Wheat Gluten Kao Fu 紅燒烤麩

Chinese cuisine is well known for its vegetarian fare, indeed whole Chinese restaurants can be found devoted to vegetarian foods only!  And if you visit a Chinese monastery you will often find the unexpected delight of enjoying a fine vegetarian meal during your visit.  (Chinese people always take very good care of their tummies, wherever they are.)  Do be forewarned, however, that just because it's vegetarian fare, don't expect the Chinese to give up their daily meat intake!  

Whaaaaaat the hey, you say?! 

What I mean is that Chinese vegetarian dishes are mainly based around 'mock' meats: mock duck, mock chicken, mock pork, you name it, they've got it.  And these fake meats are mostly cleverly made from tofu and wheat gluten.  

Determined to make my own vegetarian dish, I first made my homemade wheat gluten kao fu (see our kao fu recipe here) and then cooked up the classic Shanghainese Red Braised Wheat Gluten Kao Fu 紅燒烤麩, a simple yet yummilicious vegetarian dish of soy sauce braised kao fu wheat gluten, mushrooms, bamboo and wood ears.  Tis so satisfying to your tastebuds and filling to your tummy!

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!