Buttermilk Waffles

I have to declare - it's a total conincidence that I'm making buttermilk waffles, right after buttermilk pancakes (and there's the corn muffins in between that i've yet to blog about). 

What makes a good waffle? I don't really have the answer to it, and I reckon everyone has differing opinions. My favourite waffle hails from Gelare, even though their ice-cream is nothing to shout about. I would think a good waffle will taste good on its own, without the need of slapping thick slabs of butter and pouring heaps of maple syrup. I could eat Gelare's waffles on its own, it's that good.

Peanut butter, maple syrup, butter - Which one is your favourite topping?

Mixing the wet and dry ingredients together

Thick batter

This recipe gives a very thick batter, thicker than my past 2 tries with making waffles. It tasted better than the previous pandan waffle recipe as well. More fragrant and softer. I'm still looking for the Gelare's waffle recipe though.

Added chocolate chips on a whim to my last batch, and i utterly regret not adding earlier! It gave an awesome sweet taste to it!

Daddy: "Aiyo, supper again." Well, you know you want it.

Buttermilk Waffles (original recipe from here)

Makes about 9 square waffles

• 1 3/4 cup all-purpouse flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter, melted (i used 110g salted butter)
• 1 1/2 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat your waffle maker.
2. Melt butter using microwave oven.
3. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, butter, and buttermilk.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry mixture and mix with as few strokes as possible. Rest the batter for 30 minutes.
6. Add your dough to the waffle maker and cook until done. My waffle maker needed about 1/4 cup of dough to fill it properly and each batch took 12 minutes.

Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes

It was National Day yesterday, and that translated to a public holiday for all of us. Of course I wouldn't miss this opportunity to bake and I actually managed to make pancakes in the morning for my parents as breakfast before moving on to corn muffins ala Kenny Roger's style. I'm amazed by how I managed to wrap up my operations by 10am.

Pancakes for breakfast!

I tried out a new recipe for the pancakes, after reading how it was touted as "restaurant-quality pancakes". And boy was I surprised! My pancakes turned out real fluffy, and it really tasted like the pancakes outside! I tried to buy buttermilk but it was out of stock at the one and only location I knew was selling buttermilk. Lucky for me, google saved the world and I realized I could substitute one cup of buttermilk with 1/4 milk and 3/4 of plain yogurt. Nobody could guess yogurt went into the pancakes!

Before it went to the skillet.

Using happycall!

Final product! 

I'm very pleased by this recipe, so much i'm going to throw away all the other (nonsense) recipes!

Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes (modified slightly, original recipe from 8 Days)

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 cup plain flour

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup milk + 3/4 cup yogurt (original recipe calls for 1 cup + 2 tbsp buttermilk)

2 large eggs

2 tbsp butter, melted and cooled

Method:

1) Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl.

2) In a separate bowl, blend the buttermilk, eggs and melted butter.

3) Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the buttermilk mixture into it.

4) Stir by hand, just until the batter is evenly moistened. Don't fret if your batter is a little lumpy.

5) Drop the batter onto the skillet and turn when it's browned.

White Lotus Snowskin Mooncakes

It's been quite some time since I paid this web space a visit, but that's because I've been busy with work (okay, not really), performing my duty as a gf (definitely), and baking! It's almost as if I've been bitten by a baking/cooking bug; I just can't stop making food. Which I suppose nobody is complaining, except that everyone's puzzled by my sudden obsession with this new found hobby.

In any case, I've decided to merry in the Mooncake Festival way too early this year, which started off with me browsing catalogues of mooncakes discounts in renowned hotels. One thing led to another, and I found myself surfing the web for mooncakes recipes. And then the rest is history, with me lugging home two bags full of ingredients and choosing an auspicious night to begin my journey.

"It tasted surprisingly like mooncakes sold in bakeries!"

Yes, that's the most common response I got from people who tried the mooncakes. Well, I take that as a compliment!

I wanted to halve the recipe, because my family members are actually on a low-sugar diet (but nobody can tell, at the frequency i'm baking) and I don't think we can actually polish off 40 mooncakes (!), whether or not with external help. But being the usual scatterbrained me, I remembered to halve the weight of the flour, but forgot about the shortening. It was only when I started to knead in the shortening into the flour that I sensed something was wrong - it was too lumpy! With the damage done, all I could do was to pour the remaining flour into the mixing bowl and prep myself on a long arduous journey.

I chose red food colouring, to make girly mooncakes!

It was indeed nothing but hard work. I actually got bored (read: very bored) at rolling the never ending dough meant to make 40 mini mooncakes, and not forgetting the thick and semi-oily white lotus paste as well! The worse thing was that I can't tell if they are successful - it's best served chilled for a few hours. 

20g of dough

30g of lotus paste with melon seeds

That neglected ugly duckling was my first product!

And that marked the end of my first attempt at making snowskin mooncakes! Well, the challenge of making snowskin mooncakes definitely comes from the wrapping of the skin around the much heavier and bigger filling. Nevertheless, the end product was a success! It was a tad hard when i first took it out from the fridge, but after letting it sit for awhile at room temperature, the snowskin mooncake became soft, and indeed, it tastes like snowskin mooncakes! Now my bf is interested to make durian snowskin mooncakes!

White Lotus Snowskin Mooncake Recipe (original recipe from here)

Snow Skin Mooncake Recipe
(this recipe makes 40 mini Snow Skin Mooncakes)

For Snow Skin Dough
500g REDMAN Snow Skin Pre-Mix
200ml iced water
100g shortening
1 1/2 tsp banana essence
A few drops of food colouring (into the water, stop at a desirable colour)

For Mooncake paste
1kg White Lotus paste/Lotus paste/Green tea lotus paste
50g melon seeds, lightly toasted (optional)

Directions
1. Pour in the Snow Skin Pre-Mix into a large mixing bowl. Knead in shortening till an even mixture is formed and there are no more lumps.
2. Add in essence and colouring into the water but you may not need to use up all the water. Stop when you get nice soft dough.
3. Cover the mixing bowl with a wet cloth, making sure it does not touch the dough. Leave the dough aside to rest for 30-45 minutes in a cool, dry place, or place it in the fridge.
4. Toast the melon seeds for 10 mins at 180 degree C.
5. Fill the mould with the dough and knock it out. Weigh the amount of dough. For mine, it's 50g. Since the so called golden ratio of snowskin to filling is 2:3, divide the white lotus into portions of about 30g each. Knead each portion a little to form a ball.
6. Divide the rested dough into portions of about 20g each. Knead each portion a little to form a ball.
7. Flatten a snow skin dough on your palm to be a 2-inch circle. Place a ball of paste in the middle and slowly wrap it up using the snow skin dough to form a mooncake ball.
8. Lightly cover the mooncake ball with glutinous rice flour, before pushing it into the mould, making sure that the edges are pressed evenly into the mould.
9. Knock out the shaped mooncake from the mould by lightly knocking in all directions with one hand and using the other hand to catch the dislodged mooncake.
10. Immediately chill the mooncakes in an airtight container.