SGFS: Kaya Toast Panacotta

At my job attachment with the marketing department at Goodrich Global, I was flipping through magazines and tagging stuff. One of the magazines I really liked was epicure. I think I'm going to subscribe to it. Also appetite magazine had this little recipe book and I saw a kaya toast panacotta, which of course inspired me to create this healthy version!

Single serving and it can be made dairy free, vegan and paleo too. It's fun shaking the plate and wobbling the panacotta :P

Not very green cos my blender isn't the best at blending up leaves :(

What you'll need

3/4 level tsp gelatin

3 tbsp hot milk (whatever kind)

80g coconut milk

6 pandan leaves, cut up

1/4 cup milk (whatever kind)

1 tbsp honey/maple syrup

1 tbsp coffee

1/4 piece of toasted bread

How to

1. Stir gelatin into hot milk and let it dissolve.

2. Blend coconut milk with pieces of pandan leaves. My blender didn't manage to blend the leaves up completely they were a little piecey, but that's fine! As long as the coconut milk has got some green in there....

3. Strain the coconut milk and pandan leaves into the gelatin and milk. Squeeze it all out! Discard the pandan leaves. (There was some coconut milk hanging around on my discarded leaves, but I just couldn't get it through the strainer so whatever.)

4. Stir in the remaining 1/4 cup milk and honey/maple syrup. Pour into a ramekin and cover with cling wrap. Chill in the fridge (I did this overnight aka 8h but 4h should be okay too?) and then serve by running a knife along the edges and turning the panacotta out onto a plate. Pour coffee over and top with a piece of toast :)

SGFS: Sweet Corn Pau

Hi! I love eating paus so it was about time I made a healthy recipe for one. I'm glad I did because I really enjoyed gobbling these up! I used a mixture of organic wholemeal and Hong Kong flour for this. I know the latter is not exactly healthy but a little won't kill you. This pau won't be as fluffy as regular pau because it's 50% wholemeal which makes it heavier. 

If you want a fluffier pau you can adjust accordingly by replacing some wholemeal flour with the Hong Kong flour. Hong Kong flour is low protein white flour that has been bleached a lot. It's very light so it makes buns, breads etc softer. If you really can't find it you can use white flour. 

The previous time I made this I used a bob's red mill gluten free flour and some corn starch instead of the HK flour and it was pretty okay too. You can do that if you wish. 

What you'll need 

Filling:

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup brown rice syrup (you can sub with honey, agave or maple syrup but I think you have to use less. In my opinion, brown rice syrup isn't very sweet)

1/3 cup milk

1/4 cup corn kernels 

3 tbsp coconut flour

Pau: 

3/4 tsp instant yeast

75 gm wholemeal flour

75 gm hongkong flour 

1/2 level tsp double action baking powder

1 tsp honey/brown rice syrup/agave/maple syrup

70ml water

1 tsp coconut oil

Extra ww flour if the dough gets sticky

How to

Filling: 

1. Mix egg, brown rice syrup and milk in a sauce pan. 

2. Heat over high flame until the mixture begins to bubble. Then over low heat simmer 13min, add corn kernels, simmer 3min longer. 

3. Then stir in coconut flour and let the mixture cool. It will thicken by the time you need to use it.

Pau: 

1. Mix wet ingredients. 

2. Mix dry ingredients.

3. Make a well in dry ingredients. Pour wet into dry ingredients and knead into a ball. Add flour if too sticky. Leave to proof for 1h.

4. Punch down. Split into 6 equal portions. Flatten dough into a disk. Wrap dough around corn custard filling. Rest for 20min.

5. Steam over rapid boiling water for 10min. Leave in steamer for 3 min after cooking. 

P.S The pau surface will be a bit sticky when its first done steaming. But when you let it cool and stuff it'll be fine!

SGFS: Gula Melaka Kaya

I haven't had kaya in ages. (Kaya: coconut egg butter) Unless you count that one bite of a bun filled with kaya... Anyway, I made some homemade healthy gula melaka kaya :) The traditional way uses whole eggs and is extremely tedious. It involves stirring kaya for over an hour. This kaya however, can be made in minutes! It's absolutely delicious, even better than the regular kind you can buy in bottles at the grocery store. My family loves it! Gula melaka is coconut palm sugar. I used pre-crushed-up gula melaka but yours may come in a "rock" form, so be sure to chop it up first. 

It goes lovely with slightly burnt toast. 

What you'll need

3 pandan leaves

Splash of water 

1 pandan leaf

3 egg yolks, stir together

200ml full fat coconut milk

70-80g gula melaka

How to 

1. Blend 3 pandan leaves with a splash of water, about 1 tbsp (or more if you really need to). 

2. Squeeze pandan leaf mixture through a sieve and get out as much liquid as possible. This will be your homemade pandan extract. 

3. Put coconut milk, gula melaka and pandan extract in a sauce pan, stir and simmer. Let gula melaka dissolve completely.

4. Next pour some of the hot coconut milk mix in to the egg yolks and stir. Then pour that back into the rest of the coconut milk mix in the pot. Add in 1 pandan leaf. Stir as the mixture cooks. When the mixture thickens slightly, turn heat to low. 

5. Now let the kaya cook and stir every so often until it becomes thick and can coat the back of a spoon easily. This will take 5-10 minutes :) 

6. Let the kaya cool before transferring into a bottle. It can be stored in the fridge for a week or so. Makes about a cup of kaya. 

EASY AND YUMMY. Please try this out!

Recipe adapted from Kitchen Tigress.

SGFS: Healthy single serving kuih dadar

OH MY GOSH THIS WAS SO GOOD ASDFGHJKL. Maybe because I'm bias to coconut and gula melaka :'D Another addition to my Singapore food series: healthy kuih dadar! This was so easy to make! Kuih Dadar is essentially a pandan (screw pine) crepe filled with sweet yummy grated coconut. I need moreeeee. I got my grated coconut fresh from the market. 

What you'll need

1 egg white

25 cm long pandan leaf 

1/8 cup oats 

20g Palm sugar 

1 tbsp water

1/4 cup grated coconut 

How to

1. Blend egg white, pandan leaf and oats. 

2. Heat up a pan. Reduce fire to small. Pour pandan batter over the pan and spread out as thin as possible! 

3. When the bottom is cooked. Flip and cook the other side. 

4. To prepare the filling, boil palm sugar and water in a small saucepan. When boiling immediately reduce to a very small fire and stir in grated coconut. 

5. Place filling on the pandan crepe like this: 

6. Fold over the left and right edges, then roll the whole crepe up from bottom to top. Should look like this: 

MAKE THIS AND THANK ME LATER BYE.

P.S Palm sugar is also known as coconut palm sugar or gula melaka. It is common in Asian countries. If you're from overseas you can get it from Asian grocery stores. It's a low GI sugar and is less processed than normal sugar. It has a really unique taste which I love :-) not to be confused with coconut sugar which is from the flower of the plant. Palm sugar comes from the sap! 

SGFS: Nasi Lemak

Every Singaporean and Malaysian must enjoy a good nasi lemak every now and then.... 

I bring you clean and healthy nasi lemak! Coconut milk isn't unhealthy but the calories do add up if you over consume it. So I try to reduce the amount of milk while still holding on to some of the coconut-y taste that makes nasi lemak so lemak haha.

Cookie dough mooncakes!!

Hello :) Mooncake festival is round the corner so I made these healthy cookie dough mooncakes. This was my first time making mooncakes so I'm so happy they turned out well! I used a mooncake mould I bought from bakeking at haig road. It was like $4+. They have an online store so you can buy it from there too if you live in Singapore!

You guys seemed really excited when I posted this on Instagram so I'm really happy my effort is appreciated haha. These are tricky to make but worth it. However, the filling is made of chickpeas so it has a different texture from the usual lotus paste mooncake. 

Made 8 mini mooncakes for me :-) I had extra filling btw. But I don't want to reduce the measurements in case it's too little and you don't have enough filling for your mooncakes :(

SGFS: Pandan Layer Cake

In my new home now! Everything's smaller. The house, the fridge, the gym... But I'll get used to it. I'm glad I have a regular oven now though! Enough with crazy convection ovens. Oh and my new rooms really pretty.

My cat however is completely freaked out. He doesn't dare move about. He justs crouches in a corner and stays still :( 

This pandan layer cake is super healthy, delicious, gluten free, added sugar free and paleo! You have to try it :) 

SGFS: Fried Beehoon

This recipe is similar to the beehoon my family usually cooks so I would say its a "family recipe". You can't even tell its healthy! Oh I use half an egg in this recipe so if that's hard to do, just double the portion of the other ingredients and make 2 servings! If you want you can add chili  but I totally forgot to. Ooops. I ate it with chili powder though so it kinda makes up for it? :/

SGFS: Clean Coconut Curry

Singaporeans need their curry. Absolutely love how easy and delicious this chicken curry is! It's single serving like almost all my recipes. Enjoy xx

SGFS: Healthy Chicken Rice

Hi all (: So I've come up with something called the Singapore Food Series aka SGFS. Each week I'll healthify one Singaporean dish (food) and post it on my blog! Singaporean food is pretty unhealthy so I decided healthifying some local favourites would benefit those who live here. Even if you aren't Singaporean, you can still try the recipes to create some clean Singapore classics!

The first recipe I've decided to healthify is the unofficial national dish of Singapore, Chicken Rice. I made the stock on my own by boiling 2 cups of water with chicken bones. This healthy chicken rice tastes just like a mild version of chicken rice and is so good!