Ramadhan Desserts

Welcome back, watch out for the new incoming desserts from day to day, year to year every time we are in the celebration periods! This time we are in the Ramadhan period, where we could see on our roadsides a lot of hawker stalls selling a wide range of fast-breaking treats, from a sugar cane drinks, to a fully mouth watering treats like murtabaks at the Ramadhan Baazar. I'm quite lucky this year, as my workplace prepared a well completed meal for a fast breaking and supper(sahur), where there include the place, the tables and a canopy for the late-stayers to have their parts. I'm not missed this chances too, where we can keep the works and community together.

Whilst I'm having a free supplies of foods, I'm quite surprise when I'm walking pass by a roadside or streets, where the activities are altered quite rapidly within the last year - last year there are most peoples selling kuihs or cakes and desserts in Malay, while this year there are peoples or folks selling toys, fruits, and some sorts of scarfs and sarongs among indonesians. They are selling this maybe because of the continuity from their pasts activities, where they don't afford to cut it as its their only bread and butter.

Ok. The only difference is, I can still saw the selling activities, although the items is slightly difference. They might have doing this for the past few years, but maybe I just realized it. Well, for this post, I haven't yet baked anything, sorry for the one who waits out there, as I've already said, I used this blog to express all kinds of foods topics, including the culture, the journeys, and also the events or happenings about the foods world. However, I would rather include more of the recipes on baking in this blog, as it names goes. Anyway, by the time I got some new idea, but I still don't managed to done it in the kitchen, or something new findings about a food, I will try to write it here.

Out of all of the sorts of kuihs, there is some weird and some to be said weird recipes being served or sell during this Ramadhan. What is to be the weird ones is the one that I have tried just now, where the sago pudding is being cooked together with a coconut milk and sugar in one pot and served. We usually have the sago cooked first, and then poured over with the coconut milk and the dark sugar, but this ones seems to go all in once. Maybe they have a limited time to prepare. I have this in a very wonderful manner, where my workplace are having the very special occasions in Ramadhan, the Nuzul Quran, where it falls in the middle of the month. Usually the folks are having some extra treats, like kenduri or gatherings by having some extra rice dishes, like the briyanis and the beef or muttons rendang. Wow! it looks like a wedding occasions, while we are in the mood of our Raya celebration. The cakes or kuihs served is also a good, or maybe I can said to be the best ones, where the sweet layer of steamed cakes (kuih lapis) being served in the big slices, soft and rich in the centre, just like the one served in the hotels. There are desserts served, like the sago pudding I said just now, and the famous Teh Tarik (a high-pulled milk tea) with a quite creamy tasty. That's all for the foods, and there are also an enough supplies of dates, where it were a Bam Dates, the one that have the dark color and soft and quite sweet tastes.

As for the one that said to be the weird ones, its the kind of dishes which are migrated from the western countries, and almost blended with the locals ones. One of the examples is you can see the fig cookies, where I never saw the one like this before. The figs usually founds in the middle easts countries, as well as some parts in the Europe sides. This lovely cookies made with a blend of normally used ingredients, like the butter cookies, and topped with the fruits. There are many more western style of dishes which are being blended to my locals nowadays, such as the mutton cooked in a chocolate sauces, pastas in laksa sauce, lasagne using a koey teow layers and something like a combination between the muffins and apoms the local favorite steam cakes. Not to mention the collections of puddings and desserts, like the smoothies, panna cottas, and the agar-agar which is prepared in the mixed styles, added with a cream or ice cream, local fruits or bites and many more. There are also the traditionally unforgettable cuisines that has been renewed to match the current styles as well.

Ok, that's all for my exposes during this fasting month, and I hope to have the best-suited favour dishes on this coming Raya celebration. Happy fasting and Hari Raya to all muslims, especially Malaysians!

Raya Feast!!!

Surprise! Welcome to my only blog about food, culinary(I'm not a pro, but I'm just want to let myself into it:)) and bakery. Ok, first of all I have just only started a baking hobby, beginning from the last decade, where I found this was only the easiest way to spend in the kitchen. Until today, I've been baked for almost all sorts of cakes, cookies, pies, puddings, and some pizzas. Actually, I supposed to start this blog earlier, as I've baked quite so much pieces of goodies, including the awesome cakes which I took some from a web or books, but I rather like to create my own recipe for the purpose of posting it here.

Ok. Firstly, I have baked some nice cookie for this incoming Raya celebration and I would like to post it here to share it with all the readers. The cookie entitled "Coconut Hazel Cookies". The result is quite good, although there are some soggy parts inside it, where I used to upgraded it by baking it longer. The final result seems ok, but it will welcome the guest depending to their acceptance!

For this cookies, I took it from my favorite magazine - Saji, with a thick pages of almost all of it contains the cookies recipes, where the recipes calls for some desicated coconut, ground hazelnut, flours, margarine/butter, egg yolk and the brown sugar. Usually this recipe doesn't calls for a vanilla essence, but it does comes out with a quite nice fragrant, maybe it comes from the coconut. I used the high fat dessicated coconut, my mom got it last time when she was in the Ministry of Agriculture. This kind of coconut turns out well!

Thinking twice, I wonder whether I could publish this recipe or not. To be honest, I'm quite concern about the copyright, but, as a mean for sharing, I'm trying to publish it by stating the authority below it.


The recipe are as follow:

250 g butter or margarine
160g brown sugar
2 egg yolks
260 g flour
1 cup self-raising flour
30g dessicated coconut
30g ground hazel

An extra green colored dessicated coconut for decorating
a little egg whites for decorating

1) Place the butter, sugar and yolks in a mixer, beat until light.
2) Add flours and the rest of dried ingredients, mix well
3) Roll dough on a plastic mat, form a 1 cm thick dough.
4) Cut into desired shapes, brush with a little egg whites and sprinkle
a little coconut to decorate.
5) Bake in a preheated oven at 180C + for at least 20 minutes +. The baking time
may be longer, depending on your oven, usually until the cookies turns light brown
on the edges.
6) Cool cookies on the tray, remove it and store in an airtight container. Awesome!

(C) Courtesy of SAJI, Utusan Karya (BUMPER September '07 Edition - pg 119)