No-Guilt Chocolate Mousse

Inspired by a cooking show by Malaysian Chef/Cook Anis Nabila, I decided to have a go at this super simple recipe. I guess one could make it vegan too if one replaces the milk with almond or oat milk.

But since I’m not vegan, I used regular milk. These are all the ingredients I used!

In a food processor, whiz one ripe avocado, about 250g of dark chocolate, 1/2 cup honey of choice and splashes of milk. Whiz till smooth. If mixture is too thick, just add more milk.

Then scoop them into serving glasses, top with blueberries and refrigerate till it’s chilled. You can sprinkle some sea salt flakes too before serving to cut down the richness of this mousse.

Simple, healthy and delicious!

Pavlova with Strawberries

In the morning, I had tried making hollandaise sauce. If failed miserably so I decided to make use of the egg whites and create something that will be failproof. So pavlova it was.

Definitely fail proof but I accidentally added in yellow food colouring instead of vanilla! Hence, the bright yellow colour. Oh well.

For the strawberry sauce, all I did was simmer about 450g of strawberry into a cup of sugar, some water, lemon juice and a 1/4 cup of my favourite honey from Scoop. Let it thicken.

For the pavlova, it was simply mixing three egg whites, and adding slowly 1 cup of castor sugar. Vanilla essence. And a pinch of salt. And of course in this case, some yellow food colouring. Sigh.

Beat well till stiff peaks form but don’t overheat after this. Stop.

Spread on baking paper. And bake in a 105 degree Celcius oven for 90min. Touch the surface to check if it’s dry.

This is how it is like after baking. Gently remove from the parchment paper and transfer to a serving plate.

And then decorate! I poured the strawberry sauce on top but I didn’t wait for it to cool down first hence you can see the bubbles or foam. Then top with more fresh strawberries and mint leaves (from my potted plant garden!)

When cooled it’s so deliciously chewy in the centre, crisp on top and the slightly sweet yet a bit tangy strawberries balance out everything!

This is easily the prettiest thing I’ve made this year. Another photo just because. ☺️

Borek pies

My version of borek pies is so quick to make and delicious too! I usually make them into spring rolls but because I was too impatient with the dough and it broke, I just turned them into pies.

The filling simply consists of Turkish white cheese or just use feta cheese, a package of frozen spinach, Greek yogurt, one egg and spices (I just used smoked paprika, black pepper and salt). Lots of melted butter and nigella seeds on top.

I love the Turkish white cheese compare to feta because these white cheese is creamy!

Put filling in the pastry…

…And then cover with more phyllo pastry. brush with olive oil and sprinkle nigella seeds.

Bake till golden brown.

Remove from pan, let it cool a bit and then cut.

Last thing to do is to eat!

Lemon Blueberry Loaf Bread

Yes, another lemon loaf but this time with blueberries. I used this wonderful recipe here at Jo Cooks but not exactly…

I only used 1 cup of fresh blueberries instead of 1.5 as in her recipe. I think a half cup more will result in too much blueberries and yo won’t be able to taste much cake! So one cup for me works fine because I can still cut into the cake.

Also, I added lemon paste. About one teaspoon of it and did not soak the cake in lemon syrup. The lemon paste added that lemony zing without me soaking in the entire cake with lemon sugar. Other than that, I think her recipe makes for a very good loaf!

Makes for a wonderful treat. I scattered some flowers tea on top.

This is for two batches.

Cooling cakes. Yes, I made one loaf to bring over to my 90 year old Grandma. 😊❤️

Quite thickly glazed though not fully.

I can’t imagine more blueberries covering the entire cake. I want to taste lemon cake too!

My slice 😋

Yemeni Honeycomb Bread

A friend of mine who’s living in Jeddah told me about the existence of this bread. It is soooo delicious that I’ve made it twice.

It’s called honeycomb bread because it looks like one. And basically, it’s a cheese bun loaf but with a sweet sugary syrup over it.

The recipe is simple. For the dough, it’s just 2 cups plain flour, two teaspoons yeast, two teaspoons baking powder, about 30ml melted butter, 1/2 tsp salt, 3 tablespoons sugar, 150g Greek yogurt. This yogurt is my addition the second time baking and boy, did the dough turn out perfect! So soft and delicious!

For the sugar syrup, melt 1 cup of sugar to 1/2 cup of water. Boil for ten minutes then stir in 1/4 tsp of rise water and 2 tablespoons of runny syrup.

I used my trusty Kitchen Aid mixer and when all is incorporated and kneaded (the more you let the machine do its thing, the softer the buns going to be), let the dough rise till double in size. Then gently punch it down, and form about 19-20 small balls. Fill each ball of dough with cream cheese and place it in a circular pattern inside a well greased 9 inch pan. Any round pan will do, but don’t use Pyrex glass!

I really am such a lazy photographer. But as you can see here, the dough is so soft! Space them slightly apart but close enough because after this, leave it to rest and rise a second time.

Look how fat they’ve become! Lovely! After the second rise, brush the tops with a mixture of egg and milk. Sprinkle nigella seeds. If nigella seeds prove to be too strong and earthy, just use sesame seeds. But I love the intense flavour from the nigella seeds. Then bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celcius fill the buns are browned. For my oven, this took about 25 min.

Fresh out of the oven. While it’s still hot, brush generously all over with the sugar syrup. I’ve seen in YouTube videos some people poured the syrup all over and there’s even a version where they poured condensed milk all over. I cannot. I don’t particularly have a sweet tooth, so the brushing generously method works fine for me and the family.

I used a loose bottom springform pan so it was easy to remove

I brought this over to my sister’s for teatime treat.

As you can see from the caption there, I should have added more cheese for some of the individual buns, some had a lot, some had just a bit too little. 😁

This is a keeper and I would definitely be making this for guests during teatime treats!