Raspberry Snowflake Cake

Raspberry Snowflake Cake

There are couple things that have made me feel very happy recently. The first thing is my head chef asked me for the Peking duck recipe for the new dish on our restaurant menu. The second thing is Lisa from http://www.koreanamericanmommy.blogspot.com follow my recipe and made her first “three cup chicken” and it turned out really awesome. Here is her blog about this three cup chicken: http://koreanamericanmommy.blogspot.com/2010/07/chef-liv-wans-chinese-three-cup-chicken.html

I feel so proud and also super happy. I wish people who visit my blog can enjoy my recipe and have fun in the kitchen. That’s the greatest thing to me. I feel really honour that my head chef asked the recipe from me and I wish my recipe help him a bit with the new dish. This is the two thing make me feel really happy and I share my happiness with you who is reading this post at moment and wish you have a great day.

Now, It’s the time for the recipe of the day. I’m going to share this Chinese dessert recipe with you. My colleague asked me if there any popular Chinese or Taiwanese desserts? Yes, of course there are a lot of desserts in both China and Taiwan. But I have to say they are different from desserts that are popular in the UK. Here is an example dessert that I share with you today.

raspberry snowflake cake

When the first time I read about this dessert’s name I just fall in love with it. How cute is the name? I guess the name snowflake comes from the layer of coconut powder that actually looks a bit like a snowflake.

Raspberry snowflake cake tastes a little bit sweet and sour and the most important thing is this dessert has to be eaten in cold. You must eat it immediately after taking it out from fridge.

These photos were taken by Chris from Chris Radley Photography

 

Raspberry Snowflake Cake

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 30 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Servings 2 people

Ingredients

A

  • 50 g rasberries
  • 450 g water
  • 180 g caster sugar
  • 200 ml milk
  • 50 ml double cream
  • 5 leafs gelatine

B

  • 120 g potato starch
  • 100 ml water
  • coconut powder

Instructions

  1. Cook raspberry, 450g water and caster sugar in a small sauce pan and bring it to boil. Keep whisk it while cooking to help sugar and raspberry dissolve.
  2. Soften gelatine in cold water. Add milk and double cream into step 1 and bring it to boil again.
  3. Turn off the gas and add gelatine into step 2 and keep whisk it to help to mix evenly.
  4. Mix potato starch and water evenly and add it into step 3.
  5. Pour the mixture from step 4. Into a long rectangle shape baking tray with baking paper in it. (Baking paper helps us to take out the snowflake cake easier later.) Put the snowflake cake into your fridge for 1 or 2 hours to help it form. Cover the snowflake cake with coconut powder and it’s ready to serve.

 

Shengjianbao

Shengjianbao

shengjianbao

Shengjian mantou, also known as Shengjianbao, is a common and popular dish in both Taiwan and Shanghai. It’s very popular in Shanghai for breakfast and we eat it pretty much any time in Taiwan.

We usually make Shengjianbao with mince and cabbage in Taiwan and people usually use only mince and spring onion in Shanghai.

My recipe for this Shengjianbao is mince with carrots and spring onion because my husband doesn’t like the taste of cabbage so I change the recipe a little bit. I guess people who doesn’t like cabbage will like this dish as well.

Most people tolerate carrot more than cabbage and carrot has special vegetable sweetness for this dish. On the other hand, carrot is also a healthy vegetable and I tried my best to make sure my husband have his daily vegetable all the time to ensure he is happy and healthy.

Here is the recipe for this Shengjianbao.

 

Shengjianbao

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 20 minutes
Servings 20 Shengjianbao

Ingredients

Ingredients for filling

  • 100 g beef mince
  • 200 g pork belly remove skin and chop into small dice first
  • 1.5 medium carrots use food processor to mince it
  • 2 spring onions chop really finely
  • 2 thin slices ginger chop really finely

Seasonings for filling

  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper powder
  • 1/2 tsp sugar

Ingredients for the pastry

  • 250 g white bread flour
  • 250 g plain flour
  • 1 cup water
  • 7 g yeast
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 1/4 tsp sugar

Instructions

Procedure for making Shengjianbao

  1. Mix yeast and water together. After the yeast melt, mix everything together.
  2. Knead the dough until it’s smooth without lumps and cover by cling film or clean wet kitchen napkin. After covering it up just leave it on aside for 30~40 minutes to allow it arise.
  3. Mix all the ingredients and seasonings for filling together. Use both of your hands to mix it evenly.
  4. Use a scale to weight up the dough 40g per one and after knead the small dough into round shape.
  5. Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough and put 1 tablespoon of filling onto the flatten dough.
  6. Fold it as in the procedures photos you can see and leave the Shengjianbao on aside for 10 minutes to allow the pastry arise again.

Procedure for cooking Shengjianbao

  1. Use a frying pan with a lit or use 2 frying pan but 1 is bigger than the other to fry the Shengjianbao that we made.
  2. Heat up a tablespoon of oil in the big frying pan with medium gas power. Put the Shengjianbao into frying pan with some space between them because the Shengjianbao will get bigger after heat it up.(I put 5 of them in one go and my frying pan is around 9” wide from IKEA.)
  3. We only fry it until Shengjianbao’s button getting a little bit of  colour. Pour 1 cup of water into the pan and cover the lit or the smaller frying pan on top. We use the steam to cook the Shengjianbao.
  4. Cook the Shengjianbao for 8~10 minutes until the water is dry out then it’s cook.

Recipe Notes

In most of the Chinese and Taiwanese cuisine for the filling that we like to use a little fat to make the texture taste better, such as dumplings, Chinese bun. I use pork belly because it’s easy to buy it in supermarket and it has the fat also the skinny part of meat.