Twisted Cranberries Loaf with Poppy Seed

If you are like me - love everything that has poppy seeds in it, then this is definitely a recipe to try. These blue, beautiful poppy seeds are bursting with bold, nutty flavor and adding both flavor and texture to the bread. It is nicely blend with red dried cranberries. For this basic bread recipe, kindly refer to my previous post titled "Yam Paste Swirl Bun", substitute the yam paste with 1/2 cup of dried cranberries and sprinkle the bread top with poppy seed. About the twisted shape, just divide the dough into 3, braid it together and bake. Enjoy!

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French Ratatouille Tart

Ratatouille! One of my favorite Disney movies before. This isn’t a classic ratatouille, which is a traditional French vegetable stew. But it reminded me of the one on the movie, with its pretty layers of vegetables. And with the puff pastry and fresh tomatoes and cheese, it’s kind of like a vegetable pizza. An incredibly tasty vegetable pizza (I even ate all the egg plants and zucchini). This recipe is really pretty simple to make! If you're lazy to make your own crust, you may just grab the ready made crust from store.

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Heart-Shaped Strawberry Pie

For all the berries lover, don't you just love strawberries? I could eat them each and every day but too bad they're so expensive in Malaysia. Apart from tasting simply delicious or for decorating purposes, strawberries as well have beneficial effects on our health. So if it isn't just for the enjoyment itself, it score highest nutrient in most of the fruits. Hence, whenever I see it selling on supermarket's rack, I do not hesitate to buy it.

The recipe is quite similar to my previous post Pâte sucrée (French sweet pastry) - Strawberry tart except its shape and cream. I am using the first cream to match with strawberry this round. Best served with cafe latte, its bitterness match with strawberries sweetness.

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French Quiche Lorraine - comes from NZ

Quiche lorraine is the classic quiche from the Lorraine region of eastern France. It makes a nice and easy picnic/party dish and goes well with a salad. The recipe is extremely easy to make, and yet the most delicious savory pastries that I ever tasted (perhaps maybe due to the bacon and cheese inside). Believe me, you will love it too!

Before this, I do not know what is quiche until I went to New Zealand for my previous 1 year assignment there. I can find quiche in each of every cafe at New Plymouth, NZ. Its varieties make you almost can eat it for every lunch. Thanks to my best friend at New Zealand - Kirsten who actually passed me this wonderful Quiche recipe, and hence I improvised it with French method to put on the crust to make it easier to handle. And now, it become French Quiche Lorraine comes from New Zealand. Sounds good, right?

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The Smurfs Return...

Followed by my previous cupcakes post (titled "Angry Bird Fever"), I've made another theme of the cupcakes in conjunction of "The Smurfs" movie which will be released in cinema on 1st September 2011.

Why this Smurfs idea came into my mind despite of the movie, it was actually memorable moments during my  Europe honeymoon trip few months ago, my husband and I went to BELGIUM - where the Smurfs origin from!!! I do not know that beforehand until we were there, what a great surprise! Since then, I only know the first Smurfs classic song was in Belgium language actually instead of English language.

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Go green with Kiwi

Let's go green with Kiwi fruits today. These Kiwi fruit tarts are my subsequent creations, which continue from my previous blog post titled Pâte sucrée (French sweet pastry) - Strawberry tart.

I love Kiwi fruits especially those imported from New Zealand. They are unique bright green kiwi fruits, which naturally become fantastic toppings for any bakes. The color and the natural design of the fruit indeed look amazing, and it will taste even better when matches with fresh whipped cream, believe me.

The recipe is identical with my previous blog post titled "Pâte sucrée (French sweet pastry) - Strawberry tart". What you need to do is just change the topping (strawberries) with Kiwi Fruits instead, as easy as that.

You may make any design or arrangement with the Kiwi Fruits based on your own creativity. I prefer the big slice of kiwi surrounded with fresh whipped cream together. Anyhow, it's just my own liking. Enjoy!

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Black Bottom Cupcakes

You must be wondering what is "Black Bottom" cupcakes? Something black ingredients in it? Or black colour part at the bottom of cupcakes? In fact, they’re like rich fudge cupcakes at the bottom with cream cheese in the top middle. In order to participate TorviewTotonto's Black food palette's series event, I indeed cracking my head to think about what food or baking stuff is black?? Hence, I improvised this Black Bottom Cupcakes with charcoal powder mix with dark chocolate powder for this base cakes part. For your information, this original black bottom cupcake solely using cocoa powder as the base cake even though its name yields "Black"in it.

These cupcakes were dense, moist, very chocolaty and coffee taste (as I sprinkle some black coffee powder on top for decoration purposes). The filling was good too. It had more cream cheese and less egg than some other recipes, so the cream cheese  part of the cupcake was dense without being eggy.

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Easy Peasy Portuguese Tart

Here are some basic background about Portuguese egg tarts. It is evolved from "pastel de nata", a traditional Portuguese custard pastry that consists of custard in a crème brûlée-like consistency caramelized in a puff pastry case. It was created more than 200 years ago by Catholic Sisters at Jerónimos Monastery (Portuguese: Mosteiro dos Jerónimos) at Belém in Lisbon.

When we talk about tart/pastries, we always refer to European styles'. In fact, in ASEAN countries, Macau is famous with its Portuguese Egg Tart. That's why today I choose to make this to participate Janine's hosted event. Seriously, I prefer to eat Portuguese egg tart rather than normal egg tart due to its layered crust. As such, I customized it to have more crust rather than custard filling, which is rather fattening and contains high cholesterol. Remember, eat healthy!

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{Giveaway} Win 12-Colorful Cupcakes Silicon Molds

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GIVEAWAY Closed!
The winner is Wai Leng. Kindly contact me at hankerie@gmail.com for shipping purposes. Thank you the rest for participation as well.
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To all my Hankerie fans,  I would like to give some token of  appreciation  to my readers who are checking out my blog, some even on daily basis (with or without leaving any comments) ! I read each and every comment, and many of them make me smile, keep me going, produce more creative ideas on my baking each day.

Now, I'm giving you the chance to add these 12 colorful sicilicon cupcakes molds to your baking collection. If you're not bakers, it is always lovely to give this to someone else too.

To enter this giveaway, follow these 1-2-3 easy steps:

1. Step One - Click on "Like" button of my new Hankerie Facebook page, tell your friends about Hankerie website (http://hankerie.blogspot.com) by posting on your Facebook wall. 
2. Step Two - Tell me what type of cookies/pastries do you like as Christmas's gift? In what kind of packaging too?
3. Step Three - Leave any (minimum) 3 comments in any of my blog post (exclude this blog post comments). [Using anonymous without any names is not eligible for this giveaway, as well as comments in Facebook is not eligible too]. 

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"Mad" about Macarons - Successful!

You might have noticed that I've tried several times of making macarons ("Mad about Macarons - Part 1 & Part 2 in my previous blog posts. This time, I've made it successfully in the end. I was in cloud nine when I saw the feet developed gradually after 5 minutes baking in the oven. Nicely feet developed as well as no crack at all, satisfied achievement. 

In order to reduce the sweetness of macaron, I made the sour taste lemon filling to match with my green tea flavour macarons. Enjoy these airy sweet treats with a cup of TWG Earl Grey tea; such a wonderful high tea combination. 

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Angry Bird Fever

Followed by my first visit to Miri's Orphanage (see my previous post titled "Handmade Cookies Specially for Orphans" ), I've made another visit again today. Since my husband flew to Miri this weekend, I've time to bake the more challenging stuffs for the kids :).

Its Angry Birds fever everywhere now. A happy fever that spread so fast and entertained a big crowd all over the world seriously. I was a victim to its addiction too and enjoyed cracking level after level. The love for the cute game even made me create cupcakes for orphans, which themed "Angry Bird" design cupcake with fondant icing. At first, I'm quite doubtful the kids know about Angry Bird. To my surprise, they all were so exciting and fight to get the "red" angry bird!! I almost burst laughter but in the same time, few compliments that touched me are "If I eat this angry bird cupcakes, then I do not have this anymore!!". Some even said "You see, I eat the angry bird part by part, starts from ear, eyes, and nose". The way of the other kids amused me was he pulled out the angry bird, finished the whole vanilla cupcake and wallop the whole angry bird in a mouthful!!! Anyway, I really glad to see them enjoy my wholehearted creations, it makes me feel a huge success.

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Pâte sucrée (French sweet pastry) - Strawberry tart

Pâte sucrée is a French term for a rich, sweetened short pastry used for desserts such as pies, tarts and filled cookies. The shell is blind baked until entirely cooked with fresh fruit and pastry cream.

After reading my World Kitchen France cook book, few pointers that enlighten me. Most recipes don't explain in some ways, the dough starts to crumble, even practically disintegrate, when you try to lift it in the tart tin, you can use a patch method. Slide the base of a French tart tin underneath the dough, place the base inside the fluted outer ring; then take small pieces of dough and press them against the inside ring. The inside of the shell won't look as perfectly smooth as Martha Stewart's, but it will even out during baking and the exterior will look just fine. More importantly, the texture and taste of the baked crust will not be negatively affected at all.

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Yam Paste Swirl Bun

After my masterpiece of my bread, I'm continue my bread journey. With knowing the basic knowledge of the soft bread dough, I've improvised it with different filling variety - self cooked yam paste.

My yam paste swirl bun's recipe:

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Blue Chiffon Cake?

Chiffon Cake is my favourite cake among all the cake series. That's why I always use this chiffon cake method to apply to swiss roll as well in order to make it more spongy and soft. After my new creation of 3D blue blossom swiss roll which posted a while back, indeed it is my most popular post entries in my blog.

With the same believe, I tried to use the blue pea flowers to dye my chiffon cake into blue but unfortunately it did not fulfill my right expectation. It becomes green at the point when mixed with the batter. From this, knowing that natural color differs from food colouring whereas food coloring will not get changed at all. To remedy this situation as I do not want it to become "Pandan Chiffon Cake", I combined 2 colours in the chiffon cake which makes it more unique. The bottom layer is filled with Van Houten cocoa flavour.

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More for kids....

Continue from the previous post titled "Handmade Cookies Specially for Orphans", this is the white series of those handmade cookies for orphans. I genuinely prefer ice in pale ivory and pastel shades, but the colours can be as bright as I like and most importantly this natural icing colour is non-artificial colouring.

Since I've made so much pinky love shapes for the girls already, it is time to to make some cute animals shape for the boys. Even it took hours to complete these 2 sets of cookies, it's totally worth it as all the kids love it very much, as least they feel my sincerity.

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Handmade Cookies Specially for Orphans

Today I pay a visit to an orphanage which located in Miri (Sarawak), something I've never done in my life before. Indeed this is always my wish, hope I am able to do some charity physically but not only monetary basis. I've planned this visit since last week, thinking to bake something special for the kids. In the end, decided to do handmade painted cookies for them.

This orphanage is called "Methodist Children's Home", these children (aged between 8-20 years old) who are taken in will have a wholesome upbringing and growth with well equipped facilities and well trained carers. I am impressed about the way this orphanage is organized. There is a special rented bungalow house for these children and it's connected directly to their care takers' house (Mr Ling & his wife), they are such a lovely couples, introduced me and one of my colleague (Diana) to all these 18 kids. I passed all my handmade cookies to them and they are just in cloud nine. Seriously their compliments are more than anything, some of them even wants more but unfortunately I only baked for enough.

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Blueberry Cream Cheese Tart

Irresistible cream cheese tart!! I always love these blueberry cheese tart as they are indeed a tantalizing treat, be it match with a cup of fine tea or coffee. It never fails its combination taste. Been trying a few recipes but this one is extremely simple as well as delicious. Also, I've tried 2 different molds to come out different shapes as well.

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