Category Archives: dessert

Pandan Agar Agar recipe

Posted on by bruleeblog

I am going to a potluck dinner today! (More on that another day.) I wanted to bring something a little different that some people may not have tried before. This is a South-East Asian vegetarian and dairy-free gelatin dessert that uses a couple of ingredients that may seem exotic to people unfamiliar with food from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines or Malaysia.

Pandan Agar Agar

Pandan Agar Agar

Pandan leaves (also known as pandanus or screw pine leaves) are a plant that is often used in South-East Asian cooking and appears in desserts, flavoured rice, curries, etc. The taste and smell of pandan is uniquely floral and slightly grassy. It is often paired with coconut; in fact, if you buy something that is coconut flavoured and it is green coloured, it probably has some pandan in it as well. People sometimes say that pandan leaves are as important to South-East Asian cooking as vanilla is to Western cooking. In Edmonton, you can purchase pandan leaves frozen from Asian grocery stores like T&T Supermarket and 99 Supermarket. I picked up pandan extract at 99 Supermarket.

pandan extract

pandan extract

Agar agar is a derived from an algae and is often used as a substitute for gelatin. It is most commonly used in South-East Asian and Japanese desserts, but sometimes gets used as a general thickener for food. You can sometimes find them in Asian grocery stores as long, dried strips, flakes or as a powder.

I originally was going to use a recipe that I found on the Internet or from a cookbook, but all of the ones I found weren’t quite what I was looking for. I ended up doing a test run and finally settled on these measurements as my preferred recipe.

Pandan Agar Agar

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup water
400 ml (approx 2 cups) thick coconut milk (use a higher fat milk – the one I used had 17 g of fat per 1/2 cup)
2/3 cup sugar
3 tsp powdered agar agar
approx 1/2 tsp pandan (also known as screw pine) extract (also sometimes called essence or paste)

Directions
Place the water, coconut milk and sugar into a pot and bring to a low boil.

Sprinkle the agar agar powder into the pot slowly while continuously stirring the mixture. Be careful because the powder can easily clump in the liquid if you add it too quickly. If it does clump, then break it up as much as you can and keep slowly stirring until the lumps dissolve in the liquid.

Slowly add the pandan extract until the desired green colour is achieved. I added 1/2 tsp, but really the amount added depends on your preference.

Place the mixture into molds or a casserole dish and let cool. Agar agar will become solid at room temperature, but it will solidify faster in cold temperatures. I generally let the agar agar cool down a little bit, and then pop them into the fridge. I recommend making your layer about 1/2 inch tall or less; once you get much bigger than that the mixture will settle toward the bottom and the top part of the agar agar will become translucent. The flavour will fall to the bottom as well.

Once cool, unmold or cut the agar agar into squares, rectangles, parallelograms. I used a small cookie cutter to create fun shapes.

N.B. Alternatively you can use pandan leaves and make a pandan juice instead of using the extract. To create the juice you take about 8 long leaves and rinse them. Chiffonade the leaves if you can, or at least try to slice them into as small pieces as possible. Place them into a blender with 2/3 a cup of water and puree. Strain the mixture with a cheesecloth. If you substitute the juice for the pandan extract, remember to reduce the amount of the water in the above recipe to 1 cup.

This dessert can be made vegan if vegan sugar is used. It is Celiac-friendly as well, but you probably need to use the juice instead as I am not 100% sure the extract is gluten-free.

Mascarpone Stuffed Dates

Posted on by bruleeblog

This is an easy and tasty recipe for entertaining and potlucks. The sweetness of the dish makes it a great finger food dessert, or a sweet appetizer. Key to this recipe is the use of Medjool dates, which are plump and meaty. I experimented with mixing the cinnamon into the mascarpone, but the cinnamon flavour wouldn’t come through unless I placed it on top of each date.

Mascarpone stuffed dates

Mascarpone stuffed dates

Mascarpone Stuffed Dates

Ingredients
Medjool dates
mascarpone cheese
pecans or walnuts
cinnamon

Directions
With a sharp knife, make a small slit lengthwise across the top of each Medjool date. Do not cut all the way through the date! Carefully pull out the seed.

Take a small spoon (or use a filled piping bag) and place a small dollop of mascarpone inside the opening of each date.

Push a nut into the mascarpone. I used pecans but you can easily use walnuts. Dust a sprinkle of cinnamon over each filled date.

Sugar and Spice Drops

Posted on by bruleeblog

Unlike last year, when I went on a Christmas baking frenzy, I’m only doing a handful of things this year. I’ve already made a batch of crack (a.k.a sugar coated pecans), and I’m planning on making at least one batch of those cranberry-apricot chocolate chews that I keep talking about.

I am making one new kind of cookie this year though. After making those chews last year, I got really interested in the book that it came from, King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. It got great reviews so I took a risk and bought a copy online, which is rather unusual for me because  I generally prefer to flip through a hard copy of a cookbook before making a purchase.

I love gingerbread cookies, but sometimes you want something that’s a little more simple to make and is lighter in flavour. And so, when I saw this Sugar and Spice Drops recipe I knew I had to try it out. They have a light gingerbread-style flavour – just enough to give you some spice but not enough to overwhelm. They are more crispy and the flavour is lighter than the ginger cookies I made last year.

Sugar and Spice Drops
Sugar and Spice Drops
Adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains by King Arthur Flour
Makes approximately 4 1/2 dozen cookies.

Ingredients
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 cup fancy molasses
1 large egg
2 cups traditional whole wheat flour

Directions
Cream together the butter, sugar, baking soda, salt and spices in a bowl until smooth. Beat in the molasses, and then the egg, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the flour and beat until all the ingredients are incorporated. Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes. (The original recipe said it could also be refrigerated overnight, but when I did that for a second batch of cookies I found that the dough dried out a bit and was harder to work with, so I personally wouldn’t recommend leaving it for that long.)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets or line them with parchment paper. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and use a teaspoon to scoop out a piece. Lightly roll it in your hands to make a small ball, and drop it onto the prepared baking sheets.

Bake the cookies until they’ve flattened out and started to brown slightly, about 10-12 minutes depending on your oven. Be careful of overcooking them as you could potentially burn the bottom of the cookies without realizing it. Remove them from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Don’t worry if the cookies seem a bit soft or uncooked inside – they’ll finish cooking off as they cool down.

Once cool, the cookies will be crispy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside.

Ying Fat Food Products, Edmonton

Posted on by bruleeblog

You know how people say that fresh food tastes much better than processed? For something like tofu, I find this is especially true.

Edmonton is lucky enough to have a place that makes fresh tofu and other soya bean products daily. Ying Fat Food Products, Ltd. makes big vats of tofu and soy milk. While I think the majority of their business is through wholesale and commercial sales, they do a brisk business to anyone who walks into the door.

Ying Fat Food Products Ltd.

Ying Fat Food Products Ltd.

Along with tofu and soy milk, you can also purchase dofu fa (soy bean custard), deep fried tofu, homemade fish balls, dried soy beans, and fresh bean sprouts, just to name a few of their products. Sometimes they even have sticky rice wrapped in leaves – a less oily version that contains soy beans along with meat.

On my most recent visit I picked up a jug of soy milk, some deep fried tofu, and a quart of dofu fa.

Soya bean products

Soya bean products

This soy milk is unlike the stuff you can buy from Silk, So Good, etc. It is light tasting, and has a slight soya aftertaste. If you’ve tasted Vitasoy’s soy milk before then you’ll have a better idea of what fresh soy milk from an Asian grocer tastes like. The ingredients are simple – soya bean, water and sugar. It is available sweetened or unsweetened, and in 1 L, 2 L and 4 L sizes.

The deep fried tofu is soft and flavourful. It adds some great flavour to stir fries, and also can be eaten cold.

The dofu fa (or tofu fa, or soy bean custard) is a dessert that can be eaten cold or hot. It is very soft and very delicate – similar in texture to a panna cotta. It is usually eaten with a small amount of sugar syrup or ginger syrup spooned on top.

With this dofu fa, however, I usually just eat it straight out of the carton. It’s so fresh that it has a slight sweetness of it’s own and I find that I don’t need to make it overly sweet.

Like any fresh food product, these items can spoil quickly so it’s best to only buy a small amount that you can consume within a few days. They do speak a little English; point to what you want if all else fails. And if you go during the weekend, be prepared to wait in a (quickly moving) line. The one thing I don’t like about this place is the sketchy location. I’ve never been bothered by the homeless nearby and have always felt safe, but over the years I have seen a few things that I would have rather avoided….

Ying Fat Food Products Ltd.
10512-98 St.
Edmonton, AB

Making syrup

The best way to make the sugar syrup is to melt Chinese yellow rock sugar in some hot water, which will produce a simple syrup.

To make the ginger syrup, take your simple syrup and either stew 2-3 chunks of peeled ginger in the mixture, or use grated ginger. You may have to strain out the ginger however, as the syrup is supposed to be a clear, amber-coloured liquid.

Raymond Blanc’s favourite recipe

Posted on by bruleeblog

Raymond Blanc demonstrates how to make his favourite recipe, a simple chocolate mousse that is low in sugar and contains very few ingredients. Mmmm yummy. He’s fun to watch too.

The recipe is also listed on that page, as well as a couple of variations that can be made – chocolate fondant and chocolate soup.