Category: Dessert

Make your own crunchy caramel popcorn!!!

It started with Fiqa bringing back some Garrett’s popcorn from Singapore for us to try. OMG the popcorn was gorgeous!!

But since we were sharing the popcorn and I’m like really chinese when it comes to stuff like this, I didn’t eat more.

I pretended that I was considerate and that I cared about my friends and like I was totally into this thing called “sharing”.

No, it’s all a BIG FAT LIE!

So, because I didn’t get to satiate my popcorn craving, I decided to make some myself, at home!

# – Homemade caramel popcorn.

For the popcorn:

  • 1/4 cup of dry corn kernels (easily found at spice section in supermarkets)
  • 60 ml of cooking oil

    • For the caramel:

  • 125 grams of salted butter
  • 3/4 cup of demerara sugar (you can use ordinary sugar)
  • 2 tablespoons of honey
  • 1 teaspoon of paprika, optional
  • 1 teaspoon of black pepper, optional
  • 1 teaspoon of chilli powder, optional

    •  

    # – First, pour oil into a medium sized saucepan and heat it until it’s very hot. To test if the oil is hot enough, throw in one corn kernel and when it pops, the oil is ready.

    # – When the oil is ready, pour in all the dry corn kernels and immediate close with a lid.

    # – Hold the lid down. Soon you will hear a lot of popping sounds. Truly SATISFYING music! With your fingers firmly over the lid, hold the saucepan handle with your other hand and shake the pot gently but away from the flame (imagine you’re holding the reins while riding a horse). You do not want to burn the popcorn as the smell is absolutely rancid!

    # – When the popping sounds have stopped, that means the popcorn are now done! Like magic!

    # – Now, pour the plain popcorn into a large mixing bowl and allow to cool down.

    # – In the meantime, throw in all the ingredients for the caramel into a saucepan and heat them up on medium heat. I flavoured my caramel with paprika, pepper and chilli powder to give it a bit of kick amidst the sweetness. Be creative and experiment with your favourite spices!

    # – Constantly stir the mixture.

    # – Stir until the mixture has completely melted, turned a darker shade of brown and quite bubbly (about 10 minutes). Some people like to push their caramel to the darkest end (for a richer, slightly bitter taste) but it’s quite easy to burn them (nasty bitter taste) so becareful!

    # – Immediately pour the caramel into the popcorn and mix them up with 2 large metal spoons until popcorn are evenly coated. You’re handling extremely hot mixture here so be careful! Constantly stir them to loosen the popcorn so they won’t stick together until the caramel has cooled down & hardened.

    # – If you find the popcorn abit greasy, just pour them onto a kitchen towel to absorb the oil a bit.

    # – Homemade caramel popcorn, DONE!

    It’s crazy easy, crazy cheap, crazy delicious, crazy crunchy and best of all, it’s homemade.

    You can flavour the caramel however you want, you can even experiment with savoury flavours. This is not really conducive to my slow carb diet but sometimes a girl gotta have her popcorn!

     
     
     
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    The Orange English Trifle.

    It is compulsory for me to make an english trifle since I’m dating an Englishman. Besides, I LOVE trifle. It’s easy to make and it’s so decadent and delicious.

    # – The Orange English Trifle.

    I decided to make trifle the easy way, by using all store bought ingredients rather than making the ingredients from scratch. Reason? LAZINESS.

    # – Some of the store bought ingredients :D

    The beauty of this dish is that you can decide how thick each layer is. If you like more fruits, put in more fruits. For us, we had a massively thick custard hehehehe. So you can just use my recipe as a reference more than anything :)

    For the sponge, fruit, jelly & cream layers:

  • 1 packet of instant orange jello, mine yielded 400ml of jelly
  • 6-8 pieces of lady’s fingers (the biscuit, not the vegetable)
  • A few tablespoons of Cointreau or any orange liquer
  • 300 ml of whipping cream, whipped
  • 1 can of mandarin oranges

    • For the custard layer:

  • 4 tablespoons of Bird’s custard powder
  • 2 tablespoons of caster sugar
  • 600 ml of milk

    • # – First, break the lady’s fingers and lay them on the bottom of a clear jelly bowl.

    # – Add a few dashes of Cointreau or as much as desired over the lady’s fingers until they are quite soaked.

    # – Now lay the mandarin oranges over the lady fingers.

    # – By now you should have cooked the orange jello according to instructions on the packet. Pour it over the mandarin oranges and lady’s fingers.

    # – It will now look like this. Stick it in the fridge to set (length of time refer to jelly setting instructions on the packet).

    # – Make the custard by first dissolving 4 tablespoons of custard + 2 tablespoons of sugar in a large bowl with 10 tablespoons of milk taken from the 600 ml of milk. Use your fingers to dissolve to make sure there’s no lumps. Then warm up the remainder of milk in a saucepan and pour it into the bowl with the dissolved custard while whisking the mixture constantly. Then, pour the mixture back into the same saucepan. On gentle heat, warm up the mixture again and stir until thickens. Allow to cool slightly then pour custard onto the set jelly.

    # – Stick it in the fridge for at least 3 hours or until custard has set.

    # – When the custard has set, whip up the cream and pipe it onto the surface of the custard if you like it like that. Otherwise, feel free to just spoon it over.

    # – The Orange English Trifle, DONE!

    # – Absolutely delightful with a variety of textures that come together so harmoniously.

    Orange jelly, Cointreau soaked sponges, tart mandarin oranges and creamy, smooth custard AND cream. It’s awesome. True story.

    Salted chunky chocolate chip cookies recipe.

    This has totally become one of my favourite recipes. I have made it 3 times and I’ll probably make it again later today.

    # – Salted chunky chocolate chip cookies.

    The recipe works everytime! Want cookies that are not so sweet, crispy on the outside, chewy in the middle with melty chunky choocolate oozing out? This is the recipe for you.

    The ingredients:

    • 115g of salted butter, softened at room temperature
    • 110g of brown sugar
    • 100g of caster sugar
    • 1 egg, at room temperature
    • 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence
    • 180g plain flour
    • 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate soda
    • 1/2 teaspoon of coarse sea salt
    • 200g of dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

    # – First, beat the caster sugar, brown sugar and softened butter till creamy.

    # – Then crack an egg over the mixture and add 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla essence.

    # – Beat till combined and creamy.

    # – Now, sift in the flour and bicarbonate soda.

    # – As well as the coarse sea salt.

    # – Fold to combine.

    # – Then throw in the roughly chopped dark chocolates.

    # – Mix till combined, refrain from eating cookie dough…or not.

    # – Cover bowl with clingfilm and stick it in the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours. I chilled mine overnight though.

    # – To make the cookies, work with the dough while it’s still chilled. It’s normal for it to be quite hard and you probably need a hard metal spoon to help you hack at it. Form balls the size of a walnut and arrange them on a non-stick baking tray or one that’s greased and lined with non-stick baking paper. This recipe makes a maximum of about 75 decent size cookies!

    # – Stick it in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees celcius for 10 minutes.

    # – When the cookies are done baking, remove from oven and loosen them up from the tray with a spatula.

    # – Allow to cool completely on wire rack.

    # – Salted chunky chocolate chip cookies, DONE!

    I love these cookies so much, with pops of saltiness coming through the decadent chocolates…DIVINE!

    # – Hmmmmm.

    Thank you Citrus & Candy for sharing such a wonderful and straightforward recipe.