Category: Homemade Recipes

I made profiteroles and they FINALLY rose!

You know what? I did it! I freakin’ did it!

Ladies & gentlemen, I successfully made profiteroles! You may have read about my failed attempt at making profiteroles and since, I had attempted two more times and failed :(

# – Crispy, creamy, chocolatey profiteroles. Woohoo!

However, last night, the time felt right. It was late, yes it was 12.30am in the morning and I thought to myself, “Hey Kimberly, I feel like some profiteroles and I have a feeling the choux pastry will puff up this time”. And so, I decided to make them, eventhough I was supposed to be already in bed.

And boy, did they puff! I was so overwhelmed with joy, I did a dance and screamed joy in my kitchen. The BF thought I had gone nuts, but then he too saw the puffed up pastry in the oven and subsequently joined in my awesome dance.

I think the success of this attempt had to do with me implementing a tip I had picked up from Masterchef Australia where the challenge in that particular episode was to make Croquembouche, a complex dessert that can be summarised as a tower of profiteroles bound together by caramel.

During the making of the choux pastry, the Masterchef’s voiceover was saying that the choux pastry of one of the contestants did not rise because she did not cook the flour thoroughly. So this time, I made sure I cooked the flour mixture through. You probably have no idea what I’m rambling about, so lets just go straight into the step by step :D

The ingredients:

  • 65 grams of flour, sifted twice
  • A pinch of salt, sifted twice
  • 150 ml of water
  • 50 grams of butter
  • 2 eggs, well beaten

For serving:

  • 100 ml of whipping cream, whipped till double in size
  • Chocolate sauce (you can buy or make yours but watch out for tomorrow’s post for my homemade version with rum!)

# – First of all, sift the flour and salt twice and set aside in a bowl.

# – Then melt the butter in water in a pot on low heat.

# – When butter have thoroughly melted, turn the heat up a little to get to a gentle boil. Most recipes would ask you to remove the butter mixture from heat at this point, but please don’t. Now, dump in the flour and salt mixture.

# – Turn the heat back down and stir and stir and stir and stir.

# – Stir till everything sticks together and forms a soft ball. Then continue stirring over the low heat for about 5 minutes more. Yes, this is the part about cooking the flour through I was talking about.

# – Now dump the dough into a mixing bowl to cool down for about 15 minutes.

# – In a pitcher, beat 2 eggs well.

# – Gently pour the egg into the dough while you’re beating it with an electrical mixer. Beat till everything is combined and form a soft peak.

# – What’s a soft peak? This is soft peak, where the dough sticks to a spoon and very, very slowly droops downwards.

# – Now, stick the dough into a piping bag. Of course, you can use a makeshift piping bag with a freezer bag, just nip the corner off and voila!

# – Pipe the dough into half of your desired profiterole size onto a greased baking tray, because when cooked they’re going to double in size!

# – Dip you hand into a bowl of water and lightly sprinkle water all over the tray, like this. This is another way to help the choux pastry rise.

# – Stick it in a preheated oven at 200 degrees celcius for 20 minutes.

# – Watch them puff up. You may now do a dance.

# – As you can see, I made some eclair shapes too so yes, I made eclairs too with this batch…hehehehe.

# – Immediately after you take the pastry out from the oven, use the skewer to poke a hole through the under of each pastry. This is to release any pressure built up inside.

# – Split each pastry into half with a knife.

# – When they’ve cooled down completely, stuff each with as much chilled whipped cream as much as you can :D

# – Lay them all on a plate and drizzle generously with warmed delicious homemade chocolate rum sauce (will blog about this tomorrow).

# – Bite into a piece. And there, profiteroles, DONE!

These profiteroles were light & crispy on the outside, with a hollow inside perfect for cradling a good dollop of yummy, milky cream.

The combination of the pastry, cream and rich chocolate sauce is seriously something bordering perfection. What can I say, they were absolutely perfect. The BF and I hoovered up everything at one go, we were quite naughty really…

My apologies while I swim for a little while more in pure self-satisfaction.

Skewered yogurt honey chicken

This is a delicious and fresh tasting dish. Naturally tenderised by yogurt, the cubed chicken fillets were juicy and flavourful. The honey gives off a subtle sweetness which counterbalances the tart yogurt…this is perfect with fluffy white rice.

# – Today’s dinner!

For the yogurt honey chicken

  • 250 grams of chicken fillet, cubed
  • 3 tablespoons of plain yogurt
  • 2 tablespoon of pure honey
  • Salt for seasoning
  • A stalk of rosemary or you can use rosemary powder


For the honey yogurt dill sauce

  • 10 tablespoons of plain yogurt
  • 1 tablespoon of pure honey
  • A handful of chopped dill
  • Salt for seasoning

# – First season the cubed chicken fillets with salt.

# – Add 3 tablespoons of yogurt.

# – Followed by a stalk of rosemary. You may pluck the leaves and discard the stalk too (I did this later on as I think the leaves impart flavour better off the stalk).

# – Drizzle two tablespoons of honey.

# – Stir till combined.

# – Now pierce all the chicken fillets together with skewers. Set aside in the fridge to marinate for at least 2 hours.

# – In the meantime, pour about 10 tablespoons of plain yogurt into a bowl.

# – Add 1 tablespoon of honey into the yogurt.

# – Dump in the finely chopped dill.

# – Don’t forget the salt!

# – Stir till completely combined and keep chilled in the fridge till ready to be served.

# – When you’re ready to cook, heat up a properly greased griddle. Make sure it’s quite hot but not burning.

# – Place all the skewered chicken onto griddle for about 3 minutes on one side. The smaller your chicken cubes are the faster they cook.

# – Flip them over to cook the other side.

# – Serve them with rice and the yogurt honey dill sauce made earlier.

# – Skewered yogurt honey chicken, DONE!

If you’re not into rice, you could also serve it with boiled potatoes and a nice green salad. Also, if you find the yogurt honey dill sauce a little on the sweet side, you could add a tablespoon of lemon or lime juice to balance up the taste more.

I love it when reasonably healthy dishes turn out exceptionally tasty. Give it a go!

My cheese baked rice that was not :(

I was really excited about making this dish. My boyfriend absolutely loves it. Whenever we visit one of those Hong Kong themed restaurants, he never fails to order this. One layer of cooked rice, followed by a layer of meat sauce then topped off with cheese and baked till top is bubbly. Easy right?

So easy I didn’t even bother to look at a recipe. That was how cocky I was. Well, as it panned out, my version of cheese baked rice turned out quite bad :(

It was edible…okay let me rephrase, the crust was edible and now and then some bits of rice. The rest? Atrocious.

How could something that looked so good out of the oven and smelled so heavenly turned out to be a complete disappointment?

# – Perfectly good cheesy crust…what could go wrong? Right?

And every cooking failure is a lesson I have to learn from. From my disastrous cheese baked rice, I’ve learnt:

  1. Not to add beans I’ve never cooked before into perfectly fluffy rice just because I need to use some of them up.
  2. Never to buy too many cans of beans I’ve never cooked before because they were discounted. Refer to point above.
  3. Not to leave too much liquid in the meat sauce. Okay, to be more specific….drain the damn tuna. It won’t take too long.
  4. Not to cook too much of something you’ve never made before.
  5. Stick to the cheaper cheeses for first time dishes!!!!!
  6. Don’t EVER, EVER, forget the salt

# – Cannellini beans….not such a smart idea now is it?

I suppose that’s the nature of cooking, you can have some good days but you will bound to experience some bad days too.

If you’re attempting some form of cheese baked rice, and for some unknown odd reason you feel like dumping a can of cannellini beans into your rice, please, I implore you, DON’T!

# – This is an illustration of “BAD MOVE”.

So I screwed dinner up. It’s not too bad, all I had to do was take over the dishes duty and the BF’s successfully pacified. So there, if you’ve encountered any cooking disaster, don’t be discouraged and keep on cooking folks!