Osmanthus & Water Chestnut Kueh

Osmanthus is a highly perfumed flower, and it is well known that you can smell it nine miles away! It is a deliciously fragrant flowers which carry the scent of ripe peaches or apricots. In Chinese cuisine, the flowers are also used to produce osmanthus-scented jam (桂花酱), sweet cakes (桂花糕), dumplings, soups, and even liquor (桂花酒).


Usually when we went for dim sum during the weekend, my hubby will order the water chestnut kueh which he loves it alot. But then this is slightly different because of the Osmanthus fragrant infused into the kueh. It's rather a refreshing taste and it's up to individual whether you like that peachy or orange fragrant. Thanks Mandy from M4M to share with us this recipe.

Ingredients:
100g Water Chestnut Flour
1/2 Tablespoon Potato Starch
800ml Water
2 Teaspoons Dry Osmanthus
60g Chopped Water Chestnut(about 4)
200g Rock Sugar
1 Teaspoon Oil

Methods:
1. Boil water and add osmanthus flower reduce heat to simmer for 3 minutes, add in the rock sugar and stir till dissolved.
2. Cover and infused for 5 minutes.
3. Transfer about 250ml of flower tea(without the flowers) to a medium bowl and let it cool in a pot of ice water.
4. Before adding in chopped water chestnut to the pot of HOT flower tea, remove 1/2 of the Osmanthus flower in it and set aside.
5. After the bowl of flower tea and cooled down, stir in water chestnut flour and potato starch and sieve it into the HOT flower tea solution.
6. Keep stirring the mixture on low heat until slightly thicken like gluey form.
7. Stir in the oil and turn off the heat.
8. Pour into a 8" greased square tin and steam on HIGH heat for 20 minutes. (remove the cover and wipe off water every 5 minutes)
9. Cool it and put in the fridge to chill and unmould.
10. Serve it chilled.

Notes:
a) You can get the water chestnut flour from most of the supermarket.

Mango Cheesecake

Hello...all my blogger friends who had given me support for coming to and from to visit this Tea-time Delight blog of mine. So sorry that that I had being neglected it for so long. After a long break, I had decided to try out those recipes that I had being piling up for testing.....Hope we can continue to share and exchange our Tea-time experience.


I saw this recipe from one of the library books that I had got hold. Immediately, I had marked out a few interesting and tempting recipes which I would like to try them out. First of all, I choose to try this Mango Cheesecake because I simply loves the taste and fragrant of Mango. This cheesecake is sort of light without those strong cheesy taste, it's also refreshing with the mango fragrant and consists of chewy and Q texture because of the Gelatine.

Ingredients For Biscuit Base:
120g Plain Digestive Biscuit, crushed
120g Salted Butter, melted
Filling:
250g Philadelphia Cream Cheese
250ml Dairy Whipping Cream
2 Egg Yolks
160g Castor Sugar
150ml Full Cream Milk
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
2 1/2 Tablespoons Gelatine Powder
5 Tablespoons Of Water
2 Mangoes, peeled and diced

Methods:
1. Combine the biscuit crumbs and melted butter while it is still hot and mix well.
2. Pour into a 8"(20cm) round spring form baking tin, press till firm and put into the fridge to chill for more than 1/2 hour.
3. Beat the cream cheese at medium speed until soft.
4. In another bowl, lightly beat dairy whipping cream at medium speed for 3 minutes then add it into the cream cheese mixture and beat till well combined.
5. Mixed gelatine powder and 5 tablespoons water and double boiled until dissolved then set aside.
6. Double-boil Egg yolks, caster sugar, milk and lemon juice until sugar dissolve(stir while double-boiling, because not to let it boiled).
7. Add in dissolved gelatine mixture into the egg mixture and stir till combine.
8. Pour the egg mixture into the cream cheese and beat well with a whisk. (don't worry if you see some lumpy cheese in the mixture it will not affect the texture)
9. Arrange the mango cubes onto the biscuit base and pour in cream cheese mixture. Put into the fridge and chill for at least 2 hours or over night.

Notes:
a) I used 100ml Full Cream Milk + 50ml Fresh Mango Juice to enhance the Mango flavour.

Herbal Soup For Cough

I had being coughing badly for the past 3 weeks and it seems that all the medicine or herbs that I had used to take before all lost their effect. So after being drag for so long, I decided to give this Herbal Soup For Cough a try. You might feel...Err.... "Crocodile Meat", how does it taste like? Friendly speaking, this soup smells and taste fishy which i guess is because of the Crocodile meat. But after all it's really a good soup to relieves cough and strengthens function of respiratory system. Just like what they said in Chinese(良药苦口) although it's might taste awful or bitter but it is definitely good for health.


Ingredients:
2 Pieces(30-50g) Dried Crocodile Meat(鳄鱼肉)
20g Nan Bei Xin(南北杏)
6 Pieces Of Dried Huai Shan(淮山)
10g Chuan Bei Mu(川贝母)
1/2 Piece Of Chen Pi(陈皮)
5 Red Dates(红枣)
2 - 3 Dried Figs(无花果)

Methods:
1. Rinse all the herbs and place it in a double boiler.
2. Add in 1 litre of boiling water and double-boiled for about 2 - 3 hours and serve.