Banana Blueberry Muffins

My husband loves Sweet Tomatoes restaurant's blueberry muffin. So I thought I should try making it at home. I tried too make one with banana and another one without banana. We agreed that the one with banana was the clear winner both the texture and taste.

How to make Roti Boy / Mexican Coffee Bun

Roti Boy is a well known food chain famous all over Asia, including Indonesia where I grew up. They are famous for selling this sweet bun with butter filling and coffee topping. It taste so good and best eaten when it's warm fresh out of the oven. Well, any bread is best eaten when it just came out of the oven. That's the reason I bake breads in addition to save some $$. 

First thing first, make the dough then divide the dough to about 12 small buns:

Then make the filling:

Pipe it on top of the bun in spiral pattern:

Homemade Strawberry Jam

Max loves strawberries jam so I decided to make my own to replace the store bought one, which was made with long list of ingredients:

This recipe only has 2 ingredients: strawberries and sugar (I used the organic one from Costco). I tried recipe that use pectin but the texture was quite similar with this one so I decided to eliminate it.

Making Bread with Bread Machine using Tanzhong Method

I have been hearing about the tanzhong/ water roux method for years but most of the recipes I found were either in other language that I don't understand or the ingredients measurement was either too much or too little for my bread machine {I have the Zojirushi one from craigslist}, which didn't yield a great result when I tried it on the past.

However, I started seeing home breads made with this method on Instagram a few days ago. So I gathered my courage and giving this a try again. After reviewing many recipes, I went with the dessert first girl's recipe. I made a slight chance and use bread maker instead of kitchen aid. Before I went to bed; I made the water roux and placing all the ingredients in the bread maker. The next morning, I was greeted with this lovely loaf of bread inside the bread maker. Voilaaaa

Banana Chocolate Cheese Bun

Banana Chocolate Cheese Bread is my favorite bread growing up but I couldn't find it here in the States so I decided to make it myself. It's been a long time since I last made this. With the kids activities, baking has been placed in the back burner but we managed to make this yesterday because we were all sick and couldn't go any where.  The boys were so happy and couldn't wait to eat them once they were out of the oven.


Use kitchen aid or bread maker to knead the dough. Cover and let it proof for about 1 hour


Divide the dough into 12 small balls then start filling and shaping each one.

The Super Simple French Toast

Growing up, my grandma live with us and kitchen was her territory. I wished I learned more cooking tips and tricks from her but kids were not allow to hang out in the kitchen back then. 

This is one of my favorite breakfast she made for us growing up. My boys love this too so I get to cook this often especially when the bread starts to get stale. 

Miss you, grandma. I will see you in Heaven one day

The ingredients:

Beat the eggs:

Cut each slice of bread into four

Then bread unto the beaten egg

Cook on a griddle or non-stick pan.

Flip and cook the other side.


Super Simple French Toast
Printable Recipe
Ingredients:

Bread & egg {the proportion is one egg for one bread} 

Butter for cooking 

Maple syrup/ honey

Frozen berries (optional)

Directions:
Cut the bread into 4 parts, 
Beat the egg in a bowl
Dip both sides of the bread in the beaten egg
Heat the griddle, add about one Tablespoon of butter 
Cook with butter on a griddle. 
Eat with maple syrup or honey and frozen berries. 


Enjoy!

Simple Pancake

Max has been asking me to make pancake for years but I had not been able to make it since we didn't have a griddle or non stick pan and I don't want to buy one just to make pancake. After all, we can cook everything including scramble egg on stainless steel pan. Well... everything except pancake.

Until one day when we went out to eat at restaurant and ordered pancake. Seeing the price, I did the math in my head and quickly figured out that two order of pancakes equals to the price of a griddle. So off I went marching to buy a griddle the next day.

Once I got home, I couldn't wait to start cooking but disappointed to learn that many recipes use buttermilk and sour cream which I didn't have. I was delighted when I found the kitchn's recipe, which use ingredients I already have in my fridge and pantry.

Chocolate Chips Oatmeal Pancakes

We had a very ripe banana one day and I was reminded of a pancake recipe that I found on Pinterest a little while ago. So happy that we now own a griddle so we can finally make it.


The Ingredients:

I love the fact that it doesn't use any sugar. Not even a pinch. How cool is that?