Croissant Tarts and Cronuts

I saw pictures of croissant tarts by Chef Antonio Bachour and it totally caught my attention! So beautifully done. I want to try but there is no recipe or instruction on how to create a shell out of croissant dough. So I just use one of the croissant dough and experiment.  I totally fail...😅 The shape and crispiness didn't look like picture at all. I only experiment on 4 shells. Instead of continuing with all tarts, I turned the rest of croissant dough into cronuts. Wow..so crispy and yummy with the mascarpone cremeux and lemon icing. Anyhow, experiment fail but we still love the tarts and cronuts.😋 

Pain Aux Raisins- Raisin Bread

 Have not bake these raisin bread for a long while and my raisins expiring soon. Making croissant dough is not easy and I kinda lost track during folding.😅 Anyhow...still turn out delicious!😋

Followed recipe from Bruno's Kitchen.  After 20 minutes baking still not golden enough so I took out the rings and bake until crispy on the outside yet still soft inside. Delicious!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

Mid-Autumn festival is just two days away. I've been busy baking mooncakes almost everyday for 3 days now. We also been eating mooncakes for 3 days too!  

This year I made mixed nuts, coconut,  pandan mung bean, and lotus paste. Baked traditional style,  puff pastry, and Shanghai mooncakes. All tastes very nice and aromatic. 😋 I still have some fillings left...maybe I should make snowskin. 😆 

Whole Food Berry Chantilly Cake

I rarely buy a cake from a bakery ever since I learn to bake. Now I will only buy when I really have no time to bake or when it's on sale and I want to try it. 😂 Well, Whole Food famous barry chantilly cake is 40% off with Prime. How I can resist? Sometimes it's also good to try other's cakes so you can learn from it.  We have mixed reviews in this house. The kids says good and they like it while the dad took a bite and say not his type of cake. I think it's a good cake for $18. The cake is sweet and berries are tarts so it works perfectly.  

PA Golden Pawpaw

I bought two pawpaw trees many years ago. One from Starbros and another from Trees of joy. The one I bought from Starbros is the PA Golden. The tree is growing nicely and produces a lot of pawpaw. The fruit rippen mid September. 

The other tree Sunflower I bought from Trees of Joy. Maybe it's the location but the tree is growing a lot slower than the PA Golden.  Fruit is not rip yet and probably rippen late September. 

Here are some pictures of my PA Golden pawpaws. Last picture is my mom trying to pick the fruits.😁

Grilled Banana Sticky Rice- Chuoi Nep Nuong

Today I finally try to grill these bananas in sticky rice. It's not hard just need patience when grilling. I used my smokeless indoor grill and it took at least an hour. I just let it grill and flip once in a while....while watching drama to kill time.😁 You can use airfry too but my airfry too loud and I didn't want to run that for an hour. You can also use a bbq grill or even bake in oven. After grilling the sticky rice will be chewy and crunchy...totally something I like to eat.😋

Keep them totally wrapped in banana leaves and only remove the wrap after the wrapper dried out.

I followed recipe from Nathafood. 

Lotus in Planter

Found a cheap yet small and light planter for my lotus! From Lowes only $10. Should be good enough for now. 💃💃💃

Fried Bananas - Chuoi Chien

My mom couldn't control herself when she sees beautiful bananas! She bought a lot so we are frying some. Have to think of other ways to eat these bananas another day.🤪

I'm using Bethkitchen's recipe. Instead of heating 2 tbsp sugar, I used 4 tbsp. 

Nelumbo Nucifera Lotus

Planting lotus seeds from 2006. They're still good!😆 Now I need mud and a bigger pot.💃 

Four seeds soaked in water since July 28. So it is 16 days and plenty of roots already.  To start off the seeds need to use a filer to file the pointy end of seeds then soak in water and change water daily.

Happy Birthday to Mom

My mom is 61 this year! We decided just do a family BBQ with my parents, brothers and his kids and my family. I was busy marinating meat yesterday so didn't get to assembly cake until today. I usually somehow always end up doing cake right on birthday so always rush rush. Lucky it still turns our well and mom says so pretty. 😆 A durian sponge cake since mom likes durian.

Steamed Bao- Siopao Hot Buns

My family loves to eat steamed buns and I too love to eat them. So when I see people making ground pork steamed buns I thought I should try.  Saw a video on YouTube calling it siopao and not sure what it means so googled it and it means hot buns. Just learned a different name for buns.😁

So I followed the recipe but add a bit of hoisin sauce, red fermented tofu and sesame oil to give it a bit more flavor since it was pretty sweet. Then I followed recipe for dough. Omg...it was so wet I had to add more than a cup or 2 of flour to fix it. Guess sometime you can't follow recipe exactly especially if it's in cups and not grams. Since flour weight can be different so your cup of flour might not be same as my cup of flour. I'm still glad the end result is well. Happy to try something new. And with all the extra dough, I made some Vietnamese hollow donuts.😋

Mooncakes

Couldn't wait until mid Autumn...I feel like I'm either too early or too late. This year I'm definitely too early.😆 Coconut and mung bean durian mooncakes😋 so satisfying 🥰

Pineapple Tarts

I bought a large pineapple which looks fine from the outside but inside was already soft from freezing temperature. Sometimes store keeps the unripe pineapple in a cold refrigerator which can demage the fruit. I did a taste test and still taste fine except texture is too soft for eating fresh. So instead of trashing it, I blended it up to make pineapple paste. Using same recipe as my previous posts and baking at 355F for 15 minutes then cool 10-15 minutes and bake again for another 12-15 minutes. Very happy with the taste.😋