Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

The almond sugee cake, a Singapore Eurasian favourite.
Photos © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl Marie Cordeiro for CMC, 2009

Apart from the rich fruit cake, which is characteristically heavy handedly laced in brandy, that marks Christmas and all its cool weather, sometimes even rainy festivities for the Eruasians in Singapore, the Almond Sugee or Semolina Cake, would be an all-rounder cake for festive events. This cake, in all its variations of with or without icing, nutmeg, cardamon, brandy or cognac soaked etc., is served at Eurasian Christenings, weddings, house-warming parties, New Year’s Eve parties, birthdays and anniversaries.

Admittedly, I grew up not really liking this cake, because it seemed like we had it all the time. In fact, there was no event at home that didn’t omit this cake from the menu. But nostalgia kicks in, even for tastebuds when you’re away from home and just the smell of this cake baking in the oven in my Swedish home, brings me right back to happy Christmases and everything I would associate as a Singapore Eurasian heritage.

The recipe given here comes from Wendy Hutton’s (2007), book entitled, Singapore Food: a treasury of more than 200 time-tested recipes.

Ingredients:
250g butter, softened
250g fine semolina / sugee
7 eggs, yolks and whites separated
250g castor sugar + 1 tbsp castor sugar for beating egg whites
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp rose essence
2 tbsp cognac or brandy
250g ground almonds
125g plain flour, sifted
Set oven at 150 deg C

*There was no mention of the use of baking powder in Hutton’s (2007) recipe, though in my version of the cake, I do use some baking powder, as my grandmother, Dorothy Cordeiro did in her recipe.
Continue reading “The Almond Sugee cake: a Singapore Eurasian heritage” →

Chantarelle are prized mushrooms of autumn, where the adventures of plucking a handful of these would make for any dinner conversation, except the revelation of their location.
Photos © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl Marie Cordeiro for CMC, 2009

Elegantly formed with a smooth capped top and a ridged funnel shaped body, the long stems of the golden Chantarelle proves pleasantly distracting to the eye when seated next to the plumper and more rotund white button mushrooms at the store.

More familiar with Shitake mushrooms when growing up in Singapore, and having grown to dislike its pungent taste in stir-fried noodles, thereby associating all mushrooms with pungent tastes, I grew up never really caring for mushrooms, until I was introduced to kantareller in Sweden.
Continue reading “Chantarelle, symbol mushrooms of autumn in Sweden” →

Freshwater crayfish from Turkey, voted best in taste by the newspapers, Göteborgs Posten and DN, Sweden. Despite an ever present crayfish plague that began around 1985, the end of the 1990s saw a gradual increase in the production of Turkish crayfish from 320 to 1500 tonnes annually (Harlioglu, 2004).
Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson for CMC, 2009

The month of August in Sweden is mostly dedicated to the Crayfish Party or kräftskiva, where tons of crayfish are consumed. We’ve already had our first batch of crayfish earlier this year around Midsummer, the difference being that the ones consumed around Midsummer, came from the sea and these pictured here, with a lovely deep orange-red, are of freshwater origins.

I can’t help but compare crayfish eating in Sweden with crab eating in Singapore. Eating either of them would be considered a social event of sorts in both countries, because the meat of the crustaceans are rather inaccessible and getting to the meaty bits is a complicated, time consuming, if not frustrating affair that is preferably done after you’ve eaten something else.

Crayfish eating, much like eating crabs in Singapore, is a social activity that definitely calls for good company, as the event can stretch over several hours.

Crayfish eating is a lot kinder in many ways. In Singapore, you have a mortar pestle to help break open stubborn crab claws; in Sweden, no such tool is needed for the crayfish, fingers will do. In crayfish eating, you needn’t have to spend half an hour peeling the shell to get to the meat. In Singapore, a half hour’s effort into the compartmentalized body of the crab renders less than enough for a crab meatball, like the ones you find in the Straits Chinese soup, bakwan kepeting.

Of all crab varieties found at the wet markets in Singapore, I find Flower crabs (portunus pelagicus) considerably hopeless to gather meat from and would be tempted enough to opt out of the crab eating session if they were served. The body of the crayfish, meatier than the average crab claw, is accessible in just about a single snap of the shell over the main section.

In Sweden, freshwater crayfish are relatively less expensive compared to those harvested from the sea. And in a test that proved that cheaper was better, these freshwater ones were voted best in taste in Swedish newspapers, GP and DN. GP had a panel of eleven persons ranging in age from 24 to 83 years old. The group tasted about ten different versions of cooked crayfish, ranking their favourites according to colour, taste and freshness.

After having tasted crayfish from both sea and lakes, these freshwater crayfish though smaller in size than the sea faring ones, tasted wonderfully full in flavour, excellent with some mayonnaise or aïoli, atop a piece of good bread.

Chocolate orange chiffon cake

Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson for CMC, 2009

The perfect cake to pack along in a picnic basket? Why, a chiffon cake, of course!

This chocolate orange chiffon cake is the latest addition to our baking spree. Light as a feather in texture, the chiffon cake’s no fuss, non-greasey, cream-free nature makes it just about the most convenient cake to pack for that picnic by the beach.

Chiffons make a perfect cake for picnics.

The recipe I used for this cake came originally from The Joy of Baking website, the orange chiffon cake recipe. I wanted a hint of chocolate in my cake, so here’s what I used:

8 eggs, separated
2 1/4 cups (225 grams) sifted flour
1 1/2 cups (240 grams) superfine white (castor) sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (120 ml) vegetable oil
3/4 cup (180 ml) orange juice
2 tablespoons (10 grams) orange zest
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

Apart from mixing the ingredients right, folding the egg whites into the egg yolk batter and adding the flour a third at a time till you can get a smooth batter from it, what keeps the chiffon cake from collapsing after coming out of the oven is turning the cake upside down, or suspending it upside down, to cool. I’ve found an ungreased baking pan to be essential for the cake to reach its desired height because it allows for the batter to cling to the sides of the pan as it leavens during the baking process.

This cake baked at 170 deg C for about an hour in a normal convenction oven and then cooled for about an hour or two before being removed from its pan.

Cherries from our garden.

Chiffon cakes also make for perfect sandwiching, that brings you something akin to the Classic Victoria Sandwich, a traditional and fairly sweet English tea / party cake that goes well with both tea and coffee.

It’s just about time to harvest the cherries from our garden and this lot (shown in the picture above) went into the making of the chocolate orange chiffon sandwich.

Sandwiched

Butter cream or in this case, plain whipped cream, was put atop fresh sliced cherries on one layer of cake and another layer of cake was placed on top of that.

For this particular chocolate orange chiffon, which I found to be somewhat sweet, even though I’ve cut some sugar from the main recipe, a mild vanilla cream sandwiched with a fresh fruit of your choice, such as strawberries would also be a wonderful tea-time delight!

Enjoy!

Chocolate brownie served with warm chocolate fudge, bananas and crushed almonds.
Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC, 2009

The first time I baked a batch of brownies, I was in my teens, and a mishap in the kitchen caused the entire tin of already baked fudgy mixture to flip topside, face first onto the ground. My brother keeled over in laughter when he saw what happened, and we considered if we could save the batch by spooning up the parts that were not touching the ground and eat it there and then, off the floor.

Continue reading “Chocolate brownie” →