Chocolate Ganache Layer Cake

 

After multiple posts of chocolate cakes, please forgive me. I can't help buying raspberries when I see them on sale, and I really am not sure how to celebrate them apart from a good ol' chocolate cake. Please bare with me. There shall be no more chocolate from now on. 

I have to admit that it is very time consuming to blog, especially practicing a corporate eight to five, coming home to look in the unmanaged fridge and spending the rest of the evening washing cleaning to fill empty stomachs. There's no point of baking, messy slicing, decorating, perfecting, plating, anticipating the best time for photography if I wasn't going to show off. Clearly. You know me. If you don't you probably do now.

Ant's Nest Cake / Kek Sarang Semut

Ant's Nest Cake, 2014

The ant's nest cake is a traditional Malay caramel (gula hangus) cake baked instead of steamed. The sticky and bouncy texture of this dessert should be more closely related to a kuih, than the usual crumbly buttery cake. It resembles the texture of Pak Tong Gou (Steamed White Cake), which I am more familiar of. This is the first time I tasted Ant's Nest Cake myself.

Being an anti-caramel person, surprisingly this cake tastes really good. I like that it is baked to have the exterior dark golden brown, and I promise, it does not taste overly sickly sweet as much as it sounds. The best part is, it hardly needs any beating or mixer involve equipment - which saves a lot of cleaning and dreadful dish washing.

Chicken and Mushroom Pot Stickers

Chicken and Shiitake Mushroom Pot Stickers

Gyoza, Jiao Zi, and Wor Tip, they mean the same, depending on where you come from. The majority of the traditional pan fried dumpling contains minced pork. I have also tried Mandu, korean pan fried dumplings, but not a big fan of it.

My preference is surely the ones I grew up eating at Dim Sum Restaurants (as much as Australians call it "Yum Cha Restaurant", I still find it unusual, cause Yum Cha - (which directly translates to drinking tea) in Malaysia meant going for a Mamak session). On the plus side, if I was going for breakfast, surely I would not queue up for a pot of tea, I am there to eat. Would you judge the Restaurant and be a returning customer if they had poor dim sum but really good tea?