蛋挞 Cantonese Egg Tarts with a Secret Ingredient

Custard Tarts with Portuguese pastry were introduced into Hong Kong in the 1940's by Cha Chaan Teng, a Hong Kong Based Canto-western Restaurant by way of the Portuguese colony of Macau. Hong Kong Egg tarts are an adaption of Pastel de Nata found in Macau. I love how flaky and delicate the shell is with a rich smooth slightly sweet custard. Love at first taste!

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吉士馅 Cooked Custard Filling for Asian Bakery Breads and Street Snacks

Custard is a french invention but has become very popular throughout Asia. It is frequenlty seen as a filling or decoration in Asian Bakery pastries and breads and in street snacks. My readers that have been to Japan or Taiwan, this is the filling used in 車輪餅Wheel Cakes, 雞蛋糕Egg Cakes and 銅鑼燒Dorayaki as well as many 麵包店蛋奶麵包bakery custard breads. I have included the Chinese Character so you can browse the internet and look and all the yummy creations Asian has to offer and for some to take a walk down memory lane. This recipe for custard is top of the line in custard recipes. The Japanese and Taiwanese took a delicious French invention and made it even better if that is possible. Feel free to use it in anyway you want, not just in Asian cooking.

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花式豆沙面包 Asian Bakery Chrysanthemum Snack Bread with Red Bean Filling

My house smelled like an asian bakery today, what a wonderful smell it was.The dough used to make these buns is the same dough used for at least half the little bread snacks you find in a typical Asian bakery. It is a super soft, puffy/airy (similar to puff pastry but softer like a roll), sweet and fragrant bread. What came out of my kitchen today was spot on. Happy happy day for me! I love asian bakeries and now I can start recreating the numerous tasty munchies I used to frequently indulge in when I lived in Taiwan and Beijing. Yay! They have been missed much.

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芒果布丁 Mango Pudding

This cantonese dessert is heaven on the taste buds. So light and refreshing.

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芝麻糖 Sesame Candy

Since it is holiday season I thought I would learn a tasty and sooo addicting Chinese candy. These come in so many ways, chewy, crispy and somewhere in between, thin, thick, round. I really like the thin crispy ones, I think they are my favorite but then the chewy tubes of it are great too.

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甜豆浆 Sweet Soy Milk

 Before taking pictures I looked up 豆浆 in google images to get some ideas for the photo shoot. I saw these gorgeous pictures of the milk in mid pour. My poor camera has been banged around so much (little kids) and I thought it would not be able to get a clear picture because of the movement. Wow! When I put that little SD card into my computer and saw this picture I was more than a little excited.

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拔丝苹果 Deep-Fried Candied Apples

I would really recommend if you have a wok to us it for these. Having the tall sides of a wok, a little wok using know how and some kind of long handled spoon or pancake flipper you can toss the apples in the candy so they are individually and evenly coated. See if you can find a video, for a demonstration, online showing how a chinese chef uses his wok to toss food in an almost continuous circle with a hand twist

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