Food, travel, recipe & sights » Biscuits

Apple pie

lilian — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 17:13:24 +0000

Being a mom to so many kids of all ages is tough. They get hungry all the time. So, I have to stock my kitchen with a lot of food. Frozen, processed, instant, canned, you name it, I probably have it. Though, ideally I want to prepare fresh foods from fresh ingredients, this is not always the case. I can do that for main meals but not the in-between snacks. Otherwise, I will be sweating the whole day in the kitchen!

I bought a frozen, unbaked apple pie from Tesco. It costs less than RM10, I think.

I baked it at 200 deg. C (wrong temp! should have been 180 deg C) for 40 minutes. It smells good! My toddler couldn’t wait for the pie to cool down and started blowing to make it cool faster.

You can see that the pie is not small, about 6 inches, I think.

Verdict : The crust taste nice, very buttery. But I found the fillings too sour for my liking. So, toddler ate only the crust. However, one kid told me he did not find the fillings sour. Probably, some icecream could have tone down the tartness of the apples. Good point is there isn’t over-powering cinnamon smell, which I loathe! Like the one sold by McDonald’s. I wonder why they discontinued their pineapple pie which I love.

Baking pies is not my forte so I have to depend on these frozen, processed pies.

Pineapple jam biscuit

Sat, 21 May 2005 14:47:09 +0000

I enjoy featuring traditional biscuits which had been with us since several decades ago. Earlier I had featured the sugar gems biscuit and also the cream crackers. Surprisingly, basic foodstuff like the cream crackers evoke many sweet memories for a lot of people

Today, I bought the pineapple jam biscuits from the shop. It is rather rich because you can actually feel the taste of the butter/margarine clinging to your mouth. I love the chewy taste of the pineapple jam in the middle. Don’t you think the biscuits are so sweet looking? (This is from Kerk’s, bought off the supermarket shelf. Cost about RM2.50 per packet.)

Penang has many types of special biscuits to offer which cannot be found anywhere else like the tambun biscuits, hneoh pneah (black sugar biscuit) and phong pneah. I haven’t got around to purchase them for consumption but rest assured that you will see them on Penang Faces blog soon.

For ease of surfing, I have opened a category for ‘biscuits’. If any one of you have suggestions to improve this site, feel free to comment. Even if the posting is months ago, please know that I get to see the latest comments coming in (even from old post), in a systematic order on my admin board. If I missed replying to some questions, you can always post your questions in the latest posting. I love sharing the wonderful food found in Penang, Malaysia.

The humble cream crackers

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 05:52:50 +0000

I wonder why cream crackers are called cream crackers? Because there is no cream at all. Only bland biscuits.

I notice that each country has their own version of biscuits. Cream cracker has to be the most common biscuits around here. It is bland in taste and is something one will eat when sick. People usually bring tins and packets of cream crackers to give away as gifts when visiting patients in hospital.

The above is a photo of cream crackers with sugar granules. I took the photo because I think the sugar looks nice in macro mode. My kids love the biscuits because of the sugar.

Are cream crackers found all over the world, I wonder.

Muffins and tarts

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 07:04:17 +0000

Since I often get ‘hate’ mails and comments like ‘I HATE YOUUUUUU’ for blogging about local foods, I decide to blog about muffins and tarts. Hopefully those Malaysians staying abroad will finally say, ‘aha, I can get better muffins and tarts over here’ and will ‘hate’ me less.

My all time favourite muffin is from Continental Bakery at Jalan Swatow/Jalan Bawasah junction. This is the kiwifruit/poppy seeds muffin with almond flakes.

They also have fantastic cream puffs that taste more like cream cheese than custard. The photo doesn’t look too good, so I am not posting it.

Fruit tart. The ones sold by Delifrance is way too big. I found this tiny one from Mr. Ho Fine Food (in Penang). Just the right size. Yummy too.

Hmmm….what else? Nothing liao. I do not fancy pastries and puffs. Just that I ran out of things to write today.

Oh ya, today is Good Friday and it is Hot Cross Buns day. I did not get any ‘cos I am stranded at home with no car. But my toddler can sing the song, ‘hot bun bun’. Ahhh….music to my ear.

Multi-colour, sugar, gems

Sat, 15 Jan 2005 07:18:06 +0000

This is probably one of the few available biscuits when I was small. Most kids will eat the sugar and throw the biscuit part away. My kids are still doing that, leaving a bag of saliva soaked biscuits which will be fed to the monkeys later on.
There are a few shops in Penang which exclusively sell only biscuits. A little like those snack stations in hypermarkets. But the difference is the service. The shopkeeper will describe to you the taste of every type of biscuit, recommending the freshest stock and let you sample all you want. However, the downside is the amount you buy. They have this old weighing scale unlike those digital ones and therefore, everything you buy must be minimum 200gm – 300 gm or it will be too light for their weighing scale.