Galangal Honey Almond Biscotti

It is not always a bad thing when things turn out to be different from what you planned. This is one of the examples. 

I was planning to bake gingerbread biscotti for my mom. She asked me to make any kind of 'gingerbread' type of baked goods. To be honest, gingerbread is not a common type of cookies that you can find in Bangkok's bakeries. It may be because of the molasses which is a rare ingredient over here. Lucky me. My sister brought some back for my mom when she visited home last time.

When I started prepping, I realized that we didn't have ground ginger. Oops! However, we do have ground galangal. So, I decided to use that instead.   

So, what is 'galangal'?

Well, galangal is similar to typical ginger that you find in grocery store. However, it is whiter in color and has more peppery taste than ginger. Galangal root is often used in Thai cuisine. If you have Thai Tom Yum soup before, this is one of the ingredients that they used to make the Tom Yum broth. Where to find this ground galangal? You should be able to find it at your local Asian grocery store. It is easier to find the dried version than the fresh one in North America. 
  

So, this is how the plan was changed. The recipe that I adapted from is from Anja's Food 4 Thought. There are couple things that I changed. I used ground galangal instead of ground ginger, and also used honey instead of agave syrup. I got my honey from my grandma who happens to make her own honey from the bees in her longon farm.  I recommended you to use a good quality honey that you can find in your local store or farmer market.

Final result?

My Galangal Honey Almond Biscotti turned out to have a wonderful honey flavor with a hint of galangal. My mom enjoyed it even though it's not gingerbread biscotti that she expected. The biscotti would go very well with spiced type of tea such as chai tea. I hope you enjoy!

Orange and Almond Cake

It has been a month since my last post. Now, I'm back at home in Bangkok, Thailand. It's nice to be back here. I feel like a foreigner in my own homeland since I haven't been living here for the past ten years.  It will take me quite sometimes to get used to the buzzing and the hot weather again! During the last two weeks since I've been back, I have been running around and doing lots of thing with my parents. I went up to Chiang Mai which is a city that locates at the northern of Thailand to visit my grandma for a week. I visited many temples in Chiang Mai. I posted some of the pictures in my 365-days project. Feel free to drop by!

When I was in Chiang Mai, my mom took me to a baking-supplies store. I bought couple ingredients and cake pans, so I can start baking again when I came back in Bangkok. To be honest, I never ever bake when I'm back at home in Thailand. It will take me sometimes to know where would be the best places to buy my baking supplies. However, what I found the most challenging is to trust someone else's oven. I tried not to judge the look of my parents' oven. LOL. Somehow, I just do not trust it. Before I left Toronto, I decided to buy an oven thermometer. So, this way I know that at least I will get a right temperature and everything should turn out okay...and it did! 

The first recipe that I make is Orange and Almond Cake. Couple days before I arrived, my mom boiled some oranges and froze them in the freezer. So, she was asking me whether I can make something out of it. So, I went on TasteSpotting and found an orange cake recipe from Peter at Souvlaki For the Soul which uses boiled oranges. I love this recipe because there is no use of flour, butter, or oil. I would say it's pretty healthy kind of cake. It's moist, dense and not too sweet. Everyone in the family loves it. So, thumbs up for the cake and for the oven too!

Deconstructed Rhubarb White Chocolate Ginger Cheeesecake

On the weekend, I made my last visit to St. Lawrence Market before I fly back home next Thursday. Spring is here and there were many spring vegetable at the market. I was planning to get some fresh spring vegetable that will last during my last week here.  Lucky me, I got there just in the right time and finally found fiddleheads. I have heard about it quite sometimes, but I haven't seen them around before. So, I bought them back and made a quick sauteed with ginger, garlic and balsamic for the dinner. My first experience  with fiddleheads was great. I like them. They do taste like asparagus. There were a lot of rhubarb at the market. Since this will be hard to find in the future, I decided to buy some back home. I was confused by the two different looks of the rhubarbs ( Forced vs. Field ). I ended up bought the normal one since that was the type that I used when I made strawberry-rhubarb pie last year with my best friends using their home grown rhubarb.

When I was at the market, I was really sure what I was going to make. Rhubarb-Strawberry Pie? Rhubarb-Strawberry Crisp? These sounds great, but I want to make something different this time. I have no oats and no flour, so a pie or a crisp is not one of the options for me. But then, I came across this no-baked white chocolate ginger cheesecake recipe from The Good Mood Food Blog. So, I thought this would go really well with my rhubarb! I played around with the plating of this deconstructed rhubarb white chocolate ginger cheesecake. You can serve them on a plate as I did the picture above or serve them in little gars or shot glasses. The white chocolate cheesecake is very rich. A small serving of this would be perfect at the end of the dinner. I love how the tartness of the rhubarb lightens up the whole dessert. Since no baking is involved, this is a perfect dessert to make during the hot summer days. I also recommended making each component ahead and assemble right before serving, so that the ginger crust would not get soggy.