U for Upside Down Cake

U was a difficult letter to find an ingredient to work with. There was udon noodle, but we had already done noodles and udon are quite thick for children to eat.

After some research on the internet I decided on doing Upside Down Pineapple cake. This is a dessert we normally just buy. Even though there wasn’t a strong letter association to this recipe, I thought the whole experience of making a cake and then turning it upside down will be an interesting for the children.

For this recipe we followed the recipe from here. We used a regular yellow cake mix for the batter. We also used glazed cherries instead of maraschino. Both Ilyaas (4) and Zakariyya (2) were involved in making this cake.

Dumping brown sugar into cake pan

Arranging pineapple rings and glazed cherries in pan

Pouring cake batter into pan

Then it was the waiting part. Once the cake was baked, I gathered the two children . . . . then did all the sound effect, then I carefully flipped the hot cake onto a tray. They were excited to see all the pineapple rings showing on the top of the cake.

Alhamdullilah this was our Upside down pineapple cake (there wasn’t enough pineapple rings in one can to cover the entire pan!)

 

T for Tofu

Tofu is quite a staple in our home. It is high in protein and comes in a variety of forms that is easy to incorporate into our meals.

Tofu dessert a.k.a Tau Foo Fah

Tofu dessert is the type of tofu that my children have most of the time. It is affectionately known as Foo-Fah in our home. These are the flavoured type tofu.

For our letter T AlphaFood Venture, we did two different recipes using two different tofus.

First we examined the two types of tofus.

Tofu puffs and firm tofu

I chose these two types not only for their usage in the recipes but also for the difference in colour and texture.

Tofu puffs (on the blue plate) are deep fried tofu that are hollow. The white block on the right is just a regular firm tofu.

Lets touch . . .

Immediately upon touching the puffs Ilyaas (4) was just amazed. They are basically like sponge balls. When he touched the firm tofu, it almost felt like a rubbery ball to him.

Also the puff tofu are oily to the touch as they are fried and the firm tofu was wet as they are usually packed in water just like feta cheese.

We also made an uppercase T with the tofu puffs (on the blue plate).

Lets smell . . .

Ilyaas was just reluctant to smell the tofus. Just for the record, they really do not have any distinct smell.

Lets see . . .

Ilyaas made an observation that both the tofus look like boxes. The first step to knowing cubes Insha-Allah I hope.

Recipes . . .

For the tofu puff recipe, I cut a hole on the top part of the puffs. I then helped Ilyaas scoop meat mixture into the hollow part of the tofu puff. We used baby feeding spoons for this. The meat mixture is just shrimp and some chicken with seasoning. Basically a wonton filling.

Filling tofu puffs with meat mixture

Once this was done, I deep fried the tofu puffs.

For the second recipe that uses the firm tofu, I had to fry the tofu block first.

Stuffing tofu with veggies

We talked about the shape of the fried tofu i.e. a triangle. Next, with a sharpe knife I made a slit along the longest side of the fried tofu. Ilyaas then  stuffed some shredded carrots and cucumbers into the slit tofu. In Malaysia this in known as tahu sumbat (stuffed tofu) and is usually a tea time treat.

Alhamdulillah our tofus were served with some chilli sauce for dipping along side a hot cup of tea! Unusual combination, but it works for us.

Stuffed tofus

For those of you who have been sceptical about tofus, I hope you will be encourage to try some after reading this post. You can find a whole array of tofus at your local oriental supermarkets. If you are in Canada, T&T Supermarkets are a good place to start. You can also read descriptions of different types of tofus here.