Individual Shepherd's pie ala wawa~

Have you gus notice the changes in my blog especially the header? Thanks a bunch to my dearest Yus for make up-ing this blog :)

Have you ever tasted shepherd's pie from secret recipe? It's awesome! Being an outdated person I am, it took me until just recently to discover the shepherd's pie! lol. My mom is the one ordering it and afterwards she asked me to make shepherd's pie with crust the next time I'm making Shepherd's pie ><". Usually I make shepherd's pie without the pie. And I reckon that that's the way it should be made right? Despite by the name pie. *Please answer: yes, everyone make shepherd's pie without pie. U're not weird.*

So, this pie may not taste exactly like the one u have in SR but it has pie crust! :D The one in SR is delichio mucho! It tasted of mutton and I loveeeeee mutton! Duh, the name is shepherd's pie! Of course it is made of the sheep the shepherd's keep! So, there you go, don't expect it to taste exactly like SR's ya?

Here goes the recipe:

Pie crust

Mashed potatoes (about 3 potatoes):
3 tbs Butter
1 egg
-boil the potatoes until it soften, peel off the skin, mashed it with butter. When it has cool down, mash it again this time, add in egg so that the mashed potatoes join when you bake it later.

Filling:
5 tbs olive oil
1 onion diced
2 cloves of garlic
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp rosemary
1 tsp paprika
pepper
salt
2 sticks of celery
cubed beef (about one bowl) + beef stock from boiling the beef
1 tbs corn starch mix with water (to thicken the filling)

So first you, caramelised the onion and garlic into the hot oil until it is golden brown and soft. Then you put in the spices followed by the celery. Make sure the celery is soft. If it dries up and it still doesn't soften, put in some beef stock and simmer it. Put in the beef and the beef stock and taste. Add more pepper or salt if necessary. Put in corn starch and let it boil and thickens and you're ready for the next step!

Put in the filling onto the pie crust and pipe the mashed potatoes

Bake it in a 180 degrees Celsius preheated oven for about 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

My faithful helper will be leaving me this evening :"(

Now, anyone wants to fill up the vacancy? Just kidding. U're irreplaceable! *Hiring someone else would be costly of course :P*

The Big Project

Remember the big project I mention in this post? Well, here it is:

From the front

From the back

This is for my lil sister's birthday who will be sitting for her SPM this year. Since she has been working really hard, I guess she deserves a surprise cake made by my other lil sister (the free sample one) and yours truly :)

By the way the one writing "gud luck" is the birthday girl herself. It's the thought that counts, huh? :P

The ink is edible don't freak out

How efficient are we? heheh..

So, these are the steps in putting the cake together:
1. Bake a cake, crumb coat it. In case you are using layered cake like mine, frost in between so they will stick together.
2. Measure the cake roughly.
3. On a clean surface, sprinkle generous amount of corn starch and start rolling. roll a bit, lift the fondant, sprinkle some corn starch underneath and turn it 180 degrees, and roll it again. Repeat the steps until it expanded to the measurement wanted.
4. If, the fondant is not enough, add some at the centre and repeat the rolling steps.
5. Since my cake is small, I just lift up the fondant and cover the cake but if u have a big cake, roll the fondant over the rolling pin first or else it will tear.
6. Other shapes and figures are made by using ur own imagination and creativity. We added some figures just to finish the leftover fondant by the way ;)