Sweet Sesame Seeds Buns 香软芝麻甜面包

My First Stand Mixer

Some of you might still remember I mentioned in my pervious post I was seriously looking for a budget stand mixer to help with dough kneading and my dilemma of not willing to get a branded mixer due to its expensive import pricing in Malaysia.

After months of surveying, finally in Oct, I was delighted to spot an awesome deal in Malaysia Groupon. The deal came from a locally manufactured stand mixer branded “The Baker”. It was on offer a while ago and back on offer again with popular demand. It was on a 40% discount, selling at only RM450 from its original price of RM750. The deal went even lower to RM400 if 2 units were purchased. I came to know my neighbour was also looking for one, hence we combined our order to save RM50 each, at only RM400 a unit

With the price we paid, we got to enjoy a robust 6 speed 800 watt stand mixer with a 5.2 litre steel bowl which holds up to 2kg of mixture of dough or cake batter. To me this basic feature of the mixer was more than enough to meet my primary objective in dough kneading. I knew I wasn't getting a Kitchen Aid hence I wasn’t disappointed with its basic appearance when the set delivered.

 
I tested the machine last week and was satisfied with its performance so far. The result I got from my 1st trial :

• a well knead dough, no undone dough at the bottom of the bowl
• double the quantity of flour kneaded compared to what I was able to hand knead at any one time – 600g vs 300g
• about the same amount of time when I had to wrest my muscles to hand knead the bread dough.
• texture of the bread was more or less similar to my hand kneaded version.
• a transparent cover with pocket opening to prevent over spillage of flour during operation.

So, what more to ask for at only 1/5 of the price I would otherwise have to pay for a Kitchen Aid? However having said that I must also admit that the mixer has its short falls of being:

• Noisy – the higher the gear the noisier the motor.
• Stability – the higher the gear, the stronger the vibration. I tested up to gear 5 and decided to stop, the machine trembled tremendously even on my granite kitchen top. A very stable top is needed to place the mixer while in operation.

Other than that, I have no complaint so far. Now just keeping my fingers crossed for its durability.
The 1st batch of bread I made using this stand mixer as pilot had was a fluffy and soft texture .

Sweet Sesame Seeds Buns 香软芝麻甜面包

This time with double the flour quantity, I used it to make some sausage rolls in addition to the sesame sweet buns.

My mistake of not checking on oven heat when I was still have not mastered our oven temperature. The buns were a bit too brown when the timer beep.

 

Shared below is the basic sweet buns dough recipe.   

Banana Yogurt Muffins 香蕉酸奶松糕

Banana Muffins + Yogurt = Banana Yogurt Muffins

With my success of making homemade yogurt, it motivated me further to use it in my baking recipes since now I get to have this ingredient easily and inexpensively.  With that, I started off my 1st experience in using my homemade yogurt to improvise my fool-proved simple and easy banana muffin recipe by replacing the milk content with yogurt and transform it into Banana Yogurt Muffins .



These muffins were so moist and rich with banana flavour.  For kids version, I added in chocolate chips. With that you can imagine another big up from my boy Ray when he had his bite!

 

 With this success, next I think good to explore using homemade yogurt into cooking recipe, so stay tune!