Bah Kwa

Decided to try out making my own bah kwa after seeing Baking Taitai's recipe, especially since I have most of the ingredients. That's one criteria when cooking or baking from a recipe. I hate to buy stuff that we would only use that one, two occasions.

Here's my successful batch:

First attempt. TOO thick. Omg. It's like meat patty.

Second attempt still too thick (but not as crazy as the first) and maybe of the uneven thickness, some parts got burnt.

Third attempt, success. Looks good. Taste is there but of course not as good as the pros.
All three attempts were done in one batch of ingredients as per the recipe. My oven is pretty small. So I divided them and it's good since I can trial and error. But of course, it's very electricity consuming (oopsss).

The only ingredient that I did not use was the cognac/alcohol. None at home. Or rather. The cognac is not opened. Haha. Maybe that's the taste that is missing.

A few days after I attempted this, Baking Taitai came up with another recipe using pineapples (Baking Taitai's Pineapple Bah Kwa). Maybe I will try that... Maybe. But I will need my little boss's approval. Haha... Tight and busy schedule from her.


From Baking Taitai
http://bakingtaitai.blogspot.sg/2014/01/homemade-cognac-bak-kwa-chinese-pork.html

Ingredients:

• 100g brown sugar 
• 1 tbsp premium light soy sauce 
• ½ tbsp fish sauce 
• 1 tbsp premium oyster sauce 
• 1 tsp premium dark soy sauce 
• ¼ tsp Chinese five spices powder 
• ½ tsp salt 
• 500g minced pork (with some fat for greater taste)
• Honey Glaze (for brushing on the cooked slice pork)
  1 tbsp honey dilute with 1 tsp water 

Method

• Put the first 7 ingredients in a bowl and mixed well into a sauce. 
• Place the minced meat in a big mixing bowl and pour the mixed sauce into it and start mixing together with a pair of chopsticks. 
• Blend and stir the mixture in one direction until the meat becomes gluey. (this is important, otherwise the meat will break up) 
• Store in the fridge for several hours or overnight.  
• Spread the marinated minced pork thinly onto the baking tray lay with parchment or non stick baking paper. 
• Bake at pre-heated oven at 130C for 12 mins. After the meat is cooked at this stage, remove from oven. Increase the oven temperature to 200C.
• Cut the cooked meat into 9 pieces or any desired size. Flip to the opposite side and brush the meat with the honey glaze.  
• Put the tray back into the oven. Grill one side for 8~10mins, remove from oven, flip over to the other side, brush with honey glaze before putting it back to the oven to grill for another 6~8mins or until golden brown with slight burnt. 
• Once done, let it cool and enjoy!