Bubor Cha Cha

Everytime I hear the name bubor cha cha being mentioned, I think of the person who invented that name. What the heck was that person thinking pairing such a delicious dessert with such a clownish name? It must be a woman who named this dish. No guy worth his pride will ever name his creation ‘cha cha’. Fine, call me a chauvinist for that statement...

Anyway, this is my take on the popular bubor cha cha with focus on presentation. If you look at the original dish, its literally chunks of sweet potato and yam in coconut sauce. It's not very appealing to look at. So this is my attempt in transforming traditional 'kampung' fare into an appetizing gourmet delight.

Ingredients:

-2 Bananas
-2 Sweet Potatoes
-200ml thick coconut milk
-500ml water
-2 stalks of Pandanus leaves
-80g palm sugar (Gula Melaka) – hammered into small pieces
-1 cube dark chocolate
-sprinkling of chopped almonds

Skin sweet potatoes and slice into circular shapes.
Steam the sweet potatoes until soft.
Slice bananas and place into steamer along with the sweet potatoes. Steam for another 5 minutes before removing from heat.
In the meantime, heat the coconut milk and water in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add in the Pandanus leaves first and let simmer for 2 minutes before adding in the palm sugar.
Let simmer while stirring until boiling point and leave to cool. Do not overcook the coconut milk.
Arrange the sweet potatoes and bananas as shown in the picture. Pour in the sauce.
Grate the dark chocolate on top and sprinkle the almonds.
For greater nirvana, nothing beats a dollop of vanilla ice cream right smack on top.

Apple Sauce Ice Cream

I love apple pie. I simply can't get enough of the dish that has warm apple filling oozing out of a shortcrust pastry and topped with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. Grate a little bit of dark chocolate over the ice cream and it's absolutely heavenly.

While I suddenly had the craving for apple pie today, I didn't have the patience to be rolling out shortcrust pastry at a moment's notice. Instead, i thought up an apple pie substitute and tested it out. While its technically not apple sauce, I like that name for this recipe.

What i did was to layer toasted bread crumbs, apple filling and ice cream in a glass and voila... A simple yet spectacular dessert. I am so making this again.

For the apple filling, you need:
-4 green apples, skinned, cored and diced.
-2 cinnamon stick or 1 tsp cinnamon powder
-5 tablespoon sugar
-half cup sultanas or raisins
-a knob of butter (ard 50g)

For the base, you need:
-2 slices of bread, toasted to a crisp, then crushed to little crumbs

Topping:
- Vanilla ice cream
- A cube of dark chocolate

Just melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, and pour in the diced green apples, cinnamon, sugar and sultanas. Pour in a little water to prevent the apple to becoming too dry and let it simmer until the apple turns soft. Leave to cool for half an hour.

Pour in the bread crumbs into a glass followed by the apple sauce.Then throw in a scoop of vanilla ice cream and top it off by grating some dark chocolate over the ice cream.

Try it out! For some variations, you can replace apples and cinnamon with strawberries instead.