baking fiends unite!

Happy Chinese New Year!

2012-01-23T00:03:00.000+08:00

2012, the year of the Dragon... which is a milestone for me, as I've been a mom for a good 12 years!

This year, altho' it seems to me that time is really tight, with Christmas, New Year and Chinese New year back-to-back, I'm glad I still managed to churn out some CNY goodies for the family.

Pineapple tarts and kuih rose are a must for this festival.... And I also made almond & melon seeds crisps to use up the egg whites leftover from the pineapple tarts.

Almond & melon seeds crips

Cornflakes chocolate clusters

Pineapple closed tarts

Here's wishing everyone a GREAT Dragon year ahead! Gong Hei Fatt Choi!

Ian is 11!

2011-12-31T18:42:00.001+08:00

Ian turned 11 on Christmas day. As usual, he asked for a chocolate cake. But it's so boring! LOL... anyway, to make the Birthday boy happy, I did a chocolate cake for him, but the filling was cherries. In other words, it was a black forest cake in disguise.

Bought a Angry Birds chocolate mold in one of the sprees and decided to "play" with this new toy. So I made the Angry Bird figurines. Not difficult, but time consuming to colour all the parts. Anyway, I had fun and the kids had a hand in filling up the molds with chocolate. They also got to be creative with the leftover chocolate. :)

Banana cake

2011-11-17T22:17:00.000+08:00

This is a recipe that I always go back to. It's truly a good, no-fail recipe from Prima website. But I reduce the amount of sugar. the baked cake is moist and buttery. My adaptations in brackets below...

What you need

260g Self-Raising Flour
220g Castor Sugar (reduced to 180gm)
180g Butter
260g Banana (pisang hijau) (I used del monte bananas, make sure they are ripe enough so that it's more fragrant)
4 Eggs
30ml Milk
¾ tsp Baking Soda
½ tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp Emulsifier (optional)

What to do

Cream butter and sugar at medium speed till light and fluffy.
Add emulsifier and mix well.
Add eggs a little at a time and mix till batter is smooth and creamy.
Mash bananas and stir into the milk.
Fold in the mashed banana mixture and vanilla essence.
Sift Self-Raising Flour and baking soda together and gently fold in.
Pour the batter into a greased lined round baking tin (8inch) and bake at 170° for 60-70 mins.

Mooncakes....

2011-11-17T22:02:00.001+08:00

Well, since I started working in the new organization in April, I can only use one word to describe my life... HECTIC. so much so that most of the days, weekends included, I only wish to rest and catch up on my sleep.

Sorry to say that I had not been blogging much. In fact, I had not been trying new recipes much too. If I had enough energy to bake, it's usually the same ole recipes that I know the family would like.

I had plans to bake traditional mooncakes but it did not materialise, even tho' I had made a trip to get the lotus paste. So in the end, I did walnuts mooncakes.... only did 1 batch of walnut mooncakes, even tho they were very well received.

With some leftover lotus paste, I did some chinese flaky pastry. These too, were good. :)

Fruity Chiffon Cake

2011-09-18T13:42:00.000+08:00

Baked this cake using a recipe from Happy Flour. Thanks for sharing!

I used the mango and passionfruit tea bags and the infused tea was so fragrant. Even after the cake was baked, the fruity fragrance was still very prominent. I added cranberries to the batter.

Really good recipe, pls try it!

All-in-one cupcake

2011-08-28T13:49:00.000+08:00

When I saw this recipe on Happy Flour's blog, I can't help but bookmark it... why? Coz it's so simple! everything in 1 bowl and just mix then ingredients together.

But when it came to actually mixing it that day, I re-read the recipe to make sure that I did not get it wrong... I still decided to give it a try.... and well, the baked cuppies did not disappoint! it was soft and fluffy. very well received by the family. And the one thing i love about it most is the versatility. I can easily change the flavours for the cuppies and still know that it won't fail...

My cuppies looked a little different, reason being that I had not enough chocolate chips, so I chopped up some chocolate and sprinkled on the top.

Here's the recipe (recipe yields 12 good sized cuppies). :)

What you need

170g unsalted butter (room temperature)
110g sugar
3 eggs
170g self-rising flour
1/4tsp salt
1/2tsp vanilla paste (changeable to other essences)
80g chocolate chips (basically you can change this to anything you like, nuts, chocolate, dried fruits...)

What to do

Preheat oven to 180C.
Line muffin tin with paper casing and set aside.
Sift flour into a mixer bowl.
Add sugar, salt, butter, eggs and vanilla paste into the flour.
Beat the mixture at low speed until well blended.
Then switch to medium speed and continue to beat till smooth and pale, about 3mins.
Lastly, fold in both the chips.
Spoon batter into the muffin tin until 60% full.
Bake in a preheated oven for 25mins.
Remove cupcakes from tin and cool on a wire rack.

2 Chiffon cakes - cooked dough method

2011-08-06T13:56:00.000+08:00

I have a pack of coconut milk in the fridge, so it meant baking something that uses it up, instead of the coconut milk going into the bin. Was given a few pieces of chiffon cakes baked by a relative yesterday but was disappointed with the flavour and texture, so I decided the family shall eat decent chiffon cakes today!

The cooked dough method of making chiffon yields a texture that I really love.... airy and yet not too soft and floppy. So besides using the cooked dough method I posted for pandan chiffon, I also adjusted the gula melaka chiffon recipe to bake using the cooked dough method. Both turned out well. :)

Here's the cooked dough method for the gula melaka chiffon recipe:

What you need

100gm gula melaka (i shredded it so that it melts faster)
67gm coconut milk
4 nos egg yolks
2.5 tbsp corn oil
1/4 tsp salt
93gm plain flour
4 egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
33gm castor sugar

What to do

Preheat oven to 175 degrees.
Melt gula melaka in a pot with coconut milk, salt and corn oil over low heat, when the sides are bubbling, turn fire off and sift in the plain flour. Whisk till combined.
Whisk in the egg yolks till well blended and set aside.
In another bowl, whip the egg whites with cream of tartar till foamy, slowly add in the castor sugar and whip till stiff peaks.
Add 1/4 of the whipped egg whites to the egg yolk mixture to lighten it and then transfer contents into the remaining egg white and fold in.
Ensure that the batter is well combined and then pour into cake mold.
Bake for 40mins.
Invert cake mold immediately and let it cool completely before unmolding cake from mold.

Blended Orange Cake

2011-06-25T17:36:00.000+08:00

Another simple recipe that I attempted on a weekend. Too bad tho, my blender is too small to contain everything, so I ended up blending stuff in 2 batches.

On to the cake... it smelled really nice and the texture is beautiful, but a stronger orange flavour will be perfect. I guess next time if I were to bake this, I'll add additional orange zest.

Thanks to Doria for sharing this recipe. As usual, my modifications in brackets.

What you need

1 pc orange
1 cup sugar (I used 3/4 cup)
1 cup oil
3 eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder

What to do

Preheat oven at 150 degrees.
Cut orange into cubes. (I removed the orange flesh and placed into a bowl, and cut away the white pith (skin area coz it is bitter) and cut the orange skin (zest part) into smaller pieces.
Place cut up orange, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup oil and 3 eggs into the blender and blend till fine.
Pour mixture into a bowl.
Sift in flour and baking powder. Whisk in and mix well.
Pour batter into greased mold and bake for 40mins. (mine were cakelets, so I baked for 30mins)

Condensed Milk Cakelets

2011-06-12T20:22:00.001+08:00

Due to longer hours at work nowadays, I've been on the lookout of easy-to-bake cakes. So I was so happy and grateful to spot Zu's bake of condensed milk cake! The recipe originates from Patricia. I finally found the mojo to do a little baking this weekends, and I'm so glad I did.

I used corn oil instead of butter and I whipped the eggs till light, before adding the condensed milk, oil and flour, in this order. Be very careful not to overmix, or else it'll result in a very rubbery texture. Also I added chocolate paste to it just for fun. :P Finally I used my under-utlilised donut tray and these little gems were so well-received! I was worried that it would turn out too sweet, afterall, it was a whole can of condensed milk, but as I made them really tiny, it was acceptable to me. Of course, for the kids, they wouldn't mind the sweetness at all.

Here the original recipe and my adaptations in brackets.

What you need

1 can (395g) sweetened condensed milk
4 eggs
120g all purpose flour (I used half cake flour, half plain flour)
½ tablespoon baking powder
50g unsalted butter, melted and cooled (I used 50gm corn oil)
icing sugar, for dusting (I skipped this)

What to do

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF; generously butter a 22cm* (9in) ring cake pan. (i used SPAM on the donut tray)
Place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes, or until risen and a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean (my cake took 35 minutes to bake). (I whipped the eggs till light and then added the condensed milk and chocolate paste and finally the flour and baking powder, the cakelets took only 10 mins to bake)
Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely before unmolding.
Dust with icing sugar before serving. (I skipped this as the cakelets were already sweet enough)

Another Chocolate Banana Cake - Alexis's 2nd Birthday.

2011-05-15T14:20:00.001+08:00

Hey folks! I know it's been ages since I last updated my blog. Dun worry, I did not fall off the edge of the earth, just that I started working at a new workplace and the hours are longer compared to my last job altho the office now is located much nearer to home. However, logistically, it's still a long journey home as I need to switch buses. Anyway, as all new jobs go, it took me some time to settle down and adapt to it. Thus, some things were neglected along the way, this blog is one of them. :(

So being the warm, lazy Sunday afternoon like today, I decided it's high time to update the blog.

So here it is, a cake that I baked and decorated for my dear niece, who turned 2. She has a soft spot for Barney, thus explained the huge Barney on the cake. :P I had initially thot of making a fondant figurine but since chocolate banana cake was requested, I decided i can try chocolate transfer instead. I made 3 of the same Barney as backups and all turned out well, so it was a matter of choosing which Barney looked best. The Birthday gal was more interested in eating the Barney than the cake! LOL

The cake was only 8in across but it was abt 10cm tall and weighed abt 2kgs! The words were fondant cutouts that were sweating bi-time in the humid weather.

Managed to capture a shot of the innard before it was all gone.

Bak Kwa Cookies

2011-04-09T10:55:00.000+08:00

I had always wondered how bak kwa would taste like in cookies, so I purposely left a piece of bak kwa in the fridge to make some cookies out of it. Next was to search for a cookie recipe that would go well with bak kwa. I happened to be blog-hopping when I came across Florence's recipe. The cranberries in her cookies looked so much like bak kwa! LOL... so I tot, why not substitute those with bak kwa.... so here are the baked cookies....

taste-wise, i think the 1st few cookies took some getting used to. Also because the bak kwa was in the fridge for sometime, it was really dry. So it kinda tasted like bacon, but of a stronger smokey taste to it.

Chocolate Banana Cake

2011-03-31T12:16:00.001+08:00

I can't believe I've forgotten to post this cake! I was looking at my previous posts and realised that one cake is missing.... the cake I baked for my hubs' b'day. Thank goodness he's not a reader of my blog. :P

So here it is... Chocolate Banana Cake.

Happy Birthday Chris!
ok, i admit the decoration sucks. Did not expect the text and balloons to turn out so ugly. Probably will be the first and last time I use this stencil.

It's chocolate galore!

Yes, MORE chocolate!
and yes, it's a very tall cake....

Cupcake pops!

2011-03-25T19:45:00.004+08:00

I ordered this cupcake pop mold from Elyn with Cherilynn's Birthday in mind. I had thot it'll make a cool giveaway pressie to her classmates in school on her birthday. Little do I know that my princess actually did not think it'll be a good idea. She preferred to have a whole cake and candles for her birthday celebration. And I also came to know that there's a handful of muslim students in her class, which meant that I would have to prepare something different for them. So in the end, we decided to scrap the idea and just celebrate with family members.

I had fun "playing" with the cupcake pop mold and coating the pops with chocolate. Well, it did get a little messy in the beginning during the shaping part and I took sometime to figure out that the flaws during the shaping would probably be well covered by the coating of chocolate at the later stage. Also I had overlooked and did not manage to get the sucker stickers for these pops. In the end, I improvised and bought straws to replace those sticks. They worked fine, but maybe a little soft and won't be able to handle the finished pops if they were to get any bigger. However, after all were done, I realised that these cupcake pops were really photogenic! The kids love them, so I'll probably make another batch of these soon.

Durian Mousse Cake

2011-03-20T21:55:00.001+08:00

This is for Cherilynn's 9th Birthday. She could not decide what to choose for her cake and I suggested cupcake pops since I bought the mold from Elyn. Well, the day before her birthday celebration, she said she did not want the cupcake pops, coz she wanted a full cake with candles and all. I guess for her, birthday means candles blowing and cake cutting more than anything else. :P (well, I still made some cupcake pops, more of it on my next post)

What to do? I can't say no to the Birthday gal. Rushed to buy the durians (猫山王）that cost a good $13/kg. So, here it is, durian mousse cake requested by my princess....

Happy 9th Birthday!

Yumz!

Blue blue blue... blueberry pie

2011-03-17T16:11:00.001+08:00

nope. i've not fallen off the edge of the earth, just lost my mojo to blog. so this lazy afternoon, i find myself staring at the blogger website and finally logged-in to blog-hop. and since i'm already logged-in, here's a post! LOL.

Happy Valentine's Day! - Mixed Berries Shortcake

2011-02-14T11:48:00.001+08:00

Well, I can't think of any better pressie for my significant other except giving him what I *think* i can do best... a cake!

Had enough of heavy/dense butter cakes and decided to make a spongecake instead.

Base layer was strawberries with chantilly cream and then middle layer, blueberry filling... see it peeping out? LOL

Topped it with more blueberries and strawberries.

The strawberries and blueberries were so fresh!

So here it is, a mixed berries shortcake with chantilly cream. Why mixed berries, you may ask, well I saw some gorgeous blueberries on offer and decided to incorporate them into the cake. Great decision, as the blueberries were sweet and huge!

CNY 2011 Bakes - Macarons

2011-02-05T00:12:00.001+08:00

Am glad that I had not lost the macaron-touch (if there's such a thing to begin with)... made these for a gathering of my maternal relatives. Everybody had a great time feasting on yummy food! And my contribution was these macarons and also almond agar-agar with longans. :)

Happy and Prosperous Year of the Rabbit!

2011-02-02T17:03:00.001+08:00

Following last year's tradition, (well,I made these last year, so I made this again this year, is this the start of a tradition? LOL) I made 2 pairs of these huatt kueh, 2 for my mom, 2 for myself.

Here's wishing everyone a good year ahead... HUATT AH!

Birthday Cuppies

2011-01-27T10:06:00.001+08:00

BFF's b'day cuppies.

2011 CNY bakes - Chocolate Cornflakes Clusters

2011-01-24T11:54:00.001+08:00

CNY bakes up for orders

2011-01-08T14:36:00.002+08:00

I finally got my CNY bakes orders up! I know it maybe a little late now, but well, I'm only baking limited quantity anyway.

So here you go:

Pineapple tarts... comes in a nice container.

Malted chocolate chips cookes.

Sugi cookies.

Grandma's Kuih Rose

Drop me an email, thefiendbakes@yahoo.com.sg, if you're interested to order, k?

Ian is 10!

2010-12-28T09:49:00.001+08:00

My Christmas baby is no longer a baby. He turned 10 on the 25th. This year, we came back from a holiday just 3 days before Christmas and I think age had definately caught up with me as I felt so tired that I could not muster enough energy to bake him a cake. So I had told him that he'll be getting a store-bought one. He's fine with it, just that he specifically asked for a chocolate cake (and had we not eaten enough chocolates in Australia????). Anyway, when I woke on Christmas day, I decided maybe I should bake him cupcakes instead. So I did. And to make my task even easier, I told the kids that they'll get to decorate their own cupcakes. Of course, they were more than happy to do so. It was fun. This was the cupcakes they did. The middle one, which I had to place the candle in (which explaned the hole) was decorated by me. I used white chocolate and dark chocolate to coat the tops and left the decoration to them. This was how the cupcakes looked when put together.

The following day, on the 26th, I had a baking class to attend. It was by the lovely Sharon Wee, who came back to Sg for a holiday. She's currently based in Sydney and runs a home-baking biz there. For this class, we had to make some figurines and also cover a fondant cake. I got to learn how to properly ganache a cake and of course, fondant-cover it. It was a good learning experience. And it also gave me the chance to produce a "proper" cake for Ian. And so, i did up the cake with him in mind. Here's how it turned out. I'm pretty happy with the results, what do u think?

Little penguin figurines...

Here's how the cake looked as a whole.

Another angle.

Just the top.

The penguin trying to "climb" the bow. Wad a cutie. :P

Looking for more food? LOL

I finally did it.

2010-12-05T15:40:00.003+08:00

This is not a bake post.... but just to document a little achievement of mine. :)

At the starting point.

Running the marathon had always seemed to be an impossible dream for me. I always wondered how anyone can push one's body limits to complete 42.2km within hours! of course being a freshie marathon runner, I'm not that crazy to want attempt the full marathon. I was only eyeing on the 10km. In fact I had signed up for it last year, but in the end, chickened out because I had not been training at all for the run.

This year however is a different case. I had promised myself at the beginning of the year to run the 10km, come what may. But I nearly could not do so, when I missed the registration deadline and the spots were filled up. My company had it arranged as a corporate event, and they offered to pay for all the runners. Thankfully, I finally was able to sign up when they opened up for more places. Also amongst my siblings, they are all running the full marathon! so u can see, I'm the least athletic amongst them. I decided to pace myself in the practise runs in the months leading up to the race today... but the most I could cover during those practises were max. 3km. Still I wanted to run.... and I did.

I'm glad I did it.

Orange Chiffon Cake - Cooked Dough Method

2010-11-30T09:58:00.002+08:00

I first tried out the cooked dough method of chiffon cake using this same recipe. I failed in that attempt.... frankly, I have not figured out why. Maybe at that time, I cooked the dough too long, resulting in a very dry and overcooked dough... or maybe I had mistakenly measured the wrong amount of liquid... When I attempted this recipe last weekends, everything went so well that I really cannot understand what I had done wrong in that 1st disastrous attempt.

Anyhoo... this cake turned out so fluffy and good that it was very well received by the family.

Here's the recipe for a 18cm mold.

What you need

4 nos. egg yolks
75gm cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
92gm orange juice (from 2 oranges)
40gm corn oil
1 tbsp orange zest (abt 2 oranges)
4 nos. egg whites
65gm castor sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar (optional)

What to do

Preheat oven to 160C.
Place orange juice and corn oil to boil. Once you see that the sides starts to bubble, off the heat and immediately sift in the cake flour and baking powder. Mix till combined.
Whisk in an egg yolk at a time, till well combined, then whisk in the orange zest.
Whip egg whites with sugar till wet stiff peaks.

Fold in 1/3 of the whipped egg whites into the cooked dough to lighten it. Then proceed to fold in remaining whites.
Pour batter into the mold, bang on the countertop a couple on times to get ride of air pockets before sending the mold into the oven.
Bake at 160C for about 40 mins.
Cool completely, inverted on your counter before unmolding cake.

Trip to Melbourne

2010-11-25T09:24:00.000+08:00

Hi Peeps,

I will be making a trip to Melbourne very soon... intending to visit baking supply stores there. Anyone who has any must-go places to recommend? Oh... also must-buys! LOL...

Thanks a million!

Chocolate Rice Kueh Bahulu

2010-11-22T09:25:00.001+08:00

Was in the mood for something sweet ....

Recipe found here.

Cinnamon Buns

2010-11-15T14:17:00.001+08:00

Looking through my collection of baking books, I came across the book written by Peter Reinhart. I remember buying this book on an impulse online, because there was another book on offer, and I thought that since I'm ordering one book, might as well make it 2. :)

A quick flip through the book, I noticed that most of the bread recipes are for rustic/sourdough breads, which I do not have the patience for. So I looked more closely and finally found a straight-forward recipe for cinnamon buns. So cinnamon buns it shall be!

The method is quite different from the norm. The butter, sugar, eggs were whipped together first and then flour and milk added. Interesting....

The baked buns were really good too! However, i did not add any white fondant (icing) onto the tops after the buns were baked as I found the bread sweet enough.

Original recipe by Peter Reinhart, and here's my adaptation:

Makes 8-to 12 large buns

What you need

6.5 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp salt (i omitted this coz i used salted butter)
2.75oz salted butter at room temp (you can use shortening or unsalted butter or margarine)
1 large egg, slightly beaten
1 tsp lemon extract or grated lemon zest of 1 lemon ( I omitted this coz I do not have lemons at home)
16 oz bread flour (you can use all purpose flour too)
2 tsp instant yeast
9oz whole milk (or buttermilk) at room temp
4oz cinnamon sugar (mix 6.5 tbsp sugar plus 1tbsp ground cinnamon) (orginal recipe asked for 1/2 tbsp of ground cinnamon, i upped it to 1 tbsp)

What to do

Cream tog the sugar and butter on med-high speed on an electric mixer with paddle attachment. Whip in the egg and lemon extract/zest (if using) till smooth.
Add in the flour, yeast and milk. Mix on low speed till dough forms into a ball. Switch to dough hook and mix till dough passed pane test.
Oil a large bowl and transfer the dough into it. Cover bowl with plastic over and let it poof till double in size.
Transfer dough onto an oiled counter top and punch it down.
Roll out dough about 3/4 in in thickness and 14 inches wide by 12 inches long. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar onto dough and roll it up, swiss-roll style.
With the seam side down, cut into 8-12 even pieces each abt 13/4 inches thick.
Line 1 or more pans with baking parchment. Place the buns approx. 1/2 inch apart.
Poof at room temp for 75-90 mins, or until size had doubled.
Bake in preheated oven at 180C on the middle rack, for 20mins.

Green Tea with Azuki Beans Chiffon Cake (cooked dough method)

2010-10-29T14:46:00.002+08:00

As mentioned, I did some experimentation with the cooked-dough method for chiffon cake. This time, using green tea with azuki beans.

The cake turned out denser and not as fluffy. After adding the flour, the batter turned very dry, kinda like the orange chiffon attempt I tried before. But did it turn out better than the orange chiffon. Not as good as the pandan one, but still soft and nice. Maybe more liquid is needed for Green Tea... will try this again when I have the time. :) Here's the recipe for anyone who wants to give it a go.

What you need

5 nos. Egg Yolk
110gm milk
50gm corn oil
90gm Cake flour
1 and 1/2 tbsp green tea powder
100gm cooked azuki beans
5 nos. Egg white
80gm Castor Sugar

What to do

Preheat oven at 170 deg C
Cook milk and oil together till you see some bubbles at the side of the pot, while is warmed add in sifted flour and green tea powder and mix well using a whisk.
Whisk in egg yolks one by one and set aside.
Whisk egg whites till foamy and add in sugar whisk till stiff.
Add in 1/3 meringue into the cooked dough and fold well.
Pour this mixture back to the balance meringue and fold well until well-combined.
Fold in the azuki beans.
Pour into a 20cm chiffon mould, bake at 150 deg C bake for 40 mins.
Invert the cake to cool, unmould when completely cooled.

(Tip: Fold in whipped egg whites when the dough is still warm.)

Travel to Bangkok... Sights and Scenes in Chinatown

2010-10-26T09:22:00.002+08:00

Sharing with you more pics I took during my visit to Bangkok Chinatown.

Along the streets... vendors peddling their stuff.

This is a coffin shop! Most are still going for burial after death, as you can see from the coffins they sell here. Who's that man in the middle of the pic? Frankly I did not even notice him staring at me! I was so focused on getting a shot of the coffin shop! LOL.

And this shop sells stuff that Chinese would need for weddings... and the surprise was that it's directly opposite the coffin shop! You can see that the Chinese there are still very traditional. They still buy these Chinese embroidery pillow cases.

As we wandered into one of the many lanes within Chinatown. Shops packed with people jostling for their buys.

On the right side of this image, those are preserved radish. They are the sweet type, which is really delicious. These are not available in Singapore, so it's another must-buy on trips to Bangkok. If you notice, there is a yellow flag in the middle of the image. It was the 1st day of a Chinese lunar month when we visited. Most of the shops sported these flags, as it's a day where most Chinese would go vegetarian. In fact, if you look carefully here, the items in this pic are all vegetarian food.

Pandan Chiffon Cake (cooked dough method)

2010-10-22T21:40:00.003+08:00

I saw this cooked-dough method in one taiwanese blog a few months back. The blogger baked an orange chiffon using this method and I decided to give it a try. However, the cake did not turn out well. I had problems when I added flour to the batter. It was really dry and lumpy. Needless to say, the cake did not rise high and when baked it was more like a dense sponge cake. So I made rum balls with that. :P I had in mind to try it again soon. I was blog-hopping and came across Wen's post about her pandan cake using the same method. I knew it's time to give it another try.

I made slight modification to her recipe as I did not have pandan juice on hand. Here's what I did:

What you need

5 nos. Egg Yolk
110gm Coconut milk
50gm Butter
90gm Cake flour
1/2 tsp pandan paste
5 nos. Egg white
80gm Castor Sugar

What to do

Preheat oven at 170 deg C
Cook coconut milk, butter and pandan paste together till butter melted, while is warmed add in sifted flour and mix well using a whisk.
Whisk in egg yolks one by one and set aside.
Whisk egg whites till foamy and add in sugar whisk till stiff.
Add in 1/3 meringue into the cooked dough and fold well.
Pour this mixture back to the balance meringue and fold well until well-combined.
Pour into a 20cm chiffon mould, bake at 150 deg C bake for 40 mins.
Invert the cake to cool, unmould when completely cooled.

(Tip: Fold in whipped egg whites when the dough is still warm.)

The baked chiffon tasted very different from the ones made using the conventional method. This cake has a finer structure and it's really soft and fluffy. The family gave it the thumbs-up. I'll be using this method to try out different flavours. Stay tuned!

Travel to Bangkok... Traditional chinese sausages

2010-10-18T12:46:00.001+08:00

It was my 11th wedding anniversary 2 weeks back and I made a trip to Bangkok (BKK) with my DH. It was a good trip, tho' the weather was similar to Sg, meaning, walking a few steps would result in alot of perspiration! I came back with a 30kg excess luggage, which I had to pay SGD15 for, as we took the budget airlines. Lotsa food stuff and tibits for the family!

Since a long long time ago (I really cannot remember when)... when my parents visited Bangkok, they would always stop by a chinese sausage shop at the C'town area to pick up a kilo or 2 of chinese sausages. These sausages were all freshly and manually made. We love the taste of these sausages, especially when pan-fried to get a little crisp on both sides. It's not as oily as most sausages available in Singapore and it has a smokey taste to it too. At times it even felt like eating bak-kwah (BBQ pork slices often devoured during cny)! Whenever we have family, friends or relatives going to BKK, my mom will always "tumpang" the person to go get some for us! LOL....

So without fail, I was tasked to bring home some chinese sausages during this trip too. I had not visited BKK for more than 10 years... when my mom passed me an old and tattered namecard and pointed to me the name of the shop, with the address on it, I was really sceptical. I was wondering if this shop still existed! I tried checking googlemap with the road name and nothing came out.

Little did I know, things had not changed much in the past 10 years in BKK, especially at C'town! The whole place was bustling with people and noise when I stepped out of the taxi we took. The driver did not bring us right to the shop, instead, he dropped us at a prominent landmark (White Orchid Hotel) at C'town. Once I stepped out of the taxi, I knew the shop would still be there... somewhere. I showed the namecard to the driver again, hoping that he would be able to point us to the correct direction... but I know that he, being a thai and non-chinese, I would be expecting a little too much. Well, he told us to walk toward our left and then turn into a lane from there... and there we went....

We turned into the lane and what greeted us was 2 rows of shop houses. The shops were small and most of them were not opened for business yet, as we went there pretty early. So DH and I decided to wander around and take our time figuring which was the correct shop. We walked up and down the entire lane twice before we finally found the shop! It was a really small quaint old shop tucked at one corner. I was so glad that the search was over! Apparently we had missed the shop when we walked past the 1st time coz it was not opened for business yet.

There was a middle-age man sitting at a recliner, watching tv when we stood at the shopfront. He finally noticed us and came forward. I remembered that most Chinese at C'town BKK spoke teochew, so I asked DH (a teochew) to ask him abt the prices of the sausage. The shop owner was surprised to hear us speaking in teochew with him and he got really friendly! So I asked if I could take some pictures of his shop and he glady agreed. He even directed us to the back of his shop and showed us where they processed the sausages. There was a huge cooking room, where piles of charcoal are laid on the floor and the strings of sausages hanging on the rods. He went thru the process of making those sausages with us. We got to know that he had inherited the shop from his father, and he's currently 58yo (and definitely don't look like it! I'll kill to get that nice complexion he has!)

We ended up buying 2 kgs of sausages from him. Apparently, he has 3 variety of sausages for sale, lean meat, mixed of lean and fatty meat, and the fatty meat type. I pointed out that the ones hanging out at the smoke room were longer and different from those he had on sale now... he said those are considered the poorer quality ones, which the locals like to buy. I don't know how true it is, but I'm happy with my purchase! Mission accomplished!

Here's sharing some pics I took of the shop.

Bunches of sausages for sale!

The shop owner (he doesn't look 58 rite?) showing us the "smoke" room... notice the piles of charcoal on the floor? It was really smoking hot (pun intended :P) even from where I stood when I took the pic. Tried taking a few step inwards and changed my mind!

The shopfront. The red signage is where the prices of the different varieties are listed.

This shop is located at 26 Plangnum Road, Samphantawong, Bangkok 10100.

Directions : From white Orchid Hotel, walk towards your left, the 1st lane you come to, there's a road signage that says "Samphtantawong". Turn into the lane, cross over to the opposite row of shop houses, and walk about 500m.

Chocolate chips cookies, for the craving.

2010-10-12T15:49:00.000+08:00

I had a craving for chocolate chips cookies, so I baked some. :)

Lazy bread - focaccia

2010-10-04T09:47:00.002+08:00

Was lazing ard on Sunday afternoon and then realised that I had to prepare dinner. :P

Decided to go easy and peeped into my freezer for any emergency supplies that I could use. Took out the pre-cooked and frozen Hungarian Goulash Soup and then baked focaccia to go with it. My last attempt with focaccia was sometime back, which means it's high-time to make them again!

Sharing with you the recipe here:

What you need

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 tbsp mixed herbs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup water (add 1 tbsp water if the dough feels dry)

For topping

Olive oil
More mixed herbs

What to do

Add yeast into the cup of water and set aside.
In a mixing bowl with the hook, stir together the flour, salt, sugar and mixed herbs. Mix in the vegetable oil and water (with yeast).
Using the mixer, let it run till the dough is smooth (about 5mins).
Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth, and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 230 degrees C. Punch dough down; place on greased baking sheet. Pat into a 1/2 inch thick rectangle. make little indents with your fingertips and drizzle top with olive oil.
Sprinkle with more mixed herbs and cheese as topping. Leave aside to proof another 10mins.
Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve warm.

The brown bits were cheese. That's what you will get for forgetting abt the bake in the oven and busy FB-ing! LOL

Easy does it - Banana Walnut Cake

2010-09-28T15:00:00.002+08:00

I finally tried out a recipe from Kevin Chai's Easy Stir N Bake Cakes. Decided on this recipe as I had some bananas in the freezer and also leftover walnuts from mooncake-making.

I remembered the buzz when this book was launched as the title of the book said it all... no mixer needed... all you need to do is to give the ingredients a few stirs and then you bake it! But I did not buy the book immediately then, instead, waited till the buzz died down and then I started to hunt for the book. And HUNT I really did! The book was sold out at many places and I finally found a copy (the LAST COPY) on the shelves at popular bookshop, in a shopping ctr at Novena. Even then, this book suffered the same fate as the many other recipe books I had, left at the book shelf at home, till I finally picked it up on one lazy weekends. :P

Back to the recipe....

I was afraid that the over-ripe bananas will make the cake too sweet so I reduced the amount of sugar. Also I did not have a small tube pan indicated in the recipe, and searched everywhere until I found the smallest tube pan I have at home. Still, the cake turned out quite short. But well, it did taste good! So good, that everyone had 2 helpings (I cut small slices) and the cake was gone in 1 afternoon. I did not have any buttercream on hand to decorate the cake, so I melted some white chocolate and drizzled it on and finally, sprinkled some chocolate rasps on top.

Here's the recipe, with my modfication.

What you need

100gm plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp soda bicarb
1/8 tsp salt
2 eggs
70gm castor sugar
80gm veg oil
150gm bananas (diced)
40gm walnut (toasted and chopped)

What to do

Preheat oven at 170 degrees. Grease a 20cm tube pan. Set aside.
Sift flour, baking powder, soda bicarb and salt tog in a mixing bowl.
Combine eggs, sugar and oil tog in another bowl. Give it a few whisks. Stir in sifted flour mix and then mix in banana and walnut till well blended.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake in 170 degrees for 35mins. Stand cake in pan for 10mins before unmolding onto wire rack to cool completely.
(Optional) Deocrate with melted chocolate.

Marbled Condensed Milk Poundcake

2010-09-24T15:11:00.002+08:00

Once a while, I'll bake this cake....

throw in a little surprise when I felt like it...

In this instance, I marbled it. :P

Mooncake 2010 - Baked Walnut Mooncakes

2010-09-14T10:38:00.001+08:00

These mooncakes are also known as Shanghai Mooncakes. This recipe yield really yummy mooncakes, a definate keeper! This is the 2nd time I've made these and this time, I halved the recipe.

I adapted LeeLee's recipe (Thanks Lee!) and made some modification to it as I do not want to be left with 1/2 an egg and I do not have shortening in my pantry.... I got 13pcs from the recipe listed below.

What you need

190g Plain flour
12g Custard Powder
1/4 tsp Sodium Bicarbonate
25g Icing sugar
135g Butter (salted)
1/2 tsp Vanilla paste
1/4 tsp Ammonium Bicarbonate
1 Egg
Walnut for decoration

What to do

Cream sugar, butter, vanilla paste and ammonium together until slightly white. (slow speed first then change to high speed)
Gradually add in egg.
Add in sifted flour, custard powder and sodium bicarbonate to knead into a dough. Be careful not to overmix. Leave dough in fridge overnight or for a few days.
Take out dough from fridge and divide into portions of 30 gm each.
Divide fillings into about 40 gm each.
Wrap fillings into dough and round it up. Decorate with walnut at 4 sides. Apply egg glaze (from SunLik, can be used to glaze traditional baked mooncakes too) and bake at 160ºC for 10 mins. Take it out and leave it for about 10 mins and apply egg wash again. Bake for another 15 mins.

Mooncake 2010 - Traditional Baked Mooncakes

2010-09-13T16:30:00.002+08:00

I've made use of the long weekends to bake some mooncakes. Last year, I did not have the time to bake these, and made snowskin and agar-agar ones instead. It made me realise that I still prefer and appreciate these old-school baked mooncakes.

I had been using Florence's recipe for mooncakes and as usual, I used it again this year. It's a good, no-fail recipe. Thanks Florence, for your generous sharing.

I only made single yolk ones as I'm no fan of salted egg yolks, but since I'm giving some of them away as festive gifts, having a yolk in them makes them more presentable. :P

Here's the mooncakes... I LOVE the mold. Special thanks to Elyn for bringing them in!

There was leftover dough and filling, so I made a piglet and use the cookie cutter to finish up the dough.

Blueberry Cream Cheese Poundcake

2010-09-06T13:05:00.003+08:00

This is a very sinful cake, considering the amt of cheese AND butter in it. It was originally a simple cream cheese poundcake recipe, I added blueberries in it coz i was trying to finish up the blueberries stash in my freezer.

Tea in a cake - Earl Grey Chiffon

2010-08-28T22:26:00.002+08:00

This is one cake which grows on you. It may taste a little bland when u 1st bite into it, but after tasting in your mouth, it has a very subtle and lovely earl grey tea fragrance and you will start to take bite after bite. :P

However, I think if I were to make this a 2nd time, I'll probably steep some tea bags in the liquid so that it'll impart a stronger tea fragrant in the cake. Also I adjusted the recipe to a 4-egg recipe as I want a taller cake.

Recipe adapted from HHB. Thank you!

What you need

3 satchels of Earl Grey tea powder (I used Twinnings)
133g cake flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4nos egg yolks
50g caster sugar
65g vegetable oil
100ml water
4nos egg whites
53g caster sugar

What to do

Place egg yolks in a mixing bowl with sugar, whisk till the mixture becomes turns pale.
Add in the oil and water, whisking till the mixture is well combined. Sieve in the flour, baking powder and salt and whisk to fully incorporated into the batter. Add in the earl grey powder and mix well.
In another bowl, whip egg whites it becomes frothy and foamy. Add in sugar gradually and continue to whip till wet stiff peaks.
Fold in 1/3 of the whipped egg white into the egg yolk batter till batter becomes uniform and continue to fold in the remaining whites.
Pour batter into chiffon pan. Bake in pre-heated oven at 170 degC for 45 mins or until the cake surface turns golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and invert the pan immediately. Cool completely and then unmold the cake.

Sliced Cheese Cheesecake

2010-08-12T14:28:00.005+08:00

I've bookmarked this recipe for sometime but did not get around to making it coz somehow, by impulse, I tend to pick up a block of cream cheese during grocery shopping. On my latest grocery shopping trip, I had managed to convince myself that I DO NOT need another block of cream cheese that will eventually be sitting in the fridge till almost expiry that only then will make me jump up and do something with it. *pat myself on my back*

Back to the cake.... Sliced cheese is what I will always have in my fridge (and I believe many household will have it too), and the recipe is so simple and straightforward, that I really have to try it.

Thank you Zu for posting this recipe. I followed the recipe to a T, except that I omitted the lemon juice and extended the baking time another 10mins as I read in the comments that the texture of this cake is kinda soft and mushy. The additional 10mins solved the problem. The cake turned out very well... Love it!

Here's the recipe:

What you need

5 slices of cheese
200ml of milk
70gm butter
4 egg yolks
70gm cake flour
1 tsp vanilla paste
65gm sugar
4 egg whites

What to do

Place a greaseproof paper on the base of an 8-in pan and preheat oven to 170C.
Break sliced cheese into smaller pieces and add to the milk in a small pot.
Apply low heat to the milk and melt the cheese, making sure that there are no lumps.
When cheese had melted, remove pot from fire, stir in the butter. Set aside.
Whip egg whites in a clean bowl till foamy and add in the sugar. Continue to whip till stiff peaks form. Set aside.
In another bowl, beat the egg yolks till light, pour in the milk/cheese/butter mixture and drop 1 tsp of vanilla extract into it. Stir till well blended.
Sift in flour and fold into the mixture till batter is smooth.
Fold in 1/3 of the whipped egg whites into the batter, once well blended, fold in remaining egg whites. Be careful not to deflate the egg whites. Final batter will be watery.
Pour batter into 8-in tin and bake, baine marie, at 170C for 20mins and lower the temperature to 140C and bake it for further 50mins.
Cool cake and chill before serving.

Assorted buns

2010-08-03T15:12:00.001+08:00

Chocolate wassants

It's been a long while since I last made breads. It's not that I don't like breads. In fact, the whole family loves it, but it's just the long process of making that turns me off sometimes. I do not get to stay at home for the whole day in the weekends. Weekdays is totally out of the question as I do not wish to stay up all nite waiting for the bread to proof, then bake, THEN cool down.

It certainly did not help when the weather's been so cranky lately. Just when I decided to make some buns, it started pouring. The day before was perfectly bright and sunny!

Used my KA to knead the dough and the poor machine was *coughing and whining* so much that I thought it could break down anytime. The entire process of kneading till the dough passed the pane test took a good 45mins! However, even tho' the weather was cooling, the dough did proof beautifully.

I did a chocolate filling for one half of the dough and made chocolate wassants and the other half, I filled it with canned tuna and slices of luncheon meat.

Tuna buns

So tt's good b'fast for my kiddos for the next few days!

Luncheon meat buns

Matcha swiss roll with azuki beans filling

2010-07-26T16:26:00.002+08:00

I made this swiss roll by adapting Lucy's sugar roll recipe. Added 1 tbsp of powdered matcha in the process.

The azuki beans were store-bought but too sweet for my liking. I guess I have to be diligent and cook my azuki beans next time. :P

Cherries Agar Agar

2010-07-15T10:00:00.005+08:00

As mentioned in my earlier post, there was syrup leftover from the 2 cans of pitted dark cherries I used for the blackforest cake. The syrup in the canned cherries was very thick and smelled really nice. It'll be such a waste to pour it away. So I decided to make agar-agar with it. I even pureed the 5pcs of cherries and added into the syrup.

I proceeded to boil the agar agar powder in some water and then added the cherry syrup to it. Prior to that, I had scooped out a portion of the agar-agar and set aside. I added some milk to that.

I intended to make layered agar-agar, alternating the cherry layers with milk. However, being the impatient person that I am, the layers did not turn out. Even tho' I had tried my best to wait patiently for the layers to set, when I added the next layer of agar-agar to it, the layers just kinda combined together. To the point that I decided that I had enough of waiting.... I just dumped whatever's remaining into the mold to set.
to hell with that!

Fast forward to the next day, to my surprise, when I unmolded the agar-agar, it did not look that bad! I love the deep hue of burgundy and there's actually some signs of layers towards the base! Of course, I had to check the insides... so I cut it and was pleasantly surprised to see that there's a "marbling" effect to it! LOL.... Taste-wise, it was really good. Altho' it's a little too soft to my liking... but well, I'll take it as a good attempt on my part. Well, I think I must really be learn to be more patient when it comes to making layered agar-agar. :P

Blackforest cake - Mom's Birthday

2010-07-12T10:58:00.003+08:00

The cake was done for Mom's 67th Birthday. I guess when one grows older, he/she tends to be fussier about food. In my mom's case, I had to be careful to choose what kind of cake to make for her. I hope she liked this. I used up nearly 2 cans of pitted dark cherries for the fillings in between the layers and also squeezed in as many fresh cherries as possible for the top. Brushed kirsh on the cake layers as I assembled the cake. The cream whipped up so beautifully this time. *happy*

I have the syrup of the canned cherries reserved for some other use. Also abt 5 pcs of the pitted cherries.... more of that coming up in the next post.... meanwhile, enjoy these pics. :)

Fruity Agar-agar

2010-06-30T10:01:00.002+08:00

I actually made these agar-agar during the cny period! I had these images on my computer, but just did not have the time to edit them.

The agar-agar was made with apple juice, which explained the yellowish tinge. The kiddos got a pack each from their b'fasts from McDonalds and did not finish them.... so I took them and made agar-agar out of it. :) Thinking that it's apple juice, I did not add additional sugar to it. Well, turned out to be a wrong decision.... the agar-agar tasted sour! Thankfully, I topped them with some canned cocktail fruits, which sorta sweeten them up a little.

White chocolate strawberries cookies

2010-06-28T08:59:00.005+08:00

Sorry for the long name of this cookie. Such a mouthful.

I bought a pack of dried strawberries, thinking that it would be able to impart fragrance and taste to cupcakes, but I was so wrong. Dried strawberries are nothing like the fresh one! It actually tasted like raisins! Much bigger in size tho'.

So in order to use it up somehow, I decided to incorporate those into my fav cookie recipe... I also added white chocolate chips to the dough....

Chantilly Cake

2010-06-22T15:19:00.004+08:00

This cake was done for my father's b'day.

Before I got hold of this recipe, I had googled for chantilly cream and all I got was chantilly cream was whipped sweetened cream. So when I had a good look at this recipe, then I realised that it was totally different from the definition on the internet. I won't be disclosing the recipe, sorrie, as the instructor is still teaching this cake.

As I went about preparing the cream, I duno how I did it, but I overwhipped the non-diary cream! I wanted the cream to achieve soft peak but it never happened :P , disaster striked! The resulting cream was lumpy in appearance... but taste-wise, it's similar to what i had tried. Also I did not use rum as indicated, but replaced it with kirsh instead. I decorated the sides with white chocolate curls and kept the top simple with just piped words. It was a 3 layered sponge cake, with the same cream in between. Each layer was brushed with some kirsh too.

Green tea marbled madeleines

2010-06-07T09:32:00.008+08:00

I made these as a variation from the yuzu madeleines recipe. These madeleines did not turn out as good.... I wonder if it's coz of the green tea powder.

Also, the green tea taste was not prominent enough. Maybe I have to add more to it. I used 1 tbsp and yet the taste was still not what I wanted.

The marbling was achieved by the addition of bamboo charcoal powder. As seen, not enough of the bamboo charcoal powder was added, it turned out like greyish instead of black.

Mother's Day bake

2010-06-01T15:10:00.004+08:00

I better post this before it's Father's Day! LOLz. Been badly bitten by the lazy bug lately, which explained the sporadic postings. Here's what I did for Mother's Day. I opted for small little cakelets instead of a whole cake this year coz we dined out for the day and would not want to bring a cake along. Small cakelets, were enjoyed at home, before meals and the leftovers were finished in fairly short time. These cakelets were actually brownies, very moist and buttery. I topped them with some white chocolate and toasted whole almonds.

Brownie buttons

2010-05-19T09:49:00.005+08:00

Made these brownie buttons as a treat for my colleagues sometime back and only remembered to post them now. :P I baked them in muffin cups as I could not find the corrrect silicon mold that is sitting somewhere at home.
Recipe adapted from Doris Greenspan – From my home to yours.

Yuzu Madeleines

2010-05-03T20:27:00.006+08:00

I was feeling lazy all weekends, I wanted to bake something but couldn't decide on what. Eventually settled on madeleines as I could prepare the batter in advance and the main plus point was that the ingredients were simple and it was easy to put together. And I could bake them when I have the "mojo". Finally got my butt off the chair and prepared the madeleine batter to leave in the fridge.

These madeleines were THE bomb! The bakes were moist and buttery, with a beautiful fragrance of orange and yuzu. The kitchen smelled great while the madeleines were baking. They also brown beautifully, with a golden hue on the inside too!

This recipe was adapted from Dorie Greenspan, Baking From my home to yours. My adaptations are in brackets below. Hope you'll like it.

What you need

2/3 cup all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt ( I omitted this coz my butter was salted-SCS butter)
1/2 cup sugar
Grated zest of 1 lemon (I used grated zest of an orange)
2 large eggs, at room temp (the eggs I used were ard 64gm with shells)
2 tsps vanilla extract ( I used yuzu paste)
3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled (I used 85gm salted butter, melted the butter using the microwave)

What to do

Weigh sugar in bowl, add in orange zest and rub into sugar.
Add eggs into bowl, whip at high till light and fluffy (almost ribbon stage).
Add in yuzu paste and mix till well combined.
Sift in flour and baking powder. With mixer on lowest speed, beat in flour into batter.
Mix in melted butter.
Press a clingwrap onto the surface of the batter and leave in the fridge for at least 3 hours. Can be kept in frige up to 3 days. I baked the batter after 24 hours.
When ready to bake madeleines, preheat oven to 200 degrees, grease and flour mold. If using nonstick pan, greasing it is enough.
Bake for 11-13mins (mine were done in 10mins).
Cool completely and dust with snow sugar (optional)

I managed 16pcs from the big madeleine mold using 1x recipe.

Alexis's 1st Birthday

2010-04-27T10:57:00.008+08:00

I had volunteered to bake a cake for my dear niece for her 1st birthday. I had in mind what to do but only started with the figurine, rainbow and little flowers 5 days in advance. Little did I know that the rains would come... and stayed.... for days. It kept raining for the many days after the figurine and rainbow were completed and I could only pray that the figurine would dry. As for the cake itself, I baked it the day before the celebration and assembled the cake the next morning. I was happy when the figurine, flowers and rainbow felt dry to touch.

While assembling the cake, I decided the prop the rainbow higher so that Alexis's name would be more visible on the rainbow, so I added some height to it, by placing a huge blob of fondant as the base. To cover the base up, I added small balls of fondant to represent the clouds. I did all the finishing touches to it and happily placed the cake into a box. The weather that morning was very warm. Once I turned the air-con off and opened the doors and windows, I felt a gush of warm and humid air rush in. Still I continued with my cleaning up and left the cake alone.

Till it was time to leave the house, I peeped into the box and saw a DISASTER! The rainbow had collapsed and was leaning onto the cow. When I tried to adjust the rainbow to the original position, the left ear of the cow was stuck onto the rainbow. Still this was something that I would be able to save quite easily, so I left it as such.... until I peeped into the box 30 minutes later, while waiting for my parents to appear, I saw the fondant base had cracked! Turned out that the rainbow base and the "clouds" were too heavy for the base, it started to slide off and dragged the fondant base along! Furthermore, the fondant started melting.... making the cake looked a gooey mess instead! OMG OMG OMG... I could only asked DH to turn back to my place, where I rushed to pack fondant, the alphabet cutter, rolling pin and a pack of cornstarch to bring along to the holiday chalet, where the celebrations will be held...

Seemed like it was truly not my day, as it started to pour again on the way there... and it was still raining cats and dogs when we finally reached the destination. I could only turn the aircon at it's fullest and also the fan once I stepped in. I started dismantling the cake decor and at the same time, my brain was in overdrive, trying to salvage the situation. I was even contemplating to buy a cake at the nearby bakery if all I could do did not work.

After some consideration, I decided to redo the top of the cake, as the fondant surface was beyond repair. So I took out my remaining fondant and started rolling it out. Finally I re-assembled the decor and got approving grunts from the rest of the family.

I guess I did manage to pull it off *PHEW*.... here's some of the pics of the "before" and "after" cakes.

These are the pics of the "before" cake..... with the rainbow, figurines and flowers...

Close up of the figurine and all....Close up of the clouds which "destroyed" the cake eventually...The sides of the cake.... i placed wooden fences, flowers and butterflies all around...These are the pics of the "after" cake...

If you had the patience to read till the end of this post... Thank you! LOLz...

~~THE END~~

Orange Chiffon Cake

2010-04-13T10:50:00.005+08:00

In the weekends, DH came home with a carton of fruits... I took a peep and found many oranges in there! I'm not exactly a fan of oranges, probably had an overdose of it when I was younger, which was why I stopped eating them. Orange juice and orange-processed sweets also do not interest me, so I have a hard time to find ways to use them up.

I finally decided to make an orange chiffon cake. And I had a brilliant idea of placing slices of oranges as the base of the chiffon cake mold, and when the cake was baked and overturned, it would be so nicely in place, very much like an upside down cake! I decided that the slices had to be very thin and light, so I went looking for the sharpest knife in the kitchen. Still I had lotsa problems getting the orange cut to thin slices. Sigh.... anyway, I tried my best and crossed my fingers.
brain fart

When the cake was done, I could not wait to unmold it, but I really had to wait for it to cool down. Finally when it was lukewarm, I decided to unmold and check if my idea worked. Lo and Behold... the top actually sank! Guess my orange slices were too heavy for the delicate chiffon. :( Oh well, I never knew until I tried... and I'm glad I did. It did look pretty.... if only the surface was flat and even. LOLz

Bundt Cake

2010-04-03T22:04:00.009+08:00

I always wanted a nice bundt cake mold and had come across many and the nordicware design really took my breath away. However, it's too expensive, especially when it's imported into sg. Getting someone to help me purchase it in the USA also does not work as it's a heavy mold. So I have to settle for wadeva's available in sg and finally found a silicone one not too long ago. Thanks to Eyln for providing me the recipe for the cake. I had to reduce the amount of sugar as the amount stated in the recipe gave me a shock. I think it'll be too sweet for the family's palate, so I cut down abt 100gms of sugar and after drizzling some chocolate on it, the sweetness was just nice. Lovely, especially with a cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate.

The cake without the chocolate... very plain... and it did not brown nicely. guess coz I use silicon mold.Ahhhh... much better....

Cherilynn is 8!

2010-03-28T09:57:00.007+08:00

I guess I better post this before March is over! LOLz.

Cherilynn turned 8 last week and we had a po-piah (spring rolls) party held for her. I ordered fresh po-piah wraps from a neighbourhood foodstall and also a container of factory-made pie-tee shells. I asked my mom to cook the fillings for the po-piah, while I helped with the preparation of ingredients.

The kids (and adults) definitely had fun wrapping our own po-piah with ingredients that we like. We can choose to add more of those ingredients we favoured. It was such a blast.

Of course, any party is not complete without a cake. This year, I chose to make a pralet. And I had to purposely make a trip to a baking supply store to get varlhorna chocolate and cocoa powder for it. But it a trip so worthwhile coz the chocolate made such a big difference! I followed the recipe from Jo meticulously, except that I made the cake into an 8in one. The recipe had looked complicated but when I was working on it, everything turned out well and the process was very smooth. Completed on the cake in no time. Beside making the cake bigger, I also reduced the amt of liquor to half, as kids will be eating. But then, the kids still did not take too well to the liquor, so I guess half the amount of liquor is still too strong for them. :P

Here are some pics.....

The fillings for the po-piah.Greens for the po-piah.Other ingredients.... hard boiled eggs, ground peanuts and chinese sausage.Alternative for po-piah... pie-tee.Also made almond jelly.... after meal dessert.Another shot of the cake
Innard shot of the cake, pardon the image quality.. taken with the iphone with low lighting condition.

Advertorial : Lushae Jewelry Earrings

2010-03-28T09:38:00.002+08:00

One day I was going thru' my emails when I saw an email titled "Weird Request". Usually when I see emails with such headers, my 1st instinct will be that it's spam mail, those which claimed that I had struck lottery or that there's some inheritance which I can lay my hands on... in short, con-mails. :P However, curiosity got the better of me, I opened the mail to read... Turned out that Sarah of Lushae Jewelry had offered me a free item on her site. I went into http://www.jewelryartdesigns.com/ to take a look and I was happy to see that there are designs that interest me. So I replied to Sarah that I'll be glad to take up her offer.

Initially I was looking at rings on the site but upon printing the size chart, I realised that it was not too accurate. I did not want to risk ordering the wrong size, coz it meant either I have to give it away or return it for another size. So after much contemplation, I decided to choose earrings instead. Finally settled on this pair....

The whole ordering process was such a breeze and all I needed to do next was wait for the earrings to arrive.

The wait was very short, all it took was about 7 days! I eagerly opened the box, to discover such a pretty and petite looking pair of earrings.... *Happy* But I have to say that the pieces are priced on the higher end. And the material being sterling silver, it felt really light. I had preferred my earrings to be heavier. However, this pair of earrings is great as a gift for teens and gfs!

Thanks Sarah, for the wonderful offer!

Hub's birthday cake

2010-03-13T17:33:00.004+08:00

As some of you may know, March is kinda a b'day mth for my family. 3 of us celebrate our b'days in the same month.
This is what I did for dear husband... a moist chocolate sponge cake with peanut praline cheese topping.

Rum laden fruitcake

2010-02-28T07:11:00.003+08:00

I promised DH a fruitcake before the cny. However, alot of things got into the way, especially the cny bakes... :P Anyhow, I eventually got it baked and it has to "mature" for a while before I can serve the cake. Finally, I got it cut-up for everyone to have a share yesterday. I was over-zealous in dousing the cake with rum... it's abit soggy with rum, but tasted so good nevertheless!

Gula Melaka Chiffon Cake

2010-02-22T16:40:00.005+08:00

I've been wanting to give this recipe a try and the CNY break was a good time to do it. The cake turned out really nice, soft and very fragrant! The original recipe called for 6 eggs, for a 22cm tin, but I decided to reduce it to 4 eggs to fit my heart-shaped chiffon tin. Here's the original recipe (with my 4 eggs recipe in brackets)... do try it!

What you need

150gm gula melaka (100gm)
100ml coconut milk (67gm)
6 egg yolks (4)
4 tbsp oil (2 1/2 tbsp)
1/4 tsp salt (1/8 tsp)
140gm plain flour (93gm)
6 egg whites (4)
1/4 tsp cream of tartar (1/8 tsp)
50gm castor sugar (33gm)

What to do

Melt gula melaka in a pot with coconut milk over low heat. Set aside in mixing bowl.
Combine egg yolks, cooking oil and salt into the melted gula melaka mix.
Sift flour into egg yolk mix and whisk in.
In another bowl, whip egg whites till foamy and add in cream of tartar. Then gradually add in castor sugar and whip till stiff peaks.
Fold in 1/3 of the whipped egg whites into the egg yolk mix to lighten it. When combined, pour entire egg yolk mix into the remaining whipped egg whites. Gently fold in till the colour of the batter becomes uniform.
Pour batter into cake tin and bake in preheated oven at 170 degrees for 30-40mins.
Remove tin from oven, invert immediately and remove cake from tin when totally cooled.

Happy and Prosperous Year of the Tiger!

2010-02-12T11:43:00.004+08:00

Hi everyone,

Here's me wishing everyone a happy and
prosperous new year!

Gong Hei Fatt Choy!

Chocolate cornflakes clusters

2010-02-12T11:38:00.003+08:00

This is a no-brainer recipe. All I needed to do was melt some chocolate to coat the cornflakes and then sprinkle some hundreds and thousands on it before the chocolate sets. Definately a treat for the kids! and also a good way to use up my half pack of cornflakes that had been sitting in the fridge. :P

Huatt ah!

2010-02-11T21:07:00.005+08:00

When it comes to Chinese New Year, the Chinese love anything & everything auspicious. This covers anything from the decorations to food that is served during the festive period.

Huatt Kueh is actually a steamed cake. And it is very important that the top has to crack open, as it symbolises prosperity. "Huatt" means propsperity and this is very crucial when one is steaming this cake for the new year as it will mean the coming year will be a good and prosperous one for the family.

The original recipe was from a forumer. There was coconut milk in the ingredient list, but I did not want to include that as coconut milk turns rancid easily in the hot weather we are experiencing lately. So I replaced it with water and prayed very hard that it will work. I also added a tsp of baking powder.

Here's the recipe:
What you need

250gm self-raising flour
1tsp baking (double-acting) powder
140gm orange sugar
40gm dark brown sugar
320ml water

What to do

Boil water in the steamer. Sift flour & baking powder together and set aside.
Mix the orange and dark brown sugar into the flour.
Make sure that the water is boiling and steamer set on high.
Add water into the flour mix and stir till there's not lumps.
Pour batter into the mold till at least 90% full.
Steam on high fire for 20mins. Do not lift the cover while steaming.

It's just round the corner....

2010-02-10T09:14:00.003+08:00

Made pineapple closed tarts but this year, i decided to do it tangerine style.

The pastry is oh-so-melt-in-the-mouth that I have a hard time wrapping the tarts, all thannks to the very warm weather we're experiencing lately. Even after baked, the pastry was very soft. However, it was well received as the family love the melt-in-the-mouth texture.

As busy as a bee...

2010-02-08T09:16:00.004+08:00

As usual the weekends came and went in a flash. During the weekdays, I'll look forward to the weekends, with an ambitious list of to-bakes. However, when weekends actually arrived, I tended to take things easy and ended up making only a tiny dent in the to-bake list. This seems like an re-occurring (vicious) cycle in my life, at least for now. :P

Anyhow... nephew asked me last weekends if I intended to make kueh rose, popularly know as beehive in my family. It is a very well received snack in the family and I guess there's no escaping from making these. So I got myself all prepared with the ingredients, only to know later that nephew was not coming to visit my mom in the weekends, meaning I'll be left to make these myself. Thankfully my niece did come by and she helped me to finish these up.

After standing at the hot kitchen for 2 whole hours, these are what we got. *happy dance*

Chocolate Chips Coookies

2010-02-02T14:55:00.004+08:00

These are crunchy and delicious.... nom nom nom....

come... have a piece. :)

Green Pea Cookies

2010-01-31T22:09:00.005+08:00

After Elyn's attempt on these cookies, she convinced me that it's very yummy and different from the usual CNY bakes. So, when I saw the bakery supply shop in JB selling the ground green peas, I picked up a pack. It was going for RM6.00 for a 500gm pack.

True enough, it was easy to put together, however, I had different reviews of these cookies. Some told me outright that it's not nice, some did not like the texture, some said it's too crumbly, some commented that it's too sweet. Still, I had a few fans of these cookies. * thank goodness* I used the wilton mini easter cutter for these cookies.

Here's how mine turned out.

So much to do, so little time...

2010-01-30T11:27:00.005+08:00

I know... I deserved it.. all due to my procrastination, I'm left with only 2 weeks for my cny bakes. The coming 2 weeks will definately be crunch time... as I have in mind a whole (long) list of cny to-bakes!

To start off the baking frenzy, I baked some kuih balu. I bought the cheap stainless steel molds a few years back, and I do remember attempting this bake but the mold was disappointing as the kuih balu stuck on it even tho I had greased and floured them. Furthermore, the design of the mold was not defined when baked. Until recently I spotted a recipe by Sinner. Her kuih balus looks so good! and this is a favourite snack of mine, and my little one... so I decided to give the mold another chance. :P Well, this time I followed Sinner's instruction to grease the mold... the kuihs still got stuck. However the recipe yield great kuih balus... so good that the family finished it in 1 afternoon, and I had doubled that recipe.

Not wanting to give up, I bought the same molds as Sinner in a recent trip across the causeway. I was glad that I bought these molds... they were going for RM8.90/pc. At a baking supply shop west of Sg, these molds are selling for SGD9.80! This is how the mold looks like.

Thanks to Sinner's sharing.... I tripled the recipe this time, reduced some sugar, and added chocolate rice; and this is the recipe:

What you need

3 eggs ( I used 60gm eggs)
85gm castor sugar
90gm plain flour
1/4 + 1/8 tsp baking powder
vanilla extract
a handful of chocolate rice

What to do

Preheat the oven at 190 degrees. Also, place the molds into the oven to heat them up.
Sift the plain flour and baking powder together, set aside.
Whip eggs till foamy, add in the castor sugar, beat on high.
Add in vanilla extract, continue to whip eggs till ribbon stage.
Fold in sifted flour mixture into the whipped eggs.
Add in a handful of chocolate rice and fold into the batter.
Take out heated molds, spray PAM onto it.
Scoop batter into mold, till full.
Bake for 10mins at 190degrees and remove with skewer onto cooling rack.
Cool completely and store.

Strawberry Shortcakes

2010-01-18T09:48:00.003+08:00

Since the new school year started, weekends seemed to come and go at such amazing speed. Very soon, we'll be looking at Feb (yay! cny!) and then March will be at our doorsteps. As much as I try to get some baking done, the tons of stuff to do and NOT added up and I usually feel too exhausted.

Anyway, no matter how tired I am, there is always a cake to be baked in January that I will definately chun out. It's my bestie's b'day and there has been a few years that she was not in sg that I cannot celebrate with her. So, since now she's settled down here (at least for the time being), there is simply no excuses not to turn up with a cake for her!

Happy Birthday Dear Fion!

Whenever I bake this cake, I'll double the recipe so that the family can have a share of this wonderfully moist and delicious cake.... so this is for the family... a square cake, so that it makes dividing the cake easier. no fighting for that strawberry! LOLz.

Ian turns 9

2009-12-30T14:10:00.003+08:00

My Christmas baby's all grown up now!

I baked a chocolate fudge cake this year for his Birthday... a small one as there's too much feasting those few days. :P

Happy 9th Birthday Ian!

This Christmas.....

2009-12-30T13:25:00.008+08:00

had been an awfully tiring one. We were at my sis's place on Christmas Eve for a party which lasted till late. And then I hosted a dinner for Ian's birthday on Christmas Day .... and on Boxing Day, was at my cousin's place as early as 6.45AM for her wedding. The day did not end till after the wedding dinner, which was closed to 11pm. I was so drained and exhausted that till today I am still trying to recover! Not to mention, Ian came down with a stomach virus on Boxing Day and is still recovering from it....and Cherilynn came down with hives today.

With this chain of events happening, I totally lost my energy to even download any photos taken during the past few days! But still I eventually gathered enough strength to edit and compose my post today.

I started planning for Ian's b'day bash a few weeks beforehand. I wanted to try my hand at poaching salmon as one of the dishes, but only managed to research for recipes only in the morning of Christmas Eve! I got to leave the office early that day, and made my way to a fty that sells salmon and other seafood at wholesale prices, all the way at the north. Thanks to Hubs for driving me there and I picked up fillet of half a salmon there. The guy refused to help me get a whole salmon (head and tail included) from the freezer as he was adamant that I would not buy the fish... even tho' I said that was exactly what I wanted. (Gosh... that's customer service for you). In good Christmas spirits, I took the next best thing that I can lay my hands on. LOLz.On Christmas morning, that I went to buy all the necesary ingredients from the supermart nearby. With the help of C, I managed to twit the recipes I found online and the poached salmon came out perfect! It was moist, flavoursome and totally rocks!

This is the salmon before poaching....yummmm

I'll share the recipe here for all those who wants to give it a try.

What you need

Alumimium foil
Greaseproof/waxed paper
Fresh salmon (The fillet I bought is 1.2kg, good to feed 12pax)
Olive oil
1 lemon (cut into slices abt 5mm thick)
10gm fresh dill (chopped)
10gm fresh italian parsley (chopped)
crushed black pepper
sea salt
2 carrots (chopped)
1 corn

What to do

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
Lay alumimium foil on table top, place greaseproof/waxed paper over it, make sure that these 2 materials are bigger than the salmon
Place the salmon on top of the greaseproof/waxed paper and drizzle olive oil on it, make sure the whole fillet has been coated with olive oil.
Sprinkle sea salt and crushed black pepper generously onto the fillet.
Place the lemon slices onto the fillet.
Sprinkle another layer of sea salt on top of the lemon.
Sprinkle the chopped dill and parsely on top.
Placed the chopped carrots and corn at the sides.
Wrap the fillet up. Seal it tight.
Place sealed salmon poach onto a baking tray and into the oven... I baked the fillet for 40mins and it was cooked just nice. For smaller-sized fillets, 20mins is sufficient.
Remove from oven after 40mins, open up the poach and serve.... enjoy!

Besides the poached salmon, I also served a mixed fruit salad (combo of orange, blueberries, strawberries, cherries, jackfruit mixed with mango yogurt), smoked salmon and cream cheese on crackers, cream of mushroom soup, mini garlic pork sausages coated with hosin & honey sauce (Thanks Ching for this recipe), chicken & beef lasagna; chocolate fudge cake (the b'day cake) and rum balls for dessert.

Oatmeal cranberries cookies

2009-12-24T17:34:00.005+08:00

Made these cookies as giveaways to my friends and colls for the festive season.... lovely chewy cookies that's healthy!Enjoy the pics and here's wishing everyone Happy Holidays!

What you need

110gm butter
100gm castor sugar
100gm brown sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp milk
1tsp vanilla extract
250gm rolled oats
110gm self-raising flour
1 tsp salt
100gm cranberries
melted chocolate (for drizzling on cookies - optional)

What to do

Preheat oven to 180degrees.
Cream butter with the 2 sugars till light.
Add egg, milk, salt and vanilla extract into creamed butter and mix well. It will be quite watery at this stage.
Set mixer on lowest speed and sift in self-raising flour.
Mix till just combined, add in rolled oats and cranberries. Continue to mix on low speed till all combined and a dough forms.
Roll dough into balls abt 1in size. Place on baking tray and flatten dough.
Bake in oven for 15mins till cookies turn golden.
Drizzle chocolate onto cookies and cool completely.

Christmas cookies

2009-12-17T22:48:00.007+08:00

This is for an order of 30 cutout cookies and I made some extra. :P Altho it's rather time consuming (or maybe it's just me being a slow coach), I had so much fun cutting and assembling and beautifying the cookies! And I was so glad that I did not need to attach sticks to these cookies as the cookies were too crumbly.

Birthday cuppies

2009-11-30T21:25:00.007+08:00

N ordered these cuppies for her bestie. She sent me some pics to reference and she wanted all 12 cuppies to be of different designs. I gathered from the references that the colour theme to be white, red and pink... flowers and butterflies. The wet weather lately is not helping much. I had some trouble getting the flowers and butterflies to dry, altho I had added a fair amt of gum tex to the fondant.

This is what I came up with.... hope Jasmine will like them...

Happy Birthday Jasmine!

The finale cake

2009-11-26T10:10:00.005+08:00

My last lesson for the wilton course 1 was just a day after the lesson 3. This was because E needed to leave for a work trip the following week and the day we are supposedly gonna have the last class is a public holiday, so instead of finishing the class 1 week later, we decided to push it forward.
This lesson, we have to decorate a finale cake, based on what we learnt in the past few lessons. It's basically making use of the piping tips and techniques. I have chosen the rose as the main theme for the cake... a BLUE one too! I actually wanted to place roses at the sides of the cake , but it was not possible due to the weight of the piped roses. It'll end up falling off the sides! So I decided to pipe sweet peas on the sides instead. I kept the colours used simple too. In fact, I had thot of using the only 1 colour, besides the white at the base of the cake, but in different tones for the vines, leaves and flowers, but looking at the amount of buttercream leftover from the last few lessons, I decided to just add some colour tints to them and use them for the cake instead. But I did whip up 1 recipe of the buttercream to frost the cake.
Here's what I did for the finale cake. I'm glad to say that I'm happy with the design and it looks so sweet. :P

Piping designs

2009-11-22T20:45:00.004+08:00

These were done during the Wilton course 1, lesson 3. We learnt how to pipe and make use of different tips. For decorating on cupcakes, I decided to do a bouquet of flowers, a clown and practise the rose.... here's what I had done.

Looks familiar?

2009-11-15T11:11:00.005+08:00

I'm sure those who had attended the wilton courses will be familiar with this cake design. This is usually the cake design to create by the 2nd class, during course 1 of wilton cake decorating class.

For those who are my regular blog readers, you may be puzzled why I took up this class at this time when I had started my cake decorating journey years ago.... well, I guess after frumbing in the dark for so long, it's time to have some formal education! LOLz... I remembered when I 1st started cake decorating, I did not even refer to any internet sites, eg. youtube or any baking sites, for any help. Most that I had done was by trial and error and I was glad that it still managed to "pass the test" for my family. I realised that there maybe some special techniques, tips or recipes that were revealed only when you signed up for the class, so when E asked me if I was interested for the wilton courses, I said yes immediately... well, almost immediately.

E had done a write-up on the 1st lesson of course 1, while this cake was done during the 2nd lesson of the same course.

I'm glad to have attended this course as I did pick up some tips and techniques for piping. And me being the only leftie in the class, my set of instructions varied slightly from the rest.

Techniques aside, I was quite surprised that alot of stuff are not inlcuded in the course. I was given the straight spatula, instead of the angled one (which will definately be a better choice to be included in the startup kit). They included the small brush for washing tips, which was a very considerate gesture, making washing the tips a much easier. Besides the tools, we had to prepare cakes and buttercream for the class, which I find a chore as I had to find time to get all these ready after work. And the amount of buttercream needed was terrifying to me!

Also I had some issues with the instructor. She was not organised and professional enough. Many a times I wondered if I had signed up with another school, will I be able to learn more? Or is it that my expectations were too high? All these remained to be answered.

At the meantime, I'll try to enjoy the classes. There's only 2 more lessons to go. I'll make sure that I make sure of every minute spend there and learn everything that I should. One thing is for sure tho... practise makes perfect!

Hazelnut Chocolate Mousse Cake and muffins

2009-11-05T09:54:00.005+08:00

I actually marked the wrong date on my calendar when C communicated the order to me last month. Only when C smsed me y'day afternoon asking when she can collect the bakes from me that I realised that I remembered the date wrongly!

Thank goodness I can get the cake ready. It's for C's wedding anniversary and birthday, I definately will not want to disappoint her.

C, I wish you a Happy wedding anniversary and Happy Birthday!

Besides the cake, she also ordered some muffins from me. I decided to use blueberries and peaches for it. Yums!

Cut-out cookies - wedding and others...

2009-11-01T20:23:00.005+08:00

The bride and groom cookies are made specially for Mr and Mrs C! I wish them a Happy Marriage!

Tried out some other cutters that I have. I bought these cutters a long time ago and only now did I take them out to try...After trying out the cookie cutters, I made some mango jelly. Not happy with these even tho' I followed the instructions on the packaging, the jelly turned out way too soft. I also added some nata-de-coco to it.

Strawberry Shortcake

2009-10-28T10:06:00.003+08:00

A moist, fluffy cake with the fragrance of strawberry and splash of kirsh added to the cream makes it oh so irresistable!

Cutout Cookies - 12 dresses

2009-10-28T09:16:00.002+08:00

Pardon the poor photography.

Rum Balls

2009-10-12T10:22:00.004+08:00

Last Saturday was my 10th Wedding Anniversary... My initial plan was to make a double-tier cake, for the fun of it. But as the day neared, I came down with a flu. So I scrapped that plan but still wanted to make some treats to commemorate the day, and finally settled on making some rum balls instead.

Rum balls had been on my to-do list for some time, just because of the cake "scraps" that had been accumulating in my freezer! I'm glad that I finally did these yummy little treats.

2nd round of agar agar moonies

2009-10-03T17:05:00.004+08:00

After trying the agar agar moonies I did earlier, my mom said she loved it. So I kinda promised her I'll make her another set of moonies.

Was trying to think of new flavours for the outer skin and finally settled on Ribena and Osmanthus tea. Quite refreshing and happy with the colours. :)

The leftover fillings I added pandan paste to it and managed to get 2 mini ones.

Agar agar moonies

2009-09-26T18:03:00.007+08:00

Finally I made these mooncakes . It's quite a long process (tho' not tedious) to make these as you need time to set the agar agar part by part. 1st you start with the egg yolk portion. I let it sit in the fridge for 2 nites as I can't find the mojo to continue with it. But being a weekends today, and I was idling at home, there was absolutely no excuses not to complete the whole process.

I bought the egg yolk jelly mold 2 years back, and never got to actually use it coz I was too lazy. It was still in its original shrink-wrap when I took it out 3 days ago! LOLz.

Thanks to Elyn for trying out the recipe, modifying it and finally posting it online. She mentioned that the final mooncakes were rather soft, so I upped the agar agar portion just a tiny little bit. Still, I found that maybe more can be added to achieve that crunchiness I love in agar agar.

Besides the pandan flavour, I made them in yam flavour too.The mini white ones were left over agar agar cutout from the white "fillings" and I added an egg yolk in each of them too.

Wedding cake order

2009-09-19T23:06:00.006+08:00

This is for an order for a wedding today. 20/09/2009.... I heard that there's many couples getting married today! One thing is for sure.... they have no excuses for forgetting their wedding anniversary. :P

I wish Alvin and Nikki a blessed marriage!

Snowskin Mooncakes

2009-09-15T10:23:00.004+08:00

I got a few requests for mooncakes this year but did not really start working on them till now.

These are now ready to go on sale. :)

Email me for orders/enquiries.

Berry Berries - Cranberries/Blueberries lotus paste with strawberry snowskin

Go Green - White lotus paste with melo seeds with green tea snowskin

Yammilicious - Yam filling with almond snowskin

Having fun with cut-out cookies

2009-08-30T21:23:00.005+08:00

Made some cut-out cookies and decorated with fondant. These will be my kids' pressies for their Teachers. Hope their teachers will like them.

These are after I packaged them... tied with ribbons and a gift tag I designed... Lovely isn't it?

Teachers' Day Cuppies

2009-08-30T20:54:00.005+08:00

An order of 12 pcs of cuppies for Teachers' Day.

Teachers' Day falls on Tues, which is a school appointed holiday for all teachers. So students will be presenting their pressies for teachers tomorrow.

Here are the designs....

There's couple of designs which I felt needs improvement. Which do you like best?

Eileen turns one!

2009-08-15T16:40:00.007+08:00

This is for an order of 120 cupcakes and a 7in cake. With dear Elyn's help, I managed to complete it within a day... but boy... so tired that I'm still nursing my poor back today!

Girl figurine made of 50% gumpaste and 50% fondant. Took some time to harden. Letter cutouts using the same formula of gumpaste and fondant.

Total of 4 flavours - chocolate, vanilla, oreo and lemon. So, there's 4 designs for the cupcakes, one for each flavour.

Fancy Boxes with a matching ribbon as packaging.... 6 cupcakes in 1 box.

Alternative packaging. Plain white boxes, with customized message on cover.Cake and cupcakes on the cake stand, Beautiful, isn't it? :P

2009 Food Review #4 - Laska Steamboat

2009-07-29T08:49:00.012+08:00

The very bright signboard along the main road... you won't miss it!
Before the feast began... waiting for the broth to come to a boil.. and more importantly... the ingredients to be served!

Drinks available... the lime juice was quite good.

With some veg inside the broth... again waiting for it to come to a boil. :P

Some of the ingredients for the feast... the pork belly slices shown here... really good as it's very tender, kinda melts in the mouth.

This is a restaurant we ate at 3 months ago for my mom's birthday. It's a new and interesting experience... to have laksa as steamboat broth!

You know how the coconut milk will separate if you continuously boil it... so I was rather sceptical if the broth will be able to withstand the heat thru'out the whole meal. After the feasting, I was rather pleasantly surprise to see that the coconut milk did not separate and it was really good broth! It was "just right" without being too thick or salty. The "pot" had a divider in the middle, which on one side, there was the laksa broth, and in the other, chicken broth, which was good for the kids, as they could not take spicy stuff.

I really had enjoyed the meal as there was a wide selection of ingredients for the steamboat available, tho' the service may be a bit slow... probably due to the crowd that day? One thing tho' that really piqued my curiosity was the way the place was furnished. It was what I would classify as gaudy... hmm... the gold wallpapers, the gold light fixtures and the furniture did not seem to gel at all.

Price-wise, it was rather reasonable, perhaps because we went in a huge group of 15 pax, which tend to bring down the cost/head abit.

I took more pics of the place rather than the food!... guess I was really "intrigued" by the furnishing! LOL....

See the gold wallpaper... and gold paintings that adorned the walls???

Chandelier! and more light fixtures
gaudy

All in all, it would be a place I'll return to when there's a chance. However, for those who drive, it's a challenging to find parking lots. There is a small parking space right in front of the restaurant and some lots available at the next block. Also a few (probably less than 10?) at the small lane behind the building.
real pain in the a**

Here's the addy for those who are interested to try the food:

San Katong Laksa Steamboat Restaurant

404 Telok Blangah Road

Tel: 6275 7069 (reservations recommended, esp for weekends, unless you do not mind waiting abit)

Parting shot of another light fixture.. this one even spins slowly, casting shadows on the ceiling!

Waffles... the bestest!

2009-07-11T23:10:00.006+08:00

I finally got myself a waffle-maker while shopping in town on Thursday. This item had been on my shopping list for a long time but I just did not have the time to go buy one or that the model I'm eyeing at was out of stock at the store. In fact, I wasn't hopeful to be able to buy on that day, and was just trying my luck at the household department. I enquired abt the waffle-maker when I saw the display set. The sales person told me that it's the only set left, but I did not want to get that set coz the waffle plate was chipped off at some corners... so she suggested that I try another shop within that building... and off I went! Guess I was lucky that day... I managed to get a new set from the store... and they only had 2 sets left.

Since I had the waffle-maker on my shopping list, I had been gathering several waffle recipes online too! And today is just the day to try out my new toy and a new recipe.

I'm really happy with the outcome... the recipe's great and the waffles were wolfed down by my kids once ready! However, once the waffles cooled down, it turned soft... hm.. I'm thinking of twitting the recipe next time, replacing some of the plain flour with rice flour, hopefully it'll work fine.

Here's the recipe for you to try. I get 14pcs of waffles from 1 recipe. You can create different variations to it and get chocolate, pandan or even strawberry flavoured waffles from this recipe. Happy waffling!

What you need

1 3/4 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar (I'll add more next time)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 egg whites

What to do

Sift plain flour with baking powder together. Set aside.
Whisk yolks, sugar, salt and milk together.
Whip egg whites till stiff peaks... meanwhile....
Whisk in the sift flour into the egg yolk mixture.
Whisk in oil into batter till combined.
Stir in oil and mix.
GENTLY fold in beaten egg whites, do not over mix.
Pour about 1/2 cup at a time into waffle maker.

2009 food review #3 - The Line, Shangri-la

2009-06-26T16:47:00.008+08:00

Took a day off work yesterday to celebrate Mom's b'day. I booked a table at The Line, located at Shangri-la Hotel. They are having a Birthday promotion now, where you get a discount off the bill depending on your age... for example, Mom's 66 this year, so we got a whopping 66% discount off the bill! It's quite incredible, isn't it? But the catch here is that you have to call exactly 1 month in advance (in my case, 25th May) to try getting a reservation. Each reservation is limited to 8 pax, so the 9th person in your group will have to pay full fare. Thankfully, we went in a group of 8... so no extra charges incurred! :P

Anyway, it was a beautiful day to start with and we reached the resturant just slightly after 12noon. It's buffet style and my 1st visit to the restuarant. The buffet line is really huge! The variety offered is rather overwhelming. I spent a good 15 mins just walking around trying to decide on where to start...

Finally decided that I should "attack" one table at a time. LOLz. I started off with seafood... sashimi and the boiled crabs, prawns, mussles and a must-eat, the oysters... everything was so fresh and succulent! Really relish every bite.

The sushi bar.... yes, those are slabs of salmon, tuna and squid... yum!

Maybe I shd let the pictures do the talking.... BUT I did not capture every dish/line available. The restuarant was enjoying a full house and of course that meant each line had guests q-ing up for food. So I thought I better not be in the way too much. Furthermore, I had my growling stomach to settle too!Roast beef....Couscous, risotto and ravioliOne of my favourites... Laksa. The broth is really thick!Part of the Indian food line....*grin* chocolate fountain! But sadly they only have mashmallow and cakelets for dipping.Selection of bread....Ice cream counter... the mango sherbet is so full of goodness! and chocolate ice-cream is really creamy and not-too sweet. We get to choose from a wide variety of toppings too!AHHHHH... DESSERT.... love love love... need I say more? LOLz...Dessert line again... can you spot those macarons?Fruits... strangely limited selection of fruits available. And the shelf above? those are nonya kuehs.

Frankly, I only sampled 50% of the dishes available, and was stuffed to the brim! There are also a dimsum bar, salad bar and many other dishes that I did not get to try, and the pictures are missing in this post too.
I'll go for this buffet again if the promotion is a long-term affair(let's see who's b'day is coming up next!). Currently, the price for per adult is $44++ and per child is $23++. ++ means additional of 17% (service tax and GST).

Dark Chocolate Macadamia Brownies

2009-06-22T20:37:00.006+08:00

Giving in to my cravings of brownies. :P

Very moist and fudgy.... hmmm... i'm in fudge heaven!
What you need

200gm butter
180gm dark chocolate (broken into pieces)
180gm caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla paste
4 eggs
150gm self-rising flour (sifted)
100g roasted macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
100g dark chocolate droplets

What to do

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, and line an 8-in square cake tin with baking paper and set aside.
Melt 180gm of dark chocolate and butter in a brain marie. Once the mixture is smooth and shiny, set aside to cool for 8-10 minutes.
Once the chocolate mix has cooled, add caster sugar and vanilla extract and whisk in till smooth. Then add the eggs, one at a time, whisking well after each addition. The mixture should be thick and gooey.
Coat the macadamia nuts and 100g of chocolate chunks in flour and set aside.
Fold in the flour into the chocolate mixture.
Fold in the coated macadamia and chocolate droplets.
Pour batter into the lined baking tray and bake for 40-50 minutes, or till a wooden skewer inserted into the middle comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it.
Once baked, allow to cool completely, then chill the brownie in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm it up, making it easier to slice.

Earl grey cheesecake

2009-06-22T11:03:00.007+08:00

Settled on an earl grey cheesecake recipe for Father's Day. From the recipe, I deduced that it shd be similar to the Japanese cheesecake, which is soft, fluffy and light.

However, I underbaked it and that explained the "pear-shaped" figure that the cheesecake spotted. I followed the recipe and baked it for a good 70mins, but I guess it's still not enough. Anyway, after leaving it overnite in the fridge, it tasted good! Moreover, the earl grey taste was not prominent enough... or maybe the cream cheese is too strong? hmm....

Here's the recipe for anyone interested to give it a go.

What you need (for a 9-in cake)
For the base:

120gm crushed oreo cookies
55gm soft butter

For the cake batter:

500gm cream cheese
30gm icing sugar
12gm earl grey tea leaves
150gm water
50gm butter
1 no. egg yolk
2 nos. whole egg
3 nos. egg white (ard 120gm
80gm sugar

What to do

Simmer tea leaves in water for 3 mins. Use 80gm.
Grease mold, lay baking paper at base & wrap base wif alu foil.
Add in butter to crushed oreo cookies. Using a spoon, press and smooth the cookies onto the base of mold.
Melt cream cheese using brain marie and make sure there are no lumps.
Mix in icing sugar.
Beat cream cheese using the mixer, till fluffy. Add in soft butter.
Add in egg yolk and whole eggs and beat till combined.
Add in earl grey tea and some tea leaves (optional)
Place mixture over brain marie but do not on the fire.
Whip egg white till frothy and add in sugar till wet stiff peak.
Lighten cream cheese mix with a little of egg white. Fold in remaining egg white into mixture.
Place mold in water bath, bake at 180C till it turns golden on surface, lower temp to 150C till baked, ard 65-75mins.