My first loaf from the bread maker

This breadmaker is not a new addition. My mother bought it from Phoon Huat many months ago. Today is the first time I use the machine.

My girl is the only person in the family who likes pandan bread (I eat any flavour thou) so instead of buying just for her, I used this chance to bake one for her since I have the pandan juice. I followed the Pandan bread recipe from HappyHomeBaking's blog. I only have 50ml of coconut milk left over from my pandan chiffon cake attempt last week, so I top up the rest with pandan juice (extracted from pandan leaves on my own). I just happily dump all the required ingredients into the machine (mum helpped too), let the machine do some mixing before I stopped it to do some scrapping of the ingredients off the wall of the bread bucket. Then I choose the option for basic bread and light crust, and waited patiently for 3 hours and this is what I have got.

The bread does not have a nice uniform shaped top. Could it be due to the size of bread (using only 250g of flour). After slicing it up, I still think the crust is a little thick. The green colour is not nice, and not much of pandan smell (unlike the bonjour brand pandan bread). See! Anyway I forgot to add in the pandan essence.

The bread texture looks good in the picture right? The bread is ok, but it just doesn't taste like the gardenia bread, or bonjour bread, or even sunshine bread. Those commercial bread are soft and when you tear a slice, you feel like tearing cotton wool, doesn't require much effort. However when I try tearing this homemade one, it is like tearing cheese .. you will feel some pull (if you understand what I mean). Nevertheless, the bread is still soft and fluffy. I wonder how it will taste tomorrow morning. As for the taste test, this bread only passes my girl's. My boy says yucky and the daddy finds that it somehow a slight hint of sourish. I think I need to change the brand of yeast.

Now that I finally tried making bread , I think I gonna find more of such simple bread machine recipes, like chocolate, nutella (from happyhomebaking website) flavour etc.

我終於烘焙麵包啦。成品不是很理想。可能是麵包太小了（才用250克粉）外觀有些怪異 。皮也厚了點。用了椰奶和班蘭汁取代牛奶，但口感對我而言还不錯，當然不能比美外面賣的。期待下次的嘗試。

Chocolate Cheese Cake the 2nd

Last sunday was my granny's birthday. No, I did not bake the birthday cake, my "Kungfu" still not there yet, but I baked a cake to add to the list of existing food. I had no confidence that the cake will make it, so I did not tell my relatives at all. Finally, after much meddling with that new baby, I got an 8" by 8" product.

I used alot of time making this cake because I can't decide if I should use the K beater or the wire whisk. Finally, I choose the K beater. Since I only have one beater and one mixer bowl, I have to wash after I cream the cheese part. When I am about to start my cake batter portion, I realise my SR flour has expired and I have to google for a substitute and finally settled with mixing baking powder and plain flour. The "formula" that I used is to add 1 and a half teaspoon of baking powder to 140g flour to make 140g of SR flour. The recipe called for 120g flour, so I just estimate and mix. I also, out of convenience, reduce the butter by 6g. I also used icing sugar for the cheese mixture rather than caster sugar.

The outcome? The cake has many bumps on the surface, not sure why. It did not rise alot, and I tent it throughout after half the baking time because it is chocolate cake and it is difficult to see if the top is burnt. Since it is for other's consumption, I think I want to see how it taste before letting other people eat it. So I tasted a corner. The chocolate part is rather dry, but the cheese part is defnitely super yummy.

After the gathering, I brought back an empty container. My 2nd aunt took the remainders. All of them who ate said they love the cheese portion and said the same thing "the chocolate part is dry".

My kids did not get to eat any (besides the little bit of sampler) so I baked for them again the next day. This time I use SR flour with the right amount of butter and it resulted in a cake with very moist and soft chocolate part with the same super yummy cheese part. I gave some to my boy's classmate's mum and she also said the cake is very yummy.

The whole cake is gone on the 2nd day. I think the chocolate part taste close to Sara Lee. Wonder if I can just bake the chocolate part portion and "serve" as Sara Lee to my kids. They have finish 4 boxes of Sara Lee this month.

Cake made from SR flour. Rises better.

Changes on the pandan cake

On the 2nd day when I wanted to eat the pandan cake, I noticed there is layer of moist sticky green layer on top of certain parts on the slices of cake. I wonder why is this happening. It happens to the pandan muffins too. See.

Anyway I proceed to eat them and there is nothing wrong with me after that. There is no foul taste or smell too, so I think the cake has not turned bad.

Anyone out there to explain?

Much awaiting Pandan Cake

I have finally baked the pandan cake, with the help of my new baby KitchenAid mixer. Here is the new baby.

I only use it to beat my egg white. Quite happy using it, and most importantly, the sound from the mixer is quite soothing and not too loud.

I used the same recipe again (this is my 4th try) and I take note to save some for cupcakes since my pan is smaller. I can't remember if I should mix the egg white into the egg yolk mixture or other way, but since the mixer's bowl is bigger, I mix the yolk mixture with the egg white mixture. Not quite used to such a big bowl, so I took quite a long time to mix both mixture together. As I blend, I see bubbles popping away.

After the cake went into oven, it rose very high roughly after 5-10 minutes, then as the time goes by, it rose and it started to crack. The final product after 45minutes is a pandan cake with a very explosive top. As usual, I use the lowest shelf and tent the top. I had to go out after the cake and the cupcakes are baked, so I troubled my mother to unmould for me when the cake is cooled, so I did not see the whole cake but the pieces that she already cut. This is how it looks.

As it rose so high, the condensed part at the bottom is expected. This time the pandan cake has bigger holes than the 2nd try (I did not have any cross section picture taken in the 3rd try). I find the cake very moist, unlike those sold in NTUC, but hubby say he like this better as those sold in NTUC are pretty dry.

This time the top is not evenly browned. It seemed to have a "vacuum" at the bottom of the pan, that is why the top seems to have sunk. This also happens to all my pandan cupcakes. Their bottoms are concave. I have 3 more packets of coconut milk. I hope to try again real soon.

買了個新攪拌器，用它做了pandan 蛋糕。 我还得一段時間才能習慣那又大又深的mixer bowl.

在烘爐里，蛋糕發得很厲害，蛋糕頂嚴重“破裂”， 但 裡頭其他部份，那些小洞洞，还真像外邊賣的。期待第五次的製作。

The 3 rings

I have made 3 rings recently. My friend just signed up a beading course and now that I have kaki, I have more motivation.

I shall call it "Brown Square in the ring".

I shall call this "Simply Purple".

For the moment, this will be "Rollie Pearlie".

The first and last ring was made by following instructions from the library book that I borrowed (Beautiful Beaded Rings). The 2nd ring was made following an online tutorial from here. I usually do not wear these accessories, esp after my kids are born. I like to make them though. Soon I will have lots of end products.

Finally - after almost half a year

Finally what? Finally I baked the peanut cookies that we usually eat during CNY. Before the CNY, I am so busy with cleaning, then CNY came and gone, then all those post of CNY cookies made me want to try baking them. After so many reads, I finally understand that peanut cookies are the easiest of the lot so I went ahead to buy peanut powder. That powder has been patiently sitting in my cupboard for roughly 5 months before I finally found time to do it.

Yesterday, I still can't get my cake flour from NTUC (trying to use it on pandan cake), so I use the time to make the peanut cookies. Thou it is easy, but I still took ard half an hour to mix the cookie dough. Perhaps my mixing bowl is too small, so I must stir slowly (excuse!) and also I did not use my hand till the very last 10 minutes.

Then I follow the "mineral bottle mold" method and has a whole 9" by 9" tray of cookies. I put them in without the egg wash (forgetful) so I took them out 5 minutes before the stated time (20 minutes) and do the egg wash. I bake then alittle longer than 20 minutes and took it out. Another smaller batch went in with the egg wash and I purposely baked it longer cos I feel that the 1st batch doesn't have the colour. In the end, they are quite brown!

As usual, my kids do not fancy the cookies, and half of them went down my stomach already. Luckily this recipe only uses 100g oil (excluding the peanut fat). I guess it might be better than eating alot of brownies.

The lighter ones are the first batch.

The first batch out from oven, so neat. :)

I followed the recipe from Florence's blog with some amendments (cos I ran out of icing sugar). I only had 38g of icing sugar, so the rest is compensated by caster sugar. Sweetness is still acceptable, perhaps cos I reduce the total sugar by 10g. Besides that, I just use the sunflower oil I used for cooking.

拖了好久才嘗試了華人過年吃的花生餅。要不是超市沒有蛋糕粉，害我不能嘗試pandan cake，那包花生粉肯定放到過時。做法不難，花的時間不久，大家不妨嘗試嘗試。我用的食譜來自Florence's的部落格。

My first - baked potato chips

I think this is my first and should be my last try of baking potato chips. Either Woman's weekly or Simply Her has a short note on how to bake our own potato chips. Since I have russet potato at home and did not want to make soup with it, I use it to try baking my own chips. Actually I tried two times.

The first time, I painstakingly slice the potato as thin as I can. Then I dry them with kitchen towel, every single piece, then toss them in olive oil and salt, then I lay them on foiled paper baking pan, then into the oven. I do not have a oven thermometer now, so I just turn the knob happily. I watch the potato slices patiently (got all the time since I am not cooking). I see them shrink into small pieces, then it started to turn brown. I feel that they are not crispy yet, so I "oven" them a little more, and wanting to hasten up, so I thought grilling might be faster! So after the grill mode for less than 2 minutes, the chips all turn chocolate brown (instead of golden brown). I still took a piece to taste. No bitter taste thou, proves that it is not completely burnt yet, so I happily finished all the chips) and that small little amount (sorry no pictures) came from one potato only.

The kids are not happy that I did not deliver the potato chips, so they wanted me to make another time. So this time, I sliced it thicker, ard 2mm each slice. I wanted to try what would happen if the slices are not dried (I thought dried slices would result in crispy chips, hmm actually lazy to dry them piece by piece too) , so I just drain dry and toss with olive oil and salt. I also happily turn the oven temperature knob and keep watch carefully. The chips finally turn brownish (at some parts only) after more than 30 minutes. About half of them are still too burnt for the kids to eat, so those went into my tummy. The rest, I split them into half, sprinkle on some Mcdonald's seaweed shaker powder and the kids gobble up in no time (all thanks to the powder I think).

The chips are still not as crispy as those sold outside, perhaps only deep frying will result in that? But I m not going to do that, cos I don't want to clean an oily kitchen. The kids said they love it and ask for more. Anyway, it is really hardwork (cos I am a lazy mum) to produce that little amount of chips (The potato slices really shrink well!), and the time taken to wait for the slices to turn into the chips is a little too much.

Now that I see the amount of chips produced from one potato, I can't imagine how many potato I have eaten whenever I finish a big bag.

Here are how my baked potato chips looked like.

The two different "classes"

The better looking ones closed up

雜誌刊登了一小則自制薯片的方法，剛巧家裡有材料，就姑且一試。第一次，很用心切薄片，一片一片抹乾，加油和鹽，也盯著烘爐，但太急了，火候一時太大，都燒焦了。孩子不甘心我沒給薯片他們，所以吵著還要我再嘗試。我這次就懶了。馬鈴薯片切厚點，只是瀝乾水份，加油和鹽，就送進烘爐。花了好些時間，終於看到薯片開始縮小，變金黃色。可是，我又怕不熟，多等了幾分鐘，結果有些烤焦了。看到圖片的兩堆薯片嗎？一堆孩子的，一堆我的。一粒馬鈴薯就出那一點兒薯片，可想每當我吃完一包，我一共吃了幾粒馬鈴薯！

More simple beading

Just completed what I intended to do for a long time. More bracelets for my girl. Isn't this candy pastel coloured one sweet?

Then I see another simple one from a library book I borrowed some time back. I did not note down the author and title, so cannot give credit here. The book just gave me the idea to match my bungle beads with seed beads to make these bracelets that looked like bangles.

They look pretty nice on my girl's hand, so I made some for myself.

Just for the record. My girl required 18cm of the elastic band, while it is 20 cm for me.

My friend has just signed up a beading course .. so lets hope with motivation from her (she keep making and making and making), I can also shorten my "beading to do list". Of cos, I should be starting my baking soon, since I already got my mixer. Time .... all I needed is time.