Sherlyn's hobbies blog （Sherlyn's 爱好部落格）

A sad news

2012-01-25T22:01:00.000+08:00

Dear friends and readers,

I will be busy with taking care of my mother as she is down with luekemia. I will not be able to handle my hobbies at the moment. Please pardon my absence.

sherlyn

Edible decoration

2011-12-03T04:09:00.000+08:00

I made oreo milkshake for the kids sometime back. I only used the biscuit part and normally discard the cream. Too much of those sweet creams are no good anyway. Before I threw them away, I used them to make into a flower. Maybe it can serve as a decoration in my future oreo cakes? Here is sharing a picture of it.

Coconut Cakes

2011-12-01T01:32:00.001+08:00

I was hoping this could be my entry for the Aspiring Bakers Challenge. However, I am writing this entry late and the method used in the recipe seems to be of the muffin way.

I have always love anything with coconut and I still have a packet of coconut cream that I bought for the purpose of last month's kuih challenge, so I planned to try this recipe when I am browsing the book after the kids' exam. It is a pity the maid side of me took over and I started cleaning the house on the first week when school holiday starts. It also happened that there were half day events like CCA etc in the same week so time flies and I was left with last 3 days of November. I finally made this at 8.30pm on 30th November but only has time to post it now so still not in time for AB challenge. :-(

My understanding was that cupcakes are made by creaming butter with sugar first, or whisking of eggs first. The wet into dry ingredient method usually means muffin. But this recipe with the title "Coconut Cakes with Lime Syrup" has the following short description :-

"These moist, coconut-lime cupcakes make an excellent dessert. for a sweeter touch, replace the yogurt with the same quantity of Chantilly Cream."

See that? It says coconut-lime cupcakes! Later on in the recipe I "attached" below, you will see it is the wet into dry method. So is this still a cupcake? Anyway, to make sure I will make it, I melted the butter before I cook my dinner. So the melted butter was sitting around for about 3-4 hours before it was being used. Would this affect the result? The batter was really very thick, so thick that whatever I spooned into the cupcake liner, it will stay in the shape that it went in. The batter did not change at all after 45 minutes of baking time accept the higher peaks of the batter turned golden brown. For some recipes, the thick batter melts into flat top then rises, some just rises as it is but this, I did not see any changes. The "peaks and valleys" were still where they were when I spooned batter in. The recipe mentioned it only takes 15-20 minutes and it is done when the tops spring back but I actually baked 45 minutes since it took so long for them to turn golden brown on top. After I took out the batch, I started to ponder, do I need to bake till it is golden brown at all? Perhaps they are never meant to be brown tops (book has no picture of the cupcake).

The cakes tasted lovely. Sweetness is just right as I reduced the sugar by 50g. Every one of them have slightly crispy top and a firm body. Every mouthful is filled with the desiccated coconut, just like eating the traditional coconut tart. I love it!

Here comes the recipe, from "desserts - 250 recipes for every occasion"

Coconut Cakes with Lime Syrup (Makes 8 cupcakes)

Coconut Cakes
2 cups (300g) all purpose (plain) flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/3 cups (270g) sugar
1 cup (125g) shredded (desiccated) coconut
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup (250ml) cream of coconut
1 cup (250g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 teaspoon finely grated lime zest
1 cup (250ml) plain yogurt

Lime Syrup
3/4 cup (150g) sugar
3/4 cup (180ml) freshly squeezed lime juice
5 teaspoons finely grated lime zest
1/2 cup (125ml) water

1. Preheat the oven to 350dF (180dC/gas 4). Lightly grease eight muffin cups.

2. To prepare the coconut cakes, mix the flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Add the sugar and coconut, stirring to combine. Combine the eggs, coconut cream, butter, and lime zest in a medium bowl. Whisk until blended to a smooth liquid. Add to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. Pour the batter into prepared muffin cups.

3. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the tops spring back when touched. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then invert onto the rack. Turn right side up and let cool completely.

4. To prepare the lime syrup. combine the sugar, lime juice, lime zest, and water in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat to medium-high and simmer for 5-10 minutes, until thickened to the consistency of honey. Pour a few spoonfuls of syrup over each cupcake. Allow to cool and absorb the lime syrup. Serve with a dollop of yogurt on the side.

Now, doesn't that look simple.

As usual I omitted the syrup, but I am sure it will taste better with the syrup. A little sweet sweet, a little sour sour ....

Here are the cupcakes in oven.

The results - see, no change from uncooked besides the brown top

The firm body

I hope someone will read this post and bake this and let me know what happen to her/his entire process and experience. I would love to see how much it differs from mine.

A Pink Tiramisu

2011-11-25T03:10:00.000+08:00

This is a strawberry tiramisu cake I made for my girl's birthday in the month of Oct. It came from a magazine which I have returned to the library. Unfortunately, I cannot locate the recipe that I have snapped from the magazine and again forgotten to note down the title of the magazine. There are many recipes that I wanted to try in that particular magazine so I will go and hunt for it again in the magazine section. After that I will update the recipe here.

It is a straight forward cake just like any tiramisu. The ingredients are almost the same except for dipping mixture. In place of the usual coffee and coffee liquor, it uses cranberry juice. I remember the magazine said that this cake is kid-friendly. However raw egg is one of the ingredient in the cake. :-(

The process of making the cake is pretty smooth. I asked the boy to help as I knew he would love to have a part in making his sister's birthday cake. He was in charge of cutting the strawberries into small pieces and helped assemble and decorated the cake. Everyone loves how the cake turned out and the taste was great. One thing I was puzzled about was the liquid found at the bottom of the cake. I do not remember giving the finger biscuits extra juices.

Let me get hold of the magazine as soon as possible. I will update the recipe once I get that.

Meanwhile, I will let the picture reminds me that the silver decoration balls went flat/melted into the cake after a night.

It is time for me to sleep again. 3am already. Gotta wake up early to bring kids out and about.

Dessert recipes not to be forgotten

2011-11-24T03:10:00.001+08:00

Was actually tidying my photo gallery halfway when I see alot of photos on things I have made. Time flies. October was gone before I can post up a few recipes that I have tried. These days I have not been staying up later than 12 so hardly get anything personal done. Have to summarise what was done and not recorded in this post so that I can still retry these recipes that I love.

1) 柚子果凍

This is a very simple recipe. I have to use up my ice jelly powder before it expires so I have been very hardworking sourcing for recipes online as well as the library. However, there are so many recipes but hardly any uses 愛玉粉 which is the ice jelly powder. Most recipes uses 寒天粉 which is actually agar agar powder. Out of desperation, I chose a simple recipe and replace the agar agar powder with my ice jelly powder. The kids like it and so do I. As long as it is a cooling tasty dessert, who cares if it is ice jelly powder or agar agar powder. But the ice jelly powder is yellowish.

Ingredients (材料）， for 3－4 people

寒天粉 2g
水 300ml
柚子茶 100g
蜂蜜 2大匙

Method （做法）
1。將水輿寒天粉倒入鍋中開中火加熱，一邊用木匙攪拌一邊將寒天粉煮融。沸騰之後再煮2－3分鐘，一邊攪拌使其完全融解。
2。加入柚子茶輿蜂蜜攪拌融解。
3。倒入杯子內，待稍微降溫之後用保鮮膜封口，放入冰箱冷藏凝固。

This is my Korean Yuzu Tea dessert made from Yuzu tea and ice jelly powder. I have forgotten to take down the title of the book that I got the recipe from (before I return the book to the library).

2. Gula melaka and coconut milk agar agar

Besides this dessert, I also tried making layered agar agar that has coconut milk. I love to eat anything with coconut milk. However, I did not succeed in making the agar agar separated. When it was being pour out, the liquid is a light brownish in colour. Most of my friends whom I shared my concern on the separation issue seem to assure me that the liquid will separate when cool. So I put the agar agar into the fridge and wait. The outcome is still the same, uniformly brown! But like all desserts, as long as they taste good, no one minds. I tried the recipe from Blessed Homemaker. I must clarify that there is nothing wrong with the recipe as many others have got it with the same recipe. My friend did mentioned that the coconut milk I bought in small carton may be the culprit. I have no chance to try again yet as my kids did not take the gula melaka well.

My brown gula melaka coconut milk agar agar.

Ok, I have to sleep now and will find time to post another birthday cake that I have made. *yawn*

I made it to another round of challenge with Bingka Ubi (Baked Tapioca Kueh)

2011-10-20T01:58:00.005+08:00

It is a stretch of 4 off day for my kids as it is blocked off as PSLE marking days. I am pretty happy with the "off" because I am planning to do more by staying up since I need not wake up early to send boy to school. Furthermore, hubby will be outstation so no one to bug me to sleep. *sigh* but my body cannot take it. Cannot deny I am not young anymore.

I have wasted last night and so tonight I am going to update this post while it is still hot! Bingka Ubi was made today! Bingka Ubi's mandarin translation is "烤木薯糕" (baked tapioca kueh - if translated into English from Mandarin).

I love any form of tapioca - in form of chips (spicy or bitter), in its original form steamed and eaten with grated coconut or baked. Me and my mother were having trouble getting tapioca. The NTUC is not selling it, so we have to depend on the wet market. After a few tries, she finally saw it yesterday and she has bought some for me. The amount is enough to make a quarter of the recipe in the book. Luckily a quarter, I am already having trouble finishing them as me and my mother (maybe my girl) will be the only one eating the kueh.

I took probably 45 minutes to grate 450g of tapioca using the mini grater that is sold in NTUC. Quite alright as I have set aside time for this bake today. After that, the steps are easy. Just mix all ingredient and heat the mixture till thick then off it went into the oven. As I did not want to burn the mixture, I use a really small heat so it took quite a while of constant stirring before the mixture seemed to dry up abit. While the mixture is in oven, the whole house smelled of coconut milk (windows are all closed as it was raining heavily). I love it.

However, I think I overbaked my kueh. So disappointed that after all these years of baking, I can still overlook the relationship of baking time and amount of bake. I knew I overbaked, but did not realise I should have adjust the time based on amount of bake. I simply followed the required time to bake which was 95 minutes for a 10" round tray while mine was only an oval pie dish! Furthermore, I only realised the mistake when I was blog hopping just now and chanced upon other bloggers' Bingka Ubi baked under 1 hour for a smaller amount. I can only console myself that I did not think much as I tried to follow as close to the instructions as possible since this is a new bake. Luckily I know how to tent my kueh but I tented it too late. It started browning after 10 - 15 minutes. However I am afraid it will not bake well if I tent it too early (with respect to the 95 minutes baking time). So I had a very brown skin Bingka Ubi, rather tough skin but the inside is still soft and chewy. It also has a natural yellow colour even though the tapioca is whitish. It got its colour from the gula melaka. Good thing I did not use yellow coloring. I also reduce the sugar and the sweetness is just perfect for me.

Here's my pie dish of Bingka Ubi (ya, that corner went into my mouth).

See the dry top. But the inside is a nice yellow. (ok, now you see how dark the base is.)

I ate 1/3 of it and my mother took another third. The last third is in my fridge now. Anyone can advise me how long can I keep them both in room temperature and the fridge?

Ok, here is the recipe from Tempting Kuih（chinese title : 茶粿香), complied by Wong Kee Sun, published by ONE PUBLISHER, library call number : 641.86 AZI - [COO]

Ingredients

1800 gm tapioca (grated)
500 ml thick coconut milk
400 ml water
300 gm gula Melaka
150 gm castor sugar
50 gm milk powder
80 gm butter
1 1/2 tsp fine salt
Little yellow colouring

Method
1. Combine all ingredients stir till even.
2. Stir over heat till mixture is almost thick.
3. Pour into a 10" round mould and bake at 180dC for 95 minutes.

Note :
1. Brush mould with butter at sides and bottom.
2. If prefer a yellow kuih, use 450 gm castor sugar and little yellow colouring.

Note by self to self :
Only made a quarter of the recipe as follows :-

450 gm tapioca (grated)

125 ml thick coconut milk

100 ml water

75 gm gula Melaka

37.5 gm castor sugar (I use only 30 gm for convenience)

12.5 gm milk powder

20 gm butter

1/8 + 1/4 tsp fine salt

The pot of mixture ready to go on stove

The ring of rainbow after I washed the pot

It is a pity my dh only comes back on Friday night. Not sure if I shall keep a piece for him to taste test, but surely no point since it will not be as tasty as when it is fresh from oven.
*sigh* I still do not understand why are my kids rejecting gula Melaka.

I am so happy that I am able to submit this to Aspiring Bakers #12: Traditional Kueh (October 2011), hosted by Small Small Baker.

Birthday cake for my mother

2011-10-01T02:53:00.000+08:00

I seldom succeed in getting a homemade birthday cake ready on time for that special day of anyone... however this time, I delivered the cake to her on the day of my mother's birthday! I am so proud of myself. Haha.

This is a very simple all in recipe, so I gamely try it out as a birthday cake. The recipe asked that all the ingredients be thrown into a food processor and then just bake and decorate. Sounds so easy right? But I do not have food processor and I think the KA can do the job. The recipe is for a 4 layers cake and I half the recipe since I wanted to make a 2 layer one (* struggling to keep awake *).

Even though the butter is relatively soft, after some mixing, there are still cubes of butter not blended into the batter. I chose to leave it because I am worried about the gluten forming when flour is over beaten. But this recipe uses self raising flour .... does this applies to self raising flour too? I am also too lazy to lay the baking paper properly, so I just simply fold and tug to cover the 8 inch tray. I thought the batter would turn more "watery" and then will press out the folds but I was wrong.

The "naked" cake ended up looking like this.

Then I happily (dozed off for a while while writing!) prepare frosting. I did not use the recommended buttercream since I wanted to finish my whip cream in the freezer. I beat the whipping cream with my hands, so tired but I push myself and when finally done, I pour cooled melted chocolate into the cold whipped cream. I am sure all of you know what happens after that. This mistake is the 2nd time. The first time, I pour cool melted chocolate into the whipped cream when I served them ice cream like that of chocolate syrup... but the melted chocolate hardens upon touching the cold whipped cream. I can not imagine I can forget the mistake and made same one again. So in the end, the frosting was a whipped cream with bits of chocolate. Well, 另類 frosting then.

The cake was very sweet. I dare not reduce any sugar as I am afraid the cake will taste bitter if there was not enough sugar to compensate. The inside looked presentable but the cake is on the dry side and crumbly. However, it taste very good with the whipped cream. This is how my decorated cake looked like.

The recipe is taken from BBC Australian Good Food April 2011

Layered Easter Chocolate Cake

Serves 12 Prep 20 mins plus cooling

Cook 35 mins

Super Easy, Family favourite

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (225g) self raising flour

1 1/4 cups (275g) firmly packed brown sugar

250g unsalted butter, softened

75g dark chocolate, melted

1/2 cup (50g) cocoa

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

4 eggs

16 mini Easter eggs, to decorate

Ganache icing

1/2 cup (80ml) cream

160g dark chocolate, chopped

buttercream filling

375g unsalted butter, softened

500g pure icing sugar

1/2 cup (80ml) milk

1. Preheat oven to 180C or 160C. Grease and line two 20cm round pans.

2. Place flour, sugar, butter, chocolate, cocoa, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and 2 tbsp water in a food processor and process until smooth. Spoon into pans, level surfaces and bake for 35 mins, until a skewer inserted into centre comes out clean. Stand for 5 mins, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

3. Meanwhile, to make icing, heat cream in a small pan on medium. Bring to boil. Remove from heat and add chocolate. Stand for 2-3 mins, until chocolate is melted. Whisk until smooth. Stand for 20 mins. until cooled slightly and thickened.

4. To make buttercream filling, use an electric mixer to beat butter until as white as possible. Alternately beat in sugar and milk, starting and finishing with a little sugar.

5. Using a bread knife, split each cake into two layers. Sandwich together all four layers with buttercream. Top with ganache and decorate with Easter eggs. Serve.

For those interested in the texture inside, I hope the picture can help a little.

Phew, I have finally managed an easy birthday cake on time for someone's birthday!

Chocolate Snowskin

2011-09-24T02:57:00.002+08:00

Finally, on my mooncake post. After the first try on mooncake, I am determine to make another batch so that I can participate in AB. The previous try was a snowskin premix powder, so this time I make a trip to Phoon Huat to understand about the ingredients.

I still have sesame paste not used up, but my boy only eats chocolate paste. We bought one box of snowskin from a bakery in JB and he only eats the chocolate snowskin with chocolate filling. As he did not try what was made in the first batch, I am determine to make a chocolate skin with chocolate filling for him.

I googled the net for quite sometime, but no recipe seem simple enough. Then my mother came to my help with her mooncake recipe book which she borrowed from the library a few days ago. There is a recipe on chocolate snowskin mooncake with chocolate lotus filling. I went to gather the ingredients, snowskin powder and lotus filling. I cannot buy chocolate lotus fillings because I will have too much filling to clear.

I am not satisfied with having only one type, so with lotus filling, I made the chocolate lotus filling and I made the chocolate skin as well as the strawberry snowskin from HHB's recipe. Luckily I did not use sesame filling, because I ran out of time. Initially my friend (with her kids) are interested to join me in trying out making mooncakes but after much consideration, I felt that time is too short to allow kids. It was a mad rush and my kids are happy to be able to play with each other instead of helping me out too (thank goodness). Good thing I am still on time to send my girl to school.

I did not make alot of chocolate filling since it is a trial batch. I reduced half the lotus filling with the recipe so that the filling can be more chocolatey. So with two types of filling, two types of skin, there are four combination of mooncakes.

The chocolate lotus filling is dry. Pretty sure it is so because of the additional chocolate. The chocolate skin is ok, not too wet to handle but it gets more difficult to handle as time ticks by. Initially we (my mother came over too) try 20g skin, 30g filling but it is too difficult for us to handle, so we sticked back to 21 - 22g skin, 28g filling. I will challenge the 20,30 next year perhaps.

We still did not get nice prints on the mooncake but I think it has nothing got to do with the mould since my friend can create nice mooncake from the same mould my mother bought from Phoon Huat. The strawberry skin is pretty easy to handle (all thanks to HHB's fine tuning). I did not add any colouring and the pink is very acceptable to me.

I still have both types of filling and the snowskin powder left. Not sure when I will be doing mooncakes but if I do not, what else can I use the powder for?

Here's sharing the chocolate snowskin mooncake recipe from "月餅精選" Published by One Publisher

Ingredients
(A)
130gm water
70gm brown sugar

(B)
40gm cooking chocolate
10gm coco powder
10gm chocolate elmuco (I omitted this)

(C)
20gm shortening
60gm fried glutinous rice flour

Filling
300gm lotus seed paste
1/2 tbsp chocolate elmuco (I omitted)
60gm cooking chocolate (melted)

Method
1) Cook (A) till boil.
2) Add in ingredient (B), mix well. Leave to cool. Then add in ingredient (C). mix become a smooth dough, divide into equal portions.
3) Wrap in chocolate filling, press into the mould and knock it out. Chill to set.

I am not sure how many can this recipe make ? I forgot to count and I have eaten them all up. :)

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #11 : Mid-Autumn Treats (Sept 2011). Too tired again to write any further.

Banana Walnut streusel Pound

2011-09-17T03:17:00.001+08:00

It seems that I have tried alot of recipes in July. Besides the ice cream, the strawberry trifle, the crispy skin chicken wings and garlic bread (thou posted in Aug), I also baked a Banana Walnut Streusel Pound Cake. I have referred the recipe from HHB. It was a great success.

It is almost two months ago that I attempted this recipe. My super ripe bananas is the pushing factor. The bananas stayed in the fridge for a few days before I took the time to bake this pound cake. Thanks to my friend who told me that the banana will stay fresh in the fridge even though the skin turns black. I washed and cleaned the equipment and tray in the morning and the actual action started in the afternoon. I find this method of "slicing up the whole baking job" works for me.

The process is just like any other cake, putting the ingredients one by one into the KA. However, my batter curdles even though I patiently dribbled the eggs in. Not sure if it affected the final product, but even if it did, no one noticed. The new thing about this bake is the streusel. Usually I will totally omit any extra work, but this time, I had the walnuts, the whole ones! I wanted to just sprinkle the walnuts bits (yup, I broke open them and smashed them to big bits) on tops but I am afraid they get burnt. So I obediently followed the recipe and made the streusel dough. In the end, I am so happy with the end product and I am also very happy doing the grating of the streusel dough as it is very fun.

The cake is a hit but the walnut bits are left behind. My kids are not nut people. Please tell me walnuts are healthy and not fattening because I ate all the walnut bits!

I will end this post with the pictures of this lovely cake. Please refer to HHB's blog for the recipe. I must find a time to backup the recipe.

Finally, I am quite up to date on the bakes and makes. The final one will be the snowskin mooncake that I tried this morning for AB challenge. But I must go sleep now .. it is 3.21am .... zzzz....

Easy chocolate Ice Cream - no machine needed

2011-09-17T02:32:00.001+08:00

I googled this recipe off the internet. Luckily I photographed it down with the link. I was trying to use up my Baileys so have to find other ways besides just drinking. This ice cream was made in July 15th.

Here is the recipe from David Lebovitz The Easiest Chocolate Icecream Recipe .... Ever

Easy Chocolate Ice Cream : No Machine Needed
(Makes 4 - 6 scoops)

You will need :
55g Dark chocolate (around 50% cocoa), chopped
80ml milk, whole or low-fat
80ml Baileys liquor
1 medium-sized ripe banana, peeled, and cut into chunks
1 tablespoon (about 15ml) dark rum

Directions :

1. Put chocolate and milk in a medium bowl and melt in microwave. Use 20 second burst and stir well after each.
2. Pour that chocolate milk, Baileys, chopped banana and rum into a blender and whiz together until smooth.
3. Tip into a plastic or metal container, cover, and freeze for at least 4 hours. And that's it.

Isn't that simple? No need for ice cream maker. Did not even mentioned have to take out and whiz for a few times. Well, I find that the texture is not like ice cream. It is more like Gelato texture and it melts very very fast. I read that the banana is there to help create the creamy feel but I did not feel it. This time I do not have nice magazine pictures to tempt you but my melting away one. :-)

Well, I don't think I am going to try this recipe again. Luckily it is a small portion, otherwise I will gain alot of weight just by eating this one.

Strawberry Trifle

2011-09-17T02:10:00.001+08:00

My index are getting more and more disorganised. I started this blog to help me organise the tried recipes but don't think it is helping. Only the recent ones are helpful as I tend to forget what I have baked or made. Wonder if it is possible to revamp the whole index. Haiz.

Anyway, I remembered I made layered desserts before (should be a recipe from HHB) and this should not be my first one, but I could not locate the previous try in my blog (will try harder when have time). I made this on July 7th (as my picture is dated).

It looks very pretty, like this, from the magazine

But mine looked like this :

I do not have much time to bake, so I use the small amount of time to make these simple desserts.

I cannot remember which magazine I have got this recipe from, but it goes like this :-

Strawberry Trifles (Makes 4 servings)

Ingredients

1 tbsp icing sugar
250g strawberries, finely diced and 4 sliced strawberries to garnish
200g sponge cake or pound cake, diced
250g Yoplait Creamy Light Strawberry Yogurt
2 gingersnap biscuit, finely crushed

Directions

1. Sprinkle the icing sugar over the diced strawberries and let them stand for 5 minutes.
2. Line the base with a wine glass with the sponge cake. Top with 1 tbsp strawberry yogurt and 1 tbsp strawberries. Continue to layer until the glass is almost full. Repeat with remaining glasses.
3. Top each cup with the sliced strawberries and sprinkle the gingersnap biscuits over. Serve immediately.

Of course I did not buy any gingersnap. I have used the last few pieces of Sara Lee pound cake so I have scrapped off the pound cake skin sticking to the aluminium foil tray and sprinkled them on top. You did not see it in my cups here because the kids cannot wait till I finish photo-ing it.

I guess desserts cannot be anymore simpler than this assembly job. I did not create the layers but am sure you can. Give this treat to yourself and your family. :-)

p/s : now I am thinking of making it again.

Brownie suitable for breakfast?

2011-09-13T00:19:00.004+08:00

There are nothing for breakfast tomorrow and I am not willing to buy bread today as I am doing marketing tomorrow, so I quickly took out the magazine that I have renewed a couple of times just because I have not tried out the few recipes in it. There are 3 recipes I wanted to try in this Australian GoodFood Magazine but I only have most of the ingredients in one recipe - Triple Chocolate Fudge brownies.

Look how tempting this recipe is with this picture from the magazine.

I marked down this recipe due to the flaky top. I once baked such a brownie but I lost the recipe. However I did not achieve that and I cannot even explained what happened during the whole baking process when it is such a straight forward recipe. Perhaps I should not have meddle any single bit of the process and ingredients.

First, I replaced some white chocolate with cookie and cream chocolates I got from my Perth trip and I even reduced the amount of white chocolate. Then I used chocolate chips as milk chocolate. As the sugar is added into melted butter so I used normal sugar instead of caster sugar as I guessed they will melt anyway. I also reduced the sugar to 50g since my cookies and cream chocolate is very sweet. I also beat the eggs vigorously instead of lightly as instructed because I was thinking of adding more rising power to the brownie (LOL). Perhaps I am all wrong....

The mixture became like a dough. It did not even stick to the sides of my pot. I felt that if I did not reduce the white chocolate amount, I will get an even firm mass of batter.

I have chosen to try out fan mode again. Actually I am not too sure if the mode called "turbo" on my oven is the same as fan mode. The manual said that "convection makes hot air circulate around the food ..." so doesn't that sounds like fan mode? Anyway, halfway through the baking process, the cooking in process batter turned to this below -

The surface has alot of oil, all bubbling. I am not sure why is that so. When baking time is up, I see that the top did not achieved the flaky look, so I turn on the top heat and wanted to dry up the top. This process went around 3-5 minutes. In the end, the brownie seems kind of dry but I still did not get the flaky top. The kids like it thou. I guess it will go well with vanilla ice cream like my friend suggested. Presenting my dry top brownie :-)

After I settled the "no breakfast tomorrow" problem, now I started to wonder if this bake is suitable for breakfast tomorrow..... *sigh*

Here is sharing the recipe from the magazine (Australian GoodFood April 2011) -

Triple chocolate fudge brownies (Makes 16 Prep 10 mins plus cooling Cook 25mins)

125g cold unsalted butter, chopped

200g dark chocolate, chopped

1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar (I used normal sugar and reduce amount to 50g)

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cup (185g) plain flour, sifted
180g white chocolate, chopped ( I think I used around 130g)
100g milk chocolate, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 180dC or 160dC fan. Grease and line a 20cm square cake pan.
2. Place butter and dark chocolate in a small saucepan on low heat and stir until melted. Stir in sugar. Cool for 10 mins.
3. Stir in egg, then flour, and then white and milk chocolate. Spoon mixture into prepared pan. Bake for 20 - 25 mins, until firm to touch, Cook in pan. Cut into 16 squares and serve.

So simple and yet I did not make it. Haiz. I think I will find a time to try this again, follow to the perfect T (but really worried about the sugar and the sweetness).

If there are any health concious readers, the following information that came with the recipe would be helpful to you (but not me :-( ) -

In each brownie 1216 kilojoules, 4g protein, 16g total fat (10g sat fat), 33g carbohydrate (23g sugar), 1g fibre, 31mg sodium.

*phew* I managed to update my blog today with today's bake! :-)

A recipe good to keep - Soy & Ginger Chicken noodles

2011-09-09T03:35:00.002+08:00

No, this is not a baking recipe but I have to type this recipe down for easy reference as it is still a new recipe that I have not put into my routine menu. I cooked this for yesterday's dinner and the whole family love it so much. My kids even ask me to cook it again for today's dinner! It is a one dish wonder - Soy & Ginger Chicken Noodles. This is how the dish looks like in the Kitchen Culture - Food & Travel Magazine Dec 2010 issue.

This recipe has very simple ingredients and very easy to cook. It uses yellow noodles but I am afraid my kids cannot accept the yellow noodles "alkaline" taste so I change the noodle to spagetti. I am so happy that the whole family likes it. I know I will be cooking it again real soon but will add in more ingredients like button mushrooms.

The recipe is as follows (extracted from Kitchen Culture - Food & Travel Dec 2010) :-

2 chicken thighs fillets, skinned
1/2 cup light soy sauce (I converted to 2 tablespoon soy sauce)
1/4 cup mirin (I converted to 1 tablespoon)
2 tbsp sake or white wine (I use chinese cooking wine)
1 tbsp sugar
2 thumb sized pieces of ginger (about 40g)
2 tbsp canola oil
250g fresh yellow noodles
A large handful of kailan or chye sim, sliced
Red chillies, spring onions or coriander leaves to garnish

1) Cut chicken into large dices and place in a bowl with light soy sauce, mirin, sake or white wine, sugar and ginger. Leave to marinate for about 10 minutes.

2) Heat oil in a wok or large frying pan.

3) Remove chicken from marinade (reserve the marinade) and fry over high heat until half cooked, about 2 minutes.

4) Add noodles and 2 tbsp of marinade mixture, and stir fry till evenly mixed. If it looks dry, add a little water.

5) Add vegetables and fry for a further minute, adding more water or marinade of the mixture looks dry.

6) Once the vegetables turn dark green and are cooked through, transfer to a plate and serve, garnished with red chillies and spring onions or corriander leaves.

Mine doesn't look that nice without the chilli and spring onion garnish. Perhaps I should try using dice red bell pepper as a replacement. I must remind myself to go easy on the oil too, cos the last portion of noodles from the bottom of the wok is rather oily. Perhaps due to the extra half tablespoon of sesame oil I put inside the marinate. I have intended to reduce the 2 tablespoon canola to 1.5 tbsp and to change the 0.5 tbsp (of the 1.5 tbsp) of canola into sesame oil for that extra fragrance.
I made a mistake by adding the sesame oil into marinating the chicken meat, so the end product is rather oily as I did not reduce the canola portion. Anyway, there will still be second time to make amendments.

My kids super love this dish. I hope yours too.

First try on Mooncakes

2011-09-08T14:14:00.000+08:00

*This post has to supercede the older bakes and makes cos I need to ride on this post to show some pictures of a plant for a forum purpose.

Mooncakes ah mooncakes ... this item always in my to do list .. just like any others and the CNY cookies. I casually mentioned during my visit to my in law that I wanted to try make snowskin this Sept holiday but has not purchase the powder yet then one of my sister in law promptly gave me a packet of snowskin powder. I declined as I am afraid I will not be able to find the time to purchase the rest of the ingredients but she insisted so I roped in my mother to help (got extra push factor mah).

We have decided that yesterday morning will be D day. It is not her first as she has done it many years ago but it certainly is my first and my kids' first. She came over after my hubby left for work and when we are about to start, I noticed that my laundry hanging outside has been "attacked"!

So we have to spent some time tidying up the mess, rinse the laundry again and it is noontime. I have to cook lunch while my mother go ahead to make the skin for the mooncake. She also taught my kids how to wrap the mooncake but my boy gave up halfway. I managed to make 4 pieces and am quite satisfied with my kungfu. Hee hee. See below and you will not be able to tell which is done by me, my mother or my girl. (ya so my girl is the smartest lah :->)

The designs are not very clear. Not sure if it is due to the insufficient mooncake to fill up the mould (but the mooncake did come to the brim) or the mould is not good (LOL) but I am satisfied that they look pretty decent. We did not try any fancy favour as it is the first time after all. Not too difficult to wrap in my opinion. It is after some read up that there are certain ratio to follow for certain weight of the mooncake. This time it is 20g skin with 28g filling. I must go research more and perhaps try our HHB's strawberry flavour (using strawberry milk).

Below is the cross section of one that I made. I like that the skin thickness is balance all round. Not sure if that is the only one out of the four thou. I don't think I will be able to submit this post to AB challenge since I do not have any recipe. The skin is from premix powder that has shortening packaged together and my mother has threw away the packaging before I can see the amount of ingredients. I hope I can try again soon.

Snowskin mooncake with black sesame filling

Before I go off, I have to use this post to show the plant that fell from the "sky". I need to ask experts how to take care of the plant as I am hopping to adopt it. The rest of my plants died cos I gave them overdose of fertiliser. :-(

I hope I can complete the other post sometime soon, very soon.

Playing with the same recipe

2011-09-04T04:04:00.003+08:00

No one to be blame but myself. I have not been able to stay up late lately. Used to the early rest routine. Not able to motivate myself to try new recipes too, with lack of time I dare not buy new ingredients while trying to finish the old expiring ones. PC has been collecting dust when all I did was to post what I baked and cooked and made to Facebook using the phone.

Today deliberately drank another cup of coffee so that I can stay up to transfer my scribblings (the experiences I had on my bakes) on the pieces of papers stucked on my strong room door to the blog. It really helps when I can just come into my blog on my phone and refer to the recipes that I have tried before. I even told myself that I should do "last out (from oven), first in (to blog)" but now that I am staring at the scribblings, some just did not make sense. I still have to try my best.

I am still busy as ever with "do not know what", but has to use up the expiring ingredients and to provide variety of snack choices for kids to bring for recess, so I did a few rounds of muffins with oat, and chocolate. I had combined the recipe 1 from the banana muffin trial with Nigella's chocolate chocolate-chip muffin (NOTE : this link brings you to Small Small Baker's blog since I refer to the recipe from her site). My "recipe" goes something like this since I half the portions :-

125 g SR flour
37.5 instant oatmeal (Quaker brand - red packaging)
92g sugar
30g butter, melted
92g milk
1 egg
1 tbsp cocoa powder
75g chocolate chips (save 1/4 for topping)

I did worry if the lack of banana and addition of the cocoa powder will make the muffin dry. I cannot remember what is the outcome as this batch is baked in Aug 15th. I vaguely remember it is rather hard and they could be overbaked. However, they were still tasty as the kids protested when my mother took quite a few pieces.

The 2nd time I used the same recipe is on Aug 24th. I had the time, so i tried out fan mode with two trays of mini ones (minis are easier for them to bring to school). I remembered I read that using fan mode, one must turn down the temperature roughly by 20 dC, so I used 190dC this time for 15 minutes. I had a hard time deciding if the muffins were cooked because I was not sure the stick (testing doneness) turns out chocolately due to it being uncooked or that I had poked into a chocolate chip, so I added 3 more minutes. The top tray had hard crust while the bottom try was fine. It is school holiday week now, so let me see if I still have the chance to try this recipe again. This time I must make sure I update the blog asap.

Initially I thought that things will not get burn in fan mode as there is no direct heat, but I was wrong. Some of the chips in the top tray got burnt but the rest are all just nice. The chips inside the muffins are still darker in colour (towards the colour of being burnt) rather than the nice brown on the outside of the cupcake. I still have not solve the mystery of "inside darker colour chololate chip". Haiz.

I am dozing off (at 4am!) so will leave the other items till the next time (hopefully tomorrow night). I hope I talked sense at 4am.

Here's a picture to share that depicts all my "complaints".

The burnt chips on top and those inside

hobby vs "job"

2011-08-04T01:12:00.002+08:00

It has been (almost) another month since I last wrote. I missed the Aspiring Baker Challenge on Swiss Roll! It is really fun to have an aim to work towards but pity, baking is just one of my hobby and my job is housewife. So, I got to manage the kids, the house as well as cook meals (but I love cooking too!). It is not helping that I have to sleep early most of the time since I got to wake up at 6am (tonight not counted as I really want to write something before stuff I want to record down get lost).

For the past few weeks, NLB has this DEAR program where one can borrow up to 12 books! So I spent most of my evening infront of the TV, ears with the Chinese news and eyes over food magazines. Nowadays I use my phone to snap down pictures of recipes that I want to try and of tips that are useful to me. I need to "record" the tips here so that I can easily refer to them when I needed them. I do have alot (of recipes) stored in the harddisk but the "find file" function sometimes is not as trustworthy as the search engine here.

This is one which I find quite interesting. There was a time where steel soap is an in-thing that can remove odor. This tip highlights to us that we had that "soap" all along!

Isn't this interesting?

So I said I have to cook meals right and trying out different/new recipes is really one of my favourite too. I was reading HHB's blog and noticed her crispy skin roasted chicken. I knew I had to try it but I have to do it with wings/drum sticks/ chicken legs. After I have bought required ingredients, and has read her blog in details umpteen times before I set on cooking, I realised that I borrowed that very same magazine home too! Anyway I still refer to her steps since it is tested by someone I knew and can be trusted. I really ended up with crispy skin chicken wings. HHB advised that I try the whole chicken, so that the meat will be more moist but I think to cater for my kids, drumsticks/wings are still the way to go. Here is the proof of the crispy skin.

I also tried my hands on garlic bread, with homemade garlic spread on the free hotdog buns that came with the Gardenia white bread every weekend and were very well received by my family members. Just a few days ago, I made pancake for breakfast too and had a go with making mickey mouse and mickey's hand shape pancake. Not a success thou. I used the stainless cookie cutter dipped in butter but the batter still stuck to the cutters. So I had to remove the whole cutter thing and push out the half cooked pancakes and return them to pan. Due to this trouble, I only made one each, haha.

It is 1am now. Got to wrap up. I need to write my experience on baking HHB's banana walnut streusel pound cake another day.

Here's sharing this investment strategy that I find interesting, also from a food magazine.

Good night.

Something new from Down Under

2011-07-10T01:08:00.000+08:00

It has been a month since I last post. I thought I will have more time to bake during the school holiday and perhaps also to engage the kids in baking, but no, I was wrong. The holiday flew pass.

The first weekend was spent on board Royal Carribean and there are housework to be done when we came back. After that, I have to go searching for cheap winter wear for the kids in preparation for the Perth trip on the last week of the school holiday. Top that with alot of last minute research, planning, booking and finally flew off.

We came back right before school starts, so besides kicking in the routine, I have housework and this is the first time I touch the PC at night as I did not stay past 12 midnight previously.

I have no bake to share, but I knew Aspiring bakers are on swiss roll this month .. I hope I can have time to join.

This post will then be dedicated to new fruits that I got to know during the Perth Trip.

This is called Tamarillo. I found this in the farm we stayed. The owner say this is a delicacy. The market there sells one for around AUZ70cents. The owner of the farm has warned me that he did not like the taste and it is like passionfruit and has also advised me to sprinkle sugar on top before I eat it.
I finally got a chance to try it on the next night after we are back. The inside does look like passionfruit with little seeds. The taste is a little sour and a little mild sweet but I can take it. No one else in my family wants it. Here are the pictures of the insides.

Besides the above fruit of the size of an egg, I got to taste another fruit from the "wild". We are touring the Caversham Wildlife Park when I see the Park's staff picking up fruits from the ground and the tree into a basket. More daring overseas, so I went over to KPO. The staff told me (of course upon me asking), those are called Irish Strawberries. She is collecting them for feeds to the birds in the park. I asked if they can be consume by human (silly question?) and she said yes, but not those on the floor. So I pluck one out from the short tree (or should I say shrub) and I munched it. It was sweet. Let me show you how it looked.

The berry

With this, I leave you to goggle more about the fruits I talked about if you are interested.

Two recipes of Banana muffin

2011-06-04T02:18:00.001+08:00

Purposely bought a bigger bunch of banana so that I can try out these two recipes in the library books. However, I am busy with "not sure what" that I have to fridge my spotty banana in the fridge till the skin turn black. That forces me to find a time to do it.

This was done before I went away for a weekend cruise. I have no time to update then so I cannot remember much about the experience, or any hiccups (Haiz, so old already) but the only thing that I remember was, the muffins are not oily, both types. After I eat them, I do not even need to wash hands with soap!

The kids helped with the mixing and scooping. They are as excited as me because these are done with the new oven. As the muffins are of the ever popular flavour, there was no problem of "excess stocks". I have to type down these two tried recipes before the books are to be returned to the library. Wish I will be able to find them again, because there are still quite a few recipes I would like to try out.

Recipe 1, taken from Great Tastes Little Cakes published by Bay Books

Banana Muffins (Makes 12)
250 g (9 oz / 2 cups) self-raising flour
75 g (2 1/2 oz / 1 cup) oat bran
185 g (6 1/2 oz / 3/4 cup) caster sugar
60 g (2 1/4 oz) unsalted butter, melted
185 ml (6 fl oz / 3/4 cup) milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
240 g (8 1/2 oz / 1 cup) mashed, ripe banana (2 medium bananas)

1. Preheat the oven to 210 dC (415F / Gas 6-7). Lightly grease a 12 hole standard muffin tin. Sift the flour into a large bowl and add the oat bran and the sugar. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients.

2. Combine the butter, milk, eggs and banana in a separate mixing bowl and add to the flour mixture all at once. Using a wooden spoon, stir until just mixed. Do not overmix - the batter should remain lumpy.

3. Spoon mixture into the prepared tin. Bake for 15 minutes, or until puffed and brown. Leave in tin for 5 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Note : For an extra treat, beat 100g ( 3 1/2 oz) cream cheese, 2 tablespoons icing sugar and 2 teaspoons lemon juice with electric beaters until light and creamy. Spread over muffins and top with dried banana slices.

Recipe 2, taken from healthy lunchboxes for kids by Amanda Grant

muffins (makes 12)
50 g butter (or sunflower oil)
300 g self raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
80 g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
110 ml natural yogurt (if you don't have yogurt, you could use milk)
110 ml milk
a few drops of vanilla extract
2 big handfuls of berries (e.g. blueberries or raspberries) - I replaced it with mash banana

1. Preheat the oven 200dC (400F) gas 6. Line the 12 muffin holes with paper cases - if you don't have any, just grease the muffin holes really well with butter.

2. Melt the butter in the microwave or in a small pan. Leave to cool slightly. Sift the flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Add the sugar to the flour.

3. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs with a fork, add the yoghurt, milk, vanilla extract and melted butter.

4. Quickly and gently mix everything together in the large bowl. Don't over-mix or your muffins will not be light. Quick fold in the fruit, and then spoon the mixture into the cases.

5. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until well risen and golden brown. Take the muffins out of the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack. When they have completely cooled, place in an airtight container, or you could bag, label, and freeze half for another time.

I halved both the recipes. I like the first recipe as it uses oat. I like the second recipe as it is very versatile. The author said that the muffins can be freeze and she encourages experimenting with different fruit. That is why I use banana. Here's sharing with you the products - product of recipe 1 in ikea paper case, product of recipe 2 in white cup.

I think handmix mufins are really good for my kids' bento. Easy to make and best do them in mini cases so that the muffins can fit into their bento boxes. However, in my case, baking is a troublesome process, because my oven is also a storage place. Not only do I need to move away the stuff I put on the counter top infront of the oven, I also have to move out the baking trays in the oven, as well as a oven toaster on top of my oven before I can start a baking session. If only I had more counter top space.

This is the new oven at work, now with lights so that baking can also be done at night. ;-)

p/s : Anyone has idea how to enter fractions that are used in dictating the measurement of ingredients? I hope the recipes are understandable.

More tries on sandwich maker

2011-05-24T01:46:00.000+08:00

Previously, I folded it triangular ... this time I tried rectangular. However, the milk toast is not big enough!!! So one end is still not seal properly.

So can you see that the sealed line actually pressed on the bread skin? It will not work this way, so I still have one end opened bread.

I tried one more time, with two pieces of bread, but once the sealed line pressed on the bread skin, the part will not be sealed.

So after two more tests, I think can more or less conclude that the bread need not be steam soft before it can be sealed.

Also, I will be using a new oven for future bakes. The old one is working but my mother who has shifted further away from me (used to be next block) wanted the oven back to do occasional baking, so she asked me to get a new one. With the limited tabletop space, I do not have much choices and thus settled for the below.

The salesman says this is the latest model, has double layer glass door for better heat retention, with light (a must for me) and got self clean wall. However, I am not very happy with the wall that has coating that will come off.

See, even before I use, the coating is already off a little. I wonder if there will be any problem with heating up this chemical coated wall... but I really have not much choice due the the space limit. I hope to start baking soon.

Another nice drink

2011-05-19T03:35:00.002+08:00

Long long time ago, I ordered this drink 西洋菜蜜棗水 from Macau Express in Expo and I liked it very much. I was recently told it is also served in Crystal Jade. I remembered asking my friend from Hong Kong to share the recipe, but I had since "lost" the email in the inbox.

Actually, my intention is to cook watercress soup as requested by hubby but it is such a big bunch of watercress (bought from NTUC) so I think the taste will be too overpowering if I used all. I wouldn't want to drink the soup again 2 days later (I will definitely have leftovers since kids will only drink a little) so I had the idea to cook it into the sweet drink. I googled the net for recipe (in mandarin) but it returns mostly the version with pork/pork bones. Finally I found one. My hubby thinks the drink is close to what we have then, but the watercress taste is still rather strong. I am only using 100g of watercress to abt 1.5 litre. So I will try to reduce the watercress portion the next time I try.

This drink is said to be good for the lungs and for cough. No matter what it is for, it will be a good drink.

p/s : I happened to itchy hand, google with english and it returned with more results. Perhaps will try the rest of the recipes the next time.

My hobby blog

2011-05-19T02:55:00.000+08:00

Long time ago, when I started baking, I had problem trying to keep track of the recipes that I have tried. I even went to the extend of using Microsoft Access, trying to create a database to enter the recipes and to create keywords where I can based on when I need to do a search. Of course, this did not work, so I rely on my blog now to keep track of what I have tried before and the respective recipes. However, I think my labeling is not organized, but I guess I have to live with it since it will be another tedious task to relabel. I am not adventurous to try porting the whole blog to another new platform too.

Just a few days ago, I noticed a recent blog post from my friend's blog (using blogger) went missing. There were also comments in Facebook from other bloggers (using blogger too) that their recent posts were also missing. I am not sure if there are any "damage" on my blog, but it is not noticeable to me yet.

SSB from www.smallsmallbaker.blogspot.com has kindly shared the way to back up the blog. I am going to do that now. I wouldn't want the recipes to go all missing. Thank you SSB.

Cool stuffs for hot weather

2011-05-19T02:21:00.003+08:00

Did this drink cool you down? It is so hot nowadays that I am making more drinks and cold desserts. This is lemonade. My friend June (June, thank you very much for sharing) posted her drink over Facebook and it looks so refreshing, so I just have to try it out since I have ready ingredients. Furthermore hubby is not in town half the week so there is no one to help with eating the bakes...

After cooking both ingredients together, I had around 400 - 500 ml of syrup. I waited for the syrup to cool a little before adding the lemon. I cannot remember how much water did I add, but after adding alot alot alot more water, it is still quite sweet. However, my kids went "I am in heaven (imagine them dancing and prancing round) .. I am in heaven ..." after they took a sip of the drink. (*grin*)

After making this lemonade .. I tried my hands on Panna Cotta. I got the recipe from a book I borrowed from the Clementi Library. The recipes featured in this book is rather straight forward and simple enough and I am thinking of adding it to my bookshelf. I am very happy with the taste of this dessert but the presentation and the assembling method needed improvement! Let you see what I mean.

Did you see the pretty red jelly rising up through the cream layer like molten lava? I thought the jelly layer has set after like 30 minutes in the fridge .. but it proves not. So when I had the warm cream pour onto the jelly layer .. this happens... Anyway, not very unsightly and after topping up with jelly again .. all we have to do is wait for the dessert to set and the night to fall. I must say I really like to eat this. I think there is a high chance for me to make this again because this is indeed a good way to use up whip cream. I had problem finding small strawberries to decorate the little cups (to look like what is shown in the book and some restaurants) but they are tasty on their own.

Here's the recipe (from 簡易蛋糕甜品自煮樂－芝芝著）which I will need again.

Ingredients ( makes 4-5 dessert cups)

strawberry jelly
- 1 pack of strawberry flavoured jelly powder
- some hot water
- some powdered gelatin

Panna Cotta
- 150g whipping cream
- 150g milk
- 30 sugar
- 5g leaf gelatin (same weight if used powdered gelatin)

Method

Making strawberry jelly
1. Follow the instructions printed on strawberry jelly powder packaging. Dissolve jelly powder and powdered gelatin in some hot water. Pour into dessert cups. Chill in fridge until set.

Making panna cotta
2. Combine whipping cream, sugar and milk in pot. Heat over low heat for 1 minute. Turn heat off.
3. Add soaked leaf gelatin. Gently stir until gelatin dissolves. Let cool. Pour into dessert cups. Chill in fridge until set.

After making the above successfully, I had the idea of trying out the chocolate panna cotta. This time I have to google for recipe. I found one off the net, but forgot to copy down the source. The ingredient are as below.

Chocolate Panna Cotta

400ml cream
200ml milk
40g sugar
125g dark chocolate
14g gelatin

I did not copy down the method as I believed it should roughly be the same. I did read to make sure that gelatin is still the last one to add. However, this time, the chocolate did not melt nicely. There are specks of chocolate which never did get dissolved. I even made two version, normal fresh milk and chocolate milk. The chocolate version is more tough than the white version. I still like the white version better. Here is the no frills (ie no deco) chocolate panna cotta.

There are wordings on the bottom of the mould, so the pudding has the prints. The kids, upon seeing the prints, said that the pudding is like store bought, with the brand on it. LOL.

Now I wonder how much weight did I gain after eating all these.

The sandwich maker

2011-05-11T23:47:00.001+08:00

This is the sandwich maker that my friend has posted to me as a gift. Thank you very much my dear friend.

Lovely pink and white. The instruction is to soften the bread by first microwaving the bread. I did not have a microwave, and is too lazy to steam just a piece, so I went ahead to try with the Junior Thick white bread which I find that it is pretty soft. I made extra scramble eggs today for the trial.

The piece of bread actually fits nicely onto the square rim (which should be the sealing part), but when I folded it, somehow the skin got into the way and I ended up with this :-

This side does not look nice

This side looks so much better

I will try again with normal slice of bread.

Bread machine failure

2011-05-11T00:42:00.000+08:00

No, no baking stuff today. Did tried, but ....

Wanting to try the soft soft bread machine chocolate bread again... was rushing to it because I needed to go marketing to buy ingredients before I can cook the dinner. I measured the liquid ingredients into the bread machine then realized that I have not measure out the butter! So I purposely cut it thin thin slices so that it will be softer sooner while grumbling that I should have tried using soft margarine instead. Flour in, all ready and the machine is set to run.

2 minutes into the process, funny sounds were heard. I suspected the blade is not inserted properly. Stopped machine to check but everything's ok. Restarted machine again and sound was not heard. After a while, my mother called to me (while I am scolding my boy in the study), telling me that the dough was not turning. The motor was running but the dough was not turning. The machine was stopped and bin taken out. The rotating device was found to be not turning, thus not turning the blade in the bin. Due to time constraint, the dough was thrown away.

The machine is now pronounced 'vegetable'. We have to contact Phoon Huat to check if they do 'limb' part replacement. So no more bread making for the time being. If Phoon Huat is not going to help, the machine will be pronounced dead. My $600 is going to be used to purchase new oven .. and some new baking tools since my mother will be taking some back to her new place... wonder shd I get a new bread machine .... This machine is still so new and has not seen many bread being baked inside ..... but yet ....

I shall end the post with the cooling tea I brewed today.

It is a mixture of chrysanthemum and 金銀花。Let's us keep ourself cool in this hot weather. Take care, my friends.

Assortment - Mango pudding, pancake and biscuit

2011-05-10T00:15:00.001+08:00

I must have gone crazy. Been thinking about baking and making desserts only. Then I eat and eat and eat and complain about getting fat. It is very difficult (*grin*) for me to find a time to exercise. You see, I wake at 6am daily to prep big boy to school, then I have to rush home to my still sleeping princess so that my dear hubby can go to work. I will then start the day dry mopping my house, prep girl breakie .. blah blah blah .. then prep lunch, and a whole day of housework plus squeezing in coaching then finally can sit down on sofa for TV after kids sleep. I cannot be exercising at this time cos I have showered. (*grin*)

Ok.. so what have I done this time. I made pancakes for breakfast few days ago. First time making my own! Serious. It has been in my mind after I watch Jamie's program where he shares the 1 cup recipe - one cup flour, one cup milk, and one egg. However I am not adventurous enough to follow his recipe of using any cup for measurement, so I went to ask my friend Lindy for her recipe. Guess what, she told me she did hers in 'agar-ation'. So in the end, I did 'rojak' - one egg, one cup flour and pour the milk (my friend's method) till the mixed batter is in the consistency I want. I even added in a mashed banana halfway through pan frying because I am worried hubby do not like the banana taste. The pancake took quite a while to bubble (a signal that I should flip the pancake over to cook the other side), so perhaps it means my batter is a little too thick for the bubbles to break through. :-)

So here's the breakfast that the kids gave thumbs up that morning.

I also baked the "German Melt in the mouth" cookie again (now I feel like eating them again!). This time I did not use mixer because the butter is very very soft. I went to coach the kids after leaving the butter to warm up to room temperature and I forgot about it so it is near noon when I started creaming the butter. It is still tiring using hand to cream soft butter, so I think I did not do quite a good job, but as long as the icing sugar, butter and both types of flour came together, I just go ahead to bake the cookies. It ended up very well and tasty and melt in the mouth too. So I am not going to use the mixer for this cookie the next time. I gave a few pieces to my boy's piano teacher when she left. Wonder if she will give feedback....

the bunch of cookies

Mango pudding follows the cookies. Ya, I skipped lunch. The 2 mangoes cannot wait. They have been in my fridge for more than a week! I am suppose to puree them but too lazy to do so many task in this hot weather, so I roughly chop them up and mashed them with a fork to bits. I did not have enough (as expected) and I topped up with mango puree bought from Phoon Huat (unwillingly). I did this pudding in super fast speed because I still have ironing and dinner to do. Not very happy with the result. I think gelatin is not enough because the pudding is very soft, but again, the kids are very happy and finish the whole cup.

Here's the pudding (picture not very appetizing ya? LOL) and the link where I got the recipe from.

There are still many in my to do list .. but I still hopes to improve on the pudding...

So warm .. should I go get one cup or should I go sleep? :-)

Smooth top bread machine chocolate bread

2011-05-06T01:29:00.002+08:00

Looks like I am quite free hor, able to have a new post every night. Actually I am not, just that I ignored the housework and my kids since my hubby is not around.

I made a bread today, a bread machine bread. No, not from the book that my dear friend has given me yet, but a recipe that I happened to come across and the blog showed great results and even give tips on how to make a good machine bread. It is from Cook.Bake.Love. Indeed, recipe makes a difference.

This time, my bread has a smoother top, a much much smoother one. However, I do not understand how come there is a crack on top and it looks like a big potato. LOL. Let you take a look.

I also heed the advice of stopping the machine 10 - 15 minutes before times up and I noticed, yes , no thick crust. Infact the crust is not noticeable at all! However, I am not sure if the bread is totally cooked, but it did sound hollow when I knock on it all sides using a fork. And now while writing this post and revisiting the recipe, I have put half a tsp less of yeast! I am eager to try again to see if the top will still be as smooth. I tried another recipe twice and both gave very ugly top. You can look at it here.

I can never cut thin slices!

Look ! Like no crust ya? ! And this is the first piece somemore!

A very tasty bread indeed. I ate two (the first and the last piece) right after dinner. How to slim down like that? No time to exercise and lots of time for supper.

I am eager to buy a new bottle of yeast to try out again. Let's see if this one remains soft tomorrow.

A lovely drink and "a leg" into something new

2011-05-05T01:52:00.001+08:00

First of all, I want to say Happy Belated Birthday to my blogger/email friend here (thou I have done it there too). I just hopped over from her blog. As I read her post, I felt embarrassed for not being able to give her even a simple birthday card. She has surprised me with a breadmaking book, then followed with Korean tea and recently a sandwich maker when she knew that I do simple bentos for my kids' recess. However, I do not have her mailing address so 沒法回她的多番好意。I will bear in mind, 有心不怕遲........ I am happy she has enjoyed her birthday.

Recently, been visiting the library very very often, almost daily, because the Clementi Library is opened. It has many many many new cookbooks, hobby books and so now I feel that my 6 books a card is not enough. I now have a few food magazine with recipes I want to try and beading magazines with jewelries I want to mimic, so my mind is constantly hoping for long personal time to do what I want but yet my hubby is not around these few weeks (accept weekend where it is enrichment and outdoor time for kids), so I have to go slow. Last weekend I aim to do four tasks but only managed to make the chocolate cupcakes found in a library book and the 糖水 that is found in a travel magazine.

Now I want to share the recipe for this 糖水 since I like it so much. The recipe says served chilled after a meal of sticky, glazed ribs. Sounds good to me, but I know my mother and mother in law would never agree to drinking 糖水 cold.

The picture in the travel magazine is so very tempting. However, what you get to see is what I cooked :).

Pardon the grainy picture, but it is a tasty drink. Here is the recipe.

Longan and Red Date Tong Shui

2 and 1/2 litre water

1 cup dried red dates

1 cup dried longans

100g honey rock sugar

1 cup dried chrysanthemum flowers

1) Bring water to a boil. Add remaining ingredients and allow the mixture to boil gently for 20 minutes.

2) Set aside to cool, then chill in the refrigerator. Serve cold, with a generous helping of the delicious aromatics.

Taken from Food and Travel April 2011 issue

Easy isn't it?

Besides cooking the 糖水... I have finally mustered enough courage to do a simple card with my scrapbooking supplies. Yes, I have not mastered anything and yet 又插一腳 into something so complicated. 我真該打。

The card is for a girl, who is my boy's classmate so I got him to do it with me. We spent quite a lot of time deciding on the papers. He decides over a few choices of layout and get to mix and match from choice of few pieces of papers. I did the cutting for him and the card is assembled. There, the first card. He enjoyed sticking the letterings on his own.

I hope I have more time to indulge in my hobbies.

Supporting AB again - chocolate cupcakes

2011-05-04T01:10:00.002+08:00

I did "Individual Milk Chocolate Cupcakes" (what a long name!) this morning with my girl. I started at around 10am and finishes at 12pm, with her help! But it is suppose to be very very simple.

Since she started PM session, she has not much chance of baking with me, so when I came across this recipe from this book I just borrowed from the new Clementi Library, I knew I just have to do it. However, I find that this recipe is rather familar. I cannot recall where is the similar recipe. Anyway, that is not so important. The important thing is, this recipe is easy, uses the ingredients I have on hand and also very much want to "get rid" of due to the soon to come expiry date.

The recipe goes like this :-

Inidividual Milk Chocolate Cupcakes (Makes 12)

75g (2 and 3/4 oz) unsalted butter
75g (2 and 3/4 oz or half cup) milk chocolate chopped
80g (2 and 3/4 oz or 1/3 cup) firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
60g (2 and 1/4 oz or half cup) self raising flour, sifted

Ganache
80g (2 and 3/4 oz or heaped half cup) milk chocolate chopped
2 tablespoons thick (double/heavy) cream

1. Preheat the oven to 160 dC (315dF/ Gas 2-3). Line a flat-bottomed 12-hole cupcake tray with paper cases. Put the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan of simmering water - make sure the base of the bowl doesn't touch the water. Stir until melted and combined. Remove the bowl from the heat, add the sugar and egg and mix. Stir in the flour.

2. Transfer the mixture to a measuring bowl and pour into the paper cases. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of a cake comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

3. To make the ganache, place the chocolate and cream in a heatproof bowl. Place over a saucepan of simmering water, making sure that the base of the bowl doesn't touch the water. Once the chocolate has almost melted, remove the bowl from the heat and stir until the remaining chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. Allow to cool for about 8 minutes, or until thicken slightly. Return cakes to the cold cupcake tin to keep them stable while you spread one heaped teaspoon of ganache over the top.

Recipe taken from Great Tastes Little Cakes published by Bay Books (sorry no author)

See, that is the end. Easy isn't it? I let my girl stir the chocolate and butter while I prepare lunch. I use dark chocolate couverture instead of milk chocolate by the way, dark chocolate healthier ya? Then I poured in the sugar first (to melt them with the heat), after that wait for the mixture to cool down before I poured in the egg (incase the egg gets cooked). The mixture is pretty warm and I did not bother if the bowl touches the simmering water. What is the rational for not allowing bowl to touch the water? Can anyone tell me?

The batter consistency is not too runny, but it has alot of bubbles, so not sure if it is from the raising agent in the self raising flour or due to my constant vigorous stiring. So, pretty straight forward, but after filling my 12 mini cupcakes I still have some left. I guess the recipe is for a 12 hole big muffin tray? After a round of 25 minutes, I baked the rest (6 only). Not sure if it is due to the batter not covered, I noticed the batter turned alot stickier and thicker, and not so easy to pour the second round. Anyway my girl and I used spoon to scoop, thus we took a long time to fill the tray.

The resulted cupcakes are very nice and soft when warm, but looked very ugly because of the holes on top (perhaps resulted from the airy batter). After cool down, has a hard top and I feel that it is a little to the dry side. Perhaps I over baked. Should try again and bake only the standard mini muffin timing like 10 to 20 minutes.

Here's how ugly they looked.

the "solid" inside :-)

I am participating Aspiring Bakers #7 - Chocolate Delight (May 2011) hosted by DG from Tested and Tasted with this entry.

p/s : I am sorry I have to type degree Celsius in dC and fahrenheit in dF .. and the fractions ... sigh, cos I do not know how to enter special characters.

Combined post - Handmix Chocolate muffin & Melt in mouth cookie

2011-04-27T01:22:00.005+08:00

Please pardon me for being lazy, combining my bakes into a post, but these bakes are pretty straight forward.

Early April, when I should be trying out to bake a mango mousse cake for my boy's birthday, I chickened out and did a simpler one - chocolate chip muffins (which just requires me to hand mix wet into dry). I learnt from Happy Home Baking that it is called "two bowl muffin". The baking process was pretty plain sailing as far as I can remember but as usual the muffins took longer as stated to be cooked. Still wondering if that is the reason for the chocolate chips looking burnt. Anyway, hop over to HHB's website for her fantastic recipe on this bake. I should be trying this out again, half the recipe and make them as mini muffin. Here is sharing my result.

The gooey mix

The open cups

The results

the burnt chips

chocolatey muffins

Now, this is my latest bake and one of the most satisfied one. So satisfied with the results that I gave some away. It is the (drum rolls) melt-in-mouth German cookies. Look how it caught my attention when Small Small Baker did it. Furthermore, this recipe also uses an ingredient that has been sitting there for months after I bought it for a chinese dish- the potato starch.

The process is very straight forward as I have mentioned. The "rolling dough into a ball" part is also very fun,and I guess it is suitable as a parent and child bonding recipe. The baking process is not too long but since my oven tends to take longer time to bake, I baked for a longer period and the cookies became brown (when I should not have brown it). Despite this, the cookies are so yummy, so "melt in the mouth" that I cannot stop eating. The whole family gave thumbs up for this cookie too. Now if you did not hop over to SSB's blog to get tempted, then let my "not so well taken" photo tempt you.

Now quick go try bake it. You will not regret.

Brown sugar mini muffins

2011-04-27T00:50:00.001+08:00

Wao, seems like I am very free? Not really, just that there is a need to have some breakfast for some days, and also I am only doing fried rice for simple dinner on some days. Ironing was done over weekend so I had the chance to bake. This is baked shortly after the cream cheese chocolate cookie.

I had wanted to try this - Brown sugar mini muffins ever since I see it in this blog. The recipe uses simple ingredients, esp one that I wish to "get rid" sooner - brown sugar. I had this pack of brown sugar for a long time. It has harden despite the fact that I put it in the fridge (in a container somemore!). Can anyone tell me how to keep the brown sugar from hardening?

I feel that this recipe is not that sinful and a little healthier because it is half fat to the flour used and it uses brown sugar instead of white sugar. Brown sugar is better isn't it? The method is also easy, everything throw into mixer in order. The only thing is, how to cream the sugar to pale and fluffy when I am using brown sugar. The creamed butter still seem brownish. Anyway, 無驚無險，the batter is mixed and then scooped into mini muffin paper cases lined inside my 12 holed mini muffin pan. The baking process is also not very eventful. The mini muffins rose as desired and browned as desired too. Very soon, the mini muffins are out. The recipe I referred to can make 14 mini muffins, but I am able to make 12 mini ones, plus 12 heart shaped one.

Yes, I bought a new pan, like the mini muffin pan but in heart shape. I cannot find heard shaped liner, thus I baked the muffins direct in it (since it is non stick pan). The end product is not so "heart" looking because I "squeeze" too much batter into each "heart" as I did not want to bake another half pan.

Here are how my mini muffins looked like.

No price guessing why is there a hole in each muffin :-)

I wondered, this recipe calls for 1.5 tsp of baking powder with 110g cake flour but how come the mini muffins are not puffing up very much?

The muffin is very soft when just out from oven but it taste good (and not too sweet)) when cooled. I feel that it is rather plain looking so perhaps when I serve the kids this, I will spread a layer of kaya or nutella on top. It will also served as a cover for the brown dotted surface. Why is the surface dotted? Brown sugar not melted?

Anyway my family big and small, all liked this muffin ..

Strike when the iron's hot

2011-04-16T03:08:00.007+08:00

What iron is hot? - I baked cookies today! So I must blog now, if not, it will be like the chocolate chip muffin post (not done as of now, but muffin baked like 1-2 weeks ago).

Philly cheese are getting expensive... so previously when there is sales, I bought two (very greedy!). Then as usual, they will sit in the fridge till near expire then I get very kan cheong. So I used one on the pineapple cheese cake, and I am determine to try a drop cookie recipe with cheese next. As my hersley mini chips are also near expiry, I also need to clear them. I look through the usual blogs but could not find a cream cheese chocolate chip cookie recipe, so I googled.

I took the recipe from here. I converted the measurements of the ingredients in oz to gms. So I had reading like brown sugar 110g, granulated sugar 150g, cheese and butter 115g and flour 156.25g. I felt that granulated sugar was on the high side, so I reduced it to the same as brown sugar. I think it should be fine since there are chocolate chips. In the end, I still feel that the cookies are on the sweet side. I did not even put enough chocolate chips as I did not have enough (as what recipe asked for).

It was fun looking at the butter and cheese creaming. The batter looked so smooth and after the egg, it looks more "droppable". I started to worry it will be too soft to hold its shape but after adding the flour, I had a soft dough. I do not know how big should a drop be, so I just put a big lump. In the end, some of them spread out and joined together. It is also fun looking at the lumps spread out into circular cookie shape.

Finally , after almost 2 hours since I measured out the ingredients, I had around 2 dozen or more biscuits. The baking time per batch is very long. I took at least half hour for a batch but the recipe only says about 10 minute or so. Thus, it is either my cookies are too big, or the oven really gone haywired.

The cookies were so soft when I first tried to remove them from the tray to the wire rack. It gave me a small shock, worried that the inside are not cooked. It did firm up a little after cooling . The cookies are crispy on the outside, and soft in the inside. I wonder if that is the characteristic of drop cookies. However, I did not detect any cheese.

Here they are :-

With this cream cheese chocolate chip drop cookies, I am going to join the challenge - Aspiring Bakers #6 : Say Cheese (Apr 11).

The recipe is taken from http://southernfood.about.com/.

Ingredients :

   4oz of cream cheese, room temperature
   4 oz of butter, room temperature
   1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
   1/4 cup granulated sugar
   1 large egg
   1 1/2 tspn vanilla extract
   1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
   1/2 tspn baking powder
   1/4 tspn salt
   1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips or milk

Preparation :

Hear oven to 350 F. Grease a cookie sheet , or spray with nonstick cooking spray, or line with silicon liner.
In a mixing bowl with electric mixer, beat cream cheese, butter, and sugars until very light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla until smooth. Slowly beat in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in chocolate chips.
Drop by teaspoonfuls onto prepare baking sheets (s), leaving about 1 inch between cookies, these cookies spread very little. Bake for 10 to 14 minutes, or until the cookies are set lightly browned around the edges.

Here is a cross section close up of the biscuit to end this post.

I am submitting this entry to this month's Aspiring Bakers #6 : Say Cheese (Apr 11).

2011-04-15T01:43:00.000+08:00

Have been "saying" in the header of my blog that shooting is one of my hobby .. but seriously I really love to take pictures ... thou not very good, cos do not like to spend money taking courses. While downloading the photos of our short trip end last year (ya now then download to PC!), I could not help giving these pictures captions and have the urge to share them out. Here goes :-

看海的日子

看海的日子，有我有你就夠了

看海的日子，加上爸爸才有意思

：－）

When I am not baking ...

2011-04-01T00:46:00.001+08:00

When I am not baking, I will be busy with housework or cooking. Recently, I made pop corns with the new wok, made Sloppy Joe Burgers, made strawberry pudding as well as ice jelly cocktail. I even tried making pizza with pita bread since I am so lazy to make my own base.

Pop corns - It all started with HHB's pop corns, combined with kids' growing interest in watching cartoon movie at home and the new wok. HHB's pop corn post introduced the urge, the kids' interest adds to the need, then it became a MUST with the tool available. (*grin*) It is a very fun thing to do. I followed HHB's ingredient measurement as I lost the recipe given by the promoter. It is very satisfying to see the oil coated corn pop up. However, I messed up when I try to coat the popcorn with caramel. I have to melt the sugar but when the liquid sugar starts turning brownish at certain places while some white crystal are still melting, I started to swirl the wok, hoping to balance the heat and upon seeing all the white crystals disappeared, I quickly emptied all the popcorns inside the wok. I think I overloaded my wok and also the sugar may not be totally melted? I got a problem tossing the popcorns and the sugar hardens easily so I had big lumps of popcorns and some sticking to the base with the sugar. Anyway the kids were still thrilled to have the popcorns with their movie and I think I will try again (have the corns anyway).

Here's sharing the popcorns.

Next up is Sloppy Joe Burger. Oh yes, the recipe came from HHB too. Her instructions are easy to follow and understand. Thank you for sharing, HHB. I am running out of what to cook for the kids only (as head of family is often out to make ends meet) and I saw her lovely post on this burger that is made with japanese curry n spaghetti sauce. Japanese curry and spaghetti are my kids' favourite so I think this should not go wrong. Furthermore, I welcome another way to use beef since I heard beef is good for boosting immunity. I made the burgers using Sunshine's butter rolls which are smaller (less wastage incase they really don't like it). The kids really love the filling and the daddy mentioned that it taste like rendang burger from BK yet minus the sweetness. So that night alone, the kids and the daddy polished up the bag of rolls. I have just received orders from the kids to cook it again next week.

Here is sharing my Sloppy Joe.

Finally the dessert (haha just like in a 3 course meal - but I did not make these the same day) - strawberry pudding. My family loves having dessert and the pudding post from cook.bake.love tempted me and my kids. I even purposely buy gelatin for this. Just as expected, the kids are thrilled. The pudding were very well received. What I did not understand was that .. the pudding kind of become quite watery towards the end (they have finish eating and left the bowls for me to pack up and wash) but soon, I got clarification from Angel (blog owner). Thank you Angel.

Here is how my pudding looked like.

Besides this lovely dessert, I also tried my hands at ice jelly cocktail. My kids will ask for this same dessert everytime we told them we are going to order dessert after a meal outside. Since I have heard that it is not difficult at all, I quickly go to Phoon Huat to get the ice jelly powder and with a can of tropical cocktail, the kids got their ice jelly cocktail. Not difficult to make the jelly because it is after all jelly so made it the usual jelly way. LOL. After setting it in the fridge, I just add cocktail and put in some cocktail syrup. I even put in sugar during the 2nd time I made the jelly and the family prefered jelly with a hint of sweetness. Now I am trying to tempt you with my homemade ice jelly cocktail ;-)

Pizza with pita bread as base was last night's dinner. I love that the end product look very much like a real pizza, where it is round and have a thick bread look alike base. My boy helped in assembling the pizza and while I showered the kids, I let the cheese melt inside the oven. After a while, the cheese has melted but did not brown. So I changed the oven mode to grill and I left to coach boy on a math's question. After 4 minutes (my timer beeps) I went to look at them and to my horror, some are "over grilled". The "not so black" parts are given to the hungry kids while those below will have to be cleared by me.

Both dh and the kids felt that this version is better than having normal square sandwich bread as base pizza. If I cook more cooling tea.. the kids will have more choices.

Changes to my hobby blog

2011-03-31T23:44:00.001+08:00

Dear friends,

I have made some changes in the settings of my blog. I have added the option of moderating comments and also word verification. I am sorry to cause inconvenience to you when leaving comments but I have to do it to safe guard myself and you too.

Recently I have received comments in two of my beading post. The comments look very real, with relevance to my post contents too, but when I clicked on the page of that user, I was brought to a website not so suitable for children. My hubby told me that these are ways people advertise their website, or help create awareness or could be virus being loaded into the PC when the link being clicked on. I am fine with people advertising cos it is a way I get to know the world beyond my home, but virus? no way. Since everyone can click on the links, I would prefer to put a stop to those "bots" that could be putting in comments.

My hubby also mentioned that, the person could be a genuine reader but her/his PC is infected with virus that changes links after she posted. So on the safe side - I hope you all can understand and will understand.

Cheers and have a good weekend ahead.

Trying to follow HHB's baking trail - Mixed Berries Muffins

2011-03-26T12:09:00.000+08:00

I said I will join HHB in her baking trail.. and it has been a long long while then I started ... her Mixed Berries Muffins. She explained that the usual muffin method uses less fat, so this creaming method uses more fat .. oh dear ... but it is a new thing to me, mixing berries .. so I wanna try.

Even though it is such a simple thing, I took a long long time to get it done. I can only blame it on the fact that I do not bake often. So I have to do alot of washing, before and after .. and putting them into the muffin cups proves a bit of a job . The batter I ended up having is rather thick even though my batter curdles alot in between (because I have pour in two eggs by mistake). My kids love the muffins especially my boy because blueberry is his favourite.

I did not get a high muffin because I have forgotten how high should I fill my muffin cup, I am worry about them overflowing so I just fill 3/4 full and in process of baking, the batter became half full only and rise to 3/4 full not nicely to the top. Next time if I am to bake again, I will fill the cup higher.

Here is sharing the nice blue and red tinted muffins.

Please refer to the recipe from Happy Home baking's blog. Perhaps you would like to join her in her baking trail too?

Yellow Yellow Ugly Fellow

2011-03-19T02:43:00.004+08:00

It is now 2.30am, Saturday morning, in the week of school holiday. I have just finish blog hopping and finally willing to write about my latest bake that I did last week.

I have been itching to bake for a long long time. My last bake is in December! However, I am really lazy and I am still adjusting to new routine (My girl went to P1 this year) .. blah blah blah... ok so I want easy, fast .. so I went to my shelves and took the "Easy Stir n Bake Cakes" book. I remember I have the cheese (since Nov! and yet not expired and not mouldy *phew*) so I settled for "Pineapple Cheesecake". I revisited my first try, knowing how my kids had liked it, I went ahead with full confidence.

However, I had problem melting my cheese into smooth and creamy state, but luckily that did not affect the cake at all. I cannot explain why the cheese has tiny lumps thou. Beside this difference, I also must note that I did not have enough cream cheese but since slice cheese can make into lovely cheesecake, I am sure there is no harm making up the difference with a slice of sliced cheese. I did worry about the saltiness of sliced cheese, but what can I do then? :-) I also deliberately reduce the sugar (since the pineapple should be sweet coming from a can) and oil. I reduce both by 20g.

Although there wasn't much hiccups during preparation, the cake rose unevenly in the oven, so unlike the first try.

Was quite upset by it since it is suppose to be fail proof. However, the end result is so well received by my kids, as expected.
The cake is gone in day 2 and the boy make a big fuss as he only has two pieces in that 2 days.

I took a few photos (cos I also love photography) even though it is a simple cake so now I had problem choosing one to be place here. (Note : Please do not expect good pictures, cos loving to take doesn't means I can do it well now.)

Shall spare myself the agony of looking at those pictures (now at 3.09am) by putting only just one.

A piece that looks like coming from a perfect loaf.

As this cake has pineapple, I would like to give my support to a challenge started by SSB and now hosted by Jess.

For the challenge and convenience, I am posting the details of recipe here.

Ingredients

180g cream cheese
120g caster sugar
90ml corn oil
3 eggs
130g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
170g canned pineapple (diced)

Method

1) Grease and line a 10cm x 20cm (4 x 8 inches) loaf pan. Preheat oven to 170dC.
2) Stir cream cheese and sugar over simmering water until soft and smooth. Remove from heat. Stir in oil and eggs until well combined.
3) Combine flour, baking powder and soda. Fold into cheese mixture together with pineapple dices until well blended.
4) Spoon mixture into prepared pan. Bake in oven for 40 - 45 minutes or until cooked. Stand for 10 minutes and turning on to wire rack to cool.

Recipe from Kevin Chai - Easy Stir 'n Bake Cakes

I am submitting this entry to this month's Aspiring Baker#5 : Fruity March (March 2011).

Hobbies, hobbies and more hobbies? - bento

2011-02-24T00:21:00.001+08:00

Ok, this post is not about my bakes too, but about a simple bento that I assembled for my kids on Valentines' Day. It may not be a hobby as in an activity that I do during my leisure time, but I definitely love doing this.

I put together bento for them since they started school (ie from age 4 nursery). No, I am not telling you how experience I am, because I do not do beautifully decorated ones, but simple one that my kids are happy with. They are usually bread cut into shapes or roll up since they have very limited break time during the kindy days. Now that they went to Primary School with a half hour recess and longer school hours, I need to upsize the bento, ie more assembly work but of the similar ingredients since my kids are rather fussy eaters. LOL.

This Valentines' Day, I put together the below for them.

I cut frozen cocktail sausages diagonally the night before and left them to thaw in the fridge. Early next morning, I halved them, arranged them into heart shape on small pieces of bread "lined" with cheese (bite size bread is easier for them to eat). Then I popped them into the toaster oven for around 5 minutes. I am using the melted cheese to "secure" the heart shape sausages. Flowers and strawberries cannot be wrong for Valentines' so I added the flower shaped store bought biscuits and two strawberries in a food pick to fill up the box. They do not take the usual "space fillers" raw vegs like lettuce so there is no way I include it. They are happy and so am I. Would be nice and more appropriate if I have bought the below food picks earlier.

Initially I thought of using this post to support my cyber friend in a challenge she started, but after seeing a few entries, 我打退堂鼓。The rest of the entries are so much nicer. Next time perhaps SSB.

Now .. how about my baking and beading ....

A very Happy Lunar New Year to all of you

2011-02-01T00:21:00.000+08:00

Again, I am not able to bake any CNY goodies before the CNY ... I did set aside last friday for baking peanut cookies, but PH has no stock for the peanut powder ... so these few days I am rushing my last minute spring cleaning thou I started in end Dec. I will be away for the CNY, back to hubby's hometown.

Here, with the picture I took of my mashimaro (which I dig out during spring cleaning, hello rabbit) and the esso tigers in the background (bye tigers) , I wish all my friends and all visitors to my blog, a very Happy Lunar New Year.

I hope my wish of baking some CNY goodies will come true after I come bak from hometown.

Ta Ta.

祝大家新年快樂，萬事如意，身體健康，心想事成。

A baking technique

2011-01-08T00:15:00.000+08:00

This is not a post about my bake, but rather on how I can make cookie in a shorter time.

I came across this article in Dec 2010 Real Simple magazine that says I can prepare the dough in advance, and freeze them. Then I can have cookies whenever I want it. I just have to type it out here for record.

------------------------------------------
Freezing dough

Want a recipe for avoiding holiday-baking overload? Mix up and freeze dough ahead of time, then bake it when you need it. What works best : drop cookies, like chocolate chip, oatmeal, and gingersnap. Here's what to do.

Scoop balls of dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and freeze until just firm, 15 to 20 minutes. (A small, spring-loaded scoop will give you nice, equally sided rounds, but a measuring spoon will work, too.)

Transfer the frozen balls to a freezer-safe container, cover and freeze for up to 3 months. Ready to bake? Place the frozen balls on baking sheets (no need to thaw) and bake according to the instructions, adding 1 to 2 minutes to the total time.

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There! Now I hope I have time to make some cookie dough. I am still thinking if I have time to try CNY cookies - peanut cookies ... pineapple tarts, the open face type ...

Handmade cookies

2010-12-29T01:04:00.001+08:00

Christmas is over. I did not even wish anyone Merry Christmas here through my hobby blog .. Sorry my friends.

I was planning to make Christmas cookies, those frosted one with my kids, but then again, 泡湯啦！I always wanted to bake birthday cakes for my family members during their birthdays, or cookies for CNY and Christmas, but never once, done it. What a shame!

I have been tidying up the study to create more space since my girl is stepping into Primary One next year. So one thing lead to another (clearing of storeroom space) then .. now the school holiday is over and I have yet to write names on their textbooks. Luckily I have scheduled tomorrow for ironing their uniforms and that school starts a day late next year. Time just passed like that!

After Christmas, the kids are still asking about making cookies, so I quickly googled for a recipe online and get the dough out to chill. I got it chilled overnight but I still have problem getting it done in one go as the dough soften rather fast (ok, I am slow). The kids love the cookies, and no, I did not do any icing again cos I am rushing to bring the kids out. Am happy to at least attempt the cookies, not totally 遺憾 lor.

My oven, as usual took a little long and since rushing for time, did not have much patience, so first batch came out not brown enough. However, can see little specks of darker brown .. not sure are those the sugar crystal again. This is really handmade - I used my hand to cream the butter and sugar manually, so maybe not done enough.

Cooling on a rack

After baking these, I fell ill and I dare not try out another recipe that my friend, Pris Goh has shared with me (Thanks Pris). Must wait liao, cos school re opening, stuffs not done and I am going away - back to my dh's hometown till school reopens.

Sigh, just this holiday, I have gained a few kgs.

This aside, I must share with my friends too, that I am happy to have won a giveaway by Sugar Inc, Singapore. It is a cookbook. I would like to thank Anna for passing it to me personally.

Then, the happiest thing that happened to me this month is to receive a mail addressed to me shortly after I came back from a four day trip to Sabah. It's from a friend I knew through blogging. 我很感動. However, due to the backlog of housework and "don't know what others", I received her email before I even sent her one to thank her for the present. I am quite ashamed of myself.

Let me share the pictures of the lovely present.

My dear friend, 希望我不會辜負你的這份心意。I hope you are having a very good time bonding with your closest family members there.

Brioche, my "half handmade" bread

2010-12-03T04:29:00.002+08:00

Like I said in the previous post, I held on to this bread book for 6 weeks and more... manage to encourage myself to try out the bread recipe by using the maker to make the dough and my hands to shape it.

Nothing is too difficult with the intervene of machines. Follow instructions, put in the ingredients in the correct order, switch on the machine and wait for the beep beep sound. The challenging part is to me trying to complete my swiss roll before the machine beeps. Anyway I made it. I have still time after swiss roll is completed.

This is the first time I am handling bread dough with my hand. I am really afraid of deflating the dough (like that of a cake) but I still have to follow instructions and have the dough split into 8 buns. I am trying to do buns with chocolate filling but in case I fail, I decide to leave the filling to the next round.

Kind of fun handling the dough by hand. Sticky yet not so sticky, and not too easy to pull it apart. I finally managed to have 8 buns into 2 trays, wraped both with cling wrap then put aside. I am worried they will not rise at first since they doesn't look much difference after 10 minutes. Slowly I see them grow, and by 80 plus minute (I purposely put a longer time) they are ready for "make up" (ie apply egg yolk wash). I have to tent the bread as the top gets brown easily and finally times up for the bread to come out.

They looked perfect and taste perfect when they are just out from the oven. I am so so so happy with the outcome. The bread is so soft and fluffy that I dare to sell this bread that I made. The kids also gave the bread thumbsup. However the happiness is shortlived. The bread taste a little dry after 3 hours despite me putting into air tight container (not suppose to?), but still tasty lah. I am going to make this bread again, this time with filling and into smaller buns.

Lovely soft warm breads

Try it with this recipe from "Hamlyn - 200 bread recipes"

Ingredients (Makes 1 loaf)

3 eggs, beaten
75g (3 oz) unsalted butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
250g (8oz) strong white bread flour
25g (1 oz) caster sugar
1 teaspoon fast action dried yeast
egg yolk, to glaze

Method

Lift the bread pan out of the machine and fit the blade. Put the ingredients in the pan, following the order specified in the manual.

Fit the pan into the machine and close the lid. Set to the dough programme. Thoroughly butter a 750ml (1 1/4 pint) brioche mould or a 1kg (2 lb) loaf tin.

At the end of the programme turn the dough out on to a floured surface and cut off one quarter. Shape the larger piece into a ball and drop it into the brioche tin. Push a deep, wide hole into the dough with your fingers. Shape the remaining dough into a ball and press it gently into the indented top. (If you are using a loaf tin shape the dough into an oval and drop it into the tin.)

Cover loosely with oiled clingfilm and leave to rise in a warm place for 50 - 60 minutes or until almost doubled in size. Mix the egg yolk with 1 tablespoon water and gently brush over the dough. Bake in a preheated oven, 220 degree Celsius (425 Fahrenheit), Gas Mark 7, for 20 - 25 minutes or until deep golden and firm. (Cover the loaf with foil if the crust starts to over brown.)

After baking leave the bread in the tin for a few minutes, then shake out on to a wire rack to cool.

For baby chocolate brioche buns, make the dough as above and divide it into 8 pieces. Push 15g (1/2 oz) plain dark chocolate into the centre of each piece and seal the dough around the chocolate. Space the buns well apart on a greased baking sheet. Cover loosely with oiled clingfilm and leave to rise in a warm place until almost doubled in size. Glaze and bake as above, reducing the cooking time to about 15 minutes.

Now I have finish up my posts, all thanks to the 4 cups of coffee.

Swiss roll

2010-12-03T03:31:00.003+08:00

Two days ago, I attempted two baked items in an afternoon. I made brioche and swiss roll. My friend June made cute little brioche for her kids and they love it. I asked the recipe from her but now it is lost. Sorry June. So one day I went looking for bread making book in the library and found this book and it has a brioche recipe.

Not sure where did the courage came from, but part of the reason is to use up some whip cream so I want to make a swiss roll. Of course, I did that when the bread machine is mixing the brioche dough for me. While bread machine is busy, I googled for Rachel Allen's swiss roll recipe. No butter swiss roll, so no need to wait for butter to soften. The eggs are whipped together with the sugar into a very light mixture, then I use the scrapper to mix in the flour. I think the mixture got deflated a little but after trying my best to remove traces of flour, I pour the mix into baking tray and sent it into the oven.

While waiting for the cake to be done, I had a taste of the batter. It is taste very foamy and light, very tasty. I did not do skewer test this time, as Rachel says the cake will be done when the sides pull away a little and we should not over bake swiss roll. However, after I took it out, it doesn't look pretty at all. It is rough looking with all the holes. I had trouble peeling the baking paper away as it sticks onto the baking paper. My fault for not following Rachel's instruction of greasing the paper and flouring the sides. I also have trouble rolling it and unrolling it to put the cream because the sugar coating melts and my roll sticks together! Ok, lesson learnt. Follow instructions. I am suppose to put the cream before rolling! This is the first time I attempt a sugar coated roll.

Anyway here is part of the ugly looking roll with whipped cream (too lazy to add mango puree) which my kids love more than the cake itself. Infact, I don't like the cake too, and I think I still prefer swiss roll made with normal sponge cake recipe or one with butter.

In which way do they resemble swiss roll, ya? Haiz.

Brioche comes next. ;-)

Cream puff (with cream this time!)

2010-12-03T02:07:00.001+08:00

The last time I did choux pastry is in 2008 ( this post ). I did custard one. Back then, it was a 2nd try already but the base still stuck to the foil I used unless I grease it. This time I use the baking paper from Glad, and no more stuck bottom! Yay.

I went to a demo in Mayer, who has teacher Ms Crystal Kuek demo-ing the choux pastry in a form of fruit basket. I am not so hardworking, so I just followed her recipe but just spooned the mixture onto the baking sheet instead of piping it.

It has been so long since I last did choux pastry, I cannot really remember how the batter should be like, and I am not paying much attention to the texture during the demo, but I am sure the batter should be a little semi liquid (sigh, not sure how to describe it). However, after adding the eggs and beating all into the mix, I got quite a firm ball of batter. I remember my friend describing one stage of the batter like chewing gum .. but mine is not. Anyway, I just spoon it into "puff" and bake them. However, Ms Kuek told us to sprinkle water around onto the tray before sending into the oven. This is to increase the moisture while baking. The end result looks similar to what I have done before.

I manually whipped a 100gm of non diary cream and mixed with mango puree to make the mango cream filling (according to the recipe) and it is a hit with the kids. They keep asking for the cream and a few days later, I made swiss roll with mango cream.

Here are my puffs. This recipe is different from what I used to follow. This one has no milk. Wonder what is the difference. Milk and no milk.....

Quite happy with them and guess will try to make them more often since the baked puffs can be freezed.

There, the mango cream filled puffs.

Easy non bake chocolate pie

2010-11-28T00:35:00.002+08:00

I must thank my friend Cindy for sharing her recipe. She posted a picture of a pie sitting in her fridge and it tempted me. She said it is easy and share her recipe and so I went ahead to buy the required ingredients and get my hands on it after my hubby came back from business trip.

The pie is easy for old baker (started baking like 2 yrs ago and an old auntie too lah) but newbie (cos I do not bake that often and never learn from mistakes!) like me. Only four ingredients are required and I do not need to bake it too. Best of all, the pie crust is "broken down" by the help of a machine (my grinder) and it is the first time I use it for this purpose. Why did I use my hand to crush the oreo biscuits when I made my cheese cake the last time round?

Anyway, I lined the pie pan, poured the sandy and moist looking digestive biscuit into it, press the crumbs as evenly as I can with patience and put it into the freezer. Then I cooked the nestle cream and pour it into my chocolate buttons and stir with my hand whisk.

The completed product went into the fridge while the kids crowd around me, what else, but for the chocolate coating around the mixing bowl.

Here's the complete pie and a slice of it. I will get my friend's permission before I post her recipe here. Meanwhile, do enjoy the pictures. Hehehe.

Yum! My kids love it and keep asking for it! Now you want to do that for your kids?

After gotten my friend's permission, here's the recipe. She mentioned it is from a Food and Travel Mag. Thank you again, Cindy. Here it is :-

For the crust :

180g digestive biscuits
90g butter, melted

Blitz biscuits into fine sand using food processor. Stir in melted butter. Press mixture into a 24 cm tart tin. Chill in fridge while you prepare the filling.

Filling :

280g dark chocolate, chopped
260g cream

Bring cream to boil in a saucepan. Remove from heat and pour over your bowl of chopped chocolate. Stir it until cream and chocolate combined into a smooth and shiny mixture.
Fill tart tin with the chocolate mixture and chill at least for 4 hours.

A quick bead item

2010-11-18T03:18:00.000+08:00

My girl came back from school one day to say that her classmates like her bracelet and has ask her to do one for them. So while she is beading for her classmate, I did a quick one too.

This rectangular bead is from a bracelet that is done during one of the beading lessons a few years back. I pair it up with bicone beads. This earring reminds me of a simple chinese lantern.

There, simple enough.

I hope I get more chances to bead and bake in this coming school holiday. Holiday starting soon ....

Volcanoes

2010-11-12T01:23:00.011+08:00

It has been more than two months since I last did any baking. But I still borrows books on baking and beading from the library. Recently I borrowed a book titled "Crave" which has all these recipes using cream cheese. I marked a few to be tried but after 6 weeks (I extended the deadline) I still have no time for them. I quickly did a "photo"copy of the easier recipe by snapping the recipe using my phone camera before I bookdropped it unreluctantly. Did I violate any copyright law?

So now that the exam is over, I decided to give it a try. Not only my skills (if I had any) are dusty, the mixer is also dusty, so I had more preparation work. I wiped the mixer clean, prepare the bowls that I need, weight the ingredients, blah blah blah. It took me 2 hours from preparation till the end products "emerge" from the oven. Luckily I am not cooking dinner.

The little thing I baked this time is called Volcanoes. They look like this (picture taken from the book).

Nice ya? But mine did not look like this at all. The cheese part of my cupcake sank all the way to the bottom. My volcanoes are dormant ones. :-)

The cheese part is pretty easy to mix, all done by hand, and I used icing sugar instead of caster sugar. I am not sure what is superfine caster sugar anyway. I added 10g more of icing sugar because I have understood from a baking class trainer that we can add 10g more if we want to replace caster with icing sugar.

The cake batter part is not that difficult either. However, my batter has this grainy look which I am not sure if that should be the case. It kind of look like the egg is not fully incorporated into the batter. The recipe called for large eggs, but since my eggs are small, I used 1 instead of 1/2 for the cream cheese filling and 2 instead of 1 and half for the batter mixture. Was it the extra egg? Or the shortage of cocoa powder? I tried to make up with flour thou.

Assembly time. The "assembling" instruction says that a cavity should be made with the back of the spoon, but my batter is not of that consistency and the cavity "cave" in rather fast and so I have to be quick. I use one spoon to try make the cavity and the other hand quickly pour the cheese mix in. Actually, the cheese mix still kind of stay at the top. In the end of the assembling process, I have alot of cheese mix left and I have to create little cupcakes of cheese mix with chocolate cake base.

After 35 minutes of baking (5 minutes more than required, kiasi lah), I took them out. They looked puffed up and baked. However upon cooling, I noticed they shrunk. No matter how they looked, they passed the taste test. The cake is very soft and very moist (fudgy a better word?). The kids like it, I like it and now, 2nd day after the volcanoes are baked, they are all gone. I ate at least 5 of them, for taste test and QA (on the 2nd day) etc. However, something puzzles me. On the 2nd day (ie today) I noticed the top of a few cupcakes are glossy, and the cross section shows a layer of frosting lookalike at the top. I hope I have a teacher ready for me to ask these kind of questions.

Here's how my volcanoes look.

And now, here is the recipe. (Makes 12 cupcakes)

Ingredients

Cream Cheese Filling

Cream cheese 115g (4oz)
Caster (superfine) sugar 70g(2 and half oz)
Vanilla Essence 1/4 tsp
Egg 1/2 large, lightly beaten

Fudgy Chocolate Cupcake batter (Now then I realise cupcake is of fudgy nature)

Cake flour 100g (3 and 1/2 oz)
Cocoa powder 5 and 3/4 Tbsp
Baking powder 3/4 tsp
Salt 1/3 tsp
Butter 100g
Castor (superfine) sugar 70g
Light brown sugar 70g
Vanilla essence 2/3 tsp
Eggs 1 and 1/2 large, lightly beaten
Milk 140ml

Method

Prepare cream cheese filling. In a medium bowl, blend cream cheese, sugar and vanilla essence until smooth and creamy. Gradually add egg, beating until smooth. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 180 degree Celcius. Line a 12 hole cupcake tin with paper cups.

Prepare cupcake batter. In a medium bowl, stir together cake flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt until well blended. Set aside.

Wtih an eclectric mixer, cream butter, castor sugar and light brown sugar at medium speed until smooth and fluffy. Gradually blend in vanilla essence and eggs until well incorporated.

Lowe speed and add flour mixture and milk in 3 separate additions, starting and ending with flour mixture. Make sure each addition is fully incorporated into batter before adding the next.

Divide batter evenly among paper cups, Create a cavity in the centre of each cupcake with the back of a spoon. Fill cavities with cream cheese filling.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until tops are lightly browned and spring back when gently pressed. Leave to cool in tin for 10 minutes.

Remove cupcakes form bing and leave to cool completely on a wire rack before serving. The cupcakes can be stored, covered, at room temperature for up to 3 days, or in the regfrigerator for up to 1 week.

Now you may want to have a go at it.

p/s : I used another editor and do not know how to have the recipe type out in proper spacing. Sorry.
p/s : Since I have so much of the cheese filling left, I think I should have added more to each cupcake and then the cheese mixture will not sink down?

Beading works

2010-09-08T01:15:00.010+08:00

I still have 45mins before battery of the laptop goes flat. I shall do a quick update on my beading hobby.

The challenge that me and my friend started up has stopped midway .. the previous/last challenge is to create something antique, as decided by my friend. The only item I have that fits the antique theme is the antique looking butterfly charm. I paired it up with a black square bead to make this simple earring.

I seriously think this is quite a nice pair, at least the design is not copied from somewhere. But then again, simple designs are everywhere, so I am sure someone else would have already made this design before. Still, I think this is a lovely pair. I made it all by my own mah. Even the twisted wire above the black bead is handmade.

Besides this "black beauty", I have another pair of earring that "majors" in black. The design is inspired by the lightings used in store (I think in Jurong Point). Simple, but that is what I like.

Enough of black yet? Black is one of my favourite colour. I like that it has slimming effect. So if you do not need the slimming effect, then go colourful. I made a bracelet (cannot remember where the inspiration came from) with bicones in the few colours I have. Yet another simple piece, and I hopes it can go with many different outfits.

I love making jewelries, but I usually do not wear them .. I hope one day these pieces I made will find someone who will be able to appreciate them.

Nigella's Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

2010-09-03T04:00:00.004+08:00

I can't believe I told Small Small Baker that I will bake Nigella's Chocolate Chocolate Chip muffin when I get hold of the bicar and baking powder then forgot all about it (because I did not diligently update my to-do-list). I chanced upon it again when I got hold of the bicar few days ago. How coincident.

I love making muffins because of its easy preparation. Furthermore, this recipes uses a number of regular ingredients that most bakers will have -- cocao powder, milk, chocolate chips, plain flour. Not sure if my observation is correct, but usually bakes without whipping egg whites , without creaming butter and sugar, or without whipping full eggs uses bicar and baking powder ... I should be right to say they are raising agents ... but it seems their combined pressence are common to bakes not done with those 3 method mentioned.

I have used this recipe 3 times for the past 1 week. I made a trial batch because I wanted to use this recipe for Teachers' Day gift, then the batch for actual gifts and the last batch is for own consumption plus Teachers' Day gift to the yamaha teacher.

I finally got hold of the pretty ikea paper cases that I first see in HHB's blog and I can't wait to use it. Not sure why, the paper cases did not fit my waxed cases very well and the paper cases folded up at some places, resulted in cases "eating" into muffins.

And look at this :

the "burnt" chocolate chip

The chocolate chips inside the muffins are all darker in color then the ones at the top (can see the comparison side by side?). This "burnt" chocolate chip also happens in my Double Chocolate Cupcakes.

I have tried using different brands. For the 1st and 2nd batch I used Hersley minis while the last batch Phoon Huat's housebrand. All the same result. So it is not the chips problem, then why? Perhaps the timing? I baked longer than what the recipe called for. No choice, the muffins are not baked at the required time. I extended the time by 10 minutes.

The 2nd batch were dressed up by the kids for their teachers. I used the white cups because I wanted the kids to write the message on the cups .... but since I baked it in the night ( have to involve the boy who is in PM session), the kids have to go to bed before the muffins are totally cooled so the notes are written separately when the muffins are cooling. I even wanted to include an ingredient list so that the teachers will know what is used (incase teachers are allergic to any ingredients), but I could not find an appropriate way to include it. I also purposely asked the kids not to mention names of teachers in the message so that they will not squash the other

muffins while trying to find the right one for the right teacher. Just fish out and give.

Having baked two batches, I find that it is rather plain to have chocolates over choclates, look all dark dark ... thus the third batch, I sprinkled strawberry flavoured chocolate chips instead. The strawberry choc chips did not go very well. They deformed a little from the high heat. This time I used the ikea paper cases and got 9 muffins again. Guess what ... two are wrapped for teacher and the kids finish the rest of the 6 (I ate 1 for testing) on that very day! There is nothing left for the next day.

So, I made the chocolate chip oat meal muffin on the next day. I now end this post at 3.50am and the picture of yesterday's bake. I just ate one. Yummy.

p/s 1 : It seems that only the white pokka dot cases seemed to be too big but the red ones fit nicely.

p/s 2: That night I forgot to add that the Nigella's recipe muffin has a taste similar to 發糕，those brownish coloured ones. Maybe I should bake for other people to try, and also to try others to see if they taste similar.

Chocolate Hazelnut Bread (2nd trial)

2010-09-01T01:04:00.003+08:00

It has been a long long time since I use the bread machine. So, since there is no bread tomorrow, and it is a saturday the next day, I decided to stay up and start the bread machine at 3am, so that I can have fresh bread at 7am.

This is the first time I stayed up and start baking at middle of the night. I always wanted to try, especially when my hubby is not in town, cos I would not have to worry about waking him up .. but that very day, they slept in air con room, so I just close the kitchen door and start working. But I was still concious about the noise I made when I gathered and measured the ingredients, so the preparation work took quite some time.

I initially though that I would be able to sleep once I set the machine working .. but I forgot that I must put in the ground hazelnut and chocolate chips at the beep after 2nd kneading cycle .. so I had to stay awake for a little while more.

Finally after I poured in the hazelnut bits and chips, I went to sleep and woke up after 3 hours to turn off the maker. We finally ate the bread around 9am.

The top of the bread is still not smooth looking. I cut the bread into thick slices, hoping to finish it sooner hahaha.

This time round, the bread is soft but very dense. Eating it is like eating bao skin. There is no mention about the inside of the bread being dense in my previous try. Anyway, I did not like the bread this time round, and my boy did not give it the thumbs up (but my 饞嘴猫 girl did). My hubby did not taste the bits this time but he also did not like the bread as much. So I think this is the last time I am doing this bread. I got to find more breadmaker recipe.

Here are how they look after I sliced them into thick slices.

The thick crust, swirly insides and all.

Sliced cheese cheesecake

2010-08-21T00:13:00.009+08:00

I am very happy to be able to fulfil my wish of trying out this recipe from Blessed Homemaker. It is a baked cheesecake recipe using NOT philly cheese but sliced cheese. I am sure parents with kids will always have sliced cheese in their fridge.

I read about her try on this recipe for a few times, even the comments, and finally 鼓起勇氣, have it done last friday afternoon when the boy is not having school (due to PSLE oral). Blessed Homemaker doesn't have problem in getting the cheesecake done in a short time, but I almost took an hour, from measuring all the ingredient to putting the final product into oven, that includes whisking the 4 egg whites with my hand whisk. *sigh* really regret not using the mixer... 4 egg whites! So tiring, but I manage to have medium hard peaks (but egg whites did not fall when I turn mixer bowl upside down) after like 10 - 15 minutes with lots of short rest in between. My arm ache for 3 days after that, and I even have problem brushing my teeth. (goes to show how much exercise I lack)

I have to note, when sifting the flour inside the egg, milk, cheese, butter mixture, I can see specks of flour floating around, so I do worry about getting balls of flour in the end product, but luckily, no, no trace of flour. :-)

Blessed Homemaker advise me to lengthen the baking time since I am using a 8 inch pan. As I see dark patches forming, I did not follow the recipe's 20 minutes 170 degree Celsius. I only bake 15 minutes and turn it down to 140 degree Celsius and further bake the standard 40 + my extra 15 minutes.

The cake rose beautifully in the oven after 30 minutes. See this.

Finally, I off the oven and wait for it to cool inside ... and also to see it shrinking from the sides, sinking as well and ended up like this.

So sad ... I am already expecting Kueh, not cheesecake, but after I cut, hmm still look reasonable ok, and very tasty. As expected, the cake has a dense layer at the bottom (caused by the sinking) and that layer taste saltish, but my kids say it is still tasty. My hubby even volunteer to share the last piece with me cos he feels that it is tasty. The cake is all eaten up on the 2nd day. I think I have to try again, using the KA to beat the whites. However, I still feel that my skill of folding the whites into the batter needs lots of practicing. But I like the idea of using balloon whisk to fold in the whites. Let's hope I get the time to try again.

Sharing with you how the "cheesecake kueh" looks like.

Do not be deceived, the cake is still very soft.

Easy Peasy Scones

2010-08-13T01:41:00.005+08:00

I am complaining in FB about having excess Bulla Pure Cream and don't know what to do with it. My friend then share with me her friend's recipe on scones which helps me use up the cream, today where it is suppose to be expiring. Thank you to Cindy, and her friend. And thanks to FB too.

It is only mixing up of 3 ingredients and off to the oven, and 15 minutes later (I use 20 minutes just to be sure), I got the crusty exterior, soft interior scones. I did not roll out and cut using moulds. I just take a lump randomly, roll it up then flatten it and down it goes to the baking tray. How lazy.

I have heard of scones, but not sure of the taste nor the look (forgetten even thou I read about scones in other blogs). So after baking I asked my friend to verify the result. She said looks ok but a little flat. Silly me, thinking that it will cook easier if it is flatter, so I purposely flatten them.

My girl ate some when they are just out of the oven, and she sings praises. My boy ate it 4 hours later when he came back from school, and said that he like it but then he also does not like it. My hubby said tasteless, while I said they are very salty. I think the "saltiness" is actually the taste similar to some yellow noodles. Perhaps I should say the 澗水 taste?

Here are how they look like ..

the dough

waiting to be baked

Fresh out from oven

The crusty inside and soft outside

very tired now ... cut cut cut ..

3 Flavours from one mix - nutella cupcake (try 2)

2010-08-12T01:50:00.006+08:00

I want to bake something for the kids to bring to school again. I want something small, mini and easy to pack, so I decided on the nutella cupcakes since I have done it in the mini paper cases before.

Actually I really hope for a bigger oven... I have to wait and wait for the batches of cupcakes to be done. 12 mini one is not enough .. you see, I also do taste test .. so I hv to eat one on the first day, one on the 2nd day to make sure it is still safe for consumption, and more if the cakes stay more than a day or two, and my girl usually eats 3-4 at a go if the cupcakes are nice!

With this batter, I am able to make 3 batches, almost .. total of 35 of them. Rachel Allen said that once the baking powder is added, I should be quick, but no choice, my oven can only bake a tray of 12 at a go.

I am one who like to have a variety, so this time, I decide to play around with the stuff I have at home. I made a batch of original nutella flavour, a batch of kaya flavour and the last batch, I just leave it "vanilla" with chocolate rice topping.

Here are the 3 different babies.

The mix is made using the nutella cupcake recipe which I have used previously, but would like to retype it here for the sake of "filing". The original recipe can be found here.

Ingredients

140gm butter, softened

100g white sugar

3 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

200gm sifted plain flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

Nutella, approx 1/3 cup

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line paper liners into muffin tray.

2. Cream butter and sugar until light.

3. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Add vanilla.

4. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter is uniform and no traces of flour.

5. Fill liners till 3/4 full. Top each batter with nutella and swirl it around with toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the nutella.

6. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove to cool on wire rack.

This time, I am using brown sugar, and I remembered brown sugar is sweeter than normal sugar, so I reduce the sugar by half! Not sure if this is the reason, but my butter sugar mix did not incorporate with my eggs even I cream for a long long time. The ending mixture after adding 3 eggs one at a time still looks like this :-

Perhaps I mess up the sugar and butter ratio .. I guess I can only bake one more time with 100g brown sugar to try if I get this again. Luckily, after I add in sifted flour, it came together and I manage to bake the cupcakes. This time I hid most of the kaya inside the batter because I am worried of it burning if I swirl it on top. Now I think it is fine to have the kaya exposed on top.

Can't wait to try again. Now I just want to try to sleep away the four pimples in a row at the side of my left cheek.

My First Award (two at a go)

2010-08-12T01:30:00.004+08:00

I do not know much about traditions of awards .. but I do see awards being given to blogs that I read closely and I usually do not get those. Today, finally I can say, I got awards! hehe. Thank you Esther for passing on these lovely awards to me. Have been so busy recently since hubby is away more often than last time.

So following what Esther says - must copy and paste awards on blog - done (as below).

Then I must list 10 things about myself, who is interested anyway but tradition leh..so ... (1) I am a SAHM , (2) I have two kids, (3) They are a boy and a girl, (4) I stay in the West, (5) I love to bake, (6) I love to eat, (7) I love to bead but do not like to wear, (8) I love to read blogs (otherwise I do not have friends), (9) I love to stay up late and (10) I loves HK drama.

Then I must list 10 things that make me happy ..but I have more than 10! ok , (1) I have unlimited time, (2) unlimited money, and with these two, I can do alot of others that make me really happy ...hiak hiak hiak ..

Thanks again Esther, and sorry for responding so late.

Back by popular demand

2010-07-29T00:32:00.003+08:00

This is the 3rd time in such a short period that I have bake the same thing. The kids love it so much that they keep requesting me to do it again but actually they love the icing more! So today, the only day in the week with no housework planned in the routine, I set up everything and made them - Rachel Allen's Lemon Cupcakes.

I still have not got my oven thermometer (and now GSS is over... sigh) so I just rely on the manual but the cupcakes still took abt 40 minutes to be brown to my satisfaction. I timed, it took about half hour to get the batter ready to be scooped to cups. I hate to waste these waxed cups, but I have no chance to visit ikea yet.

The process is not of any difference from the previous two. I think I will scribble down the steps I took and the ingredients that I used in this post.

Ingredients for about 12 (I think 10 or 11 will be optimise)

1. Butter (soften) 125g

2. Sugar 125g

3. Eggs 2 nos

4. Lemon rind of half a lemon

5. Plain flour 150g

6. Baking powder 1/4 teaspoon

1. I creamed the butter till soft before adding in sugar.

2. I then further cream the mixture to pale and light, but not sure why the sugar really do not melt. Can still hear the grains rubbing against the stainless steel bowl! Why ah, sigh.

3. I grated in half a lemon's rind. (oh my broken english)

4. I added in the eggs one by one, 2nd egg after the mixture comes together again after the 1st egg. (Rachel says that adding eggs a little by a time allows the sugar and butter mixture to fully absorb the egg. She said that when she need to add 4 eggs into a mixture for marble cake.)

5. When the mixture comes together again (The mixture took sometime to come together after this 2nd egg for this time), I sifted in 150g plain flour (with 1/4 tsp baking powder).

6. Hand stir the mixture to incorporate the flour. Rachel says must be fast in this stage because baking powder will start acting once come into contact with liquid.

7. Scoop the completed batter into cup cases and send them into oven at 180 degree celsius. They are suppose to be done 18 to 20 minutes, but mine took 30 minutes to look cook and 10min more to be brown.

The first two times also took a long time to get brown, so I suspect it is due to the different cases. Rachel uses paper liner that is shallower and wider than my waxed cup that is smaller and taller. I suppose the waxed paper is thicker than paper liner. Isn't that a good reason for the delay in getting them cook?

Upon cooling, I noticed that the cakes shrunk. It became lower and came away from the sides of the cups. Have not tasted them yet, cos I made the sandy butter icing (ya hand stir again) and covered the top so that the kids can decorate the cakes (which are in the fridge now).

Here are the decorated ones.

Oh .. tired liao ...and still got the old post not posted. :-(

Chocolate chip Oat muffin

2010-07-27T00:47:00.006+08:00

This is going to be a short one but I have 2 more bakes and 3 beading items not blogged yet... sigh .. old liao, cannot stay up too late.

Today (already yesterday when I finish the blog) I am very happy. I managed to do my morning routine of sweeping the floor and breakfast of course. I added in cooking of barley and washing of towels (of course hanging them). I even prepared lunch, two dishes! With all these, I squeeze in making of muffin with my boy, all before 1145am. I must admit, some of the tasks do not need my attention lah.

This poor boy has not been baking much with me (not that he asked for it), but I thought, instead of doing tablework with him, I can sacrifice the time for that to bake with him (since he has finish his school work over the weekend) . Also, the girl did not eat the blueberry version, so I customised this to chocolate chip for her (after checking with my "recipe source owner" ).

This muffin recipe is a super easy stir and bake one (ya all muffins are), and the ingredients are regular ones that can be bought at my supermarket. I especially love that I can feed them the oats!. Anyway, I have the only special one that is not stocked up often since I had used it previously for the similar bake (that I have not blogged about).

I had him helped me stir the flour, sugar, oat evenly, weight the chocolate chips (yes, I replace the blueberries with this). His skills in stirring wet ingredients are not so good yet, so I mix the oil, yogurt and egg. I let him have a go to stir the "wet into dry" mixture and told him the baking powder is acting up, so I finish the stirring and have him put the batter into the cups. Oh yes I let him lay the cups too.

I must make a note that I should only use 10 cups next time. The blueberries are taking up the space but not chocolate chips. so my cups are mostly slightly more than half filled only. What a waste of the cups.

Here's sharing the pictures of those little "hills" taken with my phone.

The moist, fluffy inside.

Please see the full recipe from http://happyhomebaking.blogspot.com/2010/07/pages-from-my-recipe-book.html.

Thanks HHB for another awesome, easy recipe. Now I must go sleep and blog about the rest soon, hopefully.

p/s : I can write messages on those white white cases when the kids bring the muffins to school later today. ;-)

A try on Nigella's Cherry Cheesecake

2010-07-15T03:13:00.008+08:00

This is an overdue post too.

This block of cheese has been sitting in my fridge for ages. I bought it when the cheese is on sales and now it is near expiring again. Looks like expiring food will always be my motivation to bake.

This block of cheese is initially intended for a baked Japanese cheesecake recipe which is found in a copy of Popular magazine. However, Nigella says that Japanese cheesecake is like a new born baby, very difficult to "look after" ... so I tried out her version of non baked one first - Cherry Cheesecake. By now you should know that I got the recipe from watching her show.

Making the base is a breeze, because the digestive biscuits are much more easier to crush then oreo one. She did not mention in the show that I need to freeze the base. The steps from her site did not mention too. Good, save some time. So I went on with making the filling.

The filling gave me some "problems". Recipe asked for 300g cheese, I only had 250. Recipe asked for 250g of double cream, but I had no time to go cold storage to buy it, so I can only make do with Bulla Pure cream from my nearby NTUC. It comes in 200g tub! So I went to buy two tubs. It cost $4 a tub and now, this homemade cheese cake becomes more expensive than store bought!

It is almost to completion, then I realized I have only put in 250g of cheese. I guess this will slightly affect the height of the cake.

Here's the final output.

My kids love Sara Lee's cheesecake .. so what do you think they have to say about this one. Nothing but just equally loving it even though I did not put any topping.

No doubt it is a nice cake, but I do not like the oily feeling I had while eating it. It is like you are eating an oily plate of kway teow. Now I still have that tub of cream, waiting to be used on making scones.

Chocolate cake

2010-07-15T02:42:00.007+08:00

This is a very very long overdued post.

I have to use up my expiring chocolate buttons (they are meant for brownie but I never made it). Not purposely looking but happened to see this chocolate cake recipe from Olivia's blog and seems quite straight forward, so went ahead with it.

I love that this cake has the height but mine sinked slightly in the centre. This one that I baked also shrinks at the side, wondering if it is due to me"buttering" the side of the cake pan.

"crater" in the centre of cake.

Cake cooling on the rack bottom up! Looks nicer, ya?

I am too lazy to do any frosting as usual, but the chocolate buttons are not all used up, so instead of making a big fuss, I just melt the chocolate with milk and pour it over the cut cake before eating.

It really looked alot more appealing with that dripping chocolate sauce .. pity I lost that picture that I took.

The kids love the cake. Although my taste bud is not sensitive, but I still feel the funny feeling of "metallic surface" when I run my tongue over the back of my lower front teeth after I eat it (wonder if you know what I mean). I will always have that feel when I bake with that certain brand of cake flour which I avoid now, but now also with self raising flour? Is baking powder the culprit? Got to bake more and pay more attention to find out.

Since I can bake this cake with this height this time, next time when I need to have layered chocolate cake, I think can try this out, cut this into two halves, frost it and decorate. Maybe for my girl's birthday?

I think I better note down the recipe here since it is a keeper .... I am suppose to jot down separately the recipes that I want to use again and again (incase broken links in future and can refer it offline) ....

Ingredients

115g plain chocolate

50ml milk

150g unsalted butter

150g light brown sugar

3 nos eggs

200g Self raising flour

1 tbsp cocoa powder

Method

1. Grease a 8 inch cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

2. Place the chopped chocolate and milk in a bowl. Place the bowl over a simmering pan of hot water. Leave for 3 mins until chocolate softens. Turn off heat and stir the mixture till smooth.

3. Cream the butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the chocolate mixture until well combined.

4. Sift the flour and cocoa over the mixture and fold in batches until evenly mixed. Pour the prepared batter into the cake tin and bake at preheated oven at 180dC for 35 - 40 mins or until cooked.

5. Cool cake in tin for 5 mins before removing from tin and place on cooling rack to cool completely.

6. Slice cake into 2 layers. Spread a thick layer of ganache on the 1st layer. Spread the remaining ganache over the whole cake.

Thanks to Olivia again.

3 works combo post - Chocolate mousse, chocolate coated cornflakes, lemon cupcakes

2010-06-11T00:55:00.009+08:00

I am still making and baking but too lazy to blog. What have I done?

I made Nigella's instant chocolate mousse. I spent quite some time finding mini mashmallows and gave up after awhile and bought big ones to cut into smaller pieces. I think the reason behind using mini is for easy melting? Anyway, I got to try reduce mashmallows to see if it affects the final product. The mousse is oh sooooo sweeeet.

Not sure what got over me, but the process in making did not go so smooth. First, I am not sure if I measured the chocolate chips correctly. I am using my going to expire coverture chocolate buttons. I totally forgot how much did I measure out just 5 minutes after measuring (blame it on pregnancy). I also over whipped my Bulla Pure cream, and even thou I sourced for recovery way (which is to add more cream and whip somemore - according to internet searches) but I did not have enough "raw material" to try. So in order to try bringing it back to a more liquid state, I try adding milk. Sorry, that doesn't quite work. So in the end, I still go ahead to add the melted chocolate and then just stir and fridge the final product. You may click her website to get the recipe or refer to below.

Nigella's Instant Chocolate Mousse (Serving Size : Serves 4–6)

INGREDIENTS

150g mini marshmallows

50g soft butter

250g good dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids), chopped into small pieces

60ml hot water from a recently boiled kettle

1 x 284ml tub double cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

METHOD


1.	Put the marshmallows, butter, chocolate and water in a heavy-based saucepan.
2.	Put the saucepan on the hob, over heat, though keep it fairly gentle, to melt the contents, stirring every now and again. Remove from the heat.
3.	Meanwhile, whip the cream with the vanilla extract until thick, and then fold into the cooling chocolate mixture until you have a smooth, cohesive mixture.
4.	Pour or scrape into 4 glasses or ramekins, about 175ml each in capacity, or 6 smaller (125ml) ones, and chill until you want to eat. The sooner the better!

Here is sharing my Nigella's Instant Chocolate Mousse.

I still have marshmallows, and I hope to try again since I did not whip my cream properly. It still taste very much a mousse thou. I hope I can get a 284ml double cream too. The Bulla Pure Cream is 200ml only and I have to adjust the recipe according.

Next in line, I made Chocolate coated Cornflakes cookies (ya, trying to use up the expiring chocolate buttons). My son got 2 packets of K-diet (I think so) cornflakes from his school's health event. Cornflakes sure do not go well with coffee that I need every morning. I google for recipes, and some uses butter, some just use chocolate. So to simplify my job, I chose one with just chocolate.

I melt the chocolate over hot water, and crushed the cornflakes a little before I pour them into the melted chocolate. After much stirring, I put them into the paper cups, then put them into the fridge after the kids sprinkle the color balls. I think without the colours, the chocolate cornflakes are so boring.

(Sad annoucement : the cornflake cookies turn moldy the next day in the air tight container. Likely reason (after much discussion with friends in FB) : condensation happened after I took them out to room temperature as advised by the recipe, so the mold. Damage : half portion gone.)

In remembrance of the tasty chocolate coated cornflakes cookies.

(Maybe I used wrong chocolate too? Perhaps the normal eating chocolate will do better.)

Besides the above, I baked the lemon cupcakes again. It is still a hit. Just out from oven, the kids ate two each, and today (2nd day) they ate 2 each again. They still say the cupcakes are yummy. I did not have time to do the frosting, but previous batch, I did the frosting. Here are the frosted cupcakes.

Very pretty with the color balls though the frosting are not well done. Has sandy texture in the mouth perhaps due to the icing sugar as it is just whip by hand. My friend advised me to whip by mixer, so I hope to try again and have the extras on swiss roll or something. The kids love the frosting!

So back to the 2nd try. This time, not much different from the previous. I am not busy today so I can witness the whole baking process. The batter starts to "melt" about 5 minutes into baking, and starts rising about 15 minutes into baking. The cakes finally looked baked with brownish top after 30 minutes. I think I must buy a new oven thermometer to test the temperature of my oven.

Ta Da! The cupcakes. This time, the batter is nicely distributed (by luck and chance!) resulting in a good shaped cupcake.

My kids asked for frosting, but I really do not have time. Hmm... now I am hungry.

Rachel Allen's Lemon Cupcakes

2010-05-20T01:01:00.005+08:00

Tada! Very on recently hor, baking and baking.

I have been watching Rachel Allen's and Nigella's show. So the recent episode has Rachel teaching her students lemon cupcakes and I have lemon at home, so .....

I involved my girl in my baking recently, but after the works, while baking, I have to carry on washing and preparing meals so my girl is still neglected.

She helped me to sift in the flour and read the readings on the weighing machine.

My kids had a bite right after the cupcake cool off and they say yummy. Let's see what they say tomorrow.

The steps for this cupcake are simple and since I have them all done in a mixer, the time taken is not too long. However, I do not have a oven thermometer now, so I set the temperature according to the table on the oven manual. The cupcakes took much more longer to bake to a brownish top. Almost 10 minutes into the 20 minute baking time, the cupcakes still not risen. It is almost 20 minutes before I see the cupcakes rise and I think my batch took almost an hour to get the brownish top. The brownish top of individual cupcakes are also not even in colour and I see specks of brown (I assume they are sugar) too. Perhaps I should soften the butter longer, or to cream the butter and sugar longer? The sugar just doesn't melt into the butter. Can creaming melt the sugar into the butter anyway? Any experts out there want to answer the question?

As usual, I did not do the frosting (but an improvement, I measured out the butter for the frosting) today, not sure if I will do it tmr. I do not know how to store the cupcakes if there are frosting.

Here is how mine look and as for the recipe, I can't provide one because I copy as I watch the show. I tried googled and a few links came out. So maybe you can google and follow anyone of them?

Non fancy lemon cupcakes.

Perhaps I will update the taste after I taste them.

I am still baking - Honey Cornflakes

2010-05-18T01:42:00.011+08:00

Wonder if you would consider me cheating if I tell you I am still baking but they are honey cornflakes.

I have four packets of cornflakes sitting in my cupboard for a long long time. I got them when I had Mcdonald's breakfast in Mcdonalds Malaysia. I had always wanted to try honey cornflakes but it make no sense to buy a packet just to try for once, so I reserved those for the purpose. It is not until I see Aimei's post on her attempt on the honey cornflakes that spurs me to try it. Thanks Aimei.

So on this weekend evening where I did not cook, and not heading anywhere with the kids, I quickly set to try this out. I promptly use my phone to keep her page in sight, measure out the ingredients and start working. (Oh, actually I also read the comments in the post that she took the recipe from.)

I added about half a teaspoon more of honey since I am worried the flakes may not stick. I also purposely scooped the sweet sticky mixture sticking on the base of the saucepan into the cases for the same reason. Then, I send the little cuppies into oven. I am suppose to bake for about 5 minutes, but I did not see any changes to the flakes so I thought, perhaps a little while more and soon, I see changes. There are bubbling liquid filling in the cases. I started to panic and switch the oven off. I still see the flakes half submerged in the bubbling liquid when I took it out. However, after it cooled down, I did not see it anymore. I happily think that I have successfully done it.

So when I tried on one after it cooled down..... I find that they stick very well and am so happy until I find them sticking to the paper cases as well. I have to play tug of war with the flakes because there is a layer of thick sticky yellowish honey like substance underneath the flakes.

See that? Not sure if that is alright, but I certainly do not see such "remains" in those that are sold during the Hari Raya or was it Haji?

Anyway, the kids love the honey cornflakes. They bring them to school for snacks. Don't you find them sweet looking, esp with the colourful sprinkles.

Here are some other stuffs that I am busy with (thus cannot find time to bake) ..

Making snacks/simple "bento" for kids

recess bentos

snacks (must remember not to use orange - 2nd pic, in agar agars)

Doing crafts with and for kids

The routine cooking

ok ... end of sharing ... and hope to shorten my to do list in baking (not forgetting beading too). :-)

Beading challenge #3

2010-05-15T11:45:00.003+08:00

This is done 2 days before it is due. It is suppose to be for Mothers' Day. My girl is tired and I asked to nap. In that 1.5 hour, I tried and tested various ways I wanted to hook up the pearl and the shell. I finally decided (or forced to decide, since with my poor skills and knowledge, this is the only possible way) that this is the way.

I can only say this thing looks simple to make, but it requires alot of my effort. Furthermore the eye pin I used are not of high quality and they broke easily. If someone is interested in this design (fat hope), I will go buy the highest quality eye pin I can get hold of and remake one more. Hahahaha.

Since it is for Mothers' Day, I chose pearl. I had another design at first, it is still a WIP in my working tray ... then this idea came along and I decide to try it since it is easier than the previous.

Here it is.

So what would you think after you see it? Tell you frankly, to me it looks pretty awful. I think I should not use the half pearl that are drilled (the hole of the pearl I mean) this way. It should look better if the head of the eye pin is hidden at the bottom. Now it looks like a pair of eyes staring at you? Or to be more apt to the Mothers' Day theme, they look like a pair of motherly breast? :-)

Anyway, I am not too happy with this pair of earring. One of my friend encourages me, and says that the first one is usually not so nice. Anyway I did put in my "better" (maybe not best lor) for this project. Now awaiting the next challenge which I asked my friend to think about.

By the way, to have nice finish products, the raw materials should be nice first, agree? Imagine this earring only comprises of a shell piece and pearl piece, and if both the raw material is not right, the combination will not be right, isn't it? *sigh* still trying to find excuse and can't come to terms that I produced such work. I hope the next one will be better.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes (take 2)

2010-05-07T01:08:00.004+08:00

No volcanoes this time. I half the recipe and it yields 16 cups, of which 3 are slightly taller cups (brown ones at the far end).

I also reduced the sugar. Hubby says this time is not as tasty as the first, but my kids still love it the same. I know the sugar and oil ratio affects the bake, but not sure by how much. Perhaps the sugar has changed something so hubby says not as tasty.

I noticed something weird this time. The chocolate chips seemed burnt. Look at the picture below, did you see a rim of black around the melted chocolate of the chip?

Can any expert visiting my blog enlighten me?

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

2010-04-26T00:58:00.006+08:00

Finally, I baked again. I baked 30 over very tasty cupcake last wednesday. They are called Ddouble Chocolate Cupcakes, but I feel that it should be called triple chocolate cupcakes, since it has chocolate chips, chocolate milk and melted chocolate.

Tasty they are, no doubt, but they don't look nice at all because I have them filled up too high, thou it is stated 3/4 full on the recipe, but I think my 3/4 is too much, thus all of them erupted like volcanoes. I have the ONLY near perfect one here.

I like this recipe because it doesn't add baking powder or soda (so called "artificial" ingredients), but of course, the self raising flour would have raising agent inside. I do not like this recipe because it uses alot of butter. Anyway the cupcake is so tasty and soft and fluffy right after bake that my girl ate 3 in a row. I ate quite a few myself *grin*. So in 3 days, all the cakes are gone.

However, this cake is a bit sweet (feedback from mother and brother). I replaced a certain portion of caster sugar with brown sugar since the teacher from the workshop says brown sugar gives better fragrance but brown sugar is sweeter, so I reduced the sugar by 50g and it is still sweet.

So here's the recipe. You got to try to believe it. Hehe.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

80gm melted chocolate

180gm plain flour

230gm butter (salted)

350gm caster sugar

4 eggs

200gm chocolate milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence (optional)

100gm chocolate chips

Procedures :-

Cream butter and sugar until creamy. Add in melted chocolate and continue to cream.
Add in vanilla essence and continue to cream until well mixed. Add in eggs, one at a time and cream until well combined.
Mixed in sifted flour alternating with milk until all ingredients are evenly mixed Lastly, fold in chocolate chips into batter.
Scoop the batter into baking cups until 3/4 full and bake at 190 degree Celsius for +/- 20 minutes.

Now go bake and enjoy the cupcakes. :-)

Beading challenge #2

2010-04-26T00:36:00.005+08:00

What has Earth Day got to do with my hobbies?

After the flower theme, I suggested to my friend about having Earth Day as the theme. She accepted. However, after 3 weeks, I still has nothing to show on the day of the deadline. I can name 101 excuses, but the most valid one is "my son is sick". He has fever for 3 weeks, on and off thou. But I did not slack. I think of ideas frequently. The day after the deadline, I finally got my hubby to tend the kids and try out my ideas. I spent almost half a day.

I started with wanting a mix of beads, chained inside a circle. The circle will be "earth", with brown chips as land, blue teardrop as water and green bicones as trees ... but I find that the beads just don't match. So I give up. Anyway kiddish idea isn't it?

Then I zoom down to only using blue teardrops as water for the design, since earth is 70% water. I quickly try ways to put the "water" together, in chain, in wire, but none is satisfactory .. and the headpins always break upon bending. Wasted alot of time here.

At last, for the sake of submission, and also a proper closure to this challenge, plus rushing time (to go kiddo's music lesson) I ... ended up ..... there .. silly piece of work .. "love the earth", blue heart and a brownish round ring (You should be able to guess why blue and brown, right?).

I think I am really not creative, and I really dislike this work. Not nice! Look at my friend's, gorgeous!

Now got to brainstorm for #3.

Flower Pendant

2010-04-02T03:41:00.005+08:00

Finally .. I can finally post, this time for my beading work.

Last week, I am thinking about motivating myself to touch my beads. Finally, I proposed to my friend who learnt beading recently, to challenge each other to make something weekly. She agreed to the proposal and we decided that we should do something with flowers since 清明節 is round the corner. Ha ha ha.

I usually do not do bead weaving, because it takes up alot of time if the pattern is complicated. This time round, I did bead weaving, because I came across this pair of earring. They look so pretty and they look like flower. I decided to copy this item (I am not creative, remember?). However, there are no instructions, or rather, no FREE instructions. So I spent 2 hrs yesterday afternoon trying to figure out how to thread the flower, draw up the pattern and tried to weave it. I tried 3 times (not nice result) but then I need to cook dinner, so I stopped.

The challenge is due today (Friday), and finally after half hour of weaving I got the flower done up.

I find it too big to be earring, so I am going to make it into a pendant. This is my result, but its only the motif because the jumprings I have are too small to be used to connect this pendant to the necklace. Perhaps I will make one myself.

How does it compare to the original? :-)

See my friend's end product here.

Before I decided on the above, my original plan is to do a pair of earring with a bead that has flower on it. I wanted to make use of a wiring techinque found in a library book that I am currently holding. However, the print on the bead doesn't seem like a flower, so even though I went ahead to try out the wiring technique, but I did not submit it for the "challenge". Here are parts of the earrings, one with wiring done over the bead, one without.

Which is nicer? Blue with silver or golden brown one ?

Look at the loop at the top of the bead, it is totally handmaded by me.

Ok, I am tired. It is 4.30 am now. Let's wait till the next challenge.

Chocolate Hazelnut Bread minus the hazelnut

2010-03-02T22:55:00.003+08:00

I made chocolate hazelnut bread (minus the hazelnut) again. I thought my yeast and bread flour are expiring, that is why. I did not add in hazelnut this time because my hubby doesn't like the bits. This time I remember to put in the melted butter as a liquid ingredient. The outcome :-

The top is still not smooth. Should I open the breadmaker to smooth out the top before it starts baking?

This is a peek into its "cross section". When it is warm, fresh out from the breadmaker, it really taste so heavenly. After that .. hehe still tasty lah. However I find the bread dense. Oh I made a mistake of putting in the egg unbeaten. Wonder what difference did it made. Will not be able to find out unless I bake another one.

I hope I will bake (anything) again soon.

Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge Cheesecake

2010-02-11T23:04:00.005+08:00

I know it is Chinese New Year and alot of baking blogs are all blogging about CNY goodies. But, day one of CNY is also Valentines' Day, so I decided that it is easier to bake for Valentines' Day then for CNY. Actually I have not finish my spring cleaning, but last year I also did not finish, the last last year I also did not finish ... so 年年有餘, I shall leave some of the cupboard doors not clean, steel shelves not clean etc etc. Haha. The real reason is not that .. but the 2 packs of cheese I bought quite some time ago.

This recipe requires only simple ingredients. However, I am not in a very good mood today, and from past experiences, mood not good, end product also will suffer.

As in all cheesecakes, the base is made of biscuit and this recipe calls for Chocolate sandwich cookie crumbs. I choose to use oreo biscuit with chocolate cream. I did not use a blender to break the cookies into crumbs so I think my base will not be tight with all the big pieces.

I am not sure if there is a printing mistake, but the recipe for the base only ask for 25ml of butter where it requires 175ml of crumbs. I remember most of the recipes (that I have read before) for cheesecake base are of 2:1 ratio (with regards to butter and crumbs). Anyway I use the biscuit as it is, hoping the cream will also help in "cementing" the base together. I also reduced the amount of crumbs, but I still end up with quite a thick base. I should have taken into consideration that my 6" heart shape cake pan has a different base area from a 6" springform round.

After the tedious work of breaking the biscuit into crumbs, I get on to the filling. Nothing too difficult when the works are all done by machine. However, I have a problem with dissolving the cocoa powder. How to dissolve 25ml of powder with 1 tsp of hot water? I got a paste instead and feel that it may not blend easily into the cheese mixture by hand, so I just add more water, just to "loosen" the paste.

Although I should really follow the recipe to a T, but I really wouldn't want to buy a bar of bittersweet chocolate just for this recipe, so I replace that with my button dark chocolate couverture (OOPS! Not sure if it is a big mistake since I don't even understand the usage of the different kind of chocolates).

In no time, the cake is completed. It should take shorter time if the crumbs are broken by machine and that I have plenty of kitchen top space. Like Nigella and Rachel Allen, they have all the machines around them, then they do not need to wash and reuse, and they did not count the wash up time into the baking process. *hiaz* They made baking and cooking so fast and easy. (just grumbling)

I had extra fillings, so they went into my newly bought ramekins. The cheesecakes have no base thou.

Here are how the cheesecake look like after 35 mins in the oven.

Ugly looking hor, cos I did not bother to "set up" the background (and I am PS dumb!). The recipe says to bake till the top feels firm and it jiggles a little and I really did that. Upon cooling down (requires 2 hours on the wire rack with pan on), I noticed that the cake firms up more and is not jiggling. After that it went into the fridge.

I let the my girl try it the next day. She likes it, and so does the boy. I just feel weird as usual since I really do not know how the cake texture should be like. It is not like those baked cheesecake found in japanese restaurants but those in secret recipe or coffee bean. I guess it should be so since there is no flour as ingredient? However, the inside is still quite creamy, like not been baked, but the top definitely is firm. It cracks when I try to cut the cake up. See the picture below. Sorry did not do a nice cut.

See the small crack at the side ?

See the thick crust and soft filling?

Think the chocolate buttons are too big.

My family likes the cake but I think we had a hard time finishing it since we are leaving home for malaysia a day after the cake is cut. It is still a very sweet cake after I reduced the sugar and since it is all cheesy, you know it is not easy to finish a big piece.

I still wonder if the inside is suppose to be this way (Perhaps it is undercooked!). If anyone can enlighten me after trying out or after understanding the recipe, do let me know. As usual I omitted the decorations.

Recipe from The Cheesecake Bible by George Geary

Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge Cheesecake

Preheat oven to 325F (160C)
6 inch (15cm) cheesecake pan, ungreased, or springform pan with 3 inch(7.5cm) sides, greased

Crust

3/4 cup (175ml) chocolate sandwich cookie crumbs

2 tbsp (25ml) unsalted butter, melted

Filling

2 tbsp (25ml) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

2 tsp (10ml) hot water

2 packages (each 8oz/250g) cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup (175ml) granulated sugar

2 eggs

8oz (250g) bittersweet chocolate chunks

1 tsp (5ml) vanilla extract

Crust : In a bowl, combine cookie crumbs and butter. Press into bottom of cheesecake pan and freeze.
Filling: In a small bowl, dissolve cocoa powder in hot water. Set aside.
In a mixer bowl fitted with paddle attachment, beat cream cheese and sugar on medium high speed until very smooth, for 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Fold in chocolate chunks, vanilla and dissolved cocoa by hand.
Pour over frozen crust, smoothing out to sides of pan. Bake in preheated oven until top is firm to touch and centre has a slight jiggle to it, 25 to 35 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack for 2 hours. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 6 hours before decorating or serving.

I hope it is still not late to wish my dear friends (who read my blog but not in FB) a very Happy Tiger Year.

Eye-opener

2010-02-08T23:51:00.003+08:00

If you can remember, I bought a KitchenAid some months back. That big investment came with two free workshops where I can further understand how to better (or fully) make use of the machine. I purposely selected one workshop on bread. I did not have my camera (cos spoilt) but is not intelligent to use my HP that day. *hiaz*

The teacher is sam, who is not a baker/chef but a food technologist baker. You can know more about him at his blog http://samsbakejournal.blogspot.com. He showed us how to make curry buns with non time dough method and olive pesto loaft bread using the sponge dough method.

I got a better understanding on bread making plus some tips. He is open to any questions even though is not related to the breadmaking workshop. So I take this chance to clarify with him if it is alright to interchange ml and grams when we measure liquids like milk and oil. He says it is fine, going on to briefly explain why (using the mass volume density equation). I also asked him if it is alright to replace milk with skim milk. I guess I have asked redundant question, because to a technologist, everything counts, but he said, I am working with too little amount of ingredients so those differences are negligible. To him, replacing butter with oil also need to make adjustment because butter contains a certain amount of water.

A pity I have to leave early without seeing the end result of the olive loaf. Anyway, its very fun to attend these workshops ... and I think anyone can attend if they are willing to pay $10. If anyone is interested, perhaps can check with Mayer.

I hope I will put the stuff I learn that day to good use, and soon. If not, how would I be able to practice?

Rojak

2010-02-04T23:10:00.009+08:00

No No. I did not make any of that (refering to the title). This post is mainly for me to talk to or update my friends who visit my blog.

I have been busy with my own house improvement (painting works) and lately helping out with my mother's new house renovation stuff as well as spring cleaning (ya so far just talk and not much done).

In the middle of all these, I still read papers and I come across an offer on something that I have been looking for quite a long time.

Ta da !

This little set of drawers now housed about 2/3 my possessions of beads and beading stuff.

(photo is blurred cos it is taken with my spoilt camera. Got spoilt on that very day!) Wished I had got another one but afraid of splurging too much on this hobby that I cannot go full swing into (actually no time to go into any hobby full swing leh).

Then just a few days ago, I came across this post where the mouth watering cake is baked in a ramekin found in Daiso (I asked the author), and ramekin is something that I have been wanting to get my hands on (thou not sure for what yet). I think it is not easy to get a $2 ramekin, so I got permission from the "finance manager" and went to purchase 4. Now I am a proud owner of these beautiful ramekins.

Besides busy shopping (keke), I attended a Bento making workshop on 30th Jan. Thanks to Angelia and June, I have the chance to enjoy some me time and most important, it is an event on something I like. I do not make bento before this workshop, but I do sometimes cut bread into shapes using my cookie cutters to prepare the kids' snack boxes to school.

At the workshop, I am totally lost at the part where we are suppose to make 2 bentos. I am not creative at all, so all I can do is to copy the simplest idea from the various pictures posted on the wall of the room.

This is the bento that I have made that day. Thanks to June for taking the pictures for me.

Our teacher for the workshop is Angie, and this is her blog where you will be able to read more details on the event. I am also happy to meet Leonny in person (otherwise only read about her in her blog).

I am really happy to have attended this event and also with the goodies that I got in that goodie bag. Thank you to Angelia and June again. Will I make bento from now on? Yes, will try, after all this is also my interest, just that hubby say I can't be having too many hobbies with the limited time I have. Anyway I think Teacher Angie says that Bento is about arranging food nicely into the boxes and I do try to create nice looking food and arrange my food, but onto plate .. so I think not difficult to try bento making on the plate. :-)

Anyway, this is the first try, meal in the box ... girl got to take her lunch at my mother's new place as I am supposed to help with supervising a job in her house.

It is salmon with Furikake. Initally only the rice and smiley potato, but not happy with serving the not so healthy ready made vege, I quickly prepare some broccoli and carrots to go with it.

Ya, I said I am busy, but my friend tried making her own kaya and said it takes her 10 minutes only. With ready ingredients in the fridge, and the "10 minutes only" temptation, I made kaya too, but I think I did not pass.

I started with low fire, trying to heat up the coconut milk, mixed some into the beaten eggs, before I empty everythingg bit by bit inside. However, I took around 30 minutes and it still doesn't look and taste like kaya. The mixture just won't thicken itself even with an extra egg I added. I double checked with my friend and decided that I will try again with the exact ingredients she used. That will be after CNY. Thanks June for the recipe and advices. Here's how my kaya look.

Too long a post, too tired ... no chinese translation for this post this time .....zzzzz

Doggie Biscuit

2009-11-27T23:51:00.004+08:00

Its not the first time I use this recipe, but the 2nd. The first time was a long long time ago. I wanted to bring this biscuit home to malaysia for my little niece and also to find something for my kids to do, so I decided to bake these cute looking biscuits and ask my kids to decorate them. My friend, upon hearing this, like to bring her kids over to "participate".

So here is part of the end result.

I baked double the recipe, because I like my friend to bring home a recipe's portion, but now I ended up with quite alot still at home. The ones in the pictures are done mostly by my friend. Very creative. Those done by the kids .... erm ... :-)

The mixing part is so easy with KitchenAid, keke. Anyway I think this recipe can be done manually by hand too.

The kids enjoyed themselves for a while, but they are too fast for my small oven, and I did not want to use too many trays, so I rather them go play then sitting around the table with oily hands.

So can you find snowman, kitty cat, rabbit, bear bear, etc among the lot?

The recipe can be found at Happy Home baking's website.

狗狗餅可愛嗎？就是因為它可愛，所以想做些拿回家婆家哄小孩，順便我家哪兩個小瓜也可以參與一份。我朋友也乘假期帶孩子來湊熱鬧。圖片里的餅餅是出自我朋友的巧手。蠻容易的，現在就去動手做一做吧。請從這兒查閱食譜。

Questions that needed answers

2009-11-25T01:10:00.002+08:00

Am copying a recipe down because am thinking about doing it. A question just pop into my mind. Can most batter wait? What do I mean by that?

You see, mine is a small oven that can only fit in a tray of twelve mini cupcakes nicely. What happen if the recipe I am following can make more than 12 ? Should I half the recipe, or should I get two trays? If I bake one first, can the batter wait? Will the waiting time allows chemical reaction to take place within the batter? I am sure some batter can survive the waiting time, some cannot. But I wouldn't know what can and what cannot.

So how?

Busy but not with ...

2009-11-22T02:33:00.003+08:00

Sigh, this time of the year, not busy with my hobbies (unless you call tidying up the household is a hobby of SAHM?) but with spring cleaning. I still bakes, but it is just the same old stuff that use to fill the tummy.

Next year, my son is going to P1, so he has used some letters beads to make his teachers these handphone straps. Of cos, he only did the pattern planning and stringing part while I crimp all stuff proper for him. I hope the teachers are happy.

Black and white

2009-11-07T23:24:00.006+08:00

Have not been baking for a long time .... cannot remember for wat reasons .. but here I am, with two recent bakes done last week and last last week.

The first is an easy Banana Chocolate cake from 手拌式蛋糕by Kevin Chai. I had very ripe bananas (so ripe that they fell off from the "don't know what to call". :-) . I am not sure if I failed or suceeded (but I baked it more than the time required), because the inside of the cake is so moist (or should I say wet) that it almost look like mud cake, or those super fudgy brownie? You see and you tell me.

The cake rises very well in the oven and it requires "tent-ing". However, after I removed it from the oven, it sank after a while. As it is a loaf cake, and I do not have a oven thermometer (my oven is very temperamental, haha) so I am worried that it will not be baked. With the aluminium foil tent, I purposely let the cake bake another 15 minutes more than the required time, so I hope the "wetness" is normal. Anyway my kids love the cake, I do too.

Look at that sunken "face".

Shortly after this bake, I remember my parmesan cheese is expiring soon, so I dig out the recipe that I had prepared long time ago ( I knew I would not be able to finish that tub before the expiry date). I followed the recipe and has Mini Cheese cupcake done with my girl in a morning. Pretty fast and fuss free, but the recipe isn't really complete because I did not jot down the temperature that I should bake the cupcakes in, so I just use any reading. Anyway, the parmesan cheese has passed its "Best Before" date (not expiry date), but I still went ahead to do it .. and eat it too! Its yummy, but oily. When they are in the oven, there are already alot of oil oozing out. My kids also love these and requested me to bake again. Look at the molehills.

and this "sunflower"

and the yummy inside.

I think I should learn from Happy Home Baker .. use more pictures, less words, esp when my command of english isn't very good. Now I am so tired to write in mandarin .. so this post will not have the mandarin part.

Here is the recipe.

Banana Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

90g SR flour, 90g plain flour

1/4 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp bicarbonate soda

1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder, 170g butter

1 tbsp corn oil, 150g chocolate

100ml hot water, 80ml milk

170g brown sugar, 3 eggs

200g banana flesh (sliced)

Method

1. Grease and line 10cm by 32 cm (4 by 13 inches) baking tin. Preheat oven to 170 degree celsius.

2. Combine flours, baking powder, soda and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl.

3. Melt butter, oil, chocolate, hot water and milk over low heat. Remove from heat, combine with brown sugar and eggs.

4. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture together with banana slices until well blended.

5. Spoon batter into prepared tin. Bake in oven for 40 - 45 minutes or until cooked. Stand for 10 minutes and turning on to wire rack to cool.

6. Decorate with decogel, banana slices and chocolate chips.

I have forgotten where did I get the mini cheesecake recipe from, so if anyone wanted it, do email me and I shall share it with you.

Now I really need to zzz...

Busy with beading

2009-10-02T00:12:00.004+08:00

The kids had chicken pox, then I had chicken pox, and I am told to avoid food like egg, chicken, peas etc for minimum of a month.. so without eggs, I did not bake, just too lazy to find non egg recipes. So I spent some time on my other hobby, beading.

I feel that the previous earring that I made is not dainty enough due to the big loops, so I cut them up and made another pair.

Pearly Black Drops

Besides this, I keep bumping into ladies wearing earrings with a single pearl... that reminds me of the peach fruit, so I made a pair with my pearls and I added a green crystal to each pearl to symbolise the leaf. I do not know how to comment on this pair, but I think just a simple pearl, but bigger would be very nice. Simple is always nice.

Fresh Peaches

Besides doing something for myself, while reading the princess magazine with my girl, I have got an inspiration from a necklace clipart and made this bracelet for her. She is so happy and this is her new favourite.

Sweet Ivory

I hope I will find a time to get some supplies .. I wanted to make another necklace for myself.

Oh .. I miss eating cakes.

A matching earring for my pearl sandwich necklace

2009-09-09T23:01:00.005+08:00

I have the intention to wear my "sandwich necklace" for a wedding coming up in Nov, so it cannot go with my current silver earring. I do not intend to have a pair of earring that looks the same as the necklace, so I just use the same colour theme and I match the pearl (that I used in the necklace) with a black drop bead. Here goes :-

Not very satisfied, but will do for the time being. The loops are too big, thus seems to make the earring "very empty" (wonder if you will understand). I do have one or two other variation in mind, but has no pearl pressence. So if only black, wonder will it be seen when my hair is hanging down.

p/s : Can you see the flaws? (the difference size of the loops is a big giveaway, not counted)

My third loaf from Breadmaker

2009-09-08T01:34:00.003+08:00

To use up the frozen pandan juice, I made the pandan bread again. This time I used the new brand of yeast, use pandan juice instead of coconut milk and remember to add pandan paste (instead of essence, because I don't have).

Normally, with my skills, I do not venture far from the recommended recipe, but this time, I just want to use up all the frozen pandan juice. With the new yeast, my hubby says there is still a slight hint of sourness .. anyway I did not detect anything.

This time, the bread is softer than the first try. Not sure if it is due to the egg. My kids are having chicken pox, so cannot consume any eggs, thus I just empty the whole egg into the mixer bowl, a total of 46g instead of what is asked for. The bread looks bigger as compared to the first time too. However, I just can't seem to get a smooth top.

By the way, anyone know what is the difference between pandan paste and pandan essence?

你認為我做麵包上癮了嗎？不是啦。是我懶。用麵包機做麵包，就好像煮一鍋熟的餐。全部材料倒進去，開機，按鈕，等三小時，就有麵包吃了。這次沒用椰奶因為想用完椰水。蛋也多過食譜寫的。這次的斑蘭麵包比第一次來的軟，也比較大。新鮮的麵包一定好吃的。

My second loaf from the breadmaker

2009-09-05T00:06:00.006+08:00

Happy with the first loaf, I continued to make the 2nd loaf. This time a chocolate flavour one, because it is my boy's favourite. I took the recipe from HappyHomeBaking again, Chocolate Hazelnut Bread.

She mentioned in her post that she bought the wrong type of hazelnut (grounded instead of chopped) but I like to use grounded hazelnut because I know that my family (accept me) cannot accept a bread with nuts.

Previously, I am using Red Man Yeast but my hubby thinks that the first loaf that I baked has a hint of sourish taste, so I am determine to change the type of yeast, from RedMan to Bake King (since it is readily available at the nearby NTUC).

This Red Man breadmaker only allows me to choose the crust and type of bread, so basic and light crust is what I have chosen, thou I know the crust will turn out not light!

At the end of 3 hours, I got this.

I love the look of the bread, the inside but not the outside. I still do not have a smooth top. Is it the standard for breads out of breadmaker? The bread is still soft, but the crust is cripsy then when cooled, chewy. Anyway I love this bread. The chocolate inside makes it so tasty and I love the little bits inside. My girl ate it while it is fresh and said is nice, hubby also say its nice (but he doesn't like the bits), but my boy got chicken pox and has no appetite. Anyway, on 2nd day, no one asking for it. it is a little drier.

According to the manual of this breadmaker, the liquid ingredients will go first follow by the dry ones, then butter, but this recipe calls for melted butter and it is liquid ... so shd it be first, or last? In the end I put it in last, since i m going to turn on the maker right away.

It was after that then I realized I may have added the hazelnut in the wrong order. Hazelnut can be considered as "other ingredients" that should only be added after the 2nd kneading, but I put it in together with the dry ingredients. I wrote to ask HappyHomebaking for advices. She mentioned if the hazelnuts are grounded to very fine, I can add in with the flour. If it is in bits, adding it too early might make the dough dry as it may absorb up the moisture. If I ever had the chance of baking this bread again, I hope I remember to add the hazelnut in later.

很高興上回的麵包不錯，所以乘勝追擊，再來個巧克力口味的。

My first loaf from the bread maker

2009-08-28T01:07:00.005+08:00

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

2009-08-27T23:42:00.007+08:00

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

2009-08-27T02:18:00.004+08:00

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

2009-08-22T14:20:00.004+08:00

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

2009-08-20T00:36:00.006+08:00

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

2009-08-19T23:48:00.007+08:00

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

2009-08-16T23:50:00.004+08:00

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

2009-08-07T08:49:00.006+08:00

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.

I cheated again

2009-07-12T23:40:00.004+08:00

What are these ugly chocolate rings? Did they scare u? They are donut when I asked my kids. They called them "Mummy's donut". I woke up early to make these so that I can utilise the leftover rings of lite meal buns I have. What happen to the centre of the "donuts"? I use them to make "Mummy's swensens burger" that look like the below.

一物二用。我用了Gardenia Lite Meal Bun 的麵包，做了孩子的早餐和晚餐。麵包中間切割出來做漢堡，傍邊拿來做甜甜圈。難看的甜甜圈沒吓着你吧？對不起，請多包涵。