Wake Up and Smell the Cake

Good morning! Not the best of mornings. I have this irritating woozy feeling lingering somewhere in my head. Or eyes. Don't really know which is the cause. Weekend was kinda okay. I made Husband-approved banana cake with chocolate chips! Haha. I wanted to use the leftover yoghurt but it seems that Husband threw it away already so I had to do with milk + vinegar. I went back to my mum's trusty banana recipe and I got it right this time! Previously I didn't, so I made changes and used another recipe too, but I was determined to get back the soft fluffy banana cake (not banana bread) that I grew up with. It's difficult to find a real banana cake recipe because most are banana bread, but I want the soft and moist cake, not a cake full of flour. This time round, I took my time creaming the butter with sugar, and then with eggs till I got the right consistency of air in the cake. I used self raising flour too and I sieved it. The result is just like my mum's cake

Initially I wanted to make shortcut apple pie using instant prata but my apple cinnamon mix was too spicy (result of agaration). To dilute it, I made muffins instead. I have yoghurt to clear so here's my yoghurt apple muffin recipe adapted from  http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/blueberry-yogurt-muffins 2 cups self raising flour + 1/2 tsp baking soda 1 1/2 cups yoghurt 6 tbsp canola oil 10 tbsp sugar 1 egg Walnuts Apple cinnamon mix: 2 apples diced 2 tbsp sugar 1 tsp cinnamon  Raisins Baked at 170 degrees for 26 minutes cos mine are big and tall muffins. The best looking muffins ever! Beautifully browned and fluffy! Yummy too! Hehe been quite some time since I baked muffins. Yay! The muffins aren't oily at all! Used 2 layers of liners but the 2nd liners isn't oily! I'm impressed. I should use yoghurt for muffins more often!

Junior is a kitty cat fan. He'll get very excited if he sees a kittycat. I have now made new cat sounds, what I call crazycat, and he loves it a lot. Will get into fits of laughter when I start my crazycat meowing.   Here's Junior with yet another cat encounter, but sadly, cats ignore him :( Or they'll be in defensive mode cos this boy runs like he's going to attack them. Can't blame these cats.    Hello kitty cat! How are you!  Oh? What is that you're looking at?  Mama, kitty cat doesn't want to talk to me :(     Hahaha that's pretty much the situation every time he sees one. My poor boy, rejected by kitty cats.   Anyway! I tried making lemon curd muffins in my bid to use up the big jar of lemon curd. I think I should use a cupcake recipe next time, muffins are dense and not very good to keep for a few days. I filled the muffin liner with one tbsp. muffin batter, 1 heaped tsp lemon curd and another tbsp muffin batter, but

Back to work after the long weekend! Three day weekends are perfect, aren't they. Love spending time with our family :)   Last Friday the SIL came over to make rainbow cake for FIL's birthday. All set for white cake recipe which I have never tried out before, and frostings which we have never tried before too - Nutella frosting and swiss meringue buttercream. I was and still am afraid of frostings. Can never get them right. I hate the thought of having too much butter, of eating just butter and sugar, so I always resort to cream cheese frostings with highly reduced sugar.   But SIL doesn't want cream cheese frosting, so we tried out something else. I didn't want plain buttercream cos butter + sugar is just yuck. So I chose swiss meringue buttercream, which apparently is lighter cos it has egg whites.   It was my first time making a white cake, the batter looked really pale because of the absence of yolks. The cake turned out great, but if I were to repeat

My blogging frequency has definitely decreased! I haven't even done the recipe for the mango cheesecake, but anyway you can refer to this one , cos I adapted a little but I realised later that this recipe needs no alteration. Haha. I decided to make carrot cupcakes yesterday to use up 2 leftover carrots and some raisins. Turns out I have way too much carrots compared to the batter and I ended up with soggy cupcakes. See? Carrots more than batter! Haha Here's the recipe from food.com , but adjusted for 6 muffins instead. 2/3 cups flour 2/3 tsp baking soda 1/4 cup white sugar 1/4 cup brown sugar 2 carrots (it says medium carrots, maybe mine's large) 1/2 cup raisins 1 egg 1/3 cup vegetable oil 2/3 tsp vanilla essence handful of white chocolate chips Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl. Mix the oil and egg in a separate container, then mix into the flour mixture just until combined. Add in the grated carrot, raisins and chocolate chips. Baked for 40 mi

Today I brought the wrong book for class nooooo. Maybe I'll make a copy for today's lessons later. Bleah. Last weekend's bake: banana choc chip muffins for breakfast. I used the recipe before , this time round I made it a little bit healthier. I reduced the egg from 2 to 1, switched from butter to oil, and I used a bit more bananas. I noticed that the muffins' top became smooth as cupcakes when I left the batter to rest before baking. Nice! I used: 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 6 medium ripe bananas, mashed 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup oil 1/2 cup low fat milk 1 egg 1/2 cup chocolate chips Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin papers. I got 17 muffins.  Combine all dry ingredients and chocolate chips in a large bowl and mix well. Combine bananas, sugar, oil, milk and egg in a medium bowl. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ingredients bowl. Do not over-mix! Divide batter among prepared muffin cups, fill it till 3/4 full. B

Another batch of rocky road, yes! And even so, I didn't finish my pack of marshmallows and hazelnuts. Sigh. But I did finish my chocolates! Haha I didn't use all of that, I threw away Nips and kept 1 bar of Toblerone back in the fridge hehe. This time round, I didn't use as much too, the first time was overkill. Haha. I used a different recipe for the brownie too, a recipe I've been meaning to use for a long time, best cocoa brownies by smitten kitchen . And it's a wonderful recipe! Best brownie I've made from scratch. Totally love the rich, fudgy deep chocolate flavour. I love that this brownie can be made in a saucepan too! Fuss free and easy. 10 tablespoons (140 grams) unsalted butter 1 1/4 cups (250 grams) sugar 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (65 grams, though some brands may weigh more) unsweetened cocoa powder (natural or Dutch-process) 2 large eggs, cold 1/2 cup (65 grams) all-purpose flour Melt butter in a saucepan, add in sugar and cocoa and mi

I can never leave Korean strawberries alone when they're on offer. So last Friday's lunchtime grocery shopping I bought 2 packs i.e. 500g. When I was in my second trimester of pregnancy, I ate Korean strawberries almost everyday, finishing a pack of 250g daily. But I couldn't finish them this time round since I have a whole carton of oranges too (yes greedy much) so I decided to make strawberry cake to be brought for the cousins gathering. Junior was very accommodating too, sleeping the whole time I was preparing the strawberries. This is quite rare, I had time to boil them, drain & blitz in the food processor, and used the strawberry water to cook down to a syrup. The whole house smelled of strawberries it was just awesome! I used this recipe by Confessions of A Foodie Bride , for a fresh strawberry cake. It is by far the most moist cake I've ever made! I totally love the texture! The colour of the cake wasn't pink, more of a very pale, brownish pink. Not i

2 more weeks and this misery is over! Had a pretty good weekend, Saturday we were out and I brought Junior to the library while waiting for his grandparents. Geylang East Library is good for kids! The books are still new, and there aren't many kids around. Junior was happily roaming the shelves and the reading areas. Went to Tampines after that and there was a fantastic pots and pans sale I just had to get something! For only $69 I got a 34-cm skillet cum steamer. Yeah now I can make steamed cakes woohoo! I also grabbed a hair dryer which has been on my to-buy list for years and this one cost me only $15! Sunday was spent at home, it was raining practically the whole day. For Saturday's breakfast I made white chocolate raspberry muffins (project clear-fridge #1: raspberries) and mushroom & cheese omelette. White Chocolate Raspberry Muffins Recipe from Best Recipes Australia , but below is what I used: 2 1/2 cups flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 3/4 cups caster s

Yesterday was my brother's 26th birthday and he requested for a strawberry shortcake. Not strawberry cheesecake or some other cake, but strawberry shortcake. The Japanese one, to be precise. So I hunted for recipes and decided on this recipe by La Fuji Mama because it has pictures to follow. I was a bit skeptical and scared to try because it's a cake without artificial leavening agent and I haven't done any cake that uses whisked egg whites. What if the cake doesn't rise!! The cake did rise, but not enough cos the bottom fell flat. Maybe I should have baked in 2 tins instead of 1 cos the top was fluffy enough. I had another problem as well. The whipped cream frosting that totally failed. Maybe I didn't do the gelatin properly? It's my first time handling gelatin as well! Omg so many firsts! Here's the recipe: For Noriko’s sponge cake: 4 large eggs, white and yolks separated 4.2 ounces (120 grams, 9.5 tablespoons) granulated sugar, sifted once

For the first time I halved a recipe. I need to start reducing my cake recipes or spread the fats so it won't all end up at my butt. The weekend was filled with weddings, began on Friday night, went home late, whole day Saturday and two weddings on Sunday. Despite that I still managed to squeeze time to bake yesterday morning with my little boy. I let him mix the butter, which he gladly touched and spread on the floor (!!), and he refused to give me back the ladle when he was having fun 'creaming' the butter and sugar together. I decided to make them in cupcake form rather than a 7 inch cake pan so that it'll be more interesting for Junior. This recipe makes exactly 12 cupcakes, just nice. Instead of the normal butter cake, I used ground almonds too so that I can reduce my stock and at the same time get a nuttier cake. Ingredients 125g butter 50g ground almonds 100g flour 1 tsp baking powder 100g sugar 1 tsp vanilla paste 3 eggs 12 tsp nutella Cream butter

Oh goddd I hate stomachaches. All that churning and squirming and not knowing why! Anyway. I'm back from Lombok and back to office sadly hahaha. Lombok deserves a post on its own so I'll save that for later. Made a vanilla bean bundt cake on Christmas after a dry baking spell haha. To my horror there were no vanilla bean cake recipes in my recipe books so I googled and use this recipe by butteredup . Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 2 sticks butter, softened (I reduced by 1/4 stick) 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar 2 vanilla beans, halved lengthwise 5 eggs 1 cup + 2 tbsp milk + 1 tbsp vinegar (original recipe is 1 cup buttermilk) Preheat oven to 170°C. Generously butter pan and dust with flour.  Whisk together dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and baking soda.  Beat together butter and sugar in an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy. Scrape seeds from vanilla beans with tip of a

Apple cupcake/mini cakes in the oven wee!! Finally FINALLY got to use all the apples. I loosely adapted the recipe from here , with alterations. I made 1 1/2 times the batter so that I could use all 6 apples. Am not sure what they will turn out like, but here's the recipe anyway! I'll update in a few minutes' time when the 1st batch is out. Moist Apple Cake 6 apples, diced 1 1/2 tbsp cinnamon 4 1/2 tbsp sugar 2 1/2 cups flour 1 tbsp baking powder 1/2 cup canola oil + 2 tbsp butter 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/3 cup apple juice 2 tsp vanilla 3 eggs 1/2 cup milk walnuts Mix the diced apples, cinnamon, 4 1/2 tbsp sugar together, make sure the apples are coated well. Mix the butter, oil, apple juice, sugar, vanilla together well. Add in eggs one at a time, incorporating into the batter. Add in the flour and baking powder. Because I thought the batter was too thick, I added the milk here haha. Add in the apples and walnuts and mix well. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for

While waiting for Husband to end his meeting, I shall blog. We're going Toys R Us later to look at, well, toys. HAHA. Feeling under the weather a little, my throat felt weird yesterday afternoon and when it was night time I felt like I was swallowing a golf ball. Very painful. Now it's much better, with slight fever, am thinking if I should go to the doctor or not. And the office is freezing cold!! These people aren't wearing any jackets or anything either! It's already midweek but I'm gonna blog about the weekend haha. Made butter almond cake for dearest Husband who has been complaining I have been baking everything under the sun except his favourite, and on Sunday we had family day by the work place! It was fun :) Games, mingling with staff, and Junior had his first sea play. Haha. He wasn't quite fond of walking on sand but he really loved to be in the sea with his daddy. Thank goodness the weather was alright, not too hot and no thunderstorm. It did dr

Been a long while since I blogged. Made red velvet cupcakes for sister-in-law's birthday yesterday! Decided to try a different recipe, one which doesn't use butter. Reason being I didn't want to wait to thaw the butter hurhur. Anyway below will be a whole lot of buttermilk recipes cos I have a carton of buttermilk. Haha. Went to Universal Studios before that, with my family. There were too many people cos there were 2 family days there, one my dad's and another is a big shipping co. The waiting time is seriously crazy. We gave Transformers a miss. It rained too, in the afternoon. Thank goodness we weren't at at queue for outdoor rides. Anyway not much time to blog so here's the red velvets! It's a really moist cake, I read the reviews and some people found it too oily but I think it's perfect cos I hate dry cakes. I came across this when I was googling for "red velvet cupcakes oil". The tips were good, and turns out it's Paula Deen'

New addition to the work table! Parfum! Using bamboo scent we bought from Taka, I can't remember the brand. The Husband was compelled to buy from this auntie cos she gives good customer service. She can even guess what kind of scents we like, and she's almost correct all the time! This was a bit pricey, 60 bucks per bottle, and we bought the refill as well, $40. An impulse buy for me, cos it was The Husband who wanted it and on the spot I took one as well haha. But now my nose is half-stuck. Bleah. Made brownies last Friday. Was on childcare leave, my poor baby was having fever. I managed to cook too haha. Made nasi goreng for myself with leftovers on Friday, and spaghetti goreng yesterday! I is amazed with what I can do when I have no menu restrictions. So for the brownies. It was the first time I made brownies from scratch! Yes! I've been too reliant on brownie mixes haha. This time I tried a safe bet, Nigella's everyday brownies. It didn't need any mel

Finally baked today yippee! Made pandan muffins this morning, cos muffins are the fastest and easiest way to get your baking craving fixed. And I can bring bring these muffins to work too for snacking. I got the original inspiration from My Muffin Lab , but I made my own adjustments. So here's what I used against what is the original recipe: 2 cups cake flour (2 cups self-raising flour) 3/4 cup sugar 1 1/2 tsp baking powder (NA because they used self-raising flour) 2 eggs 200ml Kara coconut cream (1/2 cup coconut milk + 1/2 cup milk) 1 cup canola oil (3/4 cup vege oil) 2 tsp pandan kaya paste (1 tsp pandan paste) Mix the dry ingredients in a small bowl and the wet ingredients in a big bowl. Surprisingly the coconut cream and oil mix together very well! Haha. Add the dry ingredients into the large bowl and mix only till combined. Transfer to muffin cups (abt 2 tbsp of batter per cup), I got 12 muffins! Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 27 minutes. Ahhh so prett

Hello hello! Dropping by for a short note on blueberry muffins I tried last Sunday. Although the recipe is To Die For Blueberry Muffins , I think the other blueberry muffin recipe has a more muffin-ish top, this was more cake-like. But I can't deny this is healthier because it uses milk instead of sour cream. Haha. No photos! Here what I used, note it defers a little from the original recipe: 1 2/3 cups flour (because I wanted to finish the whole packet) 3/4 cups + 3 tbsp sugar 2 tsp baking powder 1/3 cup vegetable oil 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 1 cup blueberries Mix wet ingredients together in a small bowl, and the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until combined, transfer to muffin cups (I got 8) and bake for about 25 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. I'm finally finishing most of my baking ingredients, time to get new ones!! Plain flour's cleared, brown sugar, walnuts. Now I shall aim to clear my optima flour and co

Had a superb weekend which means I'm sooo having the Monday blues. I love "just us" weekends. Husband had to attend a two day convention but skipped some sessions. Me and Junior was at home the whole time except Saturday afternoon where we went for early dinner and walked around Vivo. Vivo was quite an experience hahaha. I know it's family and children friendly but Junior wasn't keen on walking around on his own yet so we didn't really take note of such places until last Saturday. We have tried to let him walk around but he was choosy with the places. We first went into Toys R Us to get him warmed up, and warmed up he was! He couldn't wait to get out of the stroller! Once out, he happily roamed free, trying out this toy and that, wanted to make friends with GIRLS omg Junior you're too young, and when we carried him, he wanted to be put back down so he could walk. We literally had to scoop him up, hold him tight because he was squirming around