Wake Up and Smell the Cake

It's December! Too fast. Weekends aren't that free anymore, not much of cooking these days. Two weekends ago (or 1 weekend ago?) was daging masak kicap, and the weekend that just passed I didn't really cook save the quick Sunday dinner of sambal sardine with canned mushrooms. My ultimate comfort food best eaten with hot rice. I think I finally got it, tastes like my mum's. Yumyum. 1 can sardines in tomato sauce (Sardines, not mackerel. Ayam brand's the best!) 1 onion, finely sliced 2 garlic, smashed and chopped 1 inch ginger, sliced 1 stalk lemongrass, bruised and cut into 3 3 tbsp chili paste 1 small can mushrooms, drained and washed) Fry the lemongrass and onions till fragrant. Add in garlic and ginger, fry till fragrant as well then add in the chili paste. Fry till the oil separates (yes that's what my mother says), probably 10-15 minutes I didn't time, but the longer the better. Add in mushrooms, stir fry for about 1 to 2 minutes before a

My parents are home! Yay! My mum is still sick though hope she gets better :( The welcome home asam pedas was a success! I realised I didn't have to go all the way to Geylang Serai market on Friday during lunch to get ingredients cos I went to the market to get fish and Chong Pang is pretty self sufficient anyway. It wasn't really cheap at Geylang either! Oh wells. Lesson learnt. This is my second time making asam pedas using the recipe from the Malay Heritage Cooking cookbook. I made some slight changes like the method. Asam Pedas Ground paste: 50 dried chilis, cut into small pieces & soaked in hot water 70g belacan 5 onions, sliced 15 gloves garlic 2 1/2 ginger Asam pulp, 200g soaked in water (but I didn't use all) 3 stalks lemon grass, bruised 2kg ikan kerisi (about 3 tails) Laksa leaves (daun kesum), about 30 leaves Lady's fingers, about 30-40 Salt 1 1/2 tsp Sugar 2 tbsp Prepare ground paste in a blender to form a paste. Heat oil in a

It has been a roller coaster of a weekend! We finally went for Junior's hearing test and thankfully he did not need to be sedated cos he sat like a good boy listening via the earpiece. Thank God. Went home, cooked lunch of our version of ayam masak merah. I still can't get the gravy texture same like my mum's. I wonder why. Makes me feel like getting a handheld blender and blend the onions etc. Later that evening, was part 1 of project caterer for SIL's house: making brownies. I decided to add in a little twist and include red velvet swirl brownies too, but because it's a bit more tedious, I only made 2 batches. The normal cocoa brownies I made 4 batches and sprinkled with lots of chopped almonds. I used a cocoa recipe from ovenhaven . Below is the recipe: Cocoa Brownies 1/2 cup butter, melted 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (not dutch processed) 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 2 tsp vanilla 1/2 cup flour 1/4 tsp salt Melt the butter, add in sugar and

Hahahaha!! So funny right! That's just what I go through practically every day! Seldom do mothers get "me" time. Just like my Junior, he will run to the toilet to find me, open the door slightly and peek in with a cheeky smile. I seldom lock the door when I'm in the toilet, and that means he'll open and close the door with so much glee! Oh the joys of motherhood haha.

Saturday boy was I busy in the kitchen! Went to the market earlier and was home by 9.40am and got started cooking! The siblings wanted chicken fajitas so I quickly sliced the chicken meat and marinated (fajitas mix + paprika + black pepper + dried basil) before Junior & I went to the market. Junior made my heart melt: all those times spent baking and cooking with him paid off! He now is officially my little baker! I didn't want to bake anything, but he sorta forced me. How can I refuse when he took out the whisk and ladle and even the sugar! But before that, Junior was busy helping me cook! On the menu for the day: Chicken Fajitas Sindhi Briyani (Shan mix) Potato Soup for Junior Potato soup is really simple. Peel & cut potatoes, boil and add cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and fish/chicken cubes in and cook together. I throw in a teeny bit of salt, and some dried basil. It's even yummy for adults! So on to the biryani! I was kind of eager to cook biryani whe

Whoever does work today is not normal. Haha. Eve of a public holiday yet no half day oh the pain! Saturday my siblings came over for lunch, and cooking was yet another diner dash. On the menu was daging masak merah and very simple fried cabbage. Butter cookies was supposed to be an after-lunch activity but it was changed to butter cake because of lack of time. I also had to go to the post office to get Junior's books that arrived but were too big for the mail box. Maybe I should have one big mail box outside my door and ask the postman to deposit it there instead. The queue at the post office was so long! When I came at about 10, I was like 60th in queue?! So Junior and I went to get some groceries while waiting for our turn, and when we came back, the number only moved up by 20. Damn. By the time we were done and back home, It was 11.30! Not enough time to cook the meat! Thankfully Junior explored his new books on his own quietly, so I had time to cook. Multi-tasked: frying

TGIF! I'm so happy with my two hour lunch break :) Went to JEM to get gifts from Chomel for the interns whose last day is today. They made for us shepherd's pie, cupcakes and each person our name in Arabic calligraphy. So sweet! See! Really nice right! My table's in a mess right now but I'll find a place to put this! Today is a day of gifts. The Husband received the cufflinks I surprised him with (posted to office address haha), me receiving interns' gifts and I went shopping! Blessed Friday indeed :) I roamed around alone because I need some me time. Happens once in a while, when I get overwhelmed with many many things. Bought 4 t-shirts from Uniqlo because they have buttons!! Yay for breastfeeding mothers! And why buy one when it's only $12.90 each! So I got pink, yellow mustard, dark grey and purple. I also bought 2 brooches for myself from Chomel. Was browsing through for the interns' gifts (I looked at practically all brooches, some more t

Report of Saturday morning's cooking: double chocolate banana muffins, sayur asam jawa and fried chicken! Simple pleasures of food and finally one where there weren't leftovers. I need to manage my portions haha. I was under the weather - and still is - so lunch was simple. I used a ready made paste from Serambi Botani for the sayur asam jawa I bought when I was in Bogor. I just added in corn, long beans, carrot, cabbage and loads of peanuts! LOVE peanuts :) The vegetables made the soup sweet and yummeh. I tried the soup before the vegetables were cooked, and it was yuck. Tasted too much of asam. Once the flavours from the nuts, carrots and corn blends together, it was just what I needed for my throat. Made a quick spice mix of ground cumin, coriander, paprika salt and pepper for the chicken marinade before frying them. Soup + fried chicken + hot rice = yummy homemade meal. I made the double chocolate muffins earlier with Junior. I was craving for double choc muffins,

I'll steal in a quick blog post this morning. Last Saturday I tried out the Malay chicken curry recipe to the T from Malay Heritage Cooking by Rita Zahara. Not my type of curry, sadly. Too much coconut milk! It would have been much better omitting the coconut milk totally, or replacing with yoghurt. I'm an Indian curry lover, not Malay. Haha. Husband started his 6 week class on Saturday mornings and that leaves me plenty of time to do my own things. But for the past two weeks instead of stealing in a quick bake, I decided to cook! Feels good to cook for The Husband especially when he comes home all hungry and tired :) The weekend before I made sweet and sour fish, no recipe just throw in stuff. This Saturday I plan to make laksa! Heehee. I also managed to clean the house, do laundry and go to the market before cooking. It's amazing how much you can do in a few hours. No pictures of cooked food because I didn't bother taking any, but here's photos of Junior ca

After lugging around my gym clothes in my humungous bag, I finally went to the gym during lunch today. Climbed up 5 storeys to the gym and did 2km only. I can only squeeze in half an hour. Felt a little woozy after getting off the threadmill. Mixed brisk walking with jogging though it's more walking than jogging hurhur. Let's start the no-diet plan, just good ol' exercise and eating healthy diet regime. I hope it works. Haha.

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

Weekend is almost here but I'm not looking forward to it. Too many things happening that I am not in a good mood. I told FFL my itinerary for the 2 days and she said I need a superman's cape. I still haven't found my peace of mind thinking of what's to come. Very tiring. In chronological order: cooking 2 days' porridge (no time on Sunday) the usual ironing and laundry to do play group open house 5 houses to visit all in JB staying overnight in JB Junior's playgym wedding of someone I don't know and right now I don't care to go visit one house, if people are at home cook for guests we're expecting on Monday. I'm not doing the cooking but I'm doing cleaning. clear house for Monday. Peng's Kitchen just made some vanilla custard puffs that look easy to follow! If I have time (WHO AM I KIDDING RIGHT) I would love to try it out. Husband wants the stayover in JB cos probably he's sick of Singapore. It's only 1 and a ha

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!

Everyone's in holiday mood it seems. I don't get much spam emails now, much less work emails!   Yesterday night we did a mini makeover for our living room. I was amazed we did it under 2 hours! Vacuuming, partial mopping (haha yes only those areas that matter only), cleaning the fan, oiling the sofa, rearranging furniture. Oh and laying out our new carpet that has been sitting in the store for months!   I'm not a carpet person so for normal days I refuse to have carpet. It's easier to clean without carpets.   I didn't take a before-after photo, so this is the best I could find of my living room previously.   Sofa pushed to the side, coffee table too, so that Junior has maximum space to play. We have since bought a new coffee table and TV console! And this is the outcome after yesterday's mini makeover. Tada! The bowl we got it yesterday during lunch at Takashimaya. HAHA. We've moved the sofa to the middle of the living room so that

Heloooooo!! I know it's been ages since I've updated, there's still our family's umrah trip to talk about but I'll just do a random update here. You see, my brain is kinda fried for the day after three whole days of figuring out the stories behind certain numbers and accounts. It's tedious and frustrating at times because you can't get the whole picture due to some missing pieces. So, I'm going to spend the rest of the day clearing up, writing the to-do list, and some other menial work. We've to prepare our house for a small shoot on Sunday, and nothing's been done! Today we plan to vacuum, lay out the carpet, rearrange the sofa (on normal days it's just against the wall for maximum space), dig out whatever little ornaments that can be used for decoration (we don't have that many). It's going to be a long night! Kuih-wise, I've pretty much settled on my kuih list. Made two batches of kuih tart at my mum's last week (o

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

I'm scared of making things all eggs. Some sort of phobia. Like my egg tart disaster . And my never ending fear of whipping egg whites, be in for a cake , or for frosting . Because no matter how many recipes you read, you still need to see and feel what custards, stiff peaks, ribbon stage looks like. Yesterday night, I was just randomly staring at my fridge and I decided to check my egg yolks. There were 10 perfectly round yolks on Friday, but yesterday a couple had already burst. I sorta panicked, what a waste of 10 eggs! Didn't have any odour so I guess they were still edible. Since I have lemons on hand, why not start the lemon curd project! After all both my boys were asleep, boy #1 won't be nagging at why I'm making baking stuff again, boy #2 won't be clinging to me. Perfect. Zested 4 lemons, juiced, and I'm all set! I didn't use any particular recipe, cos at that moment I wanted to get it done asap. The latest recipe I had opened in my iPhone&

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

Hello hello! It's been weeks since I last updated. Been busy with lotsa stuff, even went out of the country for a work trip. I'm nursing the little one even as I type this entry. It's the Mother's Day weekend and the best part of it is the sales! I'm eyeing Crocs 20% off all women's shoes hmm. I bought a pair of Crocs flats few days ago sadly the 20% promo hadn't begun. Boo. But I feel like getting another pair heehee. We'll see how tomorrow. Anyway! Since it's mango season, I thought of making mango desserts for my mum and MIL. Have just completed one, which is mango sago for my MIL. Yesterday after work, we went to Chong Pang to get mangoes and they were going for 50 cents each! So I bought 20. HAHA. 6 for MIL, the rest for mango sago and mango cheesecake.  I think I put in a little too much vanilla essence into the dessert oh wells. But I'm sure once it is cooled it'll taste yummy!  Here's what I used: 5 med