Wake Up and Smell the Cake

I have too many things to post. The latest being my second attempt at sugee almond pudding. Along the way I did roti kirai for the Husband's birthday, with beef rendang, failed doughnuts, and now I can't remember what else! OH. Almost famous amos cookies! Let's do them one at a time. First is the sugee almond pudding. I followed the same recipe but I had rose water this time round and that made all the difference. I still did not follow the recipe exactly because I didn't toast the almonds in ghee, used store bought ground almonds, but seems good enough anyway. One batch can serve 8 to 10 people. 900ml water 1 cup sugar 2 tsp rose water 3 cardamoms 400ml evaporated milk (1 can) 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup ground almonds 150g semolina Raisins Heat the water, sugar, rose water and cardamoms until it comes to a boiling point.  Reduce the heat to a simmer and add the ground almonds, salt and milk. Don't let mixture come to a boil.  Add in the semol

This is a long overdue post! But I have to finish it anyway because of the recipe I'd like to use in the future. Few Saturdays ago I made sugee cake like FINALLY. I bought semolina flour after my little shopping trip to Phoon Huat, among other things haha. I made one batch with one pack of butter, but made into 2 cakes of 7 inches each. Sugee Almond Cake adapted from Guai Shu Shu 225g butter 225g sugar 225g almond meal 225g semolina flour vanilla 1 tbsp baking powder 5 eggs 50ml milk Using the electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add vanilla, eggs one by one and mix well. Mix in the almond meal and semolina flour and baking powder, then milk. Bake in the oven at 170 degrees for about 45 minutes or more depending on the thickness of your cake. I like the fact that this cake rose levelly unlike my usual butter cakes done by hand (maybe mixer's the trick), or maybe the ingredients play a part. The plain cake Passionfruit version! I added ab

I guess this has to be the healthiest muffins I've ever made. I made them this morning for breakfast. Very quick, mixing + baking + cooling took about an hour. It's a win-win muffin of sorts; trying to clear my oats, bananas and yoghurt, and at the same time make a healthy snack to hopefully boost my milk production. I adapted the recipe from here , but I don't have a huge food processor (I have those small ones that comes with the blender, and the baby food steamer cum processor) hence I couldn't blend all in. I just processed the sugar and oats together and mixed with the other ingredients. 2 cups oats 1/4 cup sugar 3 medium ripe bananas 1 cup yoghurt 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 2 eggs It's amazing, no oil! They turned out moist, but because I didn't process the oats to be really fine, it kinda tasted like eating cooked oatmeal. But still good cos it has a bite and even the Husband said it's okay. I added chocolate covertures

Being at my mum's for the weekend, naturally I'll have loads of free time haha. No housework of my own to do. Since my sister and husband were coming, I decided to bake something to share the fats around. I had cream cheese and butter to use, and this was one of the recent crazes among baking bloggers, the butter chocolate cheese cake. But my sister didn't want a chocolate version hence, just butter cake with cream cheese filling or centre. I adapted the recipe from here , didn't add in milk because the eggs I used were already big and the batter is quite liquid. Butter Cream Cheese Cake 225g butter, softened 6 oz caster sugar 8 oz flour, sifted 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 4 eggs 250g cream cheese 4 tbsp sugar 1 tbsp flour 1 egg Cream the butter and sugar together. Add in egg one at a time and mix well. Add in the flour and baking powder and that's your cake batter. Cream the cream cheese with the sugar, then egg and flour. I didn't use an

I love clearing out the ingredients in my kitchen. Feels good to see the fridge getting emptier without having to throw things away. I made cod potato cakes, or what I'd call fish begedil, early yesterday morning! Complete with breadcrumbs :) They were really yummy, but a bit too soft that some sorta broke while frying. Maybe if I let them cool in the fridge it would have been better. Or I could use fried potatoes instead of boiled like we do in begedil. Loosely adapted from  BBC Good Food . Cod Potato Cakes (makes 12) 1 cod fillet, about 160g 4 small to medium potatoes Milk (as usual I didn't measure) Water (same here!) 2 bay leaves 1 lime Salt & pepper 1 piece of already or almost expired bread, blitzed Skin and cut potatoes into cubes, boil them in water till soft. While potato is cooking, heat up equal parts water and milk in another pan for the fish. Add in the 2 bay leaves and cook the fish till tender. Strain the potatoes, then mash them. Season

Back to work after the long weekend! One of the days Husband requested for ayam masak merah, and good thing I bought coriander leaves and the tomyam spices set before the holidays. This recipe my friends, is totally Husband approved! I used my mama's recipe and accidentally doubled the tomato puree (I know it's one can but I forgot there's a smaller can hurhur) but seems fine still. 1 kg chicken, already fried 2 medium onions, minced 5 cloves garlic, minced 1 stalk lemongrass, cut into 3 and bruised 8 tbsp cili kisar 1 1/2 tsp salt 2 - 3 tbsp sugar 140g tomato puree Coriander leaves (the more the merrier) No pictures though but I could do this again! Amazingly I didn't bake for the past 4 days. I did make my no egg banana pancake and I caramelised some bananas to go with it. Have been thinking about making bread with tangzhong but as usual, I will look for soooo many recipes, read and re-read before actually doing it. I could have done it yesterday

Too many bananas over the weekend! We had one bunch, and I took home another bunch from a family gathering. Googled all sorts of banana recipes from pies to cakes to ice cream. Managed to use up 15 bananas which is a lot, and I still have about 6 more. Hurhur. Saturday morning I made jemput-jemput pisang, then I made chocolate banana spring rolls to be refrigerated and fried later, and in the afternoon I took out my Kenwood for some banana cake. Moist Banana Cake with Greek Yoghurt from Baking Bites 3 cups all purpose flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 227g butter, softened (the recipe used half cup butter, half cup oil) 2 cups sugar 3 eggs 1 tbsp vanilla 1 cup plain Greek yoghurt 1 1/2 cups mashed banana (they said approx 3 large, but I used 8 medium sized ones) Cream butter with sugar, then add the eggs one at a time. Add in half of the flour, then the greek yoghurt, and then rest of the flour. I used my Kenwood mixer for these! Haha so happy can us

I was so determined to make bread that I woke up at 5.30 as I do on weekdays. And I did it! So happy :) I did one recipe of sweet bun that I learnt in my breads course. Totally love my Kenwood mixer! Here's to many more bakes using the Kenwood! I got the Titanium Major, the bowl's huge at 6.7 litres. But you'll never know when you need a big one, and since I'm buying this for long term use, might as well buy a very good and reliable one. Bosch seems good too with a huge power output. Anyway. Here are the pictures! So after mixing the dough in the mixer for about 12 minutes, here it is after some kneading using the hand. Left for proofing for an hour. Good thing I can use my counter top to knead dough! It doubled! So happy! I asked my son if he wanted to punch the dough, he touched it instead -_- He didn't want to punch it because he said it was sticky. Haha. Knead and then design, I made into butter buns and raisin cranberry rolls. Got 10 x 60g bu

So I finally did something with the speculoos spread. Made it into a cheesecake with the biscoff biscuits as the base! As usual I engaged my little boy for some help. I let him beat up the biscuits in the ziploc bag and he loved it so much! He said he was very excited hahaha. This recipe was a campak2 recipe, I based on a few websites I saw, and pretty much used whatever I had in the fridge. Speculoos Cheesecake 30 biscoff biscuits, crushed 25g melted butter 2x 8oz cream cheese 3 eggs 1/4 cup yoghurt 1/4 cup thickened cream 300g speculoos spread 150g sugar Add melted butter to crushed biscoff biscuits, then transfer to an 8 inch springform pan and flatten to make the crust. Use a mixer to mix the rest of the ingredients together, then pour into the pan and bake for about 50-55 minutes at 170 degrees Celsius. I was supposed to use a water bath method but my oven can't fit the 9x13 inch roasting pan hurhur. It turned out fine, with some cracks near the sides,

I attended my first ever baking class, bread module and I love what I learnt! I've always been scared of making breads because of the fear that the bread won't rise and I don't know how to knead. So I decided to attend a class at Zan's Treats. We learnt two basic recipes, one for savoury one for sweet bun. And we made 7 types from it. The dough was mixed in the mixer using the dough hook, then kneaded a bit before proofing. We did it in pairs so one set of dough per person. Look at the dough! So high it stretched the cling wrap! Made a pattern for this so it'll look nice haha And ta-da!!  So exciting! I am now more confident of making breads. I hope I can make it without a mixer, I only have the handheld one and my two hands huahuahua. I wanna make cinnamon buns too!

I finally did kuih bakar pandan! I bought the mould ages ago and after making home made pandan extract I finally did it. Haha. I tried both cooking on the pan on top of the stove and by oven, and the stove version is much better. Anyway I kinda overcooked the one in the oven and it stuck to the pan.  Husband told me about how his late grandmother used to make these over the stove and he loved it so much, and I've been wanting to recreate it even though she didn't leave behind any recipe and I did not get the chance to meet her. And I'm proud to say Husband loves it! Totally made my day :) The recipe is super simple, I memorised it already! I got it from Azie Kitchen , she tried it a few times and loved it and the recipe is easy so I gave it a try. 1 cup coconut milk (not Kara cream, I used Ayam brand low fat coconut milk) 1 cup flour 1 cup sugar 1 cup pandan juice (2-3 tbsp thick pandan extract + water) 3 eggs Mix them all up and make sure no lumps

I made pancakes for myself yesterday, and this time round I didn't use egg but I used one overripe banana instead. Banana Pancakes for 1 1/2 cup flour 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp baking soda 1 overripe banana, mashed 1/2 cup buttermilk You don't even have to add sugar! It's sweet as it is. Kinda tastes like jemput-jemput pisang too. Really good! Oh and yesterday while I managed to make red velvets, I only did laundry and cleaning the toilets haha. Oh wells. I did iron 3 pieces of clothing this morning and that's about it. Need to try and squeeze in some time to iron more on Friday.

I have LOTS on my checklist tomorrow! Shall arrange them in order: Wash clothes Bake 1 batch of red velvet cupcakes for office and my mum's house (just because I have leftover buttermilk ha ha) Clean all fans Bake 1 batch of banana walnut cupcakes Mop 2 rooms Frost cupcakes Iron lots of work clothes Clean toilets I hope I can accomplish all within the day. I shall start early! updated Planning FAILED! I have to bring both kids with me soooooooo I think I won't be able to do even 50% of the above. Ha.

I took overripe bananas from my mum last Friday to make cake, and it turned out wonderful! Made banana walnut muffins and once again I used another recipe (hurhur) and this time I promise I will not look for any other banana cake recipes huahuahua. Cos this one is husband approved! I like this one because it uses oil instead of butter and less than my mum's banana bread. I added 2 splashes (haha what a unit of measurement) of buttermilk to make it moist and fluffy. Banana Walnut Muffins from Tyler Florence 3/4 cup oil (they used melted butter) 2 cups flour 1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda 1 cup sugar 1 bowl mashed overripe bananas (5 pieces) 2 eggs 2 splashes haha of buttermilk, maybe about 1/3 cup chopped walnuts In the big bowl, mix together flour, bicarbonate soda and sugar. Mix the wet ingredients together: oil, eggs and buttermilk. Buttermilk should be added here but when I was doing, I added in last because the batter was thick and I wanted i

Yay! So happy haha. Like finally I can make pancakes. So before I forget! I shall jot down the recipe! And best thing is it's for 1 (very hungry) person so no leftovers! Recipe from allrecipes 1/2 cup flour 1/2 tsp baking powder  1/4 tsp baking soda  1 1/2 tsp sugar 1 small egg 1/2 cup buttermilk + milk, fill up almost 1/2 cup buttermilk then top up with milk abt 1 cm deep Ta-da!! Slather with butter and drizzle with honey. Absolutely yummy :)

Wanted to make chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting for SIL's birthday but the Husband wanted red velvet with nutella like Fluff Bakery's. I have never made cupcakes like Fluff's especially the frosting because I have not mastered frosting and I had disasters with whipped cream. So for this round to make the cream cheese frosting lighter, I added mascarpone. But still not as light as fluff's and I hate to admit but I guess they use whipped cream. Le sigh. Next time maybe.  This red velvet cake uses oil instead of butter, and with so much fluid no wonder it's moist. The batter was so runny too! Made me worry that I didn't measure enough flour haha. The recipe is so easy I wrote the following without referring to the original recipe! Red Velvet Cupcakes by divascancook 3/4 cup canola oil 1 cup buttermilk  1/2 cup hot water 2 eggs 2 cups sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 2 tbsp cocoa powder 1 tsp or mo

Hello!! I know I've been missing for some time, I have lots to blog about, from the new baby to recipes tried to adjusting to being a mother of two... but I shall skip all those for now. Haha. Yesterday I tried making date cake. I don't like eating dates on its own, I do eat them when they are squashed and all watered down in overnight oats. Since I saw FFL and smittenkitchen try out date cakes and smittenkitchen loved it despite not loving dates, I thought I'd give it a try. Date Cake from taste.com.au  (I always trust AU and UK websites for desserts!) 250g dates, pitted and chopped (I just tore them using hands) 1 tsp baking soda 1 1/2 cups boiling water 125g butter, softened 3/4 cups brown sugar 2 eggs 2 cups self raising flour (I used normal flour + 1 1/2 tsp baking powder) Chopped walnuts, slivered almonds Soak the dates in the boiling water for forever. Hahaha no la they recommend 20 minutes but I took a couple of hours because I was busy handling

Yes I know I've been gone for ages!! Junior #2 came out 12 days early, and I haven't really been using the computer haha. I'm blogging from my phone now. Have been trying out some recipes baking and cooking, but I can't remember all of them anymore. So before I forget! Here's my lunch for today. Super simple and fast, this is really a meal under 30 minutes.  I have been trying to use up leftover bits here and there, and I have oranges which I thought I'd save for orange butter cake but I just made apple muffins (recipe is apple cupcakes in my list) few days ago.  Orange Honey Soy Chicken Recipe from Allrecipes.com;  http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/230660/orange-honey-and-soy-chicken 400g chicken breast (works with any boneless chicken) 1 tbsp ginger paste 1 tbsp garlic paste 1 onion, finely sliced (I added this) 1/4 cup honey 1/4 cup soy sauce (I reduced by 2 tbsp) Juice of 2 oranges  Cut the chicken into 1 inch cubes. Fry the onions until fragrant, then the ging

Did loads over the weekend! Friday was check up day (weekly now! haha!) so it was long weekend for me haha. I managed to find butterscotch chips at Cold Storage Novena on the way back home from the hospital so I grabbed one packet! And just to prove that Cold Storage does carry the brand, I went to check at Northpoint as well and yay! Found them again! Fetched my baby boy from my mum's and went home to make nasi goreng kampung which was a tad salty but the Husband said finally it has taste -_- Haha. Nasi Goreng Kampung recipe to be updated soon! I couldn't get my hands away from the kitchen hence I made butterscotch oatmeal cookies as per the recipe on the packet. Started at like 6 and ended at 8. Yes. That crazy. While the cookies taste oh-so-yummy, I had problems getting them off the trays as they tend to stick. Sigh. Very frustrating. Doesn't help that the cookies are brittle and thin. I'm kinda thinking of making another batch without using oatmeal, an