A GIft

I love the little animals which I pasted around the box and I hope they will help to comfort and cheer up my dear friend with their smiles... :)

Anyway, what goes inside the box is another batch of vegan choc cupcakes...
I managed to find another recipe for a vegetarian cupcake from Allrecipes.com (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/vegan-cupcakes/detail.aspx) and gave it a try by replacing 1/4 of the flour with chocolate powder. I made other replacements such as using white distilled vinegar, soy milk and olive oil also. I accidently cut back on the amount of sugar used too.

I actually made a first batch of vanilla cupcakes using this recipe and they taste of flour and look like 'huat kueh'. Haha... But this batch of choc cupcakes tastes better. I like the taste of soy milk actually... But I think I still prefer normal cakes afterall. :)

How do you bake cakes without eggs?

Eggs has been an essential ingredient whenever I bake cakes. However, I was planning to bake something for a friend who is on a vegetarian diet and had to bake something without the use of eggs. I searched the internet for a perfect recipe and found the recipes for vegan choc cupcakes with many reviews from Allrecipes.com.

While reading the reviews, I realised that for strict vegetarian, there seems to be a need for all natural ingredients. To be safe, I followed the recommendations such as replacing normal flour with unbleached flour and normal sugar with raw unrefined sugar.

The cupcakes turn out looking like muffins. My oven temperature was not stable during the baking process, not sure if it is the result of not baking for more than half a year. Haha... Anyway, this cupcake was full of chocolate goodness... too chocolaty in my opinion. Also, it has a little bit of flour taste and a weird aftertaste. The weird aftertaste might be from the use of vinegar. I might have under-mixed the batter, which resulted in the flour taste. Anyway, this is a recipe which I personally will not try for a 2nd time. I did not even give it to my friend...

Japanese Curry

I remember I suddenly felt like cooking Japanese curry after reading a few posts on it. And one fine day, while shopping in the supermarket, I got the ready-made packet of paste... but it sat in my cupboard for a very very long time.... but still, I finally made it...

Along with it, I cooked healthy brown rice, unhealthy fried pork cutlet and some vegetables for dinner...

There is another bigger box of ready made curry paste sitting in my cupboard... I wonder when I'll cook them.

20 March 2011...

The Menu:
1. Cereal Prawns
2. Fatty Pork Belly (to be dipped in light soya sauce & chilli sauce)
3. Steamed Fish Head
4. Mushroom Soup
5. Vegetables with Abalone Sauce

Another dinner cooked for my family. This time round, using leftover ingredients in my mum's fridge as she hurt her hand and could not cook previously. Can't remember how it tastes like but should be edible and quite good... haha... :P

Back to Basics

It has been a long long time since I baked cakes. I still remember the very first cake which I baked repeatedly was Pandan Chiffon Cake. To date, I don't think I have baked a perfect Pandan Chiffon Cake though.

I had no intention of baking on this day until I saw this bunch of bananas in my house. They were rotting and would probably end up in the rubbish chute soon. It reminded me of a recipe which I learnt in my baking classes that requires bananas which are 1/3 black. N these were the right kind of bananas too... what they call "Pang Jio". The right bananas for making Banana Chiffon Cake, so I just had to make it.

Due to my past experiences with Pandan CHIFFON cake, I was pretty apprehensive while making this cake... My pandan chiffon cakes are not that bad, just not perfect. Anyway, one of the steps in making chiffon cakes was whisking egg whites....

It has been quite some time since I whisked egg whites... kinda miss the whole process of learning how to whisk egg whites to stiff peaks.. how me and my friends and classmates would keep asking each other and the chefs if the egg whites are done in class. Haha....

I miss the whole process of seeing the batter turn into a cake and emitting a nice aroma which fills my whole kitchen too...

The Banana Chiffon Cake turned out to be unexpectedly good. The texture was great! The taste was good, just a little sweet and some preferred the banana taste to be stronger. Happy :D

I miss baking cakes and I know I should go back to practise my basics soon. I shall bake my Pandan Chiffon Cake again.

Chicken Puffs

Another practise session for puff pastry. I made Chicken puffs! The filling was good just that blur me made a wrong estimation and cooked way too much again.... Grr.... Had them for dinner the next day.

The chicken puff tastes great when they were fresh out from the oven. However, the puff pastry turned soggy the next day. :( I wonder how those puff pastry sold outside remain crispy....

Apple Strudels

These were made on the very same day I made the bread. I would say I was too ambitious. Ended up baking till wee hours and went to work the next day like a Zombie. This recipe was from the puff pastry class I attended in end 2010. I think I am getting the hang of making puff pastry, or at least I am more confident of handling the dough now.

The taste of these strudels was good... but the only problem was that the puff layers became soggy when assembled into the strudel, combined with the pastry cream and apples. I did an experiment since I had leftover puff pastry. When I put them into the fridge on their own, they still retain their crispiness. So it must be the assembling.... Just did a quick search online and realised this was normal. One way of preventing it was to reduce the moist in the cream and apples. Hmm... I wonder if Ritz Apple Strudel stays crispy after some time. I shall buy it to try...

Another 1st time...

Looks good? They sure do.... but it was not a success for my first bread attempt. The bread was underbaked. When I tried it immediately after it was baked, I only found it heavy and thought it was simply a problem with the rising process. Moreover, this was 'Honey Wheat Bread', made with wheat flour. But on the next day, I could smell yeast. My dear colleague showed her support by bringing half a slice home to toast and she said it tastes good afterall.

The whole bread making process was time-consuming but very interesting. I waited anxiously to see if the bread will rise on 2 occasions.

I'll definitely try making bread again when I have a full day to spare for baking! :)

When can I start selling tarts for CNY?

They look decent enough but they are still not my ideal melt-in-the-mouth type of pineapple tarts. Baked these with Ivory after a tiring work day. We used ready-made paste as we wanted to try perfecting the crust first. But... our first bite into the baked tarts left us disappointed for the night. It was crunchy and the paste was too sweet. In my opinion, it was a failed product.

But surprisingly, quite a number of people GENUINELY felt the tarts were nice. I guess they like the crunchy type of pineapple tarts. Sadly, I did not have time to try out making the tarts again after this attempt. Feel like giving up on my quest for the melt-in-the-mouth type of pineapple tarts... haha.... Let's see what happens next year!

A Tea Break which was late :P

I intended to make Chicken Pies and Mushroom Soup for a Sunday afternoon Tea break. But somehow, by the time I finished everything, it was already dinner time. Haha... The Chicken Pie was made following the recipe which I learnt in class recently. The crust I made was definitely better than the ones I made before I attended class. But I guess my rolling was uneven. Hence, it came out with uneven crusts and in all sorts of patterns as you can see here...

I love the yummy fillings with generous amount of chicken, potato & mushroom!

The soup was made with a recipe from the Straits Time. Not too bad but I think I shall try mincing some of the mushroom finer in my next attempt. This is to try and get the soup spoon kind of mushroom soup and also, cutting the mushroom in fine bits is very tiring! I guess using a blender will be much easier. Heh heh...

For the benefit of those who are interested to try the mushroom soup, here is the recipe from the Straits Times...

My rolling assistant :D

Yeah... I finally got a proper Rolling Mat. Spotted it in the baking shop near my office and not knowing if it was really good and without doing any research, I got it! An impulse buy which I never regret! Expensive but definitely worth it! :)