Nephew's Birthday

29 August 2007


This post came a bit late as I was waiting for my nephew's birthday cake to come. Today is his 3-year-old birthday and this "Construction Site" cake is ordered specially for him as we know that he is very obssessed about big trucks nowadays. The cake is from PrimaDeli and I find the cake quite nice and not too sweet.

Besides that, I also made some Chocolate Muffins for the celebration of his birthday at his playgroup. I just spread some Nutella on top and then put a letter on each muffin using his favourite "ABC biscuit". Not very creative but it's the best I can do now. Haha... My sis told me that luckily I did not try to put decorations for the muffins cos some of the kids in the playgroup did not finish the cake and the teachers had to throw them all away...


Lastly, I also made some cream puffs last week. It wasn't quite successful as I added too little eggs in the beginning and the puffs did not rise and expand a lot. I added more eggs later to make the batter smoother and the result was more satisfactory. Now I understand how important it is to get the right consistency when adding eggs and how it will affect the result of the cream puffs.

Quick and Simple Pizza

21 August 2007

A quick and simple pizza that is easy to prepare and very healthy too. Just place 2 slices of bread, spread some tomato sauce, top with your favourite ingredients and plenty of cheese. Bake at 180C for about 10 minutes. I will make this when I need something light and healthy. No salt and oil added. Suit my taste very well.

Sugar Roll again

19 August 2007

Remember my 1st sugar roll attempt? The last time I did not roll it up. This time I prepared some whipping cream and decided to try rolling it up. As what I have expected, my swiss roll cracked. Hai... I know it's not going to be easy. I'm still wondering what's wrong. Is it because of my technique or is it because I didn't get the right texture for the cake, maybe not soft enough?

Oops, please do not mind seeing the mess I have created with whipping cream all over the place. :p 下一次会更好 :)

Steam Cake

13 August 2007

This is a steam cake using Fenying's recipe from FM97.2. You can listen to her 厨房笔记 programme every Monday to Friday on 3:15pm. She will teach 2 recipes every week, from cakes to cookies to simple dishes, etc. You can also visit her blog which keeps a record of her past recipes.

This steam cake doesn't require any flour and is simple to do. It's a "zero-failure" cake. But you will need a lot of time and patience to steam it layer by layer 3 times. For those who do not have an oven yet. You can try this!

My lousy photo taken in a hurry.

Junior Pikelets

9 August 2007

This is my National Day breakfast. I have no bread to eat for breakfast today. With 1 egg left in the fridge and some leftover milk, I made my own breakfast (which is very rare as usually I eat bread) :).

This is not my first time making pancakes, but I used to make it using ready pancake-mix. So it's the first time I'm making using flour, egg and milk.

Oh yes, pikelets are pancakes. I was wondering until I check the Wikipedia. ;p

Ingredients (20pcs, 5-6cm)
125g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tbsp caster sugar
1 egg
125ml milk
2 tsp oil

Method
1. Sift the flour and soda together into a bowl. Stir in the sugar.
2. Make a well in the centre and whisk in the combined egg, milk and oil to make a smooth batter.
3. Heat and lightly greased a frying pan. Drop a spoon of the batter into the pan and cook until bubbles form. Turn and cook the other side until golden brown.

Chocolate Muffins

5 August 2007

As according to my plan, I make the chocolate muffins today. :) The baking process is getting smoother. Probably because I'm practising almost every week. Another reason is because the procedure for this chocolate muffins is quite similar to the Marble chocolate cake I made last week.

As a beginner to baking, I'm only trying recipes that uses simple ingredients. I try to avoid buying ingredients that I think I might use only once, then leave it aside and waste the money. As for baking equipments, I only have a small oven, a small mixer, one 8 inch square tin, one 6 inch round tin and a small cupcake tray. It's not that difficult to start baking after all. Of course, there are many limitations to what I can bake, so along the way, I guess I will be buying more and more equipments and ingredients :D

Here's the recipe for the Chocolate Muffins.

Ingredients (12 small muffins)
100g butter, softened
100g sugar
2 eggs, beaten
50g milk
120g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
20g cocoa powder
100g chocolate, cut into small pieces (I omit this)
60g nuts (I omit this)
1 tsp chocolate emulco (I omit this)
extra nuts for topping (optional)

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Beat butter at medium speed till creamy, add sugar and beat till light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs one small portion at a time, whisk well after each addition.
4. Add milk and mix well.
5. Gently fold in sieved flour, baking soda, cocoa powder, chocolate pieces, nuts and chocolate emulco. Do not overmix.
6. Fill into the paper cups until 8/10 full.
7. Bake at 180C for about 20 minutes.

My mother makes sushi

5 August 2007

My mother makes sushi on Sunday. These are vegetarian sushi cos she's a vegetarian. She uses japanese cucumber, carrots, eggs, vegetarian ham and vegetarian meat floss as ingredients. This is her 3rd or 4th time doing sushi I think. Still not quite good at rolling the sushi. But it still looks great to me. :)