Super soft and moist - Banana Cake!

I have a little booklet that contains all my handwritten recipes. Not every recipe goes into this book. Only those that I have tried and deserve keeping. Reasons?

1) Because I will make them over and over again, I need to write it down and whenever I need it, I don't have to switch on the computer to look for it.

2) Why not print it out? Because I don't write exactly the same way people write recipes online. They are all in note and table form, no lengthy descriptions, adding short notes on any adjustment needed for ingredients, baking temperature and time, etc. It's like making study notes.

3) The little booklet can be taken to the kitchen when I'm baking, without taking much space.

4) Perhaps I can pass this down to others in future yah? But I think only I can understand what I have written. :)

So, the reason why I'm talking so much about this little booklet is because this - Super soft and moist banana cake - goes straight into my booklet after baking and eating it. This wonderful recipe is Grace's Banana Walnut Cake. I was searching for banana cake recipes, none seem to attract my attention except hers. It uses only very little butter and sugar, and adds yoghurt to make it soft and moist. I omitted the walnut cos I did not have any when I was baking. Must do that the next time I bake.

And if you are wondering how I get that nice slit on top? After pouring the batter into the loaf tin, just use a knife or skewer and make a cut through the centre of the batter. Got this tip from a book! :)

A couple of blog awards

Blame it on my inactive blogging for the past one year, I have a couple of awards which I have yet to collect. Although I have the good habit of making notes of the things I need to do, I also have the bad habit of misplacing my notes, haha! So finally, I managed to find the notes that I had scribbled down and found the lists of awards that I had not posted. Thanks to everyone who have passed me the awards and I hope I have not missed any of them.

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Thank you Angel of Cook.Bake.Love for this "Best Blog Award".

Thank you Silverrock of Salute to Sanity for this "7 Traits Meme" Award.

Thank you Elin of Elinluv's Tidbits Corner and Happy Flour for this "I ♥ Your Blog" award.

Thank you Ronni of Cooking Memos for this "Happy 101" award.

Thank you Reese of Reese Kitchen for this "Beautiful Blogger" award.

Thank you Jess of Bakericious and Angel of Cook.Bake.Love for this "Stylish Blogger Award" and "A Blog With Substance" award.

Fruit Pastry Cake

I found myself a little lost in the baking blogs world. For the past few months, I had slowed down in baking and did not visit or follow blogs as much as I did in the past. Then all of a sudden, so many new baking blogs just appear and I found myself following more and more new blogs recently.

I notice that there are trends in baking too. When someone posts something that look wickedly delicious, it will just spread among all the other bloggers and you will start to see it appearing in baking blogs one after another.

One of them is the Fruit Pastry Cake by HHB. Although she is not the one who created or first posted this recipe, I believe she is the one who started this trend of making this cake.

Here's my version of the Fruit Pastry Cake. I bake it in a 8" square pan, topped with canned peaches, cherries and grapes. The cake already smells very good when it is still in the oven. And the result is exactly what everyone has described - a cross between a sponge cake and a butter cake. I have it for breakfast, teabreak, breakfast, teabreak, and still do not feel sick of it after eating for 2 days. :)

A cheque from Nuffnang

Last week, I got a pleasant surprise in my mailbox. I receive my 1st earning from blogging - a cheque from Nuffnang, with a payment of S$186.72!

For those who do not know, Nuffnang is Asia-Pacific’s first and leading blog advertising community based in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Australia. They provide an online platform that allows advertisers to place advertisements onto more than 100,000 blogs. As a blogger, all you need to do is to register an account with them and place ad units onto your blog and sit and wait for earnings to run in. Oops, no, you still need to continue blogging for good payment. :)

Of course, I don't blog to earn money. I place Google ads too. They are just for fun. I never really pay attention or login to check how much money I have earned. I don't remember when I join Nuffnang. From the payment history, I got my 1st payment from an ad placed on my blog from 19 Oct to 25 Oct 2008 and the payment was only S$0.20. I have no idea that it has accumulated to this much. (Actually you just need to earn S$50 to cashout your payment.) I think it is a very good amount considering that I did not expect any earnings at all :) I have an excuse to get baking stuffs with this money. Thanks to Nuffnang!

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On the other hand, I'm getting curious. I'm sure many of you place these ads on your blog too, if you own one. But I have never seen anyone blog that they do earn some amount from it. Maybe I too boring so I decide to write about it.

Can I do a little survey here? Telling me like, do you place any ads in your blog, any payment receive yet, and the website that you join (e.g. Nuffnang). Leave your comment to share. I'm sure it will benefit all bloggers here. Thank you!