Brandy Soaked Christmas Fruit Cake

I made this cake just in time for the Christmas season! It is one cake that my family will insist on having for Christmas. The spices and richness that comes from the brown sugar just reminds us of the season. 

Beans Stew with Quinoa

 

Beans are very good sources of protein as well as dietary fiber. This stew have many layers of texture as it is made up of a mixture of 6 different types of beans and lentils. 

Matcha Sable Viennois (Pierre Herme)

 

Christmas baking season is about to start for me. I was looking around for a cookie recipe and found this recipe at My Kitchen Antics. It is a recipe by Pierre Herme. I added 1 teaspoon of match powder to the flour before sifting and transformed the cookies into matcha sable viennois.

Mango, Pear and Parsley Salsa

This simple salsa is a great side dish to a meal that consists of roasted meats, such as a roast beef or roast rack of lamb (which was what I made as a side for). It refreshes the palate in between eating the rich, tasting roasted meat.

Sticky Date Pudding with Toffee Sauce

This was what I made for the September baby in my family. Happy birthday, dear! Instead of making one big pudding, I decided to make individual portions of the it in the form of cupcakes. This way, everyone gets to enjoy the whole cake by themselves. 

Braised Pork Belly

 
This recipe is an extension of the braised duck recipe that I have previously posted. I replaced the duck with pork belly. 

Apple Spice Cake with Rum Butter Cream

My church friend, K, was looking for a cake recipe to bake for our cell group leader's birthday. Happy Birthday, YN!! And her requirement was that the cake must have a masculine nature to it. I have never thought of cakes having gender and that was an interesting perspective. A Victoria sponge or a chiffon cake do look feminine and a carrot cake do have a masculine nature to it. To me, the decoration of the cake usually determine whether the cake is for a lady or a gentleman.

English Muffins

 
I like to eat English muffins. They are crusty on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. They are like bread but they are not baked in the oven, rather they are dry fried over the stove top in a pan without the use of any oil. They are not commonly found in our supermarket like the loaf bread. 

Fresh Figs

 

Singapore, a place that I live, is a small island state that imports most of our food. I am blessed to be able to eat the food around the world without having to fly to the country of origin. 

I found these black figs from Turkey recently in the supermarket. They are so beautiful. Their dark, shiny, purplish skin with a reddish interior. What a contrast of colors! How can we not be amazed with God's creations?

I usually have fruits without cooking them as the cooking process will destroy the vitamins and minerals in them. This is how I had the figs for breakfast over 2 days:

Macarons - The Italian Way

Front clockwise: Matcha sprinkled shell with bitter sweet chocolate filling, Chocolate shell with bitter sweet chocolate filling, Vanilla shell with passion fruit curd, Cocoa powder sprinkled shell with
bitter sweet chocolate filling, Raspberry sprinkled shell with white chocolate raspberry filling.

It was quite a fearful first attempt for me a few years ago to make macarons. I wanted to make them and was reading as many blogs as I can on the subject matter. (such as this blog)  I was so impressed at the passion of these bloggers as they went to the extend of very systematically showing the hows and whys in making and breaking one's macarons. I am thankful for all their effort and finally pluck up my courage to make them. 

Homemade Traditional Mooncakes

These are the baked mooncakes that I made this year. I am so happy and blessed to have a friend, I, who is very good at taking pictures (I loved the pictures she takes of her children) and was willing to take time to share her knowledge with me. Thank you, I.

Snow Skin Mooncakes (Uses Olive Oil)

This year mid-Autumn festival falls on 8th September 2014.  My children love snow skin moon cakes. Most of the recipes found on the internet uses shortening as one of the ingredients. I was searching for a recipe that uses healthier oil/fats and I found Sugar & Everything Nice website that uses olive oil. Yay!!

Blueberries Crumble Cake

Blueberries are selling at a very low price in the supermarket this week. 4 boxes of ORGANIC blueberries going for $8.35, that is like $2 for each pack. I grabbed 8 boxes and used 2 boxes today to make a crumble cake.  I like the idea of a crumble cake (known also as coffee cake by the Americans, even though there is no coffee used in the recipe) because I get to enjoy both the cake and the cookie like crumble. :)

I have used the blueberries muffins recipe from earlier post and instead of baking into individual cupcake, I bake it in a 9" round pan and added crumble on top of the cake.

Apple Crumble

This week, my cell group craved for apple crumble. As it is on my to-bake list, I decided to make them my guinea pigs. 

The crumble turned out very well and the recipe will be a keeper. 

Chocolate-Swirl Chcoclate Pound Cake

Pound cake uses very basic ingredients; butter, eggs, sugar and flour, to make. By using the best ingredients that you can get your hands on, the final product will be a very fragrant and satisfying cake.

Today's recipe is made a little sophisticated with the addition of chocolate. The use of good chocolate and cocoa powder, makes the smell and taste of the cake so much more luxurious.

Let's get started.

Traditional Mooncakes (First Attempt)

As the price of moon cakes increases over the years, I find it very hard to part with hard earned money to buy them. Even though, every year bakeries and hotels come out with new and interesting flavors to justify their price increase, traditional moon cakes are best to pair with a good cup of Chinese tea (IMHO). 

Strawberry Cupcakes topped with Strawberry Swiss Meringue Butter Cream

I made these a while back when the Korean strawberry were in season. The recipe requires one box of the strawberry for the cupcakes and the butter cream. But if you are topping the cupcakes with fresh strawberries, you may need another 1/2 a box. Of course, you can use strawberries from any part of world to make this recipe.

Vanilla 'Surprise' Pound Cake

A hidden heart within the cake

 

A fluttering butterfly within the cake

A hidden number '5' for the 5th anniversary of my cell group

Last week, I celebrated my milestone birthday. Age became just a number, once it passes 21 years old. A number that I usually lose track and only comes to mind till the next birthday. LOL! 

My family's Version of the Durian Penyet Dessert

It's the season to eat durian. The green, thorny fruit, that lures its admirer and scares away the faint hearted. 
In our family, only my husband and I eat it, while my kids will pinch their noses and shun away from it. We hope that as we eat more of it, the kids will get use to the smell and eventually give it a try. 

Lemon Curd Tart

It's tart time again. I did a chocolate tart with a digestive biscuit base the last time. This lemon curd tart uses the vanilla butter cookies recipe as its base. 

Teochew Braised Duck

Under the guidance of my mum (during the CNY period), I managed to reproduce this dish twice. It is my mum's recipe and this duck recipe is for keeps. One day, I will teach my girls how to cook it. 

Vanilla Butter Cookies

Since I was unable to bake her a Pooh bear cake, I went on to make her Pooh bear and his best friend, Tigger, shaped cookies. ;) 

Strawberry Shortcake

My daughter wanted a strawberry cake (she actually wanted a Pooh bear cake - difficulty 100* ) for her 10th birthday and this was what I made. 

Happy birthday, Eunice!! Be happy and most importantly, know God. 

Fresh Popiah (not the fried version)

As it is the school holidays, I cooked more than I baked. So today I am going to share a dish rather than a bake. This is one dish that I love a lot and can have it as a meal on its own. I have not tried making it at home, thinking that it is very difficult, until today. It was not difficult at all. I think the difficulties are the many components that one have to prepare before assembling the final product. 

Homemade Pure Vanilla Extract

A few years ago, I bought a batch of vanilla beans from this Australian website. While writing this page, I went back to look at the website and was shocked that prices of vanilla pods had rose tremendously.

Blueberry Muffins

 

Blueberries are on sale in the supermarket recently. I picked up a few boxes to have with my breakfast cereal and used one box to bake this blueberries muffins. Blueberries is one of the super fruit with very high antioxidants and lots of vitamins. 

Chocolate Tartlets

Recently, I got myself some small tart molds, planning to make some tarts. There are so many kinds of tarts to make, such as egg tarts, fruit tarts, jam tarts and many more. So I searched on the internet and decided to make this chocolate tart. It was a very good choice. My photography skill did not do the tart justice. The pictures taken by the original blog will make you drool.

Stamped Cookies

I liked to look at calligraphy. I am always captivated by how simple phrases can be transformed into artworks by just creatively changing the font of the phrase.

Homemade Kueh Bangkit

My family love this cookies. During our stay overseas, my in-laws would mail us a box during the Lunar New Year, so that we could have our kueh bangkit fix. These cookies are kind of fragile and are not good to send by mail. We were left with mostly cookies in crumbs when we got them.

Buns - Char Siew and Luncheon meat (SPAM) with cheese

Buns (the food kind). They comes in many different kind of fillings - luncheon meat (SPAM), sausage, red bean, curry, otah, etc. I always liked the soft and fluffy texture of the bun paired with the fillings. It brought back memories every time I eat one. I had them when I had school outings, church outdoor events and as afternoon snacks. 

 

Pineapple tart pastry...

Yes...pineapple tarts in the April. I am one who believes that we can enjoy festive cookies anytime of the year. I feel that during the festive season, I usually I ate so much of these cookies that I actually get quite sick of them. And during festive months, cookies are mass produced months before the festival, which made them laden with preservatives and/or trans fats thus quality of product are compromise. As a home baker, I can whip up these cookies, using the best ingredients, as and when my family craves for them.

Lolli Cookies

Two of my cell group ladies (thanks AB and K) and I baked for an event for our church. I baked the lolli cookies and am going to explain the steps using the photos that I have taken.

First we start with the recipe.

I have found Christ, have you?

I did a trial bake for a church event. This time I was thinking of making a 8", 4 layers frosted cake. Knowing me, I usually do not make things simple for myself, I like to put a twist into the things I do （自找麻烦）, either by adding healthful ingredients to the original recipe or make it look interesting. I was looking on the internet for some interesting ways to decorate cakes. And usually it involves decorating the outside of the cake. But lo and behold, I found this: http://iambaker.net/category/i-am-baker/. She made cakes that looked beautiful both on the inside and the outside. After being inspired by her, and since it was for church, I decided to make a cake with a hidden cross within. 

Pandan Gula Melaka Chiffon Cake

I love pandan (from screwpine leaves) cake, my husband love anything with gula melaka (palm sugar). I would get for him plain soya bean curd, with nothing added, so that he can add the homemade gula melaka syrup to enjoy it with. That is why I came out with the idea of making Pandan Gula Melaka Chiffon Cake (quite a mouthful to say though).