It's just round the corner....

Made pineapple closed tarts but this year, i decided to do it tangerine style.

The pastry is oh-so-melt-in-the-mouth that I have a hard time wrapping the tarts, all thannks to the very warm weather we're experiencing lately. Even after baked, the pastry was very soft. However, it was well received as the family love the melt-in-the-mouth texture.

As busy as a bee...

As usual the weekends came and went in a flash. During the weekdays, I'll look forward to the weekends, with an ambitious list of to-bakes. However, when weekends actually arrived, I tended to take things easy and ended up making only a tiny dent in the to-bake list. This seems like an re-occurring (vicious) cycle in my life, at least for now. :P

Anyhow... nephew asked me last weekends if I intended to make kueh rose, popularly know as beehive in my family. It is a very well received snack in the family and I guess there's no escaping from making these. So I got myself all prepared with the ingredients, only to know later that nephew was not coming to visit my mom in the weekends, meaning I'll be left to make these myself. Thankfully my niece did come by and she helped me to finish these up.

After standing at the hot kitchen for 2 whole hours, these are what we got. *happy dance*

Chocolate Chips Coookies

These are crunchy and delicious.... nom nom nom....

come... have a piece. :)

Green Pea Cookies

After Elyn's attempt on these cookies, she convinced me that it's very yummy and different from the usual CNY bakes. So, when I saw the bakery supply shop in JB selling the ground green peas, I picked up a pack. It was going for RM6.00 for a 500gm pack.

True enough, it was easy to put together, however, I had different reviews of these cookies. Some told me outright that it's not nice, some did not like the texture, some said it's too crumbly, some commented that it's too sweet. Still, I had a few fans of these cookies. * thank goodness* I used the wilton mini easter cutter for these cookies.

Here's how mine turned out.

So much to do, so little time...

I know... I deserved it.. all due to my procrastination, I'm left with only 2 weeks for my cny bakes. The coming 2 weeks will definately be crunch time... as I have in mind a whole (long) list of cny to-bakes!

To start off the baking frenzy, I baked some kuih balu. I bought the cheap stainless steel molds a few years back, and I do remember attempting this bake but the mold was disappointing as the kuih balu stuck on it even tho I had greased and floured them. Furthermore, the design of the mold was not defined when baked. Until recently I spotted a recipe by Sinner. Her kuih balus looks so good! and this is a favourite snack of mine, and my little one... so I decided to give the mold another chance. :P Well, this time I followed Sinner's instruction to grease the mold... the kuihs still got stuck. However the recipe yield great kuih balus... so good that the family finished it in 1 afternoon, and I had doubled that recipe.

Not wanting to give up, I bought the same molds as Sinner in a recent trip across the causeway. I was glad that I bought these molds... they were going for RM8.90/pc. At a baking supply shop west of Sg, these molds are selling for SGD9.80! This is how the mold looks like.

Thanks to Sinner's sharing.... I tripled the recipe this time, reduced some sugar, and added chocolate rice; and this is the recipe:

What you need

• 3 eggs ( I used 60gm eggs)
• 85gm castor sugar
• 90gm plain flour
• 1/4 + 1/8 tsp baking powder
• vanilla extract
• a handful of chocolate rice
  

What to do

• Preheat the oven at 190 degrees. Also, place the molds into the oven to heat them up.
• Sift the plain flour and baking powder together, set aside.
• Whip eggs till foamy, add in the castor sugar, beat on high.
• Add in vanilla extract, continue to whip eggs till ribbon stage.
• Fold in sifted flour mixture into the whipped eggs.
• Add in a handful of chocolate rice and fold into the batter.
• Take out heated molds, spray PAM onto it.
• Scoop batter into mold, till full.
• Bake for 10mins at 190degrees and remove with skewer onto cooling rack.
• Cool completely and store.

Strawberry Shortcakes

Since the new school year started, weekends seemed to come and go at such amazing speed. Very soon, we'll be looking at Feb (yay! cny!) and then March will be at our doorsteps. As much as I try to get some baking done, the tons of stuff to do and NOT added up and I usually feel too exhausted.

Anyway, no matter how tired I am, there is always a cake to be baked in January that I will definately chun out. It's my bestie's b'day and there has been a few years that she was not in sg that I cannot celebrate with her. So, since now she's settled down here (at least for the time being), there is simply no excuses not to turn up with a cake for her!

Happy Birthday Dear Fion!

Whenever I bake this cake, I'll double the recipe so that the family can have a share of this wonderfully moist and delicious cake.... so this is for the family... a square cake, so that it makes dividing the cake easier. no fighting for that strawberry! LOLz.

Ian turns 9

My Christmas baby's all grown up now!

I baked a chocolate fudge cake this year for his Birthday... a small one as there's too much feasting those few days. :P

Happy 9th Birthday Ian!

This Christmas.....

had been an awfully tiring one. We were at my sis's place on Christmas Eve for a party which lasted till late. And then I hosted a dinner for Ian's birthday on Christmas Day .... and on Boxing Day, was at my cousin's place as early as 6.45AM for her wedding. The day did not end till after the wedding dinner, which was closed to 11pm. I was so drained and exhausted that till today I am still trying to recover! Not to mention, Ian came down with a stomach virus on Boxing Day and is still recovering from it....and Cherilynn came down with hives today.

With this chain of events happening, I totally lost my energy to even download any photos taken during the past few days! But still I eventually gathered enough strength to edit and compose my post today.

I started planning for Ian's b'day bash a few weeks beforehand. I wanted to try my hand at poaching salmon as one of the dishes, but only managed to research for recipes only in the morning of Christmas Eve! I got to leave the office early that day, and made my way to a fty that sells salmon and other seafood at wholesale prices, all the way at the north. Thanks to Hubs for driving me there and I picked up fillet of half a salmon there. The guy refused to help me get a whole salmon (head and tail included) from the freezer as he was adamant that I would not buy the fish... even tho' I said that was exactly what I wanted. (Gosh... that's customer service for you). In good Christmas spirits, I took the next best thing that I can lay my hands on. LOLz.On Christmas morning, that I went to buy all the necesary ingredients from the supermart nearby. With the help of C, I managed to twit the recipes I found online and the poached salmon came out perfect! It was moist, flavoursome and totally rocks!

This is the salmon before poaching....yummmm

I'll share the recipe here for all those who wants to give it a try.

What you need

• Alumimium foil
• Greaseproof/waxed paper
• Fresh salmon (The fillet I bought is 1.2kg, good to feed 12pax)
• Olive oil
• 1 lemon (cut into slices abt 5mm thick)
• 10gm fresh dill (chopped)
• 10gm fresh italian parsley (chopped)
• crushed black pepper
• sea salt
• 2 carrots (chopped)
• 1 corn
  

What to do

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
• Lay alumimium foil on table top, place greaseproof/waxed paper over it, make sure that these 2 materials are bigger than the salmon
• Place the salmon on top of the greaseproof/waxed paper and drizzle olive oil on it, make sure the whole fillet has been coated with olive oil.
• Sprinkle sea salt and crushed black pepper generously onto the fillet.
• Place the lemon slices onto the fillet.
• Sprinkle another layer of sea salt on top of the lemon.
• Sprinkle the chopped dill and parsely on top.
• Placed the chopped carrots and corn at the sides.
• Wrap the fillet up. Seal it tight.
• Place sealed salmon poach onto a baking tray and into the oven... I baked the fillet for 40mins and it was cooked just nice. For smaller-sized fillets, 20mins is sufficient.
• Remove from oven after 40mins, open up the poach and serve.... enjoy!

Besides the poached salmon, I also served a mixed fruit salad (combo of orange, blueberries, strawberries, cherries, jackfruit mixed with mango yogurt), smoked salmon and cream cheese on crackers, cream of mushroom soup, mini garlic pork sausages coated with hosin & honey sauce (Thanks Ching for this recipe), chicken & beef lasagna; chocolate fudge cake (the b'day cake) and rum balls for dessert.