Chocolate chips oats cookies

Had a pack of oats lying in the fridge for the longest time. So since the weekends is here, thot I'll just make some cookies and clear the bag of oats.

These cookies have a nice cinnamon taste to it... and also vanilla... so packed full of goodness!

What you need

• 250gm unsalted butter (at room temp)
• 100gm soft brown sugar
• 50gm castor sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 200gm plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 cups oats
• 1 cup chocolate chips

What to do

• Preheat oven at 170C. Sift the plain flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon and salt together.
• Cream the butter and sugars together till pale. Add in eggs one at a time. Mix till well incoporated.
• Add in vanilla extract. Mix well.
• While the mixer is running on the lowest speed, add in the flour mixture. Up the speed to medium and make sure the flour mixture is incorporated into the dough.
• Stop mixer, add in the oats and choc chips. Mix on LOW speed.
• Remove bowl from mixer, drop teaspoons of dough onto ungreased cookie pans.
• Bake for 15mins till golden brown.
• Cool completely before storing.

Peanut Butter Bread Loaf

I baked this loaf on Monday nite as DS had an outing the next day to Sentosa and needed to pack some sandwiches to bring along. I had planned to try this recipe for some time, but it's the lazy bug which stopped me everytime! LOL...

I started the whole process using the breadmaker at 7.30pm and it was done at 10.15pm. Not too bad as I still got my beauty sleep on time. I left the loaf to cool in the oven as I did not want to stay up just to wait for it to cool.

The loaf turned out pretty well. The recipe's definately a keeper. The bread's soft, tho' it's abit dense at the bottom... but it's still acceptable. The peanut butter taste is not apparent but there's a subtle nutty taste to it and it's slightly salty. The kids and DH love it... I guess that's all that matters. :P

Thanks to Happy Homebaker for sharing the recipe...
This is ham and cheese sandwich for DS.

By the way, I tried a new product in the market... ayam brand fish luncheon meat..... well, the piece of luncheon is very dry, maybe 'coz it's made of fish, and there's not much oil. When I was deciding if i shd get it, the sales person told me that it was good. I asked her how it tasted like, if it's somefin like otah. She said it's harder than otah....more like fish cake... I was really curious, so i bought it. Well, now i can say that I won't be buying another can of fish luncheon meat! Altho' it's definately a healthier choice, compared to the pork ones available, and being much kinder to the pocket. The fishy taste is very evident... and on the whole it's rather dry. it does taste abit like otah, minus the coconut milk.... and harder, of course! Not well-received by the family... too bad.

Blueberries muffins

I was supposed to have baked these muffins 2 weeks ago. I had 2 cups of meiji yogurt sitting in the fridge and thot this shd be the thing to bake to use the yogurt up. Furthermore, whenever weekends come, Elyn and I will be discussing what to bake! Co-incidentally, we both had yogurt, so we kinda agreed to bake somefin using yogurt. Sadly, I fell sick and remained unwell for 2 weeks.

Finally took time to bake these little gems now. :)

Here's the recipe:

What you need

• 1 cup yogurt
• 100ml melted butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 280gm plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup blueberries
• Brown sugar for sprinkling

What to do

• Preheat oven to 180C. Melt the butter and leave to cool.
• Whisk yogurt, butter and eggs tog till smooth. Add in vanilla extract and mix well.
• In a separate bowl, sift baking powder tog with flour. Add in the sugar and whisk tog., Then throw in the blueberries and make sure they get coated with flour.
• Fold in the ygurt mix into the flour. Stir till there's no trace of flour.
• Place batter into muffin liners/tray.Sprinkle some more sugar on the top. It does not rise much, so you can fill it up to 90% of the liners.
• Bake for 25mins till cooked.

Food review 2008 #03 - Blue Ginger

Strangely enough, my family had never gone for a full penarakan meal before. For myself, I've tried penarakan food in Malacca before, but not together as a family. Perhaps it's because we have kids amongst us, and penarakan food is usually spicy, so we kinda subconciously avoided it. For Mother's Day this year, my bro suggested to try food that we had not eaten tog before, and penarankan food sprung into mind. So I went ard asking for suggestions on penarakan restuarants in the town area, for the convenience of everyone in the family. Finally settled on Blue Ginger, after hearing good reviews from friends and on the net.

The variety on the menu is quite wide. And with suggestions from the waiting crew, we managed to shortlist some dishes that are not so spicy and suitable for kids.

These are the dishes we ordered.

Duck Salad as starter... It's not bad tasting tho' we would prefer more duck meat in it. It had a nice tangy taste and the vegetable was very fresh. But I got review from the family that it tasted too raw... hm... I thot salad containes raw veg... so frankly, I dun see their point...

Another starter... Ngo Heong. This is one of their specialities. I find it abit salty tho... but it's yummy with rice and the accompanying sweet sauce.

Next up... Ayam Panggang 'Blue Ginger"... This dish ROCKS! it's also one of the chef specialities... I'm blown away by it! It's deboned chicken thigh and grilled. Then topped with a sauce. The meat was really tender and well marinated. The sauce had a strong coconut taste to it and it's not that spicy.

Sambal Terong Goreng. It's eggplant and then topped with some sambal chilli. It's done to perfection too. Looking at the dish alone makes my mouth water... beautiful colours!

Steamed Seabass Nonya Style. This fish is quite delicious too. Very fresh and appetising.

Seasonal Green Vegetables with oyster sauce. This is a child-friendly dish. Quite well done... no complaints! :)

Otak Otak. Another chef specialities. Firm flesh with silvers of fish in it. Yummy!

Last dish... Sotong Kunyit. It's fresh squid stirfried with tumeric powder, flavoured with tamarind. This is another child-friendly dish as it's not spicy. However, it's well-received by the adults too!

For dessert, we ordered Chendol. They offered 2 types of chendols, one with durian and another that's the common one that's without durian. Frankly, we're all disappointed with this. We had expected it to be really special as it's also listed as a chef specialities. Howver, there's very little gula melaka and the ice shavings were not fine. In fact it's just a huge lump of ice. :(

Nevertheless, it's been a good dinner for us. At least I know Mommy is happy! (that's the most impt, isn't it?)

Happy Mother's Day!

I'm still not fully recovered from the bug I caught last week. Thus, I was not up to baking a cake for Mother's day. Furthermore, whenever there's occasions like Mother's Day, we'll end up stuffing ourselves silly in restuarant, leaving no space for cakes! LOL...

However, since there's no cake for the occasion, I thot some cookies will be as good. So I baked some butter cookies, at the same time try out a cookie press DH got for me on his last trip to China. This cookie press is really cheap, cost only SGD$5. I wasn't very sure that it'll do a good job so I delayed trying it out till now. I was kinda proven right when I realised that the dough did not come out evenly... kinda loopsided... so I tried out different plates and finally decided on the heart-shaped one. This plate, surprisingly, came out with good shapes! So I stuck with this plate till the dough was finished. I'm really curious... is it 'coz the cookie press is a cheap one that will have this kinda problem? Or even the expensive ones like wilton will also have a mind of it's own? Pls... someone, enlighten me! LOL

Anyway, the recipe is quite a good one... the cookies melted in my mouth... love it! will be baking more of these soon. :)

I'll make myself a nice cup of milo and enjoy these cookies for my breakfast. That said, I wish all mothers a HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Cooling off

The warm weather had really hit us hard this time. It's so unexpected after a few weeks of cool weather and heavy rains. But then again, it's already May and it should be the hot hot HOT months in sg.

I caught a flu bug and felt really under the weather with a bad throat, swollen tonsils and blocked nose! YES, the full works... :( Being under medication means I'm feeling sleepy and lethargic most of the time. I knew that my body is too "heaty" and even the doc advised me to avoid heaty foods. So I decided to make some agar-agars. DH had requested that I make some 2 weeks ago, but I was too caught up with other stuff. It's been a long time since I last made agar-agar and it's really a good choice of dessert in this high temps we're experiencing now. And I finally got to try out the flower agar mold I bought in Ng Ming Huat many moons ago. :PVery happy with the flower molds... very pretty huh?

The rest of the agar turned into little fishies. :P