Buttermilk cake

Seeing a carton of opened buttermilk in my fridge, I thot I better make use of it before it expires. Buttermilk is not a common ingredient for baking/cooking in sg and therefore, it's not something I'll usually add to my grocery list 'coz of the price of it.

Anyway, I set my mind on this recipe and know for sure it'll turn out good... seems to me that anything with buttermilk is moist and delicious! LOLz.

I reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe to 180gm. For the rest of the recipe, I followed to the dot. My cake did not turn out as high as Lucy's but the recipe's sure a keeper!

Bought templates in a recent spree and wanted to try it out for the fun of it (if not, what's the point of buying it???). First, I dusted some snow powder on generously, covering the entire top of the cake.Then, I placed the template on and dusted cocoa powder on.Tada! The completed and dressed cake.

Now, who wants a slice?

Hello Kitty Fondant Cake

yups.. the time of the yr when I have to crack my brains for ideas of cake for my little gal. She turns 7 and it's a wonder how fast time passes by!This year, I decided to do a Hello Kitty cake. Initially I had wanted to do up a castle cake! But after thinking thru' I guess I'm being over ambitious if I really try that. Maybe next year. :P So I "downsize" my dreams of a castle cake to a Hello Kitty (HK) cake. I was also toying with the idea of making it 2 tiers, as in having a square lower tier and the HK on top. However, I finally decided on a small HK as I think it should be sufficient. So again, it got "downsized". LOLz....

Special thanks to Elyn for lending me the HK mold. It is a very deep silicon mold and Elyn had warned me that it'll take slightly longer for the cake to bake, and well, it did take 10mins more than stipulated.

The cake is a walnut butter cake, done using a separated eggs method. Hopefully I can get an innard shot tmr when the cake is being cut!

For now, enjoy the pics and it's bedtime for me!

Food Review 2009 #1 - Waraku Japanese Casual Dining

We used to stay at the east part of sg and would drive past this restaurant on our way to the beach. Many times we wanted to try the food there but never had the chance. Well, now that we've moved out of the eastern part of sg, we still head to the beach as much as we can. And finally, the chance to try the food here. :)

The place is rather spacious and not too crowded on a weekday lunch hour. It suited me fine as I'm not expecting a crowd at a restaurant so far away from offices. The service is prompt and the crew are all very polite.

Here are the dishes we ordered that day. There were only 2 of us, so we ordered 5 dishes.

This is basically for me only. Hubs do not take raw food, so sashimi is totally out of the question for him. I love the fish slices here... cut in thick slices, they are so fresh and yummy...

Nigiri (mixed sushi platter).... I needed something to further satisfy my sashimi cravings, and so this went on the order. Noticed that there's the egg and tako sushi that Hubs will be able to take. *snigger*. The rice were not molded tight enough, which broke into pieces when I tried dipping them in sauce.Ika Maruyaki - Hubs loves seafood, so this was his order. the sauce looked very little when the dish arrived but after it got warmed up, the amount was actually just nice. the squid was cooked just nice. Abit of chew to it and it's thick flesh gave a very satisfying bite. Overall rather salty but it went down well with some rice.Saba Ichiyaboshi - grilled saba. A little on the dry side but the part near the belly was good!

Final dish was chige ramen. Hubs asked for the spiciest ramen they had and this was the recommendation from the service crew. I love that thick slab of pork in it (there were only 2 pieces of meat, wish there were more). Was cooked to perfection! the meat tasted tender and there's 2 strips of tendons across it when gave it a very very nice bite! The soup had an "almost"cooked egg in it. I love breaking the yolk open and let it mix into the soup, making it very thick and flavourful. Of course there's some pieces of bamboo shots in the broth too. It's good tho' I'm not sure if I'll want to order this again. It's not as spicy as it claimed to be and we added quite a fair amt of chilli flakes in it. :P
Overall, it was a good dining experience. For those who wants to avoid the lunch crowd and have your own transportation, it's a good place for a nice and quiet sit down meal.
Waraku Japanese Casual Dining
1020 East Coast Parkway S449878
Tel : 62421123

Chocolate Birthday Cake

It's March again! The celebration month in the family. :)

First up is Hubs b'day today. After looking thru' tons of recipes, I decided on a chocolate cake. The pic of the cake in the recipe looked so good that I made up my mind on the spot that this is THE cake.

It was *almost* a cake that did not happen. Last nite, I was preparing the ingredients and thought I should preheat my oven 1st BUT when I tried to turn it on, nothing happened... *moments of panic!!!*. Dragged Hubs from the couch and he pulled the wiring out to take a look and found the culprit. There was a burnt mark along the wiring! So he went about fixing it and i heaved a sigh of relief when he announced that the oven should be working fine. However, when I tried to turn it on again, still nothing happened! This time, all kinds of thoughts ran thru' my mind. I was worried abut my other planned bakes for this month... how am I gonna do it with the oven down? I nearly freaked! And not to mention, Hubs will be cakeless tomorrow! Which also means I've to make a trip to to the bakery nearby and buy cakes which I do not like at all. Thankfully it suddenly occurred to me that it maybe it was the fuse in the power point that was causing the problem. So I got Hubs to check and replace that at the same time, fingers crossed. Finally it worked! I had never been as grateful to hear the oven working again. So I finally got the cake baked but I was really exhausted by then and decided the frosting and decorating will have to wait.

Came this morning.... 1st thing I did was the get the buttercream done. The buttercream turned out really smooth and yummy. I read that many ppl had tried making buttercream and the texture turned out grainy. Luckily it was not in my case. The sweetness was just right too!