Stress?

Pi Pi caught chicken pox from school and she's scratching like a monkey, especially in the middle of the night. Was woken at 3am by her scratching and frustrated whimpers (poor girl)... after applying bitter gourd juice on her limbs and rocking her to sleep, I gathered up some recipes faxed across by Bern's mummy and went into the kitchen to destress!!! haha...

This was the output from this morning's baking frenzy :

1. Garlic and Rosemary Focaccia Bread (play cheat.. breadmix + bread machine)

2. Chiffon cheesecake

3. Milk cookies

4. Pineapple tarts

Garlic and Rosemary Focaccia Bread
I bought a Wright's breadmix which requires water and olive oil only... how easy!! the bread turned out really soft and nice but not as herby as I would like it to be. with a dip in balsamic vinegar + olive oil and that was my breakfast! even di di loved it.... keke..

Chiffon Cheesecake
Failed!! The chiffon cheesecake didn't turn out as fluffy, maybe coz I did not beat the 4 egg whites to stiff peaks - my arm was on the verge of dropping off due to fatigue, next time will use mixed instead.. hmmmph!!

TT tasted the cake and asked "orange cake?" *FAINT*.. di di ate half a slice and pi pi ate 1 slice!!... she's the best.. first bite and she proclaimed "NICE!" it tasted more like an eggy cake (ji dan gao) to me :P

Milk Cookies
They tasted abit like Kueh Bangkit to me!! nice and super easy to make :) THanks to Bern's mummy who faxed me the recipe together with many other cookie recipes.....!!

Pineapple Tarts
still trying to tweak the new recipe to my liking.. find the crust taste abit bland despite using golden churn butter as recommended by Jonas' mummy... so sad I lost my own recipe :(

Kaya ~ Coconut Egg Jam

I’m a kaya lover and can eat kaya straight from the jar… keke… one of the main reasons why I bought the breadmaker was that it could make Jams !!!

Last night, I finally made a batch of kaya that looked decent and tasted not overly sweet… and it is this simple to make :

• 8 medium size eggs
• 280g fine sugar
• 300ml coconut cream

Mix the ingredients together and put into the breadmaker to cook. Ta da!! the jam was ready in 1+ hour. Put the jam in the blender, puree it and the lumpy watery jam turns into smooth creamy kaya with a light green yellow tinge. Scoop the kaya into dry clean glass jars and let it cool before capping and storing in the refridgerator.

Tastes absolutely yummy with olive spread on white bread

My hubby thinks that our maid has a very good life… coz her Madam bakes bread and cooks kaya for her breakfast wor…bo bian.. I need a guinea pig!!

Manual method :

• Whisk the egg mixture evenly (I held Pi Pi's hand to whisk the eggs and she was absolutely elated that she was finally "COOKING with mummy")
• Stir the sugar into the coconut cream over a pan of boiling water until the sugar melts and the mixture is hot.
• Stream the egg mixture slowly into the hot coconut cream and stir continuously over heat until the mixture curdles and thickens.
• Remove from heat and blend the jam into a smooth creamy texture. :)

Cry Sambal

My mum surprises me sometimes.... when out of the blue she cooks something fabulous... (she's a good cook, but sometimes she will spring a great dish that makes us see her in a different light). This time, it's the Sambal Eggplant that we get to eat at Indonesian restaurants... my mum's indonesian maid said she called home to indonesia after eating it and cried to her husband that she has never eaten such delicious sambal eggplant before!! so drama... but it really happened!

This afternoon my mum made Sambal again and I could see that her maid was really over the moon with glee.. haha.. but I almost fell off the chair laughing when my mum was dictating the sambal recipe to the maid!!! it went something like that :

xx dollars of dried shrimp
20 cents of brocarass
50 cents of blue ginger etc etc

*FAINT* told my mum that the taste of her sambal will change with the economy ... kekeke

Tonight I had eggplant, egg fried with silver fish and loads of mum's sambal chili for dinner.. and it was indeed fabulous.. :)

3 little princes

It's a LOOOOONNNNGG weekend ahead!!!

Went for dinner with Aunty Sophia at the very last minute at Changi Airport (our favourite hangout place!)... both daddies were too lazy to come along (I think it is coz they find Airport parking very expensive, haha) so only the kids and maids tagged along.

Crystal Jade was full, so we went to Lerk Thai which was half empty. Food was better than expected! Guess the half empty restaurant gave me the impression that food was not going to be great. Haiz... Mummy was too hungry and forgot to take pictures of the yummy food.. keke..

The 3 little boys at dinner (from left : YZ, YT and Di Di)

We were marvelling at how fast our kids have grown over the year and comparing notes for subsequent ones. Had my last one been successful, she (pi pi insists that it was a mei mei) would probably be sharing Aunty Sophia's birthday!

Poor Pi Pi was in quarantine at Por Por's place coz of her viral fever. Will bring her to the AirportHotel for DimSum after she recovers :) :)... actually it is Mummy who is craving for DimSum.. haha...

Vanilla Cheese Muffins

Pi Pi climbed onto my bed this morning and said "妈妈，读!!" It was the fruits and vegetables flashcards... got me thinking of baking some little cakes for her as a Sunday treat! Must be the guilty mummy syndrome kicking in, never spent enough time with the kids during the week :)

Rumaged through my baking cabinet and drawers and TA DA!! found a packet of French Muffin mix.. keke... play cheat.. added eggs, vanilla, butter and water to the mix and beat the mixture for 5 mins. easy peasy... then realised that the little paper cups that I have are a tad too big for my muffin trays.. arghh.. never mind, just make sure they don't slant too much and spill in the oven can liao...


sprinkled some chocolate rice on half of the muffins and plopped small chunks of the laughing cow cheese into some of the cups



the muffins were not too sweet, not as fluffy as I like (maybe that's the way muffins are supposed to taste??), but the cheese in it.. OOH LA LA!!!! me thinks Pi Pi's daddy will love the cheesy ones :) :) Pi Pi will have these for snack time after she wakes up from her afternoon nap :)
Next on my To Bake list.. Black Sesame Muffins and Cranberry Cheese Muffins !!

Afternote : after I posted this entry, my maid yelled for me... naughty Pi Pi had somehow gotten hold of the container holding the muffins, bitten off the top of a few muffins and fed 1 to Di Di!!!! Aiyoh! I hope he doesn't get an allergic reaction to the egg in the muffin!! hmm.. Pi Pi likes the muffins! *GRIN*

Feast at Lei Garden

Pi Pi's 舅母 brought us all out for a wonderful sumptious dinner at.... Lei Garden at Chijmes ... to celebrate her recent promotion!!!

wow... look at all the lipsmacking dishes we had... there were a couple of yummy ones like the 脆皮烧肉 and black glutinous rice with grass jelly and vanilla ice cream which are not shown here... coz... the tam jiak photographer forgot to take pics before she attacked the dishes!!


Wasabi mayo prawns (hot hot), lightly fried fish slices with a soup base


千叶豆腐 and 蒜香排骨 with sweet sour sauce....


Asaparagus on yam basket, French style lobster noodles (lobster chunks baked with cheese on 伊面 with potato by the side) .. very special!!

the bill was very special too.. came up to $70 per head... many thanks to YY for the superb treat :) :)

my only grouse.. the fantastic parking charges at Chijmes ($9 per entry) and the super bigsized angmoh who tried to squeeze into his car parked next to mine (parked by the valets) and in the process banged my passenger door several times right in front of my eyes!!! *faint*

四川豆花 = 黑店 ？？

MIL's birthday is just around the corner, so TT proposed to bring her to 四川豆花 at UOB Plaza for a nice dim sum lunch :)

We had the usual dim sum, 小笼包, 腐皮卷, 烧卖, 虾饺, la mian, 皮蛋粥, etc etc and enjoyed the nice river view from the restaurant situated on the 60th floor of the building. TT settled the bill and we continued to enjoy the very very smooth 豆花.

Being the usual nosy accountant, I asked TT for the bill to see how much we had eaten...HUH!!! My eyeballs almost popped out of their sockets... the bill totalled $331 and our dear Mister didn't even bat an eyelid when signing the bill!

The offending item read "xx飘香盒 $48 x 4 = $192"... I questioned the waitress and she said it's the TEA OF THE DAY and the tea was a very GOOD and imported exquisite tea! When asked why didn't she alert us of the cost of the tea when all we asked for was TEA, expecting the usual tie guanyin, jasmine tea, ba bao cha etc, she was speechless. Later she admitted that there was a mistake in our table invoice (tea of the day costs no more than $5-$6 per cup) and they waived off our tea charges to compensate for the error.

The bill came back looking more decent at $105... told TT that he has to eat up all the tea leaves and bring the tea cup back if it really costs $192 for the tea... we had a good laugh.. but TT remained convinced that the restaurant was trying to RIP us off and in his words... 黑店

King Kong pineapple tarts.. :)

After talking to some foodie friends on the pineapple tarts made couple of days back, I realised that the recipe used was not suitable for the type of tarts I was working on... I'm such a sotong! So started to hunt for recipes again... went to a ghee recipe site which Bern's mummy mentioned and found one for pineapple rolls! In the end, due to some materials contraint, I had to mix and match 3 recipes to come up with the following ...


voila!!! ...King Kong pineapple tarts....

that melt in the mouth!!!!



Tarts packed into small jars for my tasters to try... :)

This time I added more butter and the dough turned out really difficult to mould... that's why this round's tarts look "lazy"... slouching all over the tray... like Pi Pi's daddy.. heehee..

I also made some cookies with the left over dough for Pi Pi.. but I think she will prefer those with pineapple over the "kosong" cookies.. haha.. look at her grinning at the tarts...

Pi Pi : "Mummy, can I have a cookie?"
Mummy : "Finish your porridge first!"
Daddy : "小孩子,不可以吃!!"


Pi Pi : "I will help myself..."


Pi Pi : "Fwahhh..."

Verdict from Pi Pi : she says "Koot Koot" with her mouth stuffed with the tart and her thumbs sticking up.. such a darling!! :)

Pineapple Jam Tarts

It's 3 weeks to Chinese New Year, pineapple tarts season again!! So tired of buying them from outside - mass produced and expensive, so decided to try my hand at making them!

Making the pastry :


The pineapple filling :


Before and during baking :


The end product :


Tastewise ... hmm... recipe needs some tweaking.. and I think I baked the tarts at the wrong temperature.. they are so fair!!! Looks like there's too much pineapple in the tart :P

Durian Creme Cheese Cake

Last night I went back to Balestier again... to buy the D24 durian to make a cake for Gong Gong's birthday!! And tabao-ed 2 durians at the same time, just could not resist their durians... yumm... :)
Finally completed making the durian creme cheese cake after 2.5 hours in the kitchen this evening... here's the end product (still in the cake setting ring in the refridgerator)...

Oops, just realised that I forgot to keep some of the durian filling to beautify the side of the cake... hope it does not turn out too ugly!





I have been eating alot of durians recently, there goes my plan to shed pounds in time for CNY.. sigh.. I wonder if this durian binge is also making Di Di put on weight as well? Di Di gained 0.8kg in 10 days... he's 5.1kg as of today!! *faint*

Durian feast... yumyum

Went for a durian feast with Daryl's mummy at Balestier last night (recommended by Max's mummy)... we whacked 3 durians (2 bitter + 1 butter) .. so shiok!!! total damage was about $100 (including da bao).

The bitter durians were very bitter and tasty... but only about 5 or 6 seeds in each durian.. then we tried the butter durian... aiyoh, big mistake... that durian had around 12-15 seeds and the seed was tiny, so alot of BAK and that kind of snuffed out our appetite for other durians.

Daryl's mummy was so full that she only had fruits for lunch today.. haha... but I think we will be having another durian party soon.. *drool*.. hope Di Di enjoyed his "durian milk" this morning.. kekeke.. ;)