Look back on 2011

2011 is going to end soon in few hours time and as usual it is time to reflect on what we have done for the year.

To me, 2011 is a year where I spend a awfully alot amounts of money. Bad.. Its to a stage where I began to wonder if its worthwhile to spend so much in the first place.

2011 is also the year where I go heavier T.T Sad. Sign of eating too much and not moving as much.

On a happier note, I have participated in my first 10km nike run. (Speaking of which, I still haven't received my souvenirs and voucher..).  This month, more people appreciate my bake wares and I established my own business. LOL. If you counted it as business. Friends and colleagues ordered cookies from me. Learning on managing the expenses and keep track on the accounts and orders.

2011 is also a year where Alvin and I understand each other more and saving towards our future. Yay.

2012 will be the year I will be looking forward to.

*edit*

1. Graduation! Finishing my studies soon! Finally.  
2. Expand bakery?
3. Learn driving
4. Be a wonderful GF
5. Be a wonderful friend
6. Lose weight
7. Find my direction

Wishing you all a wonderful 2012 ahead!

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie

It's Christmas time! What's better than to bake some cookies for colleagues and friends. Other than sharing my baked goods with people, it is good to give them away as "Christmas gifts" when you don't know what to get for them for Christmas. No headaches to what to get!

Usually baking cookies is quite a chore. Especially cookies that contains butter as it makes washing very troublesome.

My colleagues had good raves for the cookies. 1 even enquire if he can order with me. Wah. Milestone. Someone ACTUALLY want to order my cookies.

So happy.

Anyone want order? Shall be going to buy my ingredients tomorrow.

Recipe adapted here

115g butter
115g light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence/extract
150g self-raising flour
75g rolled oats
100g chocolate chips
100g white chocolate chunks, optional
directions :
1. cream butter & sugar in a bowl until pale and fluffy. add in egg and vanilla essence/extract.
2. sift flour over the mixture and fold in lightly with a metal spoon. then add oats, choc chips and white chocolate and stir well to combine.
3. drop heaped spoonfuls of mixture onto non-stick baking sheet, leaving space for spreading.
4. bake in a preheated oven of 170 deg c for 15-20 mins until golden brown.
5. leave on to cool 2-3 mins before removing from baking sheet and let cool completely before storing in air-tight container.

The cookies doesn't really expand much during baking, so the size of the dough dropped onto the baking sheet will pretty much be the resulted size.

Lychee Rose Cupcakes

Trying to make something for Alvin's birthday as usual. Decided to try making Lychee Rose Cupcakes from Evan's blog. Looks nice, yummy and special. How often do you hear before Lychee + Rose = cupcake?

(I've made cream cheese frosting for half the cupcakes and left it in the fridge. No one eats it :( 没人欣赏。。)

I found that lychee and rose is a very good combination. The combination gives out a different scent different from the usual buttery kind. Not bad what...

Taken from here

1.5 cups self raising flour
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup ground almonds
250g butter, softened
2 cups sugar (i only used 1.5 cups)
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
60ml rose syrup water (2 parts water to 1 part syrup)
1 tsp rosewater essence
24 pcs canned lychees
directions :
1. combine flours and ground almonds in a bowl. in another bowl, beat butter & sugar until light and fluffy, then add in eggs one at a time and whisk until combined.
2. add in flours in 3 additions, alternating between milk and rose syrup water. do not overmix. fold in batter until just combined.
3. spoon 1/2 mixture into cupcake liners, top with a lychee and pour in another 1/2 batter (total height should come up to 3/4 of liner).
4. bake in preheated oven of 170C for 20 mins or until skewer inserted comes out clean.
* for the raspberry cream cheese frosting, i combined cream cheese, butter, raspberry puree & sifted icing sugar according to taste. i don't hv a recipe for it.

Makes 25

For the frosting, I just roughly combined cream cheese and butter in equal portions and then add some raspberry jam and icing sugar according to one's taste.

Black Sesame Chiffon Cake

Long wanted to try to bake this black sesame chiffon cake. But I always wanted to do it with the black sesame paste. However, the paste is quite difficult to find. Only available in a particular shop near city hall. Furthermore, that time I went to buy it, it was out of stock. :(

So I do some search online and there are recipes using black sesame powder. But the downside is that it might not be as fragrant as the paste.

Tried using the recipe below and it works well. I've excluded cream of tar tar and used equal 4 egg yolks and 4 whites instead of 4:5 ratio.

Recipe from Mimi bakery.

4 egg yolks
40g sugar
50ml vegetable oil
80ml water
100g cake flour
75g black sesame powder
1 tsp baking powder


5 egg whites
50g sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar


Method:

1. Whisk egg yolks and sugar until the sugar dissolves.
2. Gradually add in vegetable oil, followed by water.
3. Fold in black sesame powder, sifted cake flour and baking powder until well-mixed. Set aside.
4. In another bowl, whisk egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy. Add in sugar gradually until stiff peak form.
5. Gently fold in the egg white into the egg yolk batter in 3 batches.
6. Pour the batter into an ungreased chiffon tin.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 190 deg C for 40-45 minutes.(my own oven heat)
8. Remove from oven and invert the tin immediately onto a cooling rack.
9. Unmould the cake only when it is completely cool

Childhood food!

One fine day when I was staying late for work and after dinner with colleagues, I chanced upon this snack when I had it when I was very young. AK had randomly asked for the name of this snack and I suddenly wanted to eat it.

cheap cheap! Nice and airy, eat already don't feel like you have eaten anything.

Another colleague gave me a box of cakes for the full month of his baby girl. So sweet!

Aren't these cakes old school and bring up alot of fond memories?

Shopping + Osaka Town + You are the apple in my eye + Mad for garlic

Its a shopping day as Alvin needed to get a suit for upcoming Terence's wedding. After some recommendations from friends, he already got where he want to buy them in his mind. Lunching at Raffles City before we start the day!

Wanted to eat Thai Express's tomyam steamboat. But they don't serve it at Raffles City. Shall have it when I'm going to Alvin's place. We tried Osaka Town instead as the menu looks quite interesting and seems quite a healthy option.

Pork Cutlet Ramen.

Cheese ramen

Shared a Soft Shell Crab Okonomiyaki.

Overall, the ramen had more veggies inside than the ramen. Wonder thats good or bad. Nothing in particular to rave about. Quite normal and simple ramen. Not much of a WOW factor. For the okonomiyaki, quite average. But the sauce is nice. Shared the okonomiyaki and it left us very very full.

You could go when er.. all other restaurants are full.

Address

Osaka Town

Raffles City Shopping Center

#B1-75

Did some light shopping and Alvin found a nice looking suit that fits him. Weet! I've gotten a 2 drawer clear casing from Muji to store my accessories. Thanks to the $10 vouchers he redeemed after getting his suit (including a fake Longchamp bag from mall's promotion). Also gotten myself a fake eyelash and glue. 

Met up with Terence and wife as they want to see how Alvin looks like in the suit. Terence had gotten Jasmin a surprise 1 night stay in hotel for the weekend due to her birthday. So sweet of him. We split up as we went to catch You are the apple in my eye at Suntec.

Nice movie. Filled with childhood memories and jokes. The producer of the movie is the same one for Meteor Garden. so you can expect the movie to be not bad. Just a lot of 感叹that in the end people who like each other did not get together. 

Side note: The male lead is handsome and nice bod. Hee!

After movie we went for late dinner at Mad for Garlic as Alvin wanted to try the food. 

Ordered some starters while waiting for Terence and Jasmin to join us for dinner. As I had been here before with AK and Lynn, I wanted to try something different that we had not tried before.

Erdinger

Lemonade

Anchovy Garlic Cream Fondue - Heavenly. Similar concept to cheese fondue but without the gelat feeling. 

Not long after, the couple joined us and here's what we had:

Fresh Spinach Salad - Liked the fried garlic on top.

Garlic Snowing Pizza - when the serving staff is shredding the cheese on the spot over the pizza

After.

Mushroom Risotto - not bad

Other this missing are Lobster Spaghetti and moose cake.

Overall, the food will be perfect for garlic lovers like Alvin and I. A tad overwhelming for Terence and wifey. But their raves as first timer is that the Lobster Spaghetti is nice. Tried it before and it is nice. Definitely a must order item.

Address
Mad for Garlic
3 Temasek Boulevard, Suntec City (Galleria) #01 - 039
www.madforgarlic.com.sg

Of Japanese food and nails

Fun, enjoyment and relax after exams! Pray for me that I'll pass, yea?

Met Alvin for lunch at FEP and booked myself for a mani and pedicure session.

The much raved Jap restaurant. Yum!

Interior. Small and cosy.

We are seated at the counter. Observing the chef BBQ-ing the meats.

Their signature bento.

Complete with miso soup and red bean dumpling dessert. Yum.

Alvin's bento set. The Udon is nice.

Entrance of the restaurant.

Address

Nanbantei Japanese Restaurant
Far East Plaza #05-129

***

Then I adjourned to nail session at Milly's utilizing my groupon voucher while Alvin went for a hair cut.

Vietnamese girl doing my nails

OPI- Jewel of India

Its a all in one shop. It does eye lash extension, hair extension, manicure and pedicure. The workers are mostly foreign. Apparently the girl who did my nails is the most junior of the group. My heart my literally in my mouth and I was spying on her when she did my nails. 

Nail job took a freaking 2 hour plus because bubbles formed on the coat of paint after drying. Arrgh. 

At first glance, I would say the girl did quite a nice job. Never really cut me badly. She over cut some of my cuticles but luckily it doesn't bleed. However, upon closer inspection the next day, her skills are not up to the mark. The paint layers are quite uneven. 

I thought Millys should be quite good since a lot of bloggers raved about them. Also, classic pedicure should include feet soak and scrub right? But I don't know whether the shop foot basin is real or fake one. The staff never use it at all. My feet soak is done in a feet pail covered in a plastic bag and pathetic amount of water is poured in it. I was like huh?! Is that what you called classic pedi?! 

Still got 2 more session to go. Perhaps I should try out the Bugis outlet. 

Grapefruit + Orange Juice

One of the easiest juice that I always make is grapefruit and orange juice. Nice and yummy and it goes with the Meiji Amino Collagen that I have. Because the collagen powder has this fishy/ plastic smell, citrus fruits cover that really well. Tried with honey lemon drink, but it doesn't work.

You will need 1 grapefruit and 1 orange to get 1 cup of juice.

Grapefruit is rich in vitamin C and is better fruit than orange.

Contains high antioxidants.

Crystal Jade Kitchen Tim Sum

Some time back few weeks ago, after my paper at SIM, I loitered around Clementi Mall to shop (abit) and to stock up my groceries for camping at home to study.  Mummy had started working at Bouna Vista so I waited for her to have late lunch at Crystal Jade.

Ambience at the restaurant is good! Surprising spacious and due to the timing we went (2pm) there is not much of a crowd. Staff & their service are nice, friendly and prompt.

Tim Sum. *drools*

They have a buzzer for you to press if you need the staff's attention. Good! They react pretty fast too. Save you from having to wave for ages.

Our warm barley.

Our orders! A bit too much for the 2 of us. We took the set menu and ordered some more tim sum.

The roast meat platter. Nice! All cooked to perfection - nice and juicy.

The 艇仔粥. Nice. Mum likes it. Basically its a mix of pork, fish, peanuts etc. Assorted porridge.

The carrot cake which we eventually da baoed home.

The crispy yam puffs. 

Pork ribs.

Spring roll. Which did not escape the fate of being da baoed.

Custard bun. Looks harmless.

Cute.

Heavenly! The salted egg custard ooze out when you bite it. Ahh~ Better if it is hotter as we left it on the table for quite some time before we ate it.

Ending off with red bean soup from the set meal.

Conclusion: I had a very enjoyable lunch session at Crystal Jade at Clementi Mall. The staff was polite when I requested them to pack the leftovers for us. Once in a while indulgence, very seldom do I have to chance to eat lunch with mum outside. Mum likes the food. Worth the next visit.

Address

Clementi Mall (next to Clementi MRT)
#03-54/55
155 Commonwealth Avenue West Singapore 129588

Humans are very strange creatures

The title explains it all.

The more we know we are not supposed to do something, the more we will go and do it.

I have exams later at the evening and I am now blogging. Ahh..

Mummy's Birthday at Neo Garden Restaurant

Went to try out the  Neo Garden restaurant at Jurong West because I was kind of attracted by the flyer they sent to my home. 

It is a restaurant located at the HDB void deck. It was raining heavily when we reached there. Quite ulu place which is only accessible by 1 bus service. 

Wanted to order crabs but dad keep saying its expensive. 100g for $5. 1 crab is around 800g. Expensive? Not sure.. Its been ages since I ate crabs outside. 

We settled for normal zi char style dishes. Did not managed to take photos of all because we are so busy eating. But nevertheless, some not-so-well taken photos below.

南乳pork. 

Interesting. Not bad. Different from the usual zi char dishes.

三色蛋+苋菜

So-so IMO. Taste similar everywhere.

Salted egg yolk prawns

Nice! I like the powdery taste of the salted egg yolk.

What is missing was the deep fried silver fish (?) which is the appetizer. Nice and crispy. Mum likes it. Then was the 一品锅 which contain the delicacies likes scallop, fish maw, sea cucumber etc. This is better than the normal zi char version as their delicacies are much bigger and more prominent. 

We noticed that those who ate there mostly drives. Don't seem to spot any residents who live there eat here. Hmmm? Anyway their service is not very good also. They seem to be in a hurry to clear our plates after we are almost finishing our food. The restaurant is not even packed?! What's the rush?

When the bill came, we concluded that it is not worth it to dine here. HDB location but similar-to-restaurant prices. 

If you want to try, here's the address:

Block 406 Jurong West Street 42 #01-583 Singapore 640406