Strawberry Cupcake
One of the joys of being sent to work in Douta Galla is the fact that it's so near to a couple of fruit shops.
Really cheap fruit shops.
Saw some strawberries for only $1.25 a punnet and could not resist. Buying strawberries always seemed like a gamble to me - one never knows if it's going to be nice and sweet or sour. Anyway, these turned out fine and I decided to bake some strawberry cupcakes with them.
Turned out really well, even if I do say so myself.
Labels: Food
Bad Habits
Have not cooked for a long time.
Things I've been eating the past week:
1.
Cake. Lots of cake. Self baked as well as non-self baked.
2.
Lattes. I used to be perfectly happy not drinking coffee but nowadays it's beginning to become more and more of a habit to just order one when I'm out.
3.
KFC. Wicked wing snackboxes.
4.
Norsiah's. A Malaysian/Singaporean place that serves all kinds of Malay style food. Am positively addicted to their fried drumsticks, rendang and sambal egg.
Am aware that should stop self-destructive habits but just can't seem to do so.
Reached a new low point in my life when I stood in the shower and suddenly had the desire to scrub the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush to get rid of grot. Yes, I kid you not. When I rather clean the bathroom than study, you know things are getting serious.
So now I have a semi-sparkling clean bathroom (will continue grot scrubbing in the next shower), a mouthful of apthous ulcers and several stacks of unstudied notes.
Yes, I'm going
slightly insane.
Labels: Food
Dire Straits
Did not go grocery shopping for quite some time and was left with almost nothing in the house. Resorted to eating various random things to fulfil my voracious appetite:
1.
Haw flakes. Found them in an asian grocery store a couple of weeks back and was over the moon.
2.
Candied winter melon. Originally bought for making barley soup but ended up eating them straight up from the packet.
3.
Vitasoy Vanilla Soy Milk Whole posts devoted to this wonderful wonderful drink. Enough said.
4.
Indomee.
However, the hard times are over. Just went to Coles and stocked up on Bega Stringers and more soy milk.
Enjoying the weekend already.
Labels: Food
Delicious Zzzs
I've been having more than my fair share of sleep. Currently I'm probably getting about 9-10 hours a day.
It's come to a point where I'm starting to wonder if it's healthy to sleep this much. But then again, if I don't
need sleep why is it that every time I get into bed I automatically just drop off? I don't even have to try - after a couple of chapters of a happily ever after tale my eyelids get heavy and I turn over to switch off the light and drift off into bliss.
Currently very into Babybel cheese as well as Bega Stringers. The packaging makes the whole cheese eating experience highly entertaining.
Only 4 more days to the weekend!
Labels: Food, Life
Kuih Dadar
Have been feeling nostalgic of late and decided to cook more Malaysian tea time snacks to cure my blues.
Kuih dadar is a coconut pandan-flavoured crepe rolled up with a sweetened coconut filling. Made it the moment I woke up to enjoy with a nice cup of tea.
Love weekends!
Labels: Food
Seri Muka
So a couple of weeks ago I bought a 15 dollar steamer. After one use it stopped working.
Deciding to give it the benefit of the doubt, I decided to exchange it for a new one. Unfortunately, it too has failed to work after the first use.
Conclusion? I have lost faith in 15 dollar steamers.
Anyway, due to the fact that I had no steamer I had to make this in the traditional way - in a pot with a steaming rack. The outcome was rather pleasing:
A tad too little mixture on the top but I followed the recipe exactly, which means the recipe is to blame! Will adjust accordingly in the future.
Labels: Food, Life
Friday
Made some crazily sweet candy a couple of days ago.
It's also known as coconut ice and the ingredients are dessicated coconut, condensed milk and icing sugar. Don't want to even imagine its cariogenicity.
It's rather hard work making it, mainly because of the amount of kneading one has to do with something that has the texture of very very firm dough.
Next attempt? Probably something nice and buttery, possibly associated with puff pastry.
Labels: Food, Life
Food...
It's midnight and I am having insane cravings for:
1. Coconut candy.
2. Sour cream and onion chips.
3. Pandan flavoured ice cream from Il Dolce Freddo.
Labels: Food
*Hiccup*
Stuffed. Full. Of. Nutrigrain. Can't. Move. Why. Did. I. Do. Something. That. Stupid?
Labels: Food
French Earl Grey Tea
Bought some French Earl Grey tea today.
Got home, hurriedly set some water to boil and brewed a cup of tea. Then proceeded to watch Two Weeks Notice with said tea and a ham, cheese and sundried tomato sandwich.
Love this version of Earl Grey!!
When I first tried classic Earl Grey, I thought it was good.
When I tried Lady Grey I thought it was better than Earl Grey, making it my new favourite.
Now I've tried French Earl Grey and it has surpassed the other two!
Would love to have another cup but fear the caffeine will affect my sleep tonight. Looking forward to tomorrow.
Labels: Food, Obsessions
Croquembouche Cupcakes
Decided to spend my Friday night baking. Looked for the most complicated cupcake recipe I could find and whipped this up:
A vanilla butter cupcake filled with custard (made from scratch) and topped with mini profiteroles (also from scratch), which was held together with melted chocolate.
Thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Labels: Food
Strawberry Cheesecake
Saw this design somewhere online and
had to make it!!
I used a sugar cookie recipe as the base, a no bake cheesecake for the middle and strawberries to line the pan.
Was very pleased.
Labels: Food
Spaces
Decided to bake a batch of cookies today and made one of the mistakes that shouldn't really be made by someone who has done a fair amount of baking - not leaving enough space between each cookie!
The truth is that I was just too lazy to start up a second tray and therefore decided to just cram everything into the one.
The result? Misshapen cookies. Very sad.
Will stlll attempt to decorate them and call them..... whimsical hearts. Avant garde. Unique. Asymmetrical.
Labels: Food
Nasi Lemak
With the combined efforts of me and my friends, we managed to produce a semi-passable nasi lemak.
I miss Malaysian food!!
Labels: Food
Bitchin' Night
Reserved a night during the weekend to kick back and well... bitch.
Because the truth is that that's what girls do
all the time sometimes. We eat, go through dental school with unreasonable patients, unreasonable nurses and unreasonable circumstances. Then we bitch about it.
In honor of that night I decided to bake a cake and here's the result:
It's a chocolate buttercake with Nutella cream icing (yes, still not sick of Nutella yet), decorated with piped chocolate and Tim Tams.
Incidentally, I would like to reiterate that my cake plate was worth every last penny I coughed up for it.
I heart it. A lot.
Labels: Food, Life
Floss
Couldn't live another day without something sweet to eat and decided to indulge myself. Flicked through a few recipes and decided to bake a chocolate cake.
Very pleased that there will be 2 potluck dinners this weekend, which means 2 perfectly reasonable excuses to bake 2 cakes. And decorate it!! The mere prospect of it gives me great delight.
Anyway, I've always read that dental floss was good for cutting cakes. I always brushed off the idea, "Well duh, nothing a knife can't do." However, decided to try it today and it works spectacularly! Extremely pleased with the clean cuts it produces.
Hmm... can a toothbrush make petals more lifelike? Will using my perio probe help me achieve symmetrical lines down to the milimetre? Can a polishing strip remove rough edges from my cakes?
Yes, I have entered dental geek territory.
Labels: Food
19th of May, 2008
1. Nutella + water crackers = heaven.
2. Patient at 10.30am + denture still not delivered to lab at 9.30am = Stress
3. Patient at 10.30am + denture arrived at 10.15am = Extreme relief and bliss
4. Patient with lots of saliva + denture adjustments having to remove the denture every 5 minutes and putting it back = not so heaven.
5. Cloudy afternoon + half day of uni = Perfect napping conditions.
Turning out to be a pretty good day. :D
Labels: Dental School, Food
A Teaspoon of Determination, A Roll of Swiss...
As you readers are all too aware by now, I love baking.
I've done tiered cakes, piped buttercream roses, made 3D butterflies out of chocolate, made fondant flowers, croquembouche, the shebang.
But one thing I have never succeeded in doing until now is....to roll a Swiss roll.
Sad but true.
After 6 failed attempts I was at the verge of giving up. Honestly, when your Swiss roll ends up looking more like a very ugly sandwich of cake, things are not very encouraging.
However, after cleaning up my apartment today, I decided that today is
the day my Swiss roll will roll, like a proper Swiss roll is meant to be.
And it did!! 7th time's the charm, I say.
My Swiss roll, all rolled up. Sigh...
Filled with pure Nutella.
Moral of the story? It's all about determination and perseverance.
Very pleased.
Labels: Food
Passionfruit Cupcakes
Extremely belated photos of cupcakes I baked for a 21st in April. Passionfruit cupcakes!
Ingredients for cupcake:
1 cup self raising flour
2 eggs
30g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 170g can of passionfruit pulp, strained to remove the seeds.
Method:
1. Preheat over to 180 Celcius (160 for fan forced). Line cupcake tray with cupcake paper. Number of cupcakes will depend on the size of your tin. I managed to get about 30 mini cupcakes from this recipe.
2. Mix all the ingredients together except the passionfruit pulp with a mixer until it's nice and pale (maybe about 10 minutes of high speed mixing).
3. Add about 2/3rds of the passionfruit pulp into the mixture and combine.
4. Pour into cupcake tins, filling only about halfway (cupcakes will rise spectacularly).
5. Bake until cakes spring back when touched and are lightly golden. Leave to cool.
6. Pipe the remaining passionfruit pulp into the centre of the cake for an extra surprise.
7. Ice and decorate as desired.
Labels: Food
Hello, Remember Me?
My aunt from Penang came to visit and handed me a boxful of beh teh saw and tambun biscuits from the famous Him Heang shop.
Eating them has somehow been giving me strange feelings of... home.
Lately I've been feeling that no matter how much I deviate from my past life and how much I have changed, at heart deep down inside I am still a small town girl from Batu Pahat.
People say my accent is still very Malaysian, and they're surprised that almost 6 years of being in Australia has not wiped it out of me. Especially since most of my friends I hang out with now were born here. The truth is, perhaps I want to keep it. It is after all one of the only things left about me that suggests my roots.
I confess I have forgotten who I am, clouded by the present life and most of all, neglect.
I miss me.
Labels: Food
