Glad!

Celebrated teckhong's b'day 2 days ago in Sunway Pyramid. I was the one who planned most of it, and finally the one who got tricked!!!! by mama who told me she was coming back the following weekend T.T so so shocked to suddenly see her emerge from the bottom of the table! the conversation went something like this:-

kaykay: tze hui, when is mama coming back msia again? (she's studying in NUS now)
me: she told me the coming weekend lo...
*suddenly passes her phone to me, with mama on the line*
mama: tze hui!! where are you guys now?
me: at kim gary, sunway lo, why?
mama: i'm also there le!!
me: don't lansok (aka try to say that we have something in common) with me can or not...
mama: *emerges from the bottom of the table* i told you i'm at kim gary what..!!
me: *SHOCKED and grabs beeshuang by the shoulder*

but it was such a glad, glad glad reunion. Thanks mama for coming since you won't be able to make it next weekend which will be officially the last time I see the rest of you guys T.T

 what we do.. all the time. now we can't do it face to face, msn does the job XD

 b'day cake baked by me + suathoon + chaicheen! Chocolate tempation; recipe given by mama (check it out below)

 full attendance!!! and thanks so much for the farewell card.. i NEARLY got emo but stopped myself just in time.. told myself its too early its too early XD
and sis came back from singapore also to see me one last time before I leave for HK.. So blessed to have all of you.. really!!! xoxoxoxoxo <3
Chocolate Temptation
A:
20g chocolate emulco

50g cocoa powder

50g hot water

B:

250g butter

270g castor sugar

2g salt

C:

240g (4nos) egg

D

250g superfine flour

6g (1tsp) baking powder

2g (1/2 tsp) sodium bicarbonate

Choc ganache

150g dairy whipped cream

150g cooking choc

25g butter

25g glucose syrup

1. Combine A and mix well.
2. Beat B until light and fluffy. Add C one at a time and mix well until smooth.
3. Add A to the mixture and blend to form smooth batter.
4. Add sieved ingredients D.
5. Pour batter into 9 inch cake tin (I used 8 inch but it's still ok) . Bake at 180 C 40-45mins. (however, my cake had a HUGE crack on the top after 45 mins and the inside was still quite wet! so my friend suggested I put an aluminum foil on the top throughout the whole process to prevent uneven baking)
6. Cut the cake into 3 layers and spread the ganache on each layer, and also throughout the exterior of the cake.

Okay!! Gotta go sort things out. Pronto =)

p.s. currently reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. final read before HK?

(one of ) The Last Supper(s)

Meet up at Yuen Steamboat Buffet Restaurant @ Subang for lihyi's b'day...

Happy 19th, LIH YI!!! Thank you for all your cute cute antics and delicious pastry and for being an avid fan of the chinese auspicious colour--red! hehe =)

I think we were too obsessed eating ice cream to be picking out expensive seafood for the steamboat o.O

Oh ya and anyway the rest of us made a cake for lihyi too! I daresay one the the more successful cakes I've baked with my mediocre skills; so I'm pretty proud of it, and thanks to mama for the great recipe!

Green Tea Cake with Raspberry Filling
Ingredients:
A
150 g superfine flour
2g (1/4 tsp) baking powder
80g castor sugar
1g (1/4 tsp) salt

B
60g melted butter
75g (4 nos) egg yolks
60ml water
5g green tea powder

C
150g (4 nos) egg whites
100g castor sugar
1g (1/4 tsp) cream of tartar

Decoration
400g non dairy fresh cream
200g raspberry filling
5g green tea powder
some fruits

1. Combine A and mix well.
2. Add in B and blend to form smooth batter
3. Beat C until stiff peaks form
4. Gradually fold in 1/3 of egg white foam into the batter, stir gently, repeat, mix well.
5. Pour batter into 9 inch lined cake tin. Bake at 180 Celsius for 30-35 mins.

Decoration:
1. Split the cake horizontally into 3 layers, place bottom layer as base, spread with whipped cream, some raspberry filling on top. Place 2nd layer cake on top.
2. Lastly spread remaining whipped cream on top of cake. Sprinkle green tea powder on top. Garnish top with fruits.

Work starts next monday.. more kids! (and hopefully less crying XD)

Happiness in a tin

My grandma said this was the tastiest cake we've baked so far! A fairly simple cake to bake but it's not as light as sponge cake.. Depends on personal taste I guess ^^


Butter Cake Recipe (source unknown--copied from internet but forgot the link T.T)

• 180 gm butter, at room temperature
• 150 gm caster sugar (I changed it to 125 gm but doesn't make much difference right)
• 50 gm milk powder
• 140 gm all purpose flour
• 30 gm cornflour
• 1 tsp baking powder (to be sifted together with the dry ingredients)
• another 1/2 tsp baking powder (beaten with egg white)
• 3 medium size eggs, separated
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 80 ml milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease loaf cake tin/8" square mould with butter (I didn't grease 'cause mine was non-stick)
2. Sift the flour, cornflour, milk powder and 1 tsp baking powder together in a big bowl
3. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar till creamy and fluffy, add in the egg yolks one at a time and mix to combine. Add the vanilla essence and mix thoroughly. Add the sifted dry ingredients and mix to combine thoroughly. Add the milk and mix.
4. Whisk the egg white with the 1/2 tsp of baking powder till soft peaks form. Fold into the batter mixture and combine thoroughly.
5. Pour the loaf cake tin and bake for 45 mins. Turn the heat down to 170 degrees and bake for a further 15 mins (do the toothpick test) Cover loosely with a foil if the top browns too much.

And just finished watching 500 days of summer on PPStream. An awesome, quirky romantic comedy! It's a boy-meets-girl show but different in so many ways! E.g. they went to watch a movie called Vagiant--Part vampire part giant HAHAHA And doesn't Summer (leading actress--by Zooey Deschanel) look and sound so much like Katy Perry?  Plus Tom (leading actor--by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is so cute! in a geeky way ^^

In a flash

Sorry for the brief blogging hiatus! Just submitted my UCAS application this afternoon at Uni Ed; I'm applying for biomedical engineering at Oxford, Imperial, UCL, Sheffield and Glasgow, wish me luck! According to the edu counsellor, the offer (or lack thereof) will be made in 3 or 4 weeks!! So fast can die.

Anyway this monday we used our Chocettes Championship prize for buffet lunch at Shogun, click here for complete album :)

1st round (the abalone was not tender enough but unagi slices tasted pretty good!)

2nd round (moist chocolate cake was yummy! the mochi--pink and yellow ones on far left-was tasty also)

Teck Hong's sushi plate

Fruit cocktail ^^

Oh ya Suat Hoon and I helped Chai Cheen in baking a frozen cheese cake (note the irony) for her bf's b'day. Click here for full recipe. (we modified digestive biscuits to oreo biscuits!)

after adding peach slices (we ate almost half a can's worth of peaches in the process o.O)

Suat Hoon though of placing orange slices in the middle! Too bad we didn't have strawberry...

After putting orange jelly

End result; very delectable indeed!

And we bought a "group T-shirt" after the buffet, and received confused glances from people at college when we wore it, and it was damn funny when I spotted someone saying "Did you see their T-shirts said" through clenched teeth to his friends..XD

Serious version

BFFs version

"Chuan" version

Da tou tie... 1st time with 9 people! It'll be a great college memory *sobs*

This week passed by in a flash, and next week will be even quicker with 3 mock exams coming up! Gotta do some revision :)

Zebra Cake- 2nd attempt and success!

Just finished writing my personal statement (FINALLY, after a long period of fickle mindedness, I finally chose to apply for biomedical engineering for UCAS) so I'm pretty exhausted for words... So here are pics to fill you in! Recipe from Lily's Wai Sek Hong; awesome food blog! For full recipe click here.

I know I sound like a total failure, but in my history of baking cakes, none has ever risen this high!

It looked pretty distorted after it was done... anyone knows why?

But at least it was damn spongy!

Ok going to sleep now ^^

Choices, choices

I'm soooo fickle minded! From dentistry to nutrition & dietetics to medicine... God please help me!

EMOEMOEMOEMOEMOEMO

plus, I have to start writing my personal statement for application to UCAS (yes I'm applying to UK) so I have to pick only 1 course out of the three, unless I can write a personal statement that encompasses other courses as well..

Anyone with a 3 sided coin?

On a brighter note, I made apple pancakes for breakfast today! (with mom's help ^^) Recipe from here.

1 apple, peeled, cored and very finely sliced
150 grams self raising flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder*
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup milk

*Due to the apples, baking powder is needed to help lift the batter even though self-raising flour is used.

Sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl. Whisk in the egg and milk until just combined. Add the apple slices and fold in, make sure they are well dispersed through the batter. Let the batter rest for about 15 minutes before using.

I used just under a quarter of a cup to make each pancake - a heavy based skillet is essential to ensure even heat distribution. Once you see bubbles forming on the surface, you can flip them over to finish cooking.

Keep the pancakes in a warm spot while you finish making the rest.

Don't be deceived; it simply looks like roti canai 'cause I buttered the wok.. if you use non-stick pans it'll turn out fully brown...more successful than the cakes that I've been baking so far!

Tzehui edition 2009: Domesticated

Maybe it's been the H1N1 flu. (which is spreading freaking fast okay! There were 200+ confirmed cases today, plus 6 deaths...scary! and honestly people who are sick should wear masks--so the people who aren't won't have to wear -_-")

And yeah I feel so domesticated 'cause I've an irrepressible passion for baking/cooking now! Plus I'm super content spending hours watching Heroes season 3 on PPStream... But I still miss karaoke-ing though :(

Mom & I baked a coffee cake yesterday(it was a 2nd attempt), recipe courtesy of June (slightly modified):

Coffee Cake Recipe

• 1/4 cup butter (Softened at room temperature) 1st time round I actually melted it! Very wrong indeed
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 all purpose flour (sifted)
• A little less than1 Tsp Baking powder
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 & 1/2 tbsp instant coffee powder don't use 3 in 1 coffee powder though!
• 2 Tbsp Low fat Yoghurt

Preheat oven at 175 C.

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

Beat in egg.

Then add vanilla extract and coffee powder into mixture.

Combine flour and baking powder into mixture and stir well.

Finally mix in milk and yoghurt.

Combine batter. Pour batter into baking pan (lined with parchment paper) or cupcake pan lined with cupcake liners. For cupcakes, pour batter till about 3/4 cup full. Bake for 20-25 mins till testing skewer comes out clean or cupcakes slightly brown. For cake, it takes about 35 mins.

Off to Genting on Wednesday with family... Gotta stock up on masks, antibodies & infinite amount of prayers o.O

Happy Birthday Mom!

Mom's b'day was yesterday so I tried my hands on baking, for the very first time on my own! Recipe courtesy of Lih Yi ^^

Black Magic Cake

• 110 g all-purpose flour
• 100 g white sugar (initially 200g. I couldn't accept the fact that it was twice the amount of flour!)
• 30 g unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking soda (I didn't know it was sodium bicarbonate until.. yesterday T.T)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt (but my friends complained it was slightly salty though. So I might put 1/2 tsp next time)
• 1 egg
• 120ml strong brewed coffee (I used 3 in 1 coffee for this one.. LY recommends Nescafe Arabica)
• 120 ml buttermilk (I used full cream milk)
• 60 ml vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 175 C/350F. Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans or one 9 x 13 inch pan (actually it expanded to only half the height of my 8 inch square pan)
   
2. In large bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center. (You might want to sieve the flour, baking soda and baking powder first for a more even batter I suppose)
3. Add eggs, coffee, buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Beat for 2 minutes on medium speed. Batter will be thin. Pour into prepared pans.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and finish cooling on a wire rack. Fill and frost as desired.

The end result:

I was slightly upset that there was a big ugly crack in the middle.. It was also dome-shaped instead of square and flat..According to google results and LY, it was probably due to:

• my cake was closer to the upper heating element in the oven so the top part was baked faster than the bottom, causing the cake to crack when the bottom part of the cake started to rise
  
• the baking temperature (180 C) was too high
• the batter was uneven

But all in all it was pretty much a success and luckily mom enjoyed it (she HAD to, I suppose XD)

Check out here for June's recipe for the black magic cake (plus chocolate ganache as topping!)

Oh ya.

How we "dealt" with the leftovers from the steamboat. Using rice cooker ah! "Geng" or not?