Random baking

One fine random day, I decided to bake again after a long baking hiatus. It's always a dilemma, between baking new recipes and having to eat them. My mum always complains that I bake and eat very little, so I refuse to bake sometimes! LOL. But I very randomly decided to bake this after looking through a food recipe blog. Can't remember where I got this from because my laptop crashed and I lost everything except for some photos in a separate drive.

Can anyone guess what this is?

I guess you can only tell that is is some gooey stuff on top of some cake like looking thing. Or maybe you can't even. I've coined this as condensed milk because this really really tastes like condensed milk, or rather, just the gooey portions taste like condensed milk. Haha hey if you're interested in making your own condensed milk, I remember it contains 4 cups of icing sugar, some cream cheese, and eggs. And then baked. The bottom cake layer was made using a yellow cake mix that is sold in the US but something I've never heard of so I googled for recipes for yellow cake mix and made it from scratch. 

And the result? Condensed milk on hard crust which didn't taste all that bad. I actually thought I failed because it didn't turn out like how it should have like in the photos I saw, but after I refrigerated it, it became harder and it bore a resemblance to how it should look, so it was actually a success! I have to say that it was rather addictive to eat from the glass tray itself, you just keep eating and eating. It's really horrendously sweet. My brother really liked it though!(Or he was just trying to support me(:)

And the verdict? Will I bake this again? It's definitely NO! Not going to put my family and friends at risk of diabetes. This is the kind of recipes that are worth trying just once for taste, not something I would keep in a folder to bake again for special occasions. That doesn't mean that it doesn't taste nice though!

I went to google and I realised that I got my recipe here!

Cause we're cheapos like that

Marmalade pantry has been on my list of restaurants to visit for a long long time after I saw so many people posting photos of their pasta and desserts. But never really put much thought into actually planning to visit since it's rather expensive. And then came the one for one promotion in December last year. Omg, I'm lagging behind so much, it's already March. But nevermind, own time own target! Went with Amanda!:D We never expected there to be a queue, and a really long one at that, but what to do, we were already there, so we decided to queue. I think we queued for at least 30 minutes before getting a seat. And I already decided on what to order even before I reached. 

Haha posing with the piece of paper. 

Crabmeat linguine. No question about it. I wanted to try this so much after the good reviews. And true enough, it was really really good. It was cooked with real crabmeat, which is rather rare, and the tomato pieces were huge as well, not forgetting the pine nuts that I like. In case anyone is wondering, we both ordered the same dish! That's why there is only one photo of the main dish, hahaha. 

And this! The sticky date pudding! This was also really good. We finished this up in minutes because the cake was so warm and the ice cream was so cold, such a nice combination similar to chocolate lava cake and cold ice cream. The crunchy bits below the ice cream tasted nice though we were trying very hard to figure out what it was.

So that sums up our visit to Marmalade pantry! I'd love to try the other food but I'll most probably end up ordering crabmeat linguine again..

Cheese, cheese, cheese, I love you

The title says it all. It's all about cheese, cream cheese, my favourite!
We baked chiffon cheesecake, a less calorie chiffon cake compared to the pandan chiffon cake that we baked 2 weeks ago. Trying to stay off coconut milk as much as I can because it's the highest in saturated fat!

I came across something recently and found it really meaningful. The person said that dieting is a very horrible word because it means that it would only last for a period of time, like a period of eating lesser and cutting down on food intake for the sake of weight loss, and once the weight goes down to the desired weight, people go back to their previous lifestyle. Hence, the proper way is to change eating and lifestyle habits for a healthy life, and not go on a 'diet'. I'm quite proud to say that I've been eating healthily, like having 2 servings of fruits daily in addition to the vegetables as well as trying to have wholemeal bread or rice as often as possible. I really hope to be able to keep this up for the rest of my life. Okay this is sounding too ambitious, I shall just think of the rest of the year and the next first. Although I'm also guilty of 'dieting' by cutting down on food because I don't exercise regularly.

So here are the photos of our hard work in the kitchen for about 3 hours!

Chiffon cheesecake! The taste is actually similar to the Japanese cotton cheesecake but the texture is rougher, like the texture of normal chiffon cake.

And do you recognise this? This is the Japanese cotton cheesecake that I failed once at. My mum told me to try it again and I succeeded this time! It was so amazing as I watched the mixture of egg whites and sugar turn into cream-like texture. Forgot to take a photo but I'll make sure to take a photo the next time I bake something similar.

My favourite cheesecake!

I'm always posting the same photos because we always use the same recipes, but I promise to try new recipes involving peanut butter which I have a whole kilogram of. Maybe I shall start with the peanut butter pancakes that I've been meaning to try, or peanut butter cupcakes. But the thing is, I don't really have a problem with baking, I have a problem with finishing the cupcakes. My family doesn't really like cupcakes or cakes for that matter. They take better to cookies instead. Still, I shall not be deterred and bake something so I can bring it when I meet my friends!

Woke up early on Sunday morning to fry pancakes for my family, and I love days like those when we cook and bake something together, then enjoy the food happily as compared to days when we just mind our own business at home as we face our respective laptops, desktops, iphones and ipad and what nots. 

Baking and food again!

So in an attempt to do something everyday, I got down to baking cheddar biscuits! My brother watched someone baking it on tv and found the recipe online and it seemed pretty easy to bake. My first savoury biscuits. It's a really fattening and high calorie food though! The amount of butter used was so much, about 350g of it. And cheese which has high saturated fat content. Unhealthiness aside, it tasted really good when it was just out of the oven, crumbly, buttery and of course cheesy. My brother had the idea to make them so huge because the recipe said to cut into 8 pieces, but of course I wasn't going to do that, so we took half the batter each (we made double portion) and made them our own style. I made them into round patties so it wouldn't be too much to consume at once, and my brother made them into giant pieces.

 Before going into the oven

 My brother's idea

And mine. I really like how the biscuits turned out, with a crackled texture at the top because of the egg wash that we spread at the top before baking.

And the next day my mum wanted to bake chiffon cake so I helped her with the basic steps while she beat the egg whites and sugar. Don't be fooled by the small innocent looking slice of chiffon cake. It is so full of saturated fat, sugar and calories. I calculated the amount of calories from the coconut milk, sugar and butter and it amounted to more than 100 calories for just one slice of cake! Definitely not a good choice for breakfast since it doesn't make you full and it seems so 'light'. Although it tastes really good, I need to cut down on the consumption. Bulk of the calories come from the sugar even though it didn't taste very sweet, so one thing to note is that even though something doesn't taste sweet, we must never assume that it doesn't contain a lot of sugar! And always remember that cakes/desserts always contain a lot of fat/sugar although it doesn't fill you up. Sad fact because I really like desserts. 

Photo of the innocent looking chiffon cake. I actually really really like chiffon cake or any other cake that has no fresh cream. This must be the reason why I gained so much weight over the years unknowingly.

And speaking of desserts, how can I leave out the TCC high tea set that I had with my mum and grandma after a trip to gardens by the bay. I loved the set! Quite value for money since it's $13.90 for tea and the set below. We initially wanted to order one to share and then order other food but in the end we decided on one set each. So I got to taste all the nice pastries and cakes! A combination of sweet and savoury snacks which I enjoyed. I loved the scones which were so crumbly and the jam that came with it. The dumpling looking thing is actually red bean which I don't really fancy, but tasted quite nice. And the prawn and scallop pastries were really good. Actually the portion was quite small so I was trying to eat them as slowly as I could so that I would feel fuller.

This was the mid autumn special set so I'm guessing that they change the items on the high tea set regularly. Wouldn't mind trying more of their sets if they have new ones.

Met my mum for lunch at Jcube on Monday because she told me there was one-for-one pasta at some restaurant there, but we were so unlucky to miss it by one day. So we settled for the 20% discount promotion that they had.

I had the seafood aglio olio since my mum's colleague said it was nice. It was rather nice! Well cooked and not too salty. Though it was quite oily towards the end

Couldn't help but compare it against my gold standard (hahaha using biology terms) of tcc's seafood aglio olio! The photo below is the one from tcc. No idea why the photo turned out portrait instead of landscape because it clearly was a landscape photo. If I were to compare, tcc's one definitely beats it hands down. It's spicy enough and the prawns and scallops are well cooked, just really good. You need to try it for yourself, really! Told my mum I'd treat her to the one at tcc next time so she can understand why I like it so much. One thing's for sure, both these pastas win the one from pizza hut. That one was too salty, too garlicky and just meh.

Failllll

The title says it all. I encountered my first failure in baking this year. I knew the cake would fail the moment I added the egg white and sugar to the other batter that it would fail. But my mum didn't scold me, lucky for me. Haha check out my cake that failed to rise. I was trying to bake the Japanese cotton cheesecake that sells for $10 for one small cake. My mum was telling me that it's so easy to make, like it can never go wrong. But I still failed because it involved the beating of egg whites and sugar which is always tricky. 

. 

Look at how flat my cake is! I was so upset because it failed (although I already knew it would). The only consolation was that it didn't taste horrible. How can you go wrong with cheese anyway.

Yes this is how it is supposed to look like! My mum whipped these up in just a short span of 45 mins of preparation time. You know how long I took to prepare? I took 2 hours thereabouts!! This is the difference between the amateur and the expert.

This is to show how thick the cake is supposed to be. This cheesecake is not really unhealthy because one small slice has only about 30-40 calories. I Google-d. Apart from the cream cheese and the very small amount of butter (25g for 2 cakes), there really isn't anything not good about it. My favourite (healthier choice) cheesecake! The texture is so much like cotton.

Stacking up my 2 pathetic cakes can't even compare to one of my mum's successful cheesecake sigh!

I've got quite a phobia of beating egg whites and sugar so I won't be attempting this alone without any supervision. Someday I might attempt this again, but not for now!

Good times

 So I asked my mum to make this blueberry cheesecake for me last weekend. Don't get me wrong! I didn't demand for it, but I just kept saying over and over occasionally that she had promised to make this for me. But I helped her out in the end, and I could understand why my mum kept putting off making this cake. There are so many steps and it really isn't easy to make compared to the more classic baked cheesecake. Cream was used for this and there was no flour at all. And it's a non-baked cheesecake, which means the use of gelatine which I absolutely find it so hard to handle. But luckily my mum is a pro at baking. So I got to have these cakes. Not a good idea for my tummy but I guess it's fine since she hasn't made this in 2 years and might not be making this again anytime soon.

We ended up having too much of the cheese batter because of wrong estimations so we used ramekins to fill them up. The base was supposed to be some almond crust but we just substituted it with digestive biscuits which tasted good all the same.

My breakfast the next day!

Look at the thick layer of cheese, and blueberries.

In its cake form. I love taking photos of food because they turn out nice no matter what!

More photos of the cake!

And the next day my mum found a recipe for chocolate tarts and told me to use the remaining dough from the egg-tarts to make them. I took about two hours or so to roll the dough into the aluminium cups. About 16 of them. The dough was too soft, needed more flour, stuck to the rolling pin. Noob at work that's why. I think my mum only needs about half an hour or so. So in they go into the oven! They require pre-baking because the tarts need to be hard/crispy!

And making of the chocolate filling was really quick and easy. All I had to do was add milk, cream and chocolate into a pot and mix them together.

The final product! Really easy to make but I didn't really like the chocolate filling because it was a little too bitter for my liking. Good for people who like dark chocolate a lot!

Fast forward to last night! My friend and I decided to try a restaurant reviewed by a blogger. We were enticed by the cheap prices. Western food for less than $10! I can't remember the name of the restaurant but it was in Liang court (Saizeriya restaurant! I found it in my list of places to visit!). I actually have a list of restaurants to go and I intend to visit them at least once so I can strike them out, and right now I have only visited less than 5 of them! That's my long term goal hahaha.

We ordered everything to share so we could at least try the pasta/pizza.

Seafood chowder soup. Which was rather watery and not the sticky type I expected. But it tasted fine.

Salmon pizza! The pizza crust is the thick type so you'll definitely feel full after that. And although the photo in the menu looked like it's smoked salmon, the salmon was cooked thoroughly. Quite a unique pizza since I've never tried salmon on a pizza before. This was only $7.90! So cheap!

Squid ink pasta! It was nice as well. They were really generous with the squid. Only $5.90. But as always, I'm always afraid of eating squid ink pizza because of how black it always makes my lips and teeth look. Worth it for the price, really! I want to try more of their pastas! Definitely will be going back some day to try other items on their menu.
Okay I actually didn't feel very full immediately after eating. The experts always say that you should only eat till you're 80% full or so. But I always end up eating till I'm 100% full. I think it's because my brain takes very long to send signals to release the leptin which reduces my appetite. Leptin is a hormone that reduces your appetite so you don't keep on eating and stuffing your face.

As always, we always have space for desserts. Because we only spent about $8 each on dinner, we decided we would have dessert later on. So we walked back to clarke quay mrt station and walked around central, which took about 30 minutes, and we went to Haato for desserts. Okay I know it's a lot for a dinner but before that, I just unloaded a huge load off my back before that and wanted to have something nice for dinner! Had a presentation before that which I spent almost the entire week doing with a lot of difficulty and was on the verge of giving up. It was for an interview and I, during the preparations for the presentation, just got really upset, hence the upsetting blog post on Wednesday. Heaved a major breath of relief right after I left the place. Anyhow, I won't think about it until they contact me again. Time to pick myself up, search for more jobs and cross my fingers. I sidetracked again. Back to this very sinful but very nice dessert!

It's the chocolate fudge and marshmallow waffle set! I was torn between the banana one I tried with AFC the other time and this which looked so good. We settled for this in the end because I thought bananas at night was not such a good idea. But how much better an idea could chocolates be?? Hahaha. I poured the chocolate sauce all over the waffle and then the marshmallows and chocolate chips melted! I don't know if it's supposed to be eaten like this, but I liked that way a lot! I think plain marshmallows taste nicer melted. Everything was good about Haato, the food and the service, except its location. Because beside it, there're always people drinking, and then smoking as well. So the strong winds blew the smoke over despite us sitting quite far away from them.. After having this, I was so so so so so full. The dinner lasted me till about lunch time. And of course my weight increased.

And the watches I ordered last week on Gmarket arrived. I received a message from the Eurasia courier service telling me they delivered my item but I was not at home to receive it, so I thought I would have to arrange for a redelivery. But my brother actually heard the person knocking on the door and collected it for me! I went home and happily opened my pink package. It came in a nice golden box. So I'm a happy girl with my vintage looking watches. The delivery from Korea took only about 3 days. So impressed by the seller's efficiency and the watches look so nice. My mum jokingly told me to give her the brown one because it's too loose for me. Hahaha, I would have if not for the fact that she doesn't have the luxury of time to choose which watch to wear everyday. The brown one cost about $15 and the white one cost about $24. Which is reasonable to me:D So lucky of me to have chanced upon them by accident.

The leather for the white one is really thin but the design makes up for it so I guess it's fine! 

I just shopped online again because I got tempted by floral prints on a dress. I'm beginning to have this secret thought that if I spend more I will get a job soon because when things are very bad, like when I have hit rock bottom, then it can only get better. I don't know how true this is, but my mum encourages me to spend  because she says the same thing too! Hahaha. But I don't know how well she'll take to me shopping so often.

Weekday baking and making!

So, being the unemployed I still am, I got down to baking something my grandma had been pestering my mum to make. Can you guess what it is?

Right it's carrot cake! Not the Chinese hawker food but the western cake! It was after baking it that I realised that it was so easy to make! Didn't even need an electric mixer. The hardest past was probably the shredding of the carrots because I had to shred 330g of it. Which was like 4 carrots. I took quite a long time to shred those carrots, which is probably the rate-limiting step! Hahaha talking in chemistry terms. After that, it's just measuring the ingredients and soaking raisins and then mixing them all together. Then it's the batter in the oven for an hour. It has to be the longest time I have baked something in the oven for. The usual time is about 20 minutes. Quite surprised it wasn't charred or anything! Just that the raisins on top tasted burnt.

I was efficient and mixed the icing sugar and cream cheese while the cake was in the oven being cooked. I used almost double the cream cheese the recipe asked for since my family loves the cream cheese topping.

The finished product! Quite proud of it because I spread the cheese myself and it was my first attempt at creaming a cake and it doesn't look too horrible, right? Hahaha.

And the inside of the cake. Look at the amount of raisins in it. I love raisins! The only bad thing about raisins is the high sugar content, so although it's rather healthy, it must be eaten in moderation. I remember my mum buying a big box of Sunmaid raisins for me as a snack during my exam period. Once I opened the box I and started eating, I just couldn't stop. That's how much of a raisin lover I am. I'm going to buy a big pack of raisins sold for baking to eat as a snack! A much cheaper alternative as well. Okay I realise I sound so much like a glutton. Better stop talking about raisins.

And just had to spam more photos of the cake! I'm going to have some for my tea time snack later! I love the cheese!

And I made jelly beancurd as well after following the recipe on some people's blogs. It's really easy to make, just that the ingredients are quite expensive since they're all in big packets. Just had to dissolve them in water together with the instant jelly powder from phoon huat. It doesn't taste exactly the same as what is sold outside but it's good enough for me! Need to make this more often!

And the product!