Busy Gong Hei Fatt Choy

Tomorrow is eve of CNY and I am at home taking care of the kids while trying to bake my butter cookies. Managed to do some laundry and bathed the dog. Made the kids sleep now I have a little time to rest. Soooo tired. My throat is also starting to ache, an onset to getting sick, :(.

I baked 2 types of cookies only this year, peanut cookies and butter cookies (see pix). Just do not have the time to do more. But nevertheless, still have a whole collection of cookies mostly bought. Soon they will be distributed to my in laws and my mum. We don't keep much for ourselves.

Still have a bunch of shopping to do, 'bak kuah', mandarin oranges and pants and shirts for the boys and their dad, shoes for myself, may not be able to get everything before CNY, as long as the kids have new clothes and shoes. The oldies can wear anything. Need to change new notes! Gosh, million of things to do! I am going to get a little rest and then up again to get more things done!

So happy reunion dinner to all celebrating, may you have a blessed new year of the rabbit.

Shortbreads, Sweet Buns and Christmas Wishes

Baking been missing for a while from my routine until just two weeks ago when I felt the itch to bake something. Since I have all the ingredients anyway, I decided to try making shortbreads. The ingredient and recipe are pretty simple. I was calling them shortcakes but I think shortbreads and shortcakes are different. A little googling and here we found the difference. So the correct name for what I made is shortbreads. The trick here is the temperature and the length of time you bake them. Too hot and too long, they become too dry or burnt (like biscuits). So I have to make a few attempts to get the correct texture, a little soft inside and not too hard outside. They should still look white and not too brown. I made some tortoise shaped and heart shaped ones.

Then last week, I saw the facebook entry of my colleague's on his wife's Japanese-Style Sweet Bun, I had to try it. So a little googling got me to this recipe. It turned out to be a success and the process was not too complicated. Only problem I faced was that my mixer couldn't handle the dough and I ended up kneading with my hands almost entirely. I was doing this at night and the yeast had no problem doubling my dough much faster than that was stated in the recipe. That's the advantage of living in the tropics! The buns were really soft in texture, however, I think the buns were not sweet enough, I will need to put in a little more sugar next time. You can even add in fillings to these buns if you want, so I think I will be trying this recipe again soon, maybe add some variation to it.

Christmas is just around the corner, still a little more shopping to go. I am hopeful that we will get half day off on Chirstmas Eve cause I did not take any leave pre-Christmas, saving my leave for school re-opening. My sis-in-law will be having eating party on the eve at her house, I do not know yet if I will prepare something to bring over there. But Christmas is not about eating and presents and parties.... We have gone through the (annual) penitential duties and we will be attending the Christmas eve Mass and the Christmas day Mass too. I had previously posted this on my facebook, the Advent Consipracy. It is a different perspective of Christmas, the correct prespective. Have a Blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year. Peace be with you.

Pleasures of Home Cooking

Cooking and baking for the family are really great pleasures for me. On Malaysia day, last Thursday, my brother and his family visited us at home. I decided to cook nasi lemak and thai green chicken curry with the green curry paste I bought from Chiang Mai. It was pretty good, a little too spicy because of the paste but still good. My brother and my sister-in-law seemed to have enjoyed it.

Then on the weekend, I cooked more stuff for the kids and hubby. For lunch on Saturday, we had Hot Soup (Hakka style). This is a very simple soup, made with chicken or pork slices or both. The soup based was made from anchovies. Ginger slices, 'tong choi', ground pepper and chinese celery are also important ingredients, none of them can be omitted. The result is a hot but clear soup, wonderful for clearing your nasal blockage (just my personal opinion).




For tea, I made egg tarts. I had made them previously but it had been a while. It was difficult to get the baked tarts out of the tart moulds but we finally managed to. I like the taste of it but I think I need to try a few more times to try making the pastry thinner and also find the correct technique to remove the baked tarts out of the moulds.

In the evening, we went to a close friend's house for a early mid-autumn celebration cum bday party for her daughter. Was a nice nite for gathering of my friends with some hubbies being dragged into the gathering as baby sitters, such as mine.

On Sunday, after church, we had my kids' favourite for lunch. No points for guessing correctly, yes, it was Mc Donalds. I also must admit I like McD too, my all time favourite is double cheese burger. I know they are having a promotion for triple cheese burger but I dare not order it, double is already bad enough! So I had my double cheese burger while the kids had beef burgers, chicken nuggets and fries coupled with large diet cokes (too much sugar is bad for you, hence diet coke. Fat ).

For dinner made pork belly with salted fish in clay pot (ham yu fa lum po) again and also thick taufu soup (taufu kang). Felt good that almost everyone enjoyed their dinner. I said almost because my little girl wouldn't finish her food :(. She is a picky eater but I am determine to change that, slowly :P.














Looking forward to try cooking new stuff when I can again.

When Life gives you Lemons, make lemonade!

Why the title? You may wonder. It came into my mind a minute ago how close this saying is to my real life situation, literally. Well, not exactly, it has got nothing to do with lemons but has something to do with bananas! Are you curious? Ok lah, here is the story.

It was a Sunday morning and both my hubby and I were busy doing some household chores. I was in the kitchen cooking breakfast and my hubby was upstairs doing whatever. The kids were all watching TV in the living room. Or so we thought! I walked into the hallway leading to the dining place and guess what I saw!! A bunch of half mutilated and half peeled bananas (the expensive ones, mind you, the 'Montels') on the floor!! Immediately I knew who was the culprit. So I talked to the culprit and she said it wasn't her, it was her kor kor. Imagine a 2.5 year old girl already know how to push the blame! My kids cannot escape their mother's sharp sense that is beyond all the 6 senses! So I told my hubby, the culprit is the 2.5 year old girl.


But she wasn't totally to be blamed. The reason she did so was she saw her kor kor took a banana (without asking mummy first!) from where we hung them (to rippen further). My daughter is a perfectionist, she doesn't like her banana mushy or ugly. So she kept pulling them down one after another and none of them was to her liking. So she left them on the floor and went back to her TV. The kor kor also got a few words from me but since I was in a happy morning mood, I let them off. We took the mutilated bananas, peeled them and cut off whatever that was too mushy and kept the remaining in the fridge under cling wrap. What should we do with them? Immediately my baking instinct came flashing! Aha! Banana cake! So that was my Sunday evening project, when we came back from our shopping trip in the evening, I spent 30 minutes making the cake dough and another hour or so baking it. This morning, I had 3 slices for breakfast, it was yummy! Juicy (cause I used lotsa bananas) and fragrant! I gave more than half to my mother-in-law where my kids will sure be having them for breakfast or tea later and kept a few pieces for my hubby to try.

the cake dough...

...the finished goods.

So when life gives your mashed up bananas, you make banana cake!

About balloons and bread

This Saturday morning, my hubby promised the kids to bring them to see the hot air balloons in Putrajaya. We woke just before 8am and together with the in-laws, we drove to Putrajaya. I believe the balloons set off at 8am. When we reached, the only balloons left are the ones meant for show. Nevertheless, we are still happy to be able to see them.

There was also like a carnival like atmosphere around the area with many stalls and people selling kiddy balloons. But one thing that really caught my attention was a huge pair of balloony pants! Levis Jeans to be exact. Reminded me of "World Wide Pants" and of course my favourite talk show host, David Letterman. My kids also enjoyed themselves. But when we had to go back to where the car was park (a long way away), they started complaining about being hot, tired and hungry. Tomorrow is going to the last day, anyone wanting to go catch all the action got to go pretty earlier, maybe before 7am.

That was how we spent the morning before rushing through breakfast, sending my sons to piano lessons and running other errands. I was back home at 2pm and I already had something in mind to do, to bake a loaf of bread using the Noxxa breadmaker my sister gave me. I am happy to say that after about 3 hours of waiting, the bread was ready. It is a little hard on the outside compared to the gardenia ones but still it was good. I will post a picture of it later, cannot get the card reader to work on my PC at home today.

Guilty

I am really guilty of having no will-power or sustainability. Ok, so my chinese learning thingy is not going anywhere beyond a few pages in my exercise book which is now sitting, gathering dust on my work desk. It is now accompanying my Catholic Guide to the Bible book which I read through the one third of and stopped. Last time I touched the book was a good 6 months or so ago. This blog for instance, 2 months passed since my last update. I really need to get myself organised.

Anyways, I am back. I did make my 2nd fondant cake for my little girl's birthday in Feb and here's a pic. And next, we have hubby's Bday and mother's day in the next 2 weekends. Haven't been able to bake for the past few weeks since the kids were sick one after another. Only last week they got better, thank God.

So many things that I want to do and haven't. I really have to sit down and list down everything and prioritise. I should start with updating my blog more regularly. So stay tuned for more ramblings, I hope...

My First Fondant Cake

After a lot of reading up and researching on the web, I finally took a big step. I made 2 batches of Masrhmallow Fondant (MMF) one night and then tried my hands on decorating a chocolate cake (I baked) for Valentine. I was supposed to be done on Valentine's day itself but due to unforseen happenings, I only did it on the day after Valentine. The results was better than what I expected.

So now I have more confidence to try my next cake which is very important. My baby girl's first birthday cake. I have enough fondant in my fridge to decorate a fairly large cake but now I am checking out the designs. I will post my 2nd fondant cake picture soon. Hopefully I will be happy with my creation and my family will appreciate it too...

Cooking & Baking Time

I have always enjoyed cooking, and now with 3 kids, I enjoy it even more. The thought of my little ones eating the wholesome meals I prepare for them is really enough to drive me to cook more often.

On and off, I will try something new that I think my kids will enjoy like the vegetable dahl recipe which I got from the web. Here's a picture of how it turned out. We all liked it that I have cooked this recipe twice. The roti is the frozen ones you get from the supermarket.

I also enjoy baking since I became pregnant with my baby girl in 2007. Some kind of instinct, I guess. And once again, Chinese New Year is near and cookies baking time is here again. Am planning my weekends to enable me to bake a few types of cookies. At the same time, I am planning to bake and decorate my baby girl's 1st birthday cake which is in the end of Feb. So I will be trying my hands at making fondant this weekend. Looks like my weekends will be really busy....