Butternut Squash Raisins Bread

Ta-dah! This is the latest gadget in my kitchen: Breville Baker's Oven. A bread maker machine. And to officiate the bread maker, I made a butternut squash raisins bread loaf, adapted from Fluene's Corner. Butternut Squash Raisins Bread Loaf What You'll Need: 20 g milk 30 g butter 1 egg 1/2 tsp salt 1 tbsp milk powder 50 g whipping cream 60 g pumpkin puree 250 g bread flour 50 g brown sugar 1 tsp yeast 100 g raisins How To: 1. Lift the bread pan out of the bread machine and fit the kneader blade. 2. Add the milk, butter,...

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Barney & Thomas the Train Cake

This post is way long overdue. We celebrated the kids' birthday couple of months back; K-girl hit the big ONE, while K-boy turned 3. Nothing too fancy, just an intimate celebration with the family & the cake with their favourite on it. Initially I wanted to bake K-girl a birthday cake but I didn't have the time as it was just few days after my business trip to Europe. So we ended up with a Barney jelly cake, which we ordered from our favourite supplier in Taman Desa. The jelly cake was homemade, fresh, not overly coloured with food...

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A dish of tummy warming Lontong

It's been a long while since I had Lontong, then I remembered a recipe that given in a cookbook. I tried other dishes recipe from the cookbook and they turned out well so I thought I'd give this recipe a try - well, more of my house helper to try. "Lontong is a dish made of compressed rice cake in the form of a cylinder wrapped inside a banana leaf, commonly found in Indonesia and Malaysia. The rice rolled inside banana leaf and boiled, then cut into small cakes as staple food replacement of steamed rice. It is commonly called nasi...

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How To Get A Perfect Top Cake

All these years, I think I've only achieved an almost even flat top cake on 2 or 3 times. My cakes usually peaks and if I'm lucky enough, there would be no cracks. I've been searching for the answers as to why the cake peaks and cracks, to which the answer are either: the oven temperature is too hot, causing the outside of the cake to bake and form a crust too quickly. As the mixture in the center of the cake continued to cook and rise, it burst up through the top of the cake, over mixing, too much flour, too little liquid, OR incorrect...

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Vanilla Butter Cake

Ever since venturing into fondant decorating, I kept finding myself looking for excuses to bake and decorate a cake. But I can't be possibly decorating all the cakes which are meant for only normal consumption right? So I offered to bake a cake for my cousin's ROM. Not only she accepted but in return she commissioned for a cake for her friend's wedding too! I have to be frank, pressure is on. Even more so for my hubby! Hehe.. because he knows if I can't get a good recipe, then my mood swings faster than a F1 car! The cake flavour that...

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He's now a pre-schooler

In a blink of an eye, K-boy is already 30 months old. We've been trying to get him a spot in a playschool near my work place since early this year but we had to be in the waiting list. It's not that the school is that famous till it has a long waiting list, but it's because we weren't sure if we wanted to send him to one at all when the schools were busy with their registration of new student intake. Early this month we received a call saying that there's an empty spot, and that we could bring K-boy for a 2-day trial run, If everything...

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Bananas and Constipation

All these years we’ve been told by our grandparents/parents/elders that if you have constipation, take bananas or prunes. This remained as a rule of thumb for me, until when I was told that bananas can actually cause constipation in babies / kids. So, when I shared this info with my elders, they went “Really? But we’ve never come across such situations before.” I’ve got to admit, when I shared this info with my family, I didn’t really do much research on it myself as I’ve got this piece of info from my friends...

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Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

I came across this recipe from The Little Teochew, and I just couldn't resist in baking it after seeing the light and fluffy photos of the cake taken by the writer. To be honest, this is the 2nd time that I'm baking this cake, but yet both results are not up to my expectation. This recipe calls for water bath and since my oven is a tad too small for this, hence the cake got browned before the entire cake was completely cooked. Nevertheless, the cake tastes yummy, and half the cake was gone in just 10 minutes! Perhaps the next round...

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Devil's Food Cake: A Moist Chocolate Cake

A search for a moist chocolate cake recipe is definitely not easy, especially when you have to bake it and test it out for yourself if the moistness claimed is as per what you are expecting it to be. What more, when hubby suggested to have chocolate cake as my mother in law's birthday cake. Pressure is on, and the frantic search began. Tried two recipes but they ended up in a disaster. I was at the verge of giving up till I was browsing through this book, The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri. I was pretty impressed by the way he put...

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Venturing into Fondant Decorating

For the number of years I've been baking (although I'm still nowhere expert), I've never dressed a cake before. In the recent 2 years, fondant cake decorating has become more and more popular and these cakes don't come cheap. I though instead of buying one, it'll be better if I take a short course on it and decorate the cake myself but I can just never seem to find time for it. As my mom and sister's birthday are drawing near, I thought it will be nice to bake them a nicely decorated cake. So, I googled up and search tutorial...

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K-boy at 29 months

Yesterday, a small conversation between K-boy and I went like this: K: Hmm.. iPad leh (Where's iPad?) M: Oh.. iPad is not here boy. K: Oh.. iPad go 'gai-gai' already (iPad went out already) M: *almost choked on my drink* Haha... Ya, iPad go 'gai-gai' already. His randomness never fails to amuse me as he adds more words into his vocab bank...

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REVIEW: Leifheit Egg Separator

All these while, when a recipe calls for separated egg whites and yolks, I've been using my ol' trusted hands to do the work as the el-cheapo egg separator that I have at home doesn't seem to perform what it is supposed to. Before the yolk is separated, it seeped through the gaps and I get a whole egg again in the bowl. Dang. The el-cheapo egg separator that I have As I was scouting around at the baking supplies corner in Jaya Grocer Empire Shopping Gallery in Subang Jaya, my favourite past time when I'm out for lunch alone,...

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"Clear Water" Sponge Cake

"Clear Water" Sponge Cake. Don't ask me why the name. I have no idea myself too. Stumbled upon this recipe in this nice little blog "The Little Teochew" while I was searching for some nice fluffy sponge cake recipe. The photos taken by the author, Ju, is so tempting, I just had to bake some myself!  The rising cuppies! The cuppies are done! They 'deflated' somehow.. hmm.. The yummy cotton soft fluffy sponge cake!  These cuppies were cotton soft, fluffy and not forgetting yummy too! It's like another version...

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The 6th month check point!

Ok, I have to admit that I'm slacking in updating the developments of my two lil pumpkins. Having 2 kiddos is certainly a handful and makes you wonder where on earth did the hours go everyday. In a blink of an eye, my baby K-girl is already 6 months old and it also marked my successful journey on breastfeeding her exclusively too! K-girl is now weighing at a healthy weight of 8kg! *beaming with pride* This little girl's development is considered relatively faster than K-boy as he was a premature baby. At merely 1.5 months,...

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Chinese Sponge Cake (鸡蛋糕)

On and off I've been missing the Chinese Sponge Cake which my late grandma used to make during Chinese New Year and Cheng Beng Festival (The Chinese' all souls' day). And somehow, the ones that I buy outside don't really taste quite the same. So when my friend shared her recipe in her blog, Alesia The Home Cook, I was jumping with joy! I decided to make Chinese Sponge Cake cuppies as it would be easier for K-boy to hold and the lazy me don't have to cut the cakes prior to bringing them over to the babysitter's place. So, I...

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Mini Baked Orange Doughnuts

One of my favourite past time during lunch hour is to go baking-supplies-browsing / grocery shopping at Jaya Grocer which is just across my office. So while I was browsing the products at the baking supplies aisle, this cute little pan caught my attention!  Wilton Mini Doughnut Pan For a moment I thought to myself, "I thought doughnuts are supposed to be fried?". I flipped the pan, and I saw a recipe provided at the back of the packaging. Baked doughnuts seemed to be a good idea and a healthier...

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Chocolate Chips Pancakes

Woke up early this morning, and was thinking of whipping up a quick breakfast for the lil kiddo. Oh, I haven't been making pancakes for a long time now. So again, I searched BBC Good Food for a yummy, quick and easy recipe. Hmm.. American Blueberry Pancakes with a 5-star from 149 ratings sounds good. Dang. I didn't stock up on blueberries. O'well, I'll just replace them with Chocolate chips then. The pancakes turned out to be so fluffy and yummy, that the lil kiddo had 3 at one go! Chocolate Chips Pancakes Ingredients 200g...

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Chocolatey-Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chinese New Year is round the corner, and apart from the spring cleaning and house decorating to get into the CNY mood, baking is another good way to get myself into the CNY mood. However, now with 2 kids, I could no longer bake some varieties of cookies for the festive season. So I have decided to bake some chocolate chips cookies over the weekend, and found this yummy recipe from All Recipes.com. I've always loved the choc-orange combo, thus I've made some changes to the recipe. Chocolatey-Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies  INGREDIENTS 225...

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