New year with Good Old friends

Weiling and Shireen came over today but we had no idea what we were gonna do. Shireen suggested we cook something, bake something then go for coffee at Starbucks. Umm so I suggested looking up some food blogs for cooking ideas. We went to The Passionate Cook to check it out! And we found nice fillo pastry recipe and a banana muffin recipe. However, the mall here doesn't sell fillo pastry, so I replaced it with spring roll sheets! Haha, and it turned out fine too. We also modified the muffin batter by adding in oats which added an earthy flavour, nice. To complete the dinner, we have pizza made with a focaccia dough, topped with canned tomato puree, herbs and lots of morzarella. Fragrant, gooey, tender bread.. by far the best recipe for bread i rely on ..ooow so yummy.. Droolz!! Here's the recipes:

Baked seafood and chinese parsley parcels

With a dollop of sambal chilli

Recipe (serve as entree for 5-6):

1 packet small spring roll sheets

2 dozen shrimps, peeled and halved

1/2 cup fresh scallops, halved

1/2 cup spring onions, chopped

1/4 cup chinese parsely, chopped

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 red chilli, finely chopped

2 tsp fish sauce

salt and black pepper to season

1/2 tsp sugar

1 tsp paprika

juice of 1 lime

Peanut oil or melted butter for brushing


Preheat oven to 200 deg C. In a bowl, combine shrimps, scallops, greens, garlic, chilli and seasonings well. Now comes the messy part. In a baking tray, brush one sheet of spring roll skin with oil then place another sheet on top. This is to prevent the nice juices from seeping through during baking. Also, moisten any sides of the skin you see is too dry. Actually, I'm not sure if an egg would do a better job than oil. So I need to experiment on this. Place one corner pointing towards you, put a good tablespoon of filling in the middle, fold the corner pointing towards you 1/3 way upwards. Bring in the left and right corners, try your best to tuck in the last corner into the seam. Just before baking. brush tops with a bit of oil. Bake for 15 min or till golden brown.

Margarita Pizza

Recipe (Serves 5-6):

7g instant dried yeast

1 cup warm milk

1,1/2 tsp sugar

2,1/4 cup flour

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tin Ayam brand tomato puree

Herbs of your choice, like basil, oregano, mixed

salt and pepper to season

1 block good Morzarella cheese, sliced


Mix yeast and sugar in warm milk in a big bowl, stir in 1/2 cup flour. Leave to proof for 30 mins. Add oil and salt then mix in 1/2 cup of flour at a time. Knead on a board till the dough is smooth and elastic and it shouldn't stick to your fingers. Add a little more flour if it does. Oil the bowl and leave it to rise for at least an hour. You don't need a rolling pin! Punch down the dough, knead a few times and flatten it slightly with ur palms. Place in a greased baking tray and stretch it to form a 1 cm thick bread. Cover and leave to rise for another 30 mins. Meanwhile, slice the morzarella with a cheese slicer, I'm too lazy to grate it. Lay a thin layer of cheese on the dough, spread the tomato puree on top and sprinkle with salt, pepper and herbs. Layer remaining cheese on top and dump it in the oven for 30 mins. Use a fork to tap the dough, if it produces a hollow sound it's done! Take it out of the oven when the cheese is slightly browned on top and gooey inside. Enjoy!

Banana and oats muffin with sundried prunes

Recipe (makes 9 muffins):

70 g butter, soften

90 g brown sugar

2 eggs

50 g wheatmeal

140 g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup milk

1,1/2 tsp salt

1,1/2 large bananas, mashed with a fork

1/2 cup Quaker rolled-oats

120 g Sunsweet sundried prunes, chopped


Cream the butter and sugar, beat in eggs, one at a time. Then mix in flour, work with milk if it's too sticky. Add in salt, meshed bananas, oats and prunes. The batter should have the texture like thick congee. Brush 9 muffin tins with oil, Fill them 3/4 full and bake in a preheated oven at 180 deg C for 25 mins. Increase to 200 deg C for another few mins to brown the muffins. Be wary of the time cos you don't wanna burnt muffins! And don't burn your tongue! ;D

Chirstmas Seafood Dinner!

Before dinner was my late lunch, cos i like to sleep till the sun burns my butt. Haha. Mom made bolognese sauce for pasta the previous day. So i sliced a good amount of morzarella and sandwiched with bolognese between toasts. Fried them with olive oil till golden brown. Umm Yumm!

Claypot froglegs with ginger and spring onions

OoOW black pepper crab

Crispy butter prawns

Lee Hup Lee restaurant at Changi Village

The dilemma for dinner was between Kuishin Bo and Lee Hup Lee. And in the end, seafood prevails! Haha too bad brother wasn't around. I never stopped licking my fingers and slurping my coconut juice. But seriously, the frog legs didn't taste as good this time. Probably not enough ginger and shallots. Overall though, this is my current favourite seafood place. Cos the freshness of the seafood has never dropped.

Petite Cheesecakes adapted from "The Domestic Goddes"

Recipe (makes about 40 cuties):

1 pack Garden chocolate Wafer biscuits, pulsed

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed

1 pack Philadelphia cream cheese

1/3 cup caster sugar

200ml Presidents UHT whipping cream (35.1% milk fat

1 tablespoons vanilla

Squeeze of lemon

8 ounces semi-sweet Hershey's chocolate

1/2 cup milk


Rub butter into wafer crumbs then press into a lined baking tray and chill in the freezer till needed. Cream the cream cheese and sugar in a bowl. In a seperate bowl, whip the cream. Mix the two together and drop in the vanilla and squeeze in lemon. Pour into the wafer base, even out and chill in the freezer for 3 hours. Cut the cheesecake into 1.5 cm cubes, freeze for half hour. Meanwhile, melt Hershey's chocolate over a pan of simmering water, adding milk bit by bit to get a creamy consistency, then turn off heat. Coat each cube well and freeze again. Be patient and dive in after chocolate sets.

At work I was bored so i browsed Ginny's blog (La Petite Chinoise)and saw The Domestic Goddess's petite no-baked cheesecakes. And decided to make it for my colleagues and family during this festive period. When it's fresh from the freezer it tasted like cheesecake ice cream, which is really really good! Makes me think of making my own ice cream next time, cool! The ones I had at office, which has been at room temperature for bout an hour was softer and melts in the mouth. The most dificult part of the recipe is coating the cheese cubes with chocolate. You have to get the right consistency and it should be cooled slightly before coating the cheese cubes. I dunno how to make the icing flowers the domestic goddess made so simply, I just sprinkled the tops with a little icing sugar.

I decided to make some truffles so I won't waste the remaning chocolate. But to my horror it didn't set well cos the chocolate probably doesn't have 60% cocoa content, and I didn't reduce any cream or butter. Haha. In the end I wasted more chocolate than I thought I might have saved. grinz* Well, success do comes with failure for me, everytime!

Behind the bougainvillea

After the first paper Dora drove a few of us to Plaza Singapura. First to get yarn for her new product and next to have some snacks cos the exam has drained every part of me. Yup at first she choose something with mixed colours but I felt the colours were rather dull. Then this furry stuff which i think will have a very different result. Keke I love to work with furs, but the trouble is sometimes they shed too much fur and I have a hard time keeping my floor clean. The "C" in black stands for Candice, the birthday girl that's gonna recieve this.

Erika, Born 28th November'06

Umm I was feeling down for a period of time cos my mom's feeling unwell. Whenever I'm sick she is beside me taking care of my diet and needs. Now she's unwell it's my turn to take care of her. So besides preparing for my exam I plan my time to cook meals for the family. Wah though I like to cook but cooking every meal everyday is seriously tiring. Then Shireen mentioned to me one day I've forgotten Weiling's birthday! Omg this is bad! So I thought I will make up for it by giving her my first knitted teddy. It's really tiny, but I though it'll be a great companion for her pet dog. Keke. The process of seeing a teddy forming is so fun. I was lucky I got all my measurements right cos I didn't have any reference to follow closely, just my big teddy bear. Keke

Kuishin Bo Buffet

We waited long, very long, for a table at Kuishin Bo. Phy was telling me how good the food was and she can't wait to get to the fondue station. Feli also was terribly hungry and me, kept chewing mentos lime to ease my stomach juices. I just had grilled fish in school while finishing up my project like 3 hrs ago? Haha sinful glutton. The 3 hungry girls then begun making funny faces and started our dinner with a photo shoot. And yeah, seats are ready! We sprang up from our uncomfortable stools and began scanning the food counters.

My gosh the desserts and seafood corners really blew me away! We had countless plates of snow crabs, salmon sashimi, mango puddings, chocolates, and 2 paper steamboats. Neighbouring patrons gave us strange stares and I guess they have never seen any girl eating the way we did! Haha what a joke. After 120min we hurriedly requested for another few min to finish our last plate of crabs and remaining desserts. It's only 2 hrs cos we took the ladies' nite offer which is like $7-8 cheaper. Feli couldn't let go of her mango pudding, so did Phy, she couldn't leave without a cup of green tea ice cream. I stayed cool, cos I really couldn't eat anymore. Poor Phy suffered tummy aches after that! Dun eat so much salmon next time ya! Hehe

The day bro Joey came back

Sis came over with Shireen for dinner. We had mushroom quiche, garlic and herb toasts and a hearty chicken and mushroom stew in bread bowl. I made the bread way before Sis came cos it take some time for the dough to rise. The recipe was take from an online source searched by my dad. Umm but I didn't wanna make french loafs, so I shaped them in to founds to make bread bowls, like the ones we see at The Soup Spoon. I sniffed at my bread and the strong yeast smell kept me pondering if I've added too much yeast? Keke I guess I need more experiments to find out what's wrong. Anyway, the stew's great! It's got all the favourite vegetables that we girls love and thick chunks of tender chicken in it.

When sis came we just had to finish up baking the quiche and garlic bread, while waiting for Shireen to come after work. After dinner Sis had to fetch Joey from the airport, so we quickly took some shots of her accessories for ROM in November.

Wow look at that bride-to-be. I'm so so so so happy the pieces turn out just fine. I've spent much time crafting this piece which I initially saw online on a page on victorian and edwardian crochet. But of late I fail to locate this page and I dunno why has it disappeared! Sigh what a pity. The choker needs precise calculations or the lace part, then pearls are attached to it to add design and texture. As for the bracelet, Sis and I shopped for a brooch to make something that looks like what we saw in a shop at Pearl Centre. Wondering what are we doing there? Ya it's the place to get all the craft materials especially for bead and the like. I think Sis really liked her accessories alot, now I gotta think of what to do for earrings. ;)