Another easy recipe! Banana muffin with chocolate chips

Today I made banana muffin with chocolate chips for our afternoon tea. This is a good way of making use of those bananas that are left on the table for a few days when no one seems to b eating them or when they are turning too ripe to eat.

When baking banana muffins i will reduce the sugar by half the amount required as banana itself is sweet enough and with the added chocolate chips, it'll taste just nice not too sweet. My hubby and i both ate 2 each and Paige had 1! Yum..yum... ;)

Sweet light scones

I did not send Paige to school today as she is having slight flu n cough and just recovered from fever so am keeping her away from school until next week. These few days we have been staying home and doing all activities i can think of to keep her occupied.

Usually she will be in school in the afternoon so we seldom have the chance to have afternoon tea together. So i take the opportunity to bake some sweet light scones to enjoy.

I would say it is one of the easy bakes to make and took me only 30mins to prepare and pop them into the oven. After a good 20mins and 10mins to cool, they are ready to eat! ;)

Double Chocolate Cookies

Today i was confined at home as my little darling is having fever for the 2nd day and today she had blocked nose too, poor thing. While she is taking her afternoon nap, i baked some double chocolate almond cookies for myself as i was craving for it!

Paige woke up and wanted my attention while i was halfway through preparing the ingredients. So she helped me sieved the dry ingredients and weighting the amount of chocolate that is to be melt in the microwave oven and stirred it evenly. After these few activities, she says she is tired and went to my room and watch her favourite tv programme- Charlie and Lola.

While my cookies are baking in the oven, we spent some time fixing a giant puzzle. After completing the puzzles, the timing is just nice for my cookies to be eaten. Yum..Yum...!

Happy Deepavali!

Paige is having Deepavali Party in school today and everyone are encourage to dress in indian costume/party clothes. I did not have time to go and specially buy her an indian costume so she wore her ballerina dress n shoes to school.

During her nap, i tried to whipped up some cupcake and decorated them with multi-coloured buttercream frosting and some decoratives. Voala... i did them within an hour!

Hope they have fun eating them during snack time!.

Happy Deepavali! ;)

Macaron are so sensitive!! Help!!!

I have been practising for the so called Big Day and I failed again and again and again!! After another 5 attempts I still couldn't get my macarons out nicely from the oven and am totally exhausted with disappointment! :(

I do not know what went wrong as I followed step-by-step closely from my last successful attempt. WIth the exact minutes and the different in speed the egg whites should be beaten, the number of times that i needed to do the folding and the number of minutes in the oven with the correct temperature. I do not know where and why it went wrong.

Looks like my girlfriend is going to disappointed but i think i have tried my best! If anyone know how to do it and would like to share your experiences, please drop me a line. ;)

YES... YES.... YES.....!!!!!

My girlfriend is coming for a visit from SFO next week and she has made a special request for Macarons! So i tried making them again and gosh they did not turn out well like the last time i did. I really had a hard time perfecting them again...

I had sleepless nights thinking what could have gone wrong and i did my homework again searching through blog and youtube for tutorials. After the 5th attempt i failed again!!

Problems:
1) The shells did not rise and turn out to be like biscuits without any foot.
2) The shells rise nicely and deflated half time and turn out looking wrinkled with foot.
3) The shells rise halfway and started to crack during the baking process.
4) The shells rise nicely, foot can be seen but the oven is too hot and they got burnt.
5) Some of the shells cracked and some are ok.



I gave up after these failed attempts and catch up on my sleep after few sleepless night.

I tried and recall what went wrong in between the process and finally i know what is it!!! I cannot describe the feeling when the macaron started to rise and foot forming and then everything went well. Now i am going to explore into more flavours!!! ;)

20.10.2010

My birthday has always been a SPECIAL one because there is someone whom share the same birth date as me and we were created in my mummy's womb on the same day!!! Yes!! She's my identical twin sister! She is slightly taller and slimmer other than that we basically looks the same. Time really flies... now we are both mummies!

Who is the elder one? Our mum told us that she made a mistaken during registration. I am suppose to be the 1st twin as i came out 1st but my mum made a mistake and register my sister as the 1st twin. So legally i am the 2nd twin... anyway it doesn't matter as we all know I am the 姐姐 , she's the 妹妹. But it really makes no difference with that few minutes.

My mum will always dress us up with the same clothes and we will always be the central of attraction. I am not too sure how other twins feel when you already look the same and furthermore need to dress the same... what is my identity? But now when i saw twins on the road and their parents dressed then up with the same outfit, they look so adorable! Abit conflicting isn't it?!

Anyway, this year the numbers for our birth date is the same as the year which only happens once in a lifetime. So to celebrate this special day, i decide to bake a simple chocolate cake layered with chocolate truffle icing specially for my so called the other half.

Happy birthday my dearest sister!! ;)




This is another chocolate cake that i did for my FIL birthday one week later...

Foot/ Legs matters!

These days the place that Paige and I frequent is the library! We visit the library about 2 times in a week. She really enjoys going there and picking up so many books on one visit that she needs to use my quota for her books. Each card is only allowed to borrow 6 books and with so many selections, we both reaches our quota. Therefore, in order to borrow more books she took her papa card.

You can only see me at the baking and cooking section, borrowing all the cook n bake books for family and kids. Looking through the books, i saw one recipe that caught my eyes-macarons! I started going through the recipe and watched some videos on youtube and here i started my 1st batch of macarons. I failed on my 1st attempt as the macarons came out flat and having no foot/legs. I tried again a few days later and i was so excited to see the outcome that i stand infront of the oven and see how the foot/legs are formed. I was so happy when the foot started to formed and the macarons started to rise.

I brought it to my nephew birthday party on the day itself for tasting! The response was so good i din have the chance to taste one myself... it feels so good that everything just wiped out in a few minutes.

I used Van Houten cocoa powder for the macarons and used Chocolate Factory antioxidants dark chocolate for the ganache. The antioxidants helps improve blood circulation, promotes the ability to concentrate, strengthens the immune system naturally and last but not last helps in anti aging! Yum.. yum....!


I baked this coconut almond macarons yesterday and will be exploring into more flavours! ;)

chance upon...

One day a friend of mine asked me whether i do cupcakes for birthday as her friend is interested to order some cupcakes for her son 3years old birthday. I pondered for a while as i have never baked cupcakes for birthday parties.. only for my girl school mini parties. Since i have baked for so many times and never done project like this, why not?! I took the courage and took up this 1st project!

I went through my baking books for ideas and I thought brownies cupcake with fluffy frosting will be nice for little ones. As per request from my friend's friend, cookies will be included. So i made some butter cookies using my all time favourite cookies cutter.

As i do this FOC for the little boy, his mummy bought this for me as a token of appreciation. Thank you Travis mummy!


I hope Travis will have a wonderful time celebrating his birthday in school tomolo! ;)

Ice cream that will not melt...

I was planning to bake cupcakes for a birthday party and usually when we go for birthday parties all the cupcakes looked the same only for it's decoration that will be slightly different based on the theme-princess, dora, ben 10, barney, etc.

I came up with this idea why not decorate the cupcakes as an ice cream since all kids like ice cream! Therefore, I use brownies batter for the cake that will look like chocolate ice cream and fluffy frosting that tastes just like melted mashmellow for the top! Yummy! ;) I hope all the kids will have fun eating their ice cream cupcake cone.

Meringues+Prez roasted biscuit stick= Lollipopz!

Paige was telling me that it's her birthday eventhough it's not and it's childrens day today! So i told her that it's a birthday for all the children and she says she wants her birthday party.

I realised after attending school for 9months, she started to enjoy birthday parties as there are lot of sweets and chocolates in the goodies bag and some parents even make the effort to pack toys/accessories/stationary, etc. Hmmm... i wonder whose birthday is it when the birthday boy or girl has to give so many gifts to her friends instead of receiving them.

When i was a little girl i remembered receiving presents not giving presents on my birthday! But times have changed and looks like i have got to catch up on what's in the goodies bag and what shall i prepare for paige's friends on her birthday that is just 2 months away.

Anyway, I though i would make something interesting for her so called 'party'. I was flipping through this children cookbook that day and got this idea of making a tasty treats, a lollipop! Paige was so eager to taste it when she kept asking me: " can i have a lollipop?" I told her you have got to wait a while longer as the meringues takes a long time to bake. At last, the lollipops are ready! ;)

Baked not fried!

My little girl likes to eat donut and whenever we passed by a bakery, she'll say i want to buy donut! i know with the chocolate coating and the rainbow sugar chips it definitely looks yummy but not that healthy as it is fried and the sugar content maybe a little high for her. Therefore, I decided to bake her donuts instead of buying from the shelves.

My 1st attempt for Scones

Today i decided to make some scones for the 1st time! After so much baking of muffins n cakes i think i should try something new. I got one of my wet ingredient wrong n my dough become quite wet but still able to hold together and i decided to continue baking them. Luckily it turned out looking not so pretty but it sure taste yummy! Paige likes them too even though it's her 1st time trying scone. Hopefully the next time i don't get the measurements wrong.

USS again!

Today i let paige skipped her school as she is too tired after spending the whole morning @ uss. As usual, she gets to get all her rides and shows she wanted and today i'm able to get my 1st adult ride @ the mummy. Paige has so much fun n told me that she doesn't wanna go home.

Bakes!

A full time mummy without a helper can be so busy at times. Whenever i can squeeze some time from my busy schedule, i like to bake! Baking is quite an art which i haven't really master well. Sometimes the cake doesn't rise nicely, the cookies get burnt on one side or the taste just isn't right. It can be quite a challenge. 

I always try to bake with Paige and she's such a wonderful helper who always say i wan to do this and that. She can now crack an egg all by herself and stir the eggs with the right amount of strength. The first time when she stirred the eggs, it spilled all over the table and i nearly fainted.

It's always fun time for us in the kitchen. It's our mini playground! 

universal studios, resort world sentosa

Today has been a very tiring yet enjoyable one! We had our 1st bike ride in the morning @ east coast park and spent all afternoon @ universal studio. Today is our 3rd time @ universal studio within a week! Still, we haven't visit all the rides and shows. I met a few familiar faces too. Paige had a great time shopping for souvenirs and her favorite character is Gloria from Madagascar. We will head down again next week if not the week after...