Dongzhi festival

I usually don't really bother about celebrating winter solstice festival but this year I felt like making homemade, handmade glutinous rice balls, so, here's what we had:

Not so bad for first try. And the irregular shapes were proof of their authenticity :) Maybe I shall try more fancy colors and shapes next time.

Yummilicious Tuesday

We made full use of the public holiday today for some tummy-fulfilling activities.

In the morning I did another attempt at cream cheese raisin bread, by mixing the refrigerated dough and newly bought yeast. And this time round the dough actually rose. So we had warm, fresh-from-the-oven, soft and fluffy cream cheese raisin bread, finally!

Yay to homemade cream cheese raisin bread!

For lunch we met friends at The French Ladle, a French eatery located inside Pandan Valley condominium. We spent some time looking for the restaurant as the complex was huge and there was no signage whatsoever. And there was no soul in sight for us to get directions from. Finally found out that it's at Block 2 and managed to reach the place.

At the French Ladle

The restaurant was small and it had very good reputation of serving authentic french food so we made reservation in advance. Thankfully it was not crowded at all when we were there. It was homely and unpretentious. The menu was put up on a blackboard hanging on the wall, with handwritten list of wine and beverages given out on the tables. It was manned by a team of 2 and I believed they're the owners.

Yummy baguette slices were served in a small basket together with dollops of butter as appetizers. Ice waters were also served in bottles. We ordered truffle fries, escargot, duck confit pasta, pan-seared foie gras, steak fries, barramundi pesto, chicken fricassee, and mushroom risotto.

The foie gras was a melt-in-your-mouth kind, yummy and really fatty. Truffle fries was great. The one who ordered pasta thought that it would be duck confit accompanied with pasta, but instead it was a plate of pasta served with slices of duck meat. Steak was wonderful with only light flavouring used. The mushroom risotto was not that fantastic, though.

The different dishes we ordered

Service was quite slow but it's understandable given the small kitchen and the manpower. And dishes were cooked and prepared one by one. We were pleasantly surprised to note that there were no service charge and GST in the bill :)

Next item on the list: Carpenter & Cook at Lorong Kilat. The place was brimming with people and as we were in a big group we had to wait for about an hour for a table. We put our name in the waiting list but then decided to just buy some pastries for takeaway. We may be back one day :)

Pretty tiles at Carpenter & Cook

Ending the month on a sweet note by baking a cinnamon roll cake.

Cinnamon Roll Cake - first attempt

I've never thought lasagna-making could be this quick and painless. Taste was satisfying too. I like!

'Lazy' Lasagna

Banana Cake

It's been a while since my last bake. As there's no birthday party invitation this weekend, it's time to hit the kitchen!

Rainbow sprinkles butter cookies

First attempt on apple-cranberry cake, using half a recipe. Olive oil was used instead of traditional butter. It's very easy to make, ready in about an hour or so.

apple-cranberry cake

baked gingerbread-man-shaped sugar cookies - their appearance was not worthy to be put up here :p

next round was brownie cupcakes.. not too bad!

CNY fever is on!

What is new on this version of pineapple tarts: rice flour. With 1:3 ratio against wheat flour, the texture's more crumbly.

Recently I stumbled upon Pão de Queijo recipe while wasting my time browsing. I immediately tried it out by substituting mozzarella with cheddar and tapioca starch with normal flour - those were what I could find in the kitchen. The result was edible and quite tasty but it did not look right.

So after a proper preparation (read: grocery shopping), I tried it again. It was great.. crunchy on the outside - just like biscuits, soft and warm on the inside. Yum! We finished like 30 of them at one go!

With nothing better to do and having the mood to mess up the kitchen, I decided to try out 2 simple recipes today: green bean pudding and klappertart (coconut cake).

I chose green bean pudding since I had one big packet of green beans which my mum brought with her last week. I used konnyaku jelly moulds for aesthetic purpose. The pudding turned out nice to look at and tasted good too, but it's quite filling as lots of coconut milk was used.

Klappertart was chosen since eggs were required. I bought eggs 2 weeks ago and had run out of ideas what else to do with them. This cake was satisfying with pieces of coconut, raisins and almonds.

now I still have honey baked ham and thick cream in the fridge which are expiring soon. any ideas what else to make?

saw a quiche recipe a few days back and decided to give it a shot. I substituted the smoked chicken with honey baked ham, champignon mushroom with shiitake mushroom. I would say, not bad for a first attempt.

apple tart - first attempt. it's basically baked cheesecake with a layer of sliced granny smith apples topped with sliced almond. yummy!

first attempt on baking melting moments cookies. simple recipe, simple ingredients, simple directions. the result? crispy, crumbly, buttery cookies that melt in the mouth..


there are several ways on how the cookies can be presented. with creamy filling, gum paste, etc. mine is the easiest - icing sugar sprinkled on top.


question of the day - why are unsalted butter sold in blocks of 227 grams while salted ones are in blocks of 250 grams? does that mean the salt itself is 23 grams?

a simple recipe at the back of a french vanilla granola box + itchy hands on saturday afternoon = baked french vanilla tart. bonus: sliced almond and a scoop of ice cream.

my first attempt in making shepherd's pie.

a friend said it's a cruel food. the shepherd goes out guiding his sheep just to slaughter them afterwards to make the pie. it doesn't apply to me though, as I'm using beef :p

finally baked pineapple tarts this evening. and I made my own pineapple paste, instead of just buying the ready-made as usual. the paste tasted great, although I discounted a few 'inconvenient' items, haha.. it definitely involved more work. and the timer in my oven didn't work properly, therefore the last batches were overcooked.. *sigh*..

made chocolate bread, siomay tutup and kekian this afternoon. glad that my first ever bread was successful (i.e. kaga bantet :p)..

I was suddenly hit by the CNY fever and decided to make pineapple tarts with cheese.

made oreo cheesecake this afternoon at a friend's place. ingredients include toblerone white chocolate plus sugar plus thick cream, hence the result is a bit too sweet to my liking, as the cheesy taste from cream cheese is almost taken over by the sweet taste. maybe we should tweak the recipe a little bit..