Christmas Party

After the Christmas party we had in Yr 2007, we have decided to hold another Christmas Party this year at my place. This year's menu would be very simple to cook as it it only caters for like less than 20 people as some family members are away this Christmas season on a holiday. I am definitely looking forward to the party!

Raisin Pound Cake

This raisin cake is made from the same recipe as the fruit pound cake. However if you notice, this looks a bit dense. I suspect is because I used some left over brown sugar instead of castor sugar and my brown sugar was a bit damp. This could have contributed to the cake failing to rise. But I prefer this cake taste to the fruit cake as it has a brown sugar fragrance.

Fruit Pound Cake

I have used this pound cake recipe to make various versions with different fruits, nuts, etc. This recipe gives a light and fluffy butter cake texture and this is not the traditional type of fruit cake which you usually get on Christmas.

Ingredients

226g unsalted butter

100g shortening

300g castor sugar

350g flour

1tsp baking powder

5 eggs

1tbsp vanilla essence

1 cup milk

2 cups dried mix fruits/chopped walnuts/raisins/blueberry/etc

Method

Preheat oven at 180C.
1. Cream butter, shortening, sugar till light and fluffy.

2. Add eggs 1 at a time and cream well after each addition

3. Add vanilla essence.

4. Put 1 tbsp flour into mix fruits and mix well.

5. Sift flour with baking powder.

6. Use a spaluta and mix in flour and milk in 3 batches, starting with flour then milk.

7. Lastly add in mix fruits, pour into baking tin, bake for 1hr or till cooked.

Banana Cake

I made this banana cake from More Kitchen Secrets from Betty Saw. This cake uses a generous amount of bananas and makes use of the rub-in method instead of creaming method. Initially I was a bit suspicious if the cake would be soft but it turned out moist and soft as Betty has claimed.

Steamed Chocolate Cake

Made this Brownie Steamed Cake from a recipe I found from Reas Küche . This recipe proved to be a success. The cake was soft and nice. I put chocolate rice at the centre but it didn't taste like what I expected it to be. In future, I will steam it without the chocolate rice at the center and then top it up with chocolate ganache after it is cooked. I believe it will taste better that way.

Steamed Sponge Cake

This Steamed Sponge Cake was made from a ready mixed flour mixture that I bought from Seng Siong Supermarket. All you need to do is to put in milk and egg and beat it till mixed. It was suppose to open up like a flower, but then because I didn't oil the knife to make an 'X' for every cake, thus no flower appeared.

I thought the cake was rather dense as well. Maybe I should have added more milk to have a fluffier and lighter sponge. On the whole it tasted good. Nice eggy fragrance.

Nestum Cookies

Made this from a recipe that I found in the local food magazine - Food and Travel magazine. This cookie is simple to make and fabulous with the fragance of nestum with every bite of these cookies.

Chocolate Chip Muffin

These muffins were made using the rubbing in method. This means no need for a mixer to bake these muffins. Simple to make and very tasty. A colleague of mine recommended self raising flour from Prima. I must admit that she is right. Using Prima Self Raising flour definitely makes softer cakes.

No Baked Brownie Cheesecake

After eating something from Canele, I thought chocolate base cake with cheesecake goes really well. I baked this last weekend after deciding which chocolate base and cheesecake formula to use. After some thoughts I decided to use a no bake cheesecake formula.

This brownie had an additional step of whipping the eggs and sugar till fluffy instead of just mixing it into the chocolate mixture. The brownie turned out to be light and spongy but it could have been baked a bit too dry. Overall, the cake was delicious though the base could be a bit thinner and the brownie a bit more fudgier.

Recipe for brownie

250g dark chocolate

250g butter

200g brown sugar (this has been reduced from 2cups to 1cup)

6 large eggs

1tbsp vanilla essence

1 cup of chopped walnuts (optional)

200g flour

Method:

1. Melt dark chocolate with butter. Leave aside to cool

2. Whip eggs with sugar till thick and fluffy, add in vanilla essence.

3. Add melted chocolate mixture, followed by flour.

4. Pour 2 cups of mixture into a 9" square tin.

5. Bake at 190C for 10mins or till cooked.

6. Leave aside to cool.

(Pour the rest of the mixture into a baking tin to bake till cooked at 180C for about 40mins.)

Recipe for No Baked Cheesecake:

350g cream cheese

100g sugar

350g dairy cream (whippped)

1tsp vanilla essence

1tbsp geletine

3tbsp hot water

Method:

1. Melt geletine in hot water.

2. Cream cheese and sugar till smooth. Add vanilla essence

3. Pour dissolved geletine into cheese mixture. Mix well.

4. Mix whipped dairy cream into cheese mixture.

5. Pour cheese mixture onto cooled brownie base.

6. Put in freezer to set.

Ganache Topping:

100g dairy cream

100g dark chocolate

Method:

1. Bring dairy cream to boil.

2. Off the flame and pour dark chocolate into dairy cream.

3. Stir till chocolate is melted and well blended with the cream.

Longan Peach Cake for CH

Happy Birthday CH!

Another year had pass... and CH is one year older ...

Children look forward to every new age, but we adults dread every upcoming birthday. :)

After doing stock taking of my baking ingredients last week, I am quite glad that my stocks of all sorts were almost used up. Not baking for about 3 months had rendered 2 new bags of floor useless due to bugs infesting in it.

I used up the last bag of sponge cake mix and also some canned fruits to make this cake up. Got to get rid of the carton of whipping cream in the freezer as well. Quite please with the outcome of the cake. The fruits looked a bit dry though as this cake was in the fridge for 2 days before it was taken out to cut and I did not have any glazing jel at home, so I didn't do any glazing on the fruit.

As I won't be baking as much as I used to, I won't stock up too much on ingredients and will only buy what I need.

Last week I was very happy as CH brought back 13 baking books from Taiwan on his business trip for me. It resulted in a 3kg excess baggage and he was fined $50. Thus, there was very little savings for the books bought due to the fine.

Banana Chiffon Cake (High banana content and low sugar)

It hasn't been good past 2 months. Basically wasn't feeling too well and not up to bake anything at all. I only felt better 1-2weeks back and was more or less back to my usual self. I had been looking at making a Banana Chiffon Cake few weeks back and last weekend, the opportunity came when there was a bunch of overripped bananas setting on the dining table screaming 'Use me! Use me!'

I have modified the recipe to make this low sugar and banana filled chiffon cake. The original recipe called for 1 cup of bananas but I threw in all 6 large bananas I had which was about 2.5cups to 3 cups of bananas in total. The cake still baked into a beautiful chiffon cake, soft and full of bananas.

Banana Chiffon Cake

Ingredients:

(A)

200g cake flour (sifted with 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of bicardonate soda)

50g castor sugar

8 egg yolks

6 tbsp oil

2.5cups mashed bananas

(B)

8 egg whites

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

100g castor sugar

Method

• Mix all (A) ingredients together to form a thick batter.
• Whisk egg white and cream of tartar till 'soapy' stage.
• Slowly add in castor sugar
• Whisk till egg white becomes medium peaks.
• Mix egg whites to (A), mix well but with a light hand.
• Pour into a 25cm/10" chiffon tin
• Bake at 160C for about 1hr or till cooked.

Have fun!

Sugee Cake

Make a batch of biscottis over the weekends and had many egg yolks left over. I decided to make the Sugee Cake which I read in a magazine. However, I have modified the recipe slightly to accomodate to the ingredients I had at home.

The cake has a grainy texture due to the semolia flour and almond powder. I guess this is a cake that you will either love or hate. I personally do not really like the cake. I would prefer blueberry cupcakes or butter cakes to this.

Here is the recipe (reduced sugar version):

Ingredients:

250g butter

200g sugar

9 egg yolks

3 egg whites

225g semolia flour

170g almond powder

30g cake flour

1tsp mix spices

2tbsp milk

Method:

Preheat oven at 160C.

1. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

2. Add in egg yolks one at a time. Beat well after each addition.

3. Add in semolia flour and almond powder and mix till just blend.

4. Sift flour with mix spice. Add into no. 3.

5. Add 2tbsp milk. Put batter aside.

6. Whisk egg white till light and fluffy.

7. Add into butter mixture. Mix well.

8. Put in a baking tin and bake at 160C for 50mins or till light golden brown.

Father's Day Cheesecake

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Dad asked for cheesecake for Father's Day. I used the same recipe as the cake chessecake I baked for my son's Birthday excluding the Oreo Biscuits inside the cheesecake.

Pardon me for the messy handwriting. Doing writings on cakes is something that I need to definitely improve on.

I bought a new recipe book - Bit Size Desserts by Carole Bloom over the weekends at Kinokuniya since there was 20% storewide for members. Initially, I thought I would wait till this book was available at the library to see what the book was like before buying. But after waiting for 2 months, still no sign of it being available at the library and the thought of the book keeps appearing in my mind. In the end, I decide to take the risk and just buy the book.

Well, no regrets buying the book. The recipes were interesting and it included weights of ingredients in ounces instead of just cup measurements. There were also pictures includes for many of the recipes so you actually get to see how the outcome of the recipes would be like.

A good book to add to my collection.

Ice Box Cookies

These are called Icebox cookies. I got this recipe from the book called Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets. These cookie dough were quite tricky to handle as it was soft and needs to be chilled. I made a total of 4 different flavours here.

1. Orginal Flavour (ie the plain ones with red sugar coating)

[The kids called them cha siew cookies]

2. Orginal Flavour with chopped glaced green and red cherries.

3. Chocolate Flavour

4. Marbled Flavour (Orginal with chocolate)

In order for it not to be too sweet, I actually reduced the sugar content and forgot that cocoa powder is bitter. As a result, the Chocolate and Marbled flavour cookies tasted 'non sweet'.

My son and niece was so excited when the cookies came out and as the chocolate ones were not sweet, I would think that the kids won't like it. To my surprised, the 2 rascals said that the chocolate cookies where yummy... .... ...

Well, glad they liked them!

Biscottis With Egg Yolk

This biscotti recipe was given by a colleague. It is different from the ones i usually make in the sense that it had egg yolks in this recipe. It was also easier to make as you just need to mix the liquid ingredients into the flour, form a dough and bake it. After that, just slice the dough into thin slices and double bake it again.

The egg yolk smell is very strong in biscotti made in the way even though I have added grated orange peel into it. Reviews from people who have eaten the egg white version and this version all preferred the egg white version one.

My personal preference is also the egg white biscottis.

Oknomiyaki

Bought a pack of Oknomiyaki Flour from Mei-diya recently. So I made this for lunch last Saturday. I made a giant one for myself which was this one and finish everything. I added thinly sliced pork at the bottom of the pancake, but I think bacon would have made it taste better.

Osmanthus Konnyaku Jelly

My colleague got her brother to buy some osmanthus essense from Hong Kong. I wanted to make these Osmanthus Konnyaku Jelly some time back, but was not able to find the pack of osmanthus flowers in the fridge. So I gave up the ide till recently when the pack of flowers mysteriously appeared again.

The taste was pleasant but due to the fact that I did not soak the dried flowers, the flowers tasted grainy on the jelly and that was not very pleasant to eat. I will try again next time by soaking the flowers first before putting it in the jelly.

Dishonest Cake Shop at Bukit Merah Central

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YL!

Forgetting that there was a Han's near my workplace, I resorted to buying a cake at a neighbourhood bakery shop - Sweet Ring at Bukit Merah Central. This neighbourhood cake shop has been around for many years and I thought that the cake quality won't be that bad. Thus I chose this cake that looked the best out of all the cakes in the display fridge. However, maybe due to tiredness or maybe due to the glaring 2 red cherries, I have failed to spot the dried up fresh grape that was lying at the centre of the 2 red cherries behind Garfield. The fresh grape was all wrinkled and almost rotten. It was only when I got home, took out the cake that I noticed the grape. The cake shop had got the cheek to charge me $12 for this 4" cake which to our extreme dismay, it turned out that the cake was extremely stale. Base on my experience, this cake could have been in their display fridge for at least 3 weeks to 1 month!

The sponge cake was extremely dry. Stale should be the more correct word to use. After taking 1 mouth of it, we decided to throw it away. Don't think we want to risk food poisioning and have to spend further money to see a doctor.

Anyway, lesson learnt, never to buy cakes off the shelf from this Sweet Ring Cake shop. In fact, the bread they baked didn't look nice as well and they aren't cheap. I really wonder how they can survive so long at Bukit Merah.

Chocolate Marble Cheesecake

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YL!

Baked this cake for YL for her birthday. She actually wanted a strawberry cheesecake of don't know what sort which I don't have a recipe for. And she didn't have a picture of how the cake should look like. Thus in the end, she settled for this Chocolate Marble Cheesecake from my cheesecake recipe book - Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook

This cheesecake has a digestive biscuit crust which I laid the crust higher at the sides so that there was more biscuits to eat with the cheesecake.

Besides this cheesecake, I made dumplings for this Thursday dumpling festival - 端午节. This was of course with the help of my Mother-IL who did the cutting and cooking of the filling. Cooking the fillings is a lot of work having to cut up all the meat, and other ingredients are cooking them. The Hokkien dumplings needed more effort as each item had to be cooked seperately whereas the Nonya dumplings only needed to cook 1 filling which had all the ingredients in it.

There were quite a lot of ingredients for the Nonya dumpling left as we ran out of rice. So that means that we could do dumplings again pretty soon!

Mini Mango Mousse Cake

Mother's day is this weekend but my parents were going off for a short holiday so I decided to make some cakes for my mom as well as my mom-in-law last weekend. I did some Kaya Pandan Cake for my mom as I recalled her talking about it some months back. And my mom-in-law wanted a normal Chiffon Pandan Cake. No pictures taken as they looked similar to what I had made before in one of the posting.

Last Saturaday morning, I went to the market to get some water chestnuts. Though my inital intention was only $1 of water chestnut from the vegetable store, I ended up buying $10 of vegetables and fruits from the store owner. He recommended snake beans (蛇豆）to me and told me it was 10 times better tasting than the normal long beans and that I will love it. They looked like long beans but was slightly broader and grossly ugly, with very rough skin. No pictures though as my mom-in-law eagerly broke the long beans into shorter stems ready for cooking. She said that she was looking for this for a long while and also commented that it tasted better than normal long beans. I fried it with sambal chilli and I thought it tasted almost similar to normal long beans and frankly speaking I don't fancy them. I was never a fan of long beans and would prefer french beans to long beans.

Besides the long beans, the store owner recommended mangoes to me. He said that he bought it for own consumption and sold some of the extras. I was septical as the mangoes didn't smell frangrant. But he assured me that they were sweet. So all in all, I spent $10 at the vegetable store instead of $1.

So with the mangoes bought, I made the mango mousse cake and used the recipe I learnt at Creative Culnaire. One quantity of the cake recipe could make about 15 mini mango mousse cakes. These mini mango mousse cakes are easier to manage and decorate as compared to a regular 9" cake.

Vegetarian Mayo Prawns / Broccoli with Mushroom

Some vegetarian dishes after all the hearty meals over the weekends. Broccoli is one of SY's favourite vegetable. There are 3 varieties of mushroom at the centre stir fried with oysters sauce.

The other dish is called Vegetarian Mayo Prawns. Notice the yellow little sunny side up eggs at the side of the plate? I fried little sunny side up quail's eggs.

The vegetarian prawns can be bought from NTUC chilled section. It is actually made of konnyaku which is suppose to be high in fibre and good for health.

Recipe:

1 packet large vegetarian prawn

Batter(Mix together):

4 tbsp flour

1 tbsp rice flour

1 egg

1 tbsp water

Mayonnaise Dressing (Mix together):

4 tbsp mayonnaise

1/2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp lime juice

Method:

1. Coat vegetarian prawns with batter.

2. Deep fry till golden brown at 185 degrees.

3. Mix fried vegetarian prawns with mayonnaise dressing.

4. Sprinkle some sesame seed.

5. Serve.

Mini Cheese Cups

What do you think of these? I made these using some left over cheesecake batter from the Oreo Cheesecake. These little cups of oreo are very pretty to look and eat as well. More work to decorate but is worth the effort.

So instead of baking a big cake, the cheesecakes can be made into little cups like these for ease of consumption and no hassle to cut it. The baking time is also reduced since it is so small.

I managed to purchase some Philadelphia cream cheese at $5 for 2 blocks from Carrefour last weekend. This is really a good buy as the blocks are usually sold at $5 each.

Oreo Cheesecake II

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SY!!

Is SY Birthday and he asked for the Oreo Cheesecake after eating an oreo cheesecake which my BIL brought over some weeks back. Now you know why Oreo Cheesecake kept appearing in my blog. Those were the various tests on the different types of Oreo Cheesecake. By now, I am sure my family members are quite bored with cheesecake. I decided to use the egg white beaten seperately method for SY cheesecake.

Notice the strawberry hearts round the cake? I cut those using a cookie cutter. I thought they looked nice. I wanted to do more decoration but with my limited skill, I figured out that it would be better just to leave it like this in case I ruin the whole cake in theh process of trying to be creative.

This cake managed to feed 15 people and there were some leftovers for some folks to bring home. My brother mentioned that he would setup a bakery shop for me if he had the money. Well, I too hope he will one day have the money to setup a shop for me. hahaha...

Mint Oreo Cheesecake

I was at Meidi-ya when hub caught eyes on a pack of Newman's O which was Oreo look alike biscuits with a minty filling. He suggested making a Mint Oreo Cheesecake. I was game for it as I wanted to try out another cheesecake making method where egg whites are beaten seperately and folded into the cheesecake mixture before baking instead of dumping whole eggs into the cheese batter to beat.

This method gives the cheesecake a volume and is lighter and fluffier. I baked a high 7" round cake that needed only 250g of cream cheese. For making cheesecake, it is still best to use quality Philadelphia Brand® despite the cost of it. Quality of ingredients results in a quality end product.

I gave some slices of cakes away for testing and the rest was for hub's consumption since he said he liked it well.

Verdict: Most testers thought the combination of mint and cheese was kind of strange and I thought it was like eating cheesecake with toothpaste. YL's friend liked it as well as she is a fan of mint stuff. So I guess if you are a mint lover, you might like it else it may not appeal at all.

Oreo Cheesecake

In a frenzy of seperating the frozen Oreo Cheesecake slices up, I forgot to take a picture of the whole cake. The biscuit crumbs at the topping made a big mess on the table. This is the only slice of cake that I found decent and snapped a picture of it.

My son asked for Oreo Cheesecake for his birthday. I found a recipe on the internet and decided to do a trial run. The outcome was pretty good. Well my son liked it and YL reserved 3 slices.

I wonder if the cake would be lighter if I were to whip the egg whites seperately before mixing it into the cheese mixture. Should I risk a failed birthday cake by attempting to whip the egg whites before mixing into the cheese or should just follow the instructions of the original recipe.

Mini Fish Burgers

Saturday lunch was a feast of mini burgers of fish nuggets and egg mayo. The fish nuggets are convenience food bought from the supermarket. This is made of real dory fish pieces and cost about $4.80 for a bag of 16-18 pieces and all you need to do is to just deep fry it. I will put up the brand another day as I cannot remember what brand is it now. Took a picture of this burger as I thought it look kind of pretty.

Mango Mousse Cake

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME AGAIN!

I didn't make this. Hub/YL got this for me on my Birthday from Four Leaves. Mango Mousse and the sales person told YL that there is nothing inside except a sponge cake. Four Leaves ought to educate their sales person to provide the correct information. This cake has mango mousse in it other than a sponge cake.

Besides this YL bought some tiny magnets that is shaped in cakes and ice cream for me. Thank you YL.

Devil's Chocolate Cheesecake

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

I made this last Sunday for my own birthday.

Hub said "it was ridiculous to be baking my own birthday cake".

I replied "What wrong?"

Hub said "You don't give birth do yourself do you?"

I replied "I can't but I sure can bake myself a cake!"

This one is from the Cheesecake book - Junior's Cheesecake to Die For. Interesting combination which was well liked by people who tried it. My sis friend took a 2nd helping for this cake and some other testers loved it as well.

I personally cannot really accept the combination though. This cake is very rich and the chocolate is sweet while the cheesecake had a tinge of saltiness in it, making this a sweet and salty cake. Hub said the same too!

Kuih Koci / Kuih Dadar

After a trip to Malacca in the earlier part of March, my mind was full of Kuih Koci, a Kuih Koci which I tried at Malacca that has a greyish skin and a not very sweet cocount filling. It was made from a resident home and sold at a Pasa Malam. Baba CharAli is the store's name if I am not wrong. The kuihs are snapped up quicky at the home as well as the pasa malam at night. You have to be there early if you want to get a variety of kuehs.

I regretted not staying overnight in Malacca. The next time I go, I will stay over for at least a night so that we have more time to explore the place.

Till my next trip, I started exploring making kuihs on my own. I went through my recipe books and found a recipe from Debbie Toh's - Underwraps and tried it. It was nice and my MIL loved it. I used some of the coconut to make kuih dadar. The first round of kuih dadar that I made was not successful. Too many eggs and smelt like egg crepe. I did a second time the following day. This time round another recipe with less eggs and also added a spoonful of tapicca flour to make it slightly chewy. It was a success. These kuihs are laddened with coconut and not advisable to eat in large quantities.

Babi Ponteh is the next dish in line but have not thought of when I should be making it though.

Scones

This is a big lot of raisin scones that I baked base on the scones recipes given by Judy. I love these scones made of dairy cream and not butter. Still as fattening as dairy cream is 35% fat but is nice. As dairy cream cannot be frozen and cannot be kept too long after it is opened, this recipe comes into action to help use up whatever left over cream that is left after making ganache or cheesecakes.

Chocolate Eclair

Eclair that uses fondant as one of the ingredients for the coating chocolate at the top of the choux pastry. These little puffies were filled with thick chocolate ganache, absolutely delicious though the appearance didn't look very appealing as the fondant topping hardens rather quickly.

I did this a second time and tried adding more water to the fondant topping that I prepared, the result was horrenous as the fondant topping melted when these little eclairs were put in the fridge to chill. I got feedback that just normal chocolate topping with less mess was preferred. If that is what was preferred, it would be even easier to do...ie to melt compound chocolate and coat the top of these little puffies.

New York Cheesecake

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIS!

This is also 1 month late, but nevertheless, better late than never. This is the New York Cheesecake that I baked for my sis birthday. This has a vanilla sponge base instead of the biscuit crumb base that we usually see from cafes outside. The cheesecake itself is pleasant tasting. I have tried many cheesecake recipes and never fancied those that uses sour cream in them. This one uses dairy cream which I personally prefer to those that uses sour cream.

I took the recipe from this book - Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook that I came across in the library. I like the book so much that I decided to buy a copy from Amazon. I bought the other book from Junior's as well - Welcome to Junior's! Remembering Brooklyn With Recipes and Memories from Its Favorite Restaurant. This book has favourite recipes like Clam Chowder, Broiled Burgers, waffle, onion rings, corn muffin, etc.

I have also tried baking the carrot cake from Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook but have forgotten to take a picture of that.

Chocolate Cupcakes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRO!

This posting is 2 months late. Bro celebrated his birtday on the 1st day of Chinese New Year. I made these cupcakes along with 2 pandan cakes and some walnut cakes all within a day, some to be given away as CNY cakes to my parents and in-laws.

In the mist of weighing so many ingredients all at the same time and the bottle of the baking powder and bread improver looked similar, I didn't check the label and added bread improver into the walnut loaf cakes that I made. I didn't realise the mistake till weeks later. The walnut cake looked normal after it was baked, tasted soft and moist but the taste was not quite right but I couldn't put my finger to it till weeks after Chinese New Year that I realised that I have used up 3/4 of a bottle of bread improver when I didn't bake a single loaf of bread for a long while. It was only then that I realised that I have used it for the walnut cakes and no wonder they tasted kind of strange.

Besides that walnut cakes, the pandan cake and cupcakes turned out all right. I guess I must have only used bread improver for the walnut cakes I made.

The chocolate cupcakes was nice, but to prevent the cupcakes from turning messy while transporting them to Bro's birthday BBQ, I used compound chocolate to ice the tops instead of ganache. It didn't taste very impressvie when cold but by warming the cupcakes slightly in a microwave, it turned soft and tasted good and you can even eat it with a scoop of ice cream.

I used marzipan to make the sun on the cupcakes. I like the taste of marizpan. Eating this makes me think of my favourite chocolate - Reber Mozart ... Yummy...

Chinese New Year Bakes

This CNY, I did not take any cookie orders from friends. Baking in mass is no joke and I have decided that I am better off baking for fun and for friends at times would be better than doing repetitive bottles after bottles of pineapple tarts.

This year, I baked a various of cookies for family and relatives. There were:

• Almond Flortines
• Pineapple Tarts
• Tutti Frutti Cookies
• Almond Biscottis

I did not take pictures of the other goodies as they are repeated bakes that I have done through different times of the year. This Tutti Frutti Cookies was a recipe given by a colleague. She made crispy cookies while mine was a bit soft. There was a step to chill the dough before baking which I missed out due to time constrain. I wonder if that had cause my cookies to turned out soft and not crispy. On the whole, it is still nice to eat.

Christmas Cakes

These pictures should online earlier on. But I was so busy past months, I didn't even had time to retrieve the pictures out of the camera least to post it online.

I made 2 cakes for last Christmas. One for my family and one for my hubby's uncle's family who celebrates Christmas. I made a Cottage House for my family and a Christmas log cake for hub's uncle's family.

The biscuit rolls on top of the Cottage House turned soft after a while but it was still nice.

We didn't have a Christmas dinner at home like 2007, instead we were at my parent's place for Christmas last year round.