Sunday, December 09, 2007

Three Weeks of Goodies

I have baked a little during the past weeks but was really lazy to post or blog them. So here goes, three weeks of goodies.

Three Weeks back.....Green Apple Kiwi Muffins. Baked with chopped green apples and kiwi jam, these were tangy, moist and soft at the same time. Behind the apple muffins are the Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes. Fragrant, chocolately and bittersweet at the same time, these cupcakes are your perfect companion with a cup of hot coffee.
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Two Weeks back....Taiwanese Pineapple Tarts. In reality, the fillings is a mixture of Wintermelon & Nata De Coco. I bought the fillings from Taiwan a couple of months back and only got round to making tarts recently. The fillings were really good. They were not sweet, have many crunchy nata de coco bits inside and free from any artificial fragrance. Strangely, it tasted like pineapple. The lovely melt-in-the mouth shortbread crust was a recipe from another blog.
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The Tarts packed in the cookie bags which were also bought from Taiwan.
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Another bake were these vanilla cupcakes amd cherry chocolate cakes. We have this SFS2010 training in the office and I thought it would be cool to decorate the cakes with the company and training logo. Through Zu, a friend from a cooking forum, I had her help me print these edible icing sheets with the logos.. The cakes went down extremely well with the Management and colleagues and many were intrigued as to how the logos were made.
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Last Week....Fruit Pastry. Chockful of blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and chopped apples. This recipe is from Vi, who mentioned that this is extremely popular in Belgium. This was confirmed by my colleague Ilse, who hails from Belgium. Doing the taste test, Ilse gave me a thumb up and an A for authenticity.
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Finally today.....Custard Peach Bread. It was really not a good day for making bread as it was raining cats and dogs and the temperature has dropped tremendously. Not ideal for proving bread actually but I just had this tremendous urge for making some bread.
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Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Extremely Lazy

I have been extremely lazy lately. I had thought that after my exams, I would go into a baking frenzy. Surprisingly, I went on snail's pace. I was not motivated to bake nor blog. Ummh....something must be wrong with me! It has been almost a month now and I have only just started to crawl a little. I had better speed up before the next term starts in January as I do have many new recipes to try.

I was really glad to have four very good friends over for dinner last evening. Though it has been only close to five months since we started our course in July, we had became firm friends and a really dynamic project team to boot.

For my bunch of serious at times but mostly crazy, lively and funny groupmates I made:

Mee Siam - Topped with chives, beanpuffs, prawns and crispy shrimp skin.
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Yam Cake Wannabes - The correct name should be Bread Pudding I supposed but everyone was stumped to realise that these are not Yamcakes but savory puddings made with bread. It tasted so yam-like that I had to call them Wannabes.
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Frosted Cupcakes - I just loved this Vanilla Cupcakes. Soft and fluffy with a heavenly vanilla fragrance.
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Mars Bar Velvet Cheesecake - I had this recipe for the longest time and this is the first time I have attempted this cake. It has chopped Mars chocolate bars inside and I also added some shredded canned pineapple to give it a little bite and some sour tang. Amazingly, the caramel within the bars oozes out like molted lava in little pools on the surface & when you slice through the cake. Personally, I do not really like this cake as it was way too creamy for me.
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To wash the spiciness of the Mee Siam down, a refreshing minty Lime Mochito.
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To Maria, Lai Foong, Joanna and Rayson, thanks for being such good pals. Knowing the bunch of you makes studying fun and I am really looking forward to the day when the five of us will parade ceremoniously on stage in our splendid convocation gowns and mortar-boards to receive our well-deserved scrolls.