Stuff Happiness Is Made Of

And even more...

2009-07-20T23:01:00.000+10:00

More items...

2009-07-10T22:59:00.000+10:00

here.

I've Been Away....

2009-07-08T22:52:00.002+10:00

I've been away - but that doesn't mean that I haven't been keeping busy! Here are a few photos about what I've been up to for the past 2 years.

Looking at the old photos kinda makes me wonder how did I have the nerve to put them up - they look so unpolished! Not that I'm so much more polished than I was before - I'm still pretty behind in many regards. But I think you would agree that I've improved somewhat over time.

Carrot Cake

2006-12-05T22:06:00.000+11:00

Carrot cake is one of my favourite cakes but is probably one of the most fattening cakes out in there. Never mind - at least carrot is a vegetable!

I covered it with a cream cheese topping and decorated it with cherries.

Feeling very full now.

Currypuffs

2006-12-01T23:54:00.000+11:00

I am a great believer in currypuffs. When I was young my mom used to make it all the time and this time I decided to get her to teach me how to do it, me being the ignorant goose that I am.

Here they are:

Overall, was very pleased with it. The pastry used was just plain shortcrust and the filling is just chilli, potatoes and mince chicken with lots of onions.

I baked it to reduce the amount of oil in the currypuff - not that it makes currypuffs healthy. But at least I tried.

Can't wait to try making sardine rolls instead.

Strawberry and Blueberry Sponge Cake

2006-12-01T01:28:00.000+11:00

After a long break I'm finally back. Really happy to be able to potter around the kitchen again.

I've never had much success with sponge cakes but this turned out beautifully - probably because I used a better mixer than the one I had previously. I decorated it with whipped fresh cream and topped it off with strawberries and blueberries.

I love baking.

Chocolate Baileys Cheesecake

2006-10-14T18:32:00.000+10:00

Baked for a 21st birthday.

Cheesecake made with a Tim Tam border, flavoured with Baileys with grated chocolate.

Strawberry Mango Cake

2006-09-04T00:47:00.000+10:00

Yet another 21st birthday and I baked a cake. After careful consultation with the birthday boy, he concluded he wanted a mango cake. It's interesting - half the guys I know say they would love to have a mango cake for their birthday. Must be in the male genes.

I know - where are the mangoes???. The mango is inside the cake - sandwiched between two thick layers of whipped cream sweetened with icing sugar. The strawberries are basically dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts. Oh, and I used cream cheese icing.

Cake in all it's glory and candles

Turned out quite well. Only gripe I had was that the cake wasn't moist enough. Also, didn't have much time and frantically used a fork to swipe random patterns at the side. Shall not do things last minute in the future.

Back

2006-09-03T02:05:00.000+10:00

So there's been like 2 weeks of silence from me. That's because:

1. I got sick and couldn't be bothered to cook daily. It was just too much effort.
2. I had a whole load of personal problems at one go and had to deal with it.

The good news is, I'm back. I baked a birthday cake for my friend's 21st which is happily resting in the fridge now. Haven't taken photos but I will tomorrow and put it up.

I've also been baking the flourless peanut butter cookies periodically. They're so addictive I can't stop baking them.

Onde Onde From Scratch

2006-08-16T12:57:00.000+10:00

When I was young there used to be a roadside stall that used to sell various Malay sweeties on the way to school and my mom would bring me there to buy a couple of things. One of my favourites was onde-onde.

Onde-onde is a ball filled with palm sugar and made out of glutinous rice flour, flavoured with pandan (screwpine) juice. It is then dropped into boiling water to be cooked and then rolled in dessicated coconut. Traditionally, it is wrapped in banana leaves but I just left it unwrapped. It is supposed to be green in color, which didn't really show in this picture.

Never reheat onde-onde using the microwave. I learnt this the hard way - it produced rock hard onde-onde due to the lost of moisture. Instead, steam them.

Note: This was made a couple of months ago. I woke up today with a really bad headache and fever. Me getting sick seems to be a monthly affair now. I think it's the feng shui of this apartment. :(

Vanilla Slices

2006-08-15T23:53:00.000+10:00

After a long break I'm back in the kitchen and here's my attempt to get rid of my cream as soon as possible - vanilla slices.

A vanilla slice is constructed out of a puff pastry layer at the bottom, custard in the middle, topped with another layer of puff pastry and finally a layer of passionfruit icing.

This tasted good, but somehow it didn't turn out well in the photo. Here it is anyway.

Looking forward to tomorrow's baking.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

2006-08-14T12:21:00.000+10:00

This is one of my favourite cakes to bake because of its simplicity and lovely end result. The contrast between the pineapple and cherries is amazing! The only thing I don't like about it is that the cake tends to be a little bit too firm for my liking. However, it probably has to be since it has to support the pineapples. Shall experiment with other recipes to find a better texture.

The color in the middle is slightly paler because I baked this cake in a springform tin, as opposed to a closed tin which I should have done. As a result, some of the brown sugar and butter mixture leaked out, thus leaving not enough in the tin to brown the pineapple sufficiently.

Incidentally, this cake was baked for...fun. Just wanted to because it looks so good in the book that I was browsing through and decided to give it a go.

P/S: This is the last of my archived cakes (hopefully). Shall recommence baking tomorrow.

Polka Dots

2006-08-13T12:15:00.000+10:00

There's too much food in my house right now. My two other housemates baked as well, leading to a glut in cakes in the house. As a result I have not been cooking, so here's yet another one of my cakes from my archive.

This was the first cake I ever decorated using white icing. it was a plain butter cake with buttecream filling. It's nothing out of the world, but quite a cheerful whimsical cake, even if I do say so myself.

White icing is very forgiving - it masks all the imperfections in the cake and you can coax it into any shape. And you can buy it ready made, which is also another plus.

More food to come tomorow, when there's less food in the house.

3 Tiered Slab Of Butter

2006-08-12T22:05:00.000+10:00

I haven't had the energy or the calories to bake this weekend, and therefore I'm digging into my archive of things I've baked in the past.

I love decorating. Somehow producing something that looks pretty gives me the warm glow inside and the desire to produce more lovely things.

This was a cake I made for my friend's 21st. It was a he, which made many people think that it wasn't a very appropriate cake for a boy. I agree - but I wanted so much to decorate a cake this way that I just went ahead with it. The birthday boy didn't complain, ~~at least not to me~~. To date this is probably the biggest cake I've ever baked.

It took me about a week in all, baking the cakes separately (5 cakes in all, each teir being 2 layers, and the top layer just an 8 inch cake quartered, using the other half of the cake to make truffles), crumb coating it, putting on the white icing and finally the decoration.

The cake if I'm not mistaken was filled with ganache, with a pound cake layer at the bottom and a chocolate layer on top. The icing was royal icing and I made truffles to go at the top.

I love making tiered cakes, but there is not much opportunity to bake them since they're purely for celebratory reasons. That's why I love it when it's someone's birthday.

Now, that just made me sound like all I live for is to bake cakes for birthdays.

Genoise Sponge

2006-08-12T00:52:00.000+10:00

This is another 21st birthday cake I baked a few months ago. It's a Genoise sponge cake filled with custard and covered with white chocolate ganache decorated with chocolate pieces and topped with caramel.

Genoise sponge is basically sponge cake with butter added. This particular cake didn't go very well and was a tad heavy because my incorporation of the butter into the mixture before baking wasn't quick enough. Will reattempt when I have the confidence to do so.

However, I was pleased with the overall effect. Dark and white chocolate is an attractive combination, in my humble opinion.

Going to crawl into bed for a good coma-like sleep. Exhausted!

Mixed Berry Pancakes

2006-08-11T13:13:00.000+10:00

Nothing is more comforting than a stack of pancakes when one is down.

After coming back from Tooth Fairy Clinic where a patient insisted that seeing gums when she smiles is bad, I needed a pick me up and decided to make a batch of pancakes. Since I didn't have syrup, I just slathered on copious amounts of butter and a generous dusting of icing sugar with some mixed berries.

I feel so much better after that.

Spritzer Cookies

2006-08-10T20:15:00.000+10:00

I was feeling exceedingly stressed this morning and ate four profiteroles at one shot and didn't have the spirit to make lunch or dinner, thus resorting to taking out one of my pre-made chicken pies in the fridge and just baking it.

Then my housemate came and announced to me that she bought a spritzer cookie presser and I just had to make it.

Before that though, I drowned my sorrows in peanut butter chocolate chips cookies again. I love them - this time I tried mixing two types of chips, white and dark. Turned out alright, although I think the original is better.

Peanut Butter Mixed Chips Cookies

Then I set off to make the spritzer cookies.

Spritzer Cookies - Here are the two shaped I decided to press out this time. Hearts and flowers. There's a trick to trying to get the dough off the presser which took me some time to master, also resulting in me avoiding to make the more complicated shapes. Will revisit it when I have the time and patience to try again.

Flowers

Hearts

That's it for today. More tomorrow.

Croquembouche

2006-08-09T23:25:00.000+10:00

I have always wanted to make a croquembouche, but never had the courage to do it alone. What if my profiteroles didn't rise? What if my profiterole tower collapsed? There were so many possible catastrophes I didn't want to face.

Anyway, my pastry chef friend decided to come and teach me the fine arts of making a croquembouche and my friend came along as well as part of the training team. We set out together to deal with it.

First we had to make the profiteroles. Profiteroles are made of choux pastry and filled with any sort of filling. In our case, we used whipped ganache (cream and chocolate). After struggling with piping and filling, the next thing to do was the exciting part - assembling the croquembouche.

Croqeumbouche towers are actually hollow - something I never knew. There's a base that we build the croquembouche around and once the chocolate sets, we take the base off - leaving it hollow.

Croquembouche Tower - The undecorated croquembouche, coated with plain chocolate.

Next thing we did was to dust with icing sugar, creating a snowy mountain sort of look.

Snowy Mountain

Then we added the decoration, which was white chocolate butterflies. I'm particularly proud of them. Here are not one, but the two croquembouche we made. One for myself and one for my friend. None for the pastry chef. :P

Croquembouche 1

Croquembouche 2

Two of them together - Two mountains set side by side.

Guess which was assembled by the pastry chef and which by us?

Anyway, here are some close ups of the butterflies, because I think they turned out really well.

White Chocolate Butterflies - Just sitting and waiting to be attached. These took a lot of patience and a steady unwavering hand.

Butterflies - Aren't they pretty??

All in all, I had a great time making them, although I'm not sure if I would want to do it again. It was very time consuming (it took us 6 hours in all to finish making everything, including cleaning up and waiting for it to bake and dinner) but then, the results were pretty breathtaking.

My final say is - I love the butterflies. Lol.

Slices of Caramel

2006-08-09T12:28:00.000+10:00

I like baking slices but have difficulty producing slices that are camera worthy. They tend to taste good but look horrible. This is the closest I'll probably ever get to presentable looking slice and even these are imperfect. Heating the knife did not help me get clean lines.

Slices are extremely easy to make. This is just a biscuit base with home made caramel (just some sugar and condensed milk stirred together) and melted chocolate poured on top.

Caramel is one of the most cariogenic (caries inducing) substances around. It's sticky and sweet - which is all bad news for teeth. Thus these slices should be eaten with caution.

I am intending to bake peppermint slices next but people seem to be expressing their dislike towards peppermint. Why?!

Sugared Palmiers

2006-08-09T00:03:00.000+10:00

It was after dinner and I wanted ot make something simple and decided on palmiers.

Palmiers are made of puff pastry rolled up and cut into slices, spread on the baking pan and baked. Usually sugar or sometimes savoury spreads are spread on the surface of the pastry before rolling, for the flavour.

The palmiers I made were sprinkled with sugar and brushed with butter before baking. Here's the results:

A tad too little sugar and I accidentally shaved off the tip of a couple of fingers. Other than that, it turned out pretty well.

Arancini

2006-08-08T15:34:00.000+10:00

When life throws you leftover risotto, what do you do? Make Arancini.

Arancini is an Italian rice ball, made with risotto and filled with cheese. In my case, I had leftover risotto from dinner yesterday and just used it. It's really simple to make and delicious.

Ingredients:
Leftover risotto
Plain Flour
1 Egg
Breadcrumbs
Cheese

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 200 Celcius.
2. Roll leftover risotto in hands and fill with cheese (any will do - I used parmesan and cheddar). This is quite a disgusting process - cold mushy risotto in hands. Just do it quickly and get it over and done with.
3. Coat with plain flour.
4. Coat with egg.
5. Coat with breadcrumbs.
6. Put in oven and bake. Sprinkle with more cheese if desired.

Arancini can also be fried. In fact, that is the more common way of doing it. However, I didn't fancy the extra calories and cleaning up involved. I served it with salad and the leftover egg from the coating, with some sweet chilli sauce.

Leftovers aren't that bad after all.

Spectacular Orange Cake

2006-08-08T11:49:00.000+10:00

That's what the recipe called itself. I decided to try out how spectacular it was and turns out it's great! It's basically two orange butter cakes sandwiched together with orange curd, iced with cream cheese (which was not enough for the whole cake. You can see the blemishes!) :(. I then topped it off with leftover kiwi fruit from the fruit tarts previously as well as canned mandarins.

The chocolate pieces at the side were made by melting chocolate and piping them onto a piece of foil and waiting for it to dry before sticking it onto the still soft icing.

Not a perfect cake, but at least a delicious one.

Cream Horns 2

2006-08-07T22:00:00.000+10:00

Had some leftover whipped cream from my previous bout of cream horn making and decided to make another batch, this time sprinkling icing sugar instead of dipping into chocolate. Still delicious and still as easy to make as ever.

Chicken And Mushroom Risotto

2006-08-07T21:31:00.000+10:00

Risotto. I used to think it was disgusting when I was first introduced to it. To me, it wasn't quite the texture of steamed rice, yet it wasn't really porridge either. Just some wet half-cooked rice swimming in weird sauces.

Now I love it.

Here's a picture of my dinner, which was chicken and mushroom risotto. For those who are new to this dish, this is an Italian dish made from Arborio rice (short, fat grained rice - as opposed to the long grain rice that is used in normal everyday steamed rice) and various other things added such as poultry, seafood and vegetables. The reason why Arborio is chosen is so that when the risotto is cooked, the grain is creamy on the outside yet in the centre, a little crunch still remains.

Here's my risotto recipe. Many corners have been cut, me being the lazy person that I am but the outcome is still good.

Ingredients:
1 chicken breast, chopped into cubes
200g mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, chopped
200g Arborio rice
750 ml chicken stock
3 tbsp oil
salt to taste
Parmesan cheese for topping (grated or shaved)

Method:
1. Pour oil into saucepan. Add garlic and onion. Fry until onion is soft.
2. Add chicken and fry until no longer pink. Add in rice.
3. Fry rice until well coated with oil (add more oil if too dry) and slightly brown. Add in mushrooms.
4. Pour in 1/2 cup of stock and stir, waiting for the liquid to absorb.
5. Add the rest of the stock in 1/2 cup intervals, waiting each time for the liquid to absorb before adding the next portion, all the while continuously stirring to ensure even cooking.
6. After the last 1/2 cup is added, let liquid absorb until the consistency you desire, remembering that it will continue to thicken as you eat. This whole process takes about 20-30 minutes. Be patient - you will be rewarded!
7. Serve on plate and sprinkle parmesan cheese if desired.

Quiche

2006-08-07T10:36:00.000+10:00

I love eating quiche, mainly because of the crust. A yummy crust combined with an eggy, cheesy filling is just the kind of comfort food I enjoy.

I had a head of broccoli that I bought in my attempt to be 'healthy' and decided to make broccoli and cheese quiche to get rid of it. It turned out quite good:

I made the shortcrust pastry from scratch and the filling is basically cream, eggs, cheddar cheese and brocolli seasoned with pepper and salt mixed together and poured into the crust. I baked it for about half an hour and there was my lunch. One side of the quiche turned out darker than the other thanks to the uneven heat distribution in my ancient oven.

Next time I'm going to try to make a meatlover's quiche instead.

Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

2006-08-07T09:46:00.000+10:00

I always wanted a recipe that would help me get rid of peanut butter so that I could switch to Nutella instead as a spread for my bread. I found this recipe and it is great!

It's a really simple recipe, mixing peanut butter, brown sugar, egg and chocolate chip cookies and forming them into balls and baking them. The results were delicious - the only thing I would change next time would be to use crunchy peanut butter instead of creamy for an extra peanut crunch.

Quick, simple and reasonably cheap. Definitely a keeper.

Recipe can be found here.

Chocolate Coated Strawberries

2006-08-07T04:48:00.000+10:00

I had some leftover chocolate from the Almond London cookies and didn't know what to do with it. Then I remembered eating chocolate coated strawberries at some dessert buffet a couple of months ago and decided to do the same.

These are really easy to do. Melt chocolate over a double boiler, and dip the strawberries in.

They look rather... plain. Next time I shall try to marble white and dark chocolate together before doing it...or maybe sprinkle some nuts on top of the chocolate. But for leftovers, I think this is a pretty good effort. The strawberries are all of different sizes as well... somehow the punnet that I bought was packed this way. Oh well.

I love strawberries.

Almond London Cookies

2006-08-06T22:41:00.000+10:00

I used to eat these cookies when I was young during Chinese New Year and now that I've found the recipe online, I need not wait for my aunt to bring them over - I can just bake them in the comfort of my own home.

Almond London cookies are really easy to make. All you need is some basic sugar cookie dough (yes, sugar cookie dough again. It's so versatile!), some whole almonds and a block of chocolate. Mix up the dough, wrap half an almond with some dough and roll it up into a ball. Place the ball into a small paper cup and bake.

Once out and cooled, drizzle melted chocolate on top. Decorations can be done either with dragees (shown) or with chopped nuts.

These are very addictive because they're small and chocolatey. I forsee making them very often in the future.

How To Make Cream Horns

2006-08-06T14:56:00.000+10:00

I always looked at cream horns in bakeries and wondered how they made it. I always thought they somehow had some way of piping the pastry out that as beyond my skill level. Then I talked to my pastry chef friend who enlightened me.

"You buy these metal cones and wrap puff pastry around them."

Pastry chefs are smart!

Here's a picture of my cream horns just out of the oven wrapped around said metal cones. They are very easy to make and the results were pretty. Here's the decorated end product:

I coated the bottom half with melted chocolate and left it to set. I then filled the cream horn with some strawberry jam and topped it off with whipped cream sweetened with some icing sugar.

It was very yummy. Going to try different variations i.e. chocolate sprinkled with nuts, custard as filling and perhaps savoury fillings as well.

Fruit Tarts

2006-08-06T05:44:00.000+10:00

I have never really been a fan of fruit but this time I think I'm hooked. Fruit tarts are fun to make and they look so colorful and pretty. Easy to assemble as well. These are made with ready-made puff pastry (haven't gotten to the point of being able to produce my own puff pastry yet) and filled with custard. The berries are the frozen variety (fresh blueberries cost AUD9 per 150g!!!) and if you look carefully you can still see the ice glistening on some of them.

I think I ate 6 in a row while baking them. This hobby is making me obese.

Linzer Cookies

2006-08-05T23:39:00.000+10:00

Linzer cookies are traditionally cookies from Austria made from ground nuts and filled with raspberry jam. However, the not-so-traditional me decided to make it with sugar cookie dough and strawberry jam. Still tasted delish, even if I do say so myself.

There's a special Linzer cookie cutter that allows you to punch the outline and the gap in the middle in one punch. The center is interchangable so you can have different shaped holes in the middle.

I particularly like the heart shaped punched out hole. The difficult thing about this cookie is trying to handle the punched out piece without deforming it. However, I guess practice makes perfect. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I don't refrigerate the dough before going ahead with the punching - I'm too impatient.

I guess I should make it my personal mission to cultivate patience in my life.

Rice, Egg & Vegetables

2006-08-05T12:35:00.000+10:00

The Baking Fairy does not only bake but occasionally tries to make something without the help of an oven. Like fried rice.

Basically just a bunch of leftover vegetables and rice fried together.

I got a pack of metal cones to make cream horns. So excited... I made a trip down to the city specifically to get it. I'm crazy. Will be making them tomorrow.

Chocolate Cake

2006-08-05T04:10:00.000+10:00

Everybody loves chocolate cake. Whenever I bake a birthday cake, most people say they want it to be chocolate. So much so that when some other flavour is baked people say it's nice, but not as nice as chocolate.

This is one of the cakes I baked for my friend's 21st a few months ago. It's actually the first cake I've ever decorated. It's a chocolate cake glazed with ganache and decorated with chocolate curls, chocolate buttons and some sort of chocolate centerpiece.

Chocolate is so yummy that I can't imagine life without it.

Flowers

2006-08-04T18:26:00.000+10:00

After making snowflakes and hearts successfully, I decided to progress to flowers. Not easy. Making the petals are the hardest. I made the cookie with chocolate sugar cookie dough and royal icing.

Strangely, not many people seem to be able to appreciate how hard it is to make cookies like these. A friend actually had the audacity to comment that they looked 'cheap'. I'd like to point out that:

1. Cutting cookies is a big hassle
2. Flooding the background with royal icing is time consuming
3. Coloring the icing in different colors is hard work
4. Piping lines is not a walk in the park.

That said, the ingredients used are cheap I suppose *grudgingly*. However, I maintain that they do not look cheap, but rather, cute. Or whimsical.

Just bought a Linzer Cookie cutter. Can't wait to use it.

Spicy Bacon Pasta Sauce

2006-08-03T20:09:00.000+10:00

I went to a restaurant that served this pasta that they call Paul's Special, which is basically a combination of garlic, bacon, cream, basic tomato sauce and chilli flakes. I liked it so much I decided to reproduce it at home:

It turned out quite well although next time I shall:

1. Use shoulder bacon instead of streaky bacon. The amount of fat in streaky bacon is frankly quite disturbing.
2. Put more cream.

So. Full. Right. Now.

Iced Heart Shaped Cookies

2006-08-03T15:17:00.000+10:00

Came home from uni and pre-heated the oven. While waiting, took my pre-made pie out of the freezer and mixed yet another batch of sugar cookie dough to make more cookies. This time, I decided to make everything heart shaped. Trying to spread some love all around.

My lunch - Chicken and mushroom pie. It's fairly easy to make if one could be bothered to put in the effort. I bought a pre-seasoned chicken and roasted it at home (I find it better than buying the chicken roasted from the supermaket. Also, it sounds better to say that you roasted it yourself), then shredded it to pieces. I then put some oil, garlic, onions and mushrooms into the pan, shoved the chicken in with some cream, added some pepper, salt and corn flour and I had my pie filling. The crust is pre-made puff pastry. Also, the fact that you can make it and put it into the freezer until you want to eat it makes it even more convenient.

Heart Shaped Cookies - I am quite proud of the outcome. I didn't have enough icing sugar so I decorated the cookies all differently. Starting from the bottom clockwise:

1. Heart-Shaped Sandwich - Just the cookies pressed together with jam.
2. Iced background with cornelli lace piping on the top.
3. Just some random wiggles.
4. Cornelli lace with no background because of lack of icing.
5. Just a couple of swirls with the last of the icing and some dragees.

Will probably be working on stars or gingerbread men next.

Baking Therapy

2006-08-02T22:48:00.000+10:00

Baking is therapy for me. After a long day, mixing up a batch of muffins or decorating some cookies really perks me up. This is to be sort of like a photo album of all my baking efforts in the past and hopefully many more in the future.

Current Obsession: Cookies. Particularly cut-out cookies.
Current Mood: Feeling Obese. Thanks to 1/4 of a box of Merci chocolates.

Mixed up a batch of sugar cookies and managed to make these:

Snowflakes are one of my favourite shapes. Shall progress to flowers next.