Pumpkin cake

Pumpkin is among the cheapest vegetable fruit that we can find in the market, this whole fruit cost less than RM4.00.  My girls love pumpkin cake especially the one that baked by their aunty.

Since they like it so much, I try to bake some for them following a recipe from youtube

the ingredients are 2 cups of pumpkin, 7 eggs, 90g coconut milk and some sugar

mashed the pumpkin after it is steamed

put all ingredients into the blender, mix well

into the oven and bake till cooked.  It took about an hour.

Slice and serve.  

UFO cake

I have attempted numbers of baking in search for products for my shop for the last few months.  Nothing had come out with what we were looking for.  

One of the recipe that I have tried is the UFO cake which is a famous dessert in Sandakan, a city at the east coast of Sabah.  I personally hadn't tried the real one from Sandakan yet.

These UFO cake from my oven is a bit too sweet for my liking.  Though the 1st attempt did not turn out well, I decided not to go for 2nd attempt.  Would not want to waste my energy as no one in the house is excited about it.  

Verdict : Failed Attempt.  

The grilled brown meringue

Before grilling

At Secret Recipe

Secret Recipe is not a dining place we normally go, it just happened that we dropped by City Mall shopping complex to have a look at the crowd during the Chinese New Year season on last Saturday. 

Most of us agreed that the cakes at Secret Recipe are somewhat delicious because of its secret recipe ^.^  We had tried their durian cheese cake, it is very yummy.

We tried this RM16.9++ set meal.

Having young kids, we always tried to order kids friendly food, that's *non spicy food*.  But the spaghetti came out to be spicy, we even double confirmed with the waiter that it is not hot before we ordered. We can clearly see the dried chili on the spaghetti.

Slice of carrot brownies with the set meal

The chocolate mud cake was Crystal's choice.  The sweetness is just right.  We recommended the children's mini burgers set for Pearl, the presentation is cute for kids, mini burgers with alphabet fries. We shared the set as Pearl couldn't finish it. 

Pearl ordered this kid burger set.  The presentation is not bad. 

Light Cheddar Cheesecake

Inspired by Sonia of Nasi Lemak Lover, my hands have turned itchy and wanted to try on baking some Light Cheddar Cheesecake.  I finally did the baking on last Sunday night after about 2 years break from baking. I had a bit of a hard time to get my baking utensils organised because I had forgotten where I put them. Blamed it to a not so organised person, that's me "_".

I only managed to take some photos of the cheddar cheese creaming process, after that I was too busy getting the baking done before midnight as the next day was a schooling day.  Here's how it goes :

 Break 6 slices of cheddar cheese and mix together with the butter, double boiling to dissolve them (I used light cheddar cheese slices)

 the melted cheddar cheese and butter mixture

 the cake sit in the oven for 5 minutes with the oven door ajar

My Light Cheddar Cheese Cake look like this, not as fluffy and spongy as it's supposed to be, probably because I took too long on the egg yolk mixing process.  After adding all the cake flour, I realised that my egg yolk mixture is too thick hence I have to add more milk to it.

The whole piece of cake were polished off by 4 of us pretty instantly on the next day.  My girls could not wait to try this cake, they brought slices of them to school as snacks during recess.  We simply love this cake and I will definitely make it again.

I followed exactly the recipe HERE from Nasi Lemak Lover, except putting in additional milk to the egg yolks batter).  Try baking this cake, I am sure you are going to love it!!

Baby Dylan's full Moon Celebration

Baby Dylan's full moon is actually on the 4th of February but Bro Alfred and family decided to celebrate the occasion earlier on 30th January, a Saturday, made easier for everyone.

Besides having food catered from outside, mum cooked her confinement specialities dishes, that is rice wine chicken and sweet & sour pork legs with Chinese vinegar and hard boiled eggs. I was too busy eating that I forgot to take the photos of them.

I was not feeling too good that day but I have promised myself to bake some cakes for the occasion which I finally did..but the result were not as good.

Baby Dylan is soundly asleep at the beginning of his celebration

Proud mummy & Baby Dylan

Jasper, our eldest nephew and the youngest Baby Dylan

Mum & Dad with my uncle (in yellow, he is as young as me, same age I mean) and friends

my sister & brother entertaining our uncle and aunties

These are the cakes I made for the night, with the help from Pearl to sprinkle the chocolate chips on the cup cakes.

A birthday cake

Today is my younger brother, Alfred's birthday. I baked a cake for him this morning. With the encouragement from Clet and the recipe from SIL, I finally managed to bake a cake for my family single handedly. For sure there will be more cakes to come in the coming days.

A simple cake to wish Alfred a very happy birthday.

Been busy baking

Guess what I have been busy baking since last week. The idea started with wanting to bake a birthday cake for Pearl, but did not get the result that I wanted. Due to lack of confidence and time, my SIL was so kind to help me out to bake a birthday cake for Pearl to bring to the school, that really saved my day.

I have yet to try her recipe because I am lacking of the flour needed, however, I tried other sponge cake recipe, one was the premix recipe which I bought meant for Pearl's birthday, it turned out to be dry and not as spongy. I also tried the Japanese Cotton sponge cake recipe which turned out to be really good, probably because there are milk and butter in the ingredients.

I was also dare enough to try the cream puff and eclair recipe on monday and that I have a little problem with the baking time. It took much longer time that indicated in the recipe because I made the piped the dough too big thus needed long baking time.

Just the night before I baked a chiffon cake by using the chiffon cake premix which made the preparation process so much easier. Unfortunately, I fixed the chiffon baking pan wrongly that have allowed the batter to lick out from the bottom of the pan, and I accidentally touched the oven door and got a burn on my arm as well, silly me. Good thing was that the chiffon cake turned out to be fine but can be better. Next time I will try to mix the egg white separately rather than mixing everything together.

Last night, I tried the Japanese Cotton Sponge cake again due to popular requests by my family.

And today no cake baking, but puffing time. Chicken sausage puffs and cream of mushroom and chicken puffs by using the ready made puff pastry. So we had puffs for tea time this afternoon. I have posted the pictures and the recipe here.

Cake baking

I stopped my baking venture after many failed attempts to obtain the desired results couple with the many washing and cleaning up after that are also the contributory factors that had stopped me from baking. But I was in the mood to bake again recently, probably due to the persistent requests from my two little girls. They promised to help me out..yes they did help me on the preparation and decoration of the cake... not on the washing..:( They are still too little to do that for me..they will get themselves and the kitchen all wet..cause more work for me in the end.

Hands on the turning bowl..having fun..I had to stop them from doing that..it's not toy girls.I picked this Nona Super Moist recipe from supermarket, just add in oil, butter and eggs.
Crystal insisted on dressing or decorating the cake..it is too much work for me to prepare the dressing so I let her use the white choco chips and pestels hearts.

This is what she did.

The texture is fine but a bit too sweet

Cousin's wedding

Yesterday was a popular day to wed. My cousin picked the 8th August to wed as well. It was a church wedding followed by a nice and cozy cocktail and lunch party at the church hall, a simple and relaxing party with plenty of food. It was also an occasion for us to mingle around with cousins whom we have not seen quite a while.

The newly wed (this photo was taken by Pearl..)

Crystal and Pearl with the beautiful bride

The bride throwing her wedding bouquet up in the sky...hahaha..the nearest lady got it.

lunch is served

plenty of satays and lamb

sanwiches, curry puffs and malay kuih were served before lunch

A little heart shape gift box filled with cookies and Ferrerro Rocher for guest to bring home, the heart shape can also be converted into an ice cream serving cup.

The bottle of drinking water specially label with the newly wed photo

The wedding cake and cupcakes

Clet's Birthday

13th July was Clet's birthday.  I always attempt to bake a cake for him on his birthday.  This year to avoid further failure in my baking, I bought a ready packed strawberry cake mix, only need to add in oil, eggs and water.  I baked the cake on Sunday, one day ahead, knowing that I wouldn't be able to do so on a working Monday.  Crystal and Pearl are always more than helpful to do the mixing and eagerly waited to decorate the cake after it is baked too. After writing the wordings on the cake, I let Crystal decorate the cake while Pearl looked on.  Look at the cake, I am a terrible baker.  :(

Finally ready to sing the birthday song

On his birthday itself, we had a buffet dinner at Promenade Hotel.  Surprisingly, we filled up our stomach fairly quickly with the main course, we hardly touched the dessert counters though the little pieces of cakes were very tempting.  Crystal and Pearl love the ice cream with pieces of cheese while I opted for Jellies and  ice cream.

 

Bits and pieces of everything from the buffet counter