Happy Children's Day

We will be celebrating Children's Day (1st June) here in Shanghai and I think schools around here will be closing for 1 day to celebrate Children's Days too.

Sales were going on in most toys shops and parents were rushing to get some gifts to cheer up their kids while bakeries were catering for all sorts of cute cakes celebrating the day :)

I also did some baking for the day to cheer up my little girl and the little cupcakes were finally done with hubby and little Angel's "help" :) She even make 2 of her own cupcakes *smile* Can you spot them? (Answers at the bottom page)

This is my first fondant cupcakes and I just love the vibrant colours which goes well with the Children's Day theme ^_^

Happy Children's Day to all the Children in this world ^_^

Daddy and mommy love you all so so much! *muaks*


P/s: Top left (apple tree) and lower right (rainbow?) was Angel's creation ^_^

Angel Is 4 Years Old

So fast that Angel is turning 4!! I have always wanted to bake her a personal birthday cake and since I don't have an oven at my present house, I booked myself for a DIY baking session in a baking school for my big project but end up, our busy-body handy little birthday girl wants to play Angel-The-Baker instead and gets her own birthday cake done. ^_^



I was so amazed that she could almost do all the little measuring and mixing job perfectly! What a handy little girl she was and what was I doing then? Well ..... I became her assistant instead and proudly standing there smiling and 'entertaining' everyone who came over praising how well my little girl can handle the job! Something which is a bit out of planned actually *smiling embarrassingly*



Looking at her pouring and asking for help along the way telling me that my little girl is not a baby anymore which almost brings happy tears to my eyes :P :P. She was fully concentrated at ‘her project’ (not mine anymore, urrgghhh!) and even asked me to move my hands away from the utensils and telling me, "Mommy, I can do it all by myself!!" @_@



While waiting for the cake to settle, we pay for another cookie baking session. Now I can see that by playing her play dough at home really does polish up her motor skills perfectly :D



However, the cookie dough which we made seems to be a bit dry but the shop assistant assuring that it's alright. Urrggghhh ...... but Angel did have a great time moulding the cookies and even ran to others table and asked to help them moulding their dough! *embarrassing* However, those cookies turn out so well that Angel almost finished it off before we gets home!



When asked what birthday decorations she wants for the cake, she still asked for the same hello kitty cake! Ghee ..... she already had a Hello Kitty Cake (from Secret Recipe) which makes her on top of the world on her 3rd birthday and another Hello Kitty cake again this year?? After much persuasion for picking another cake, then she unwillingly asked for Tom and Jerry cake (pointing to Tom!!). Huh, Tom ?? Let's try again and this round she asked for a 'Wolf' cake! Huh?? A wolf cake?? Gosh ..... (slap forehead) Among the 3 choices, she will be having either a very cute hello kitty cake which she loves vs 2nd choice a Tom and Jerry cake vs a 3rd choice a wolf cake (huh?!!!) So you can easily guess which cake a mommy will choose for her little girl, right? :P *wipe sweat*



A Tiramisu Hello Kitty Cake as per our Princess wish! :) However, mommy was so eager to cream up the cake (1st time ma and the fun is unstoppable :P) and then ends up, she is having a Tiramisu cake loaded with fresh cream! *:P*



Of course, our little girl was so happy with her cake and told daddy that she is the one who baked the cake ‘all by herself’ and also helping with the decorations ^_^



When the clock strikes 12am, we brought the birthday girl into the room with her eyes covered and with her birthday girl party hat on! ^_^ She couldn't believe her eyes when she saw that we got her all those gifts and keep asking is it real that it's her birthday and she gets to open up all her gifts? That put a smile on my face to know that she is so happy ^_^


As the Hello Kitty Cake doesn't consider a surprise for her anymore, we decided to brighten up her days further with another Haagen Dazs Princess Cake on her birthday morning. She is a big fan of ice cream which she doesn't get many chances to indulge in. So her big day is an exceptional day for all she has wished for. The ice cream cake taste so great!! Yummy!



The smile on our little girl's face is definitely priceless!

To me, to see her living each day happily is my greatest pride and satisfaction being a mom! She doesn't need all those candles to brighten up her cute little face but I do need all those candles to remind me of how fast that our little girl has actually grown up, that I wanted to treasure each and every moment that she is still attaching to me like a leech and shouting for me, "mommy! mommy!" hundreds and hundreds time each and everyday for even the tiniest matters.

I will forgive all her mischievous and crankiness while trying my best to discipline her without spanking as I know one day, when all the wrong, bad behaviour or her mischievous stopped, it's time for me to let go while she, will be venturing her own life and having her own little family ahead, with or without mommy and daddy.



She would then pursue her dreams and chasing for her wishes while both mommy and daddy would watch her with our pride telling everyone that this is our girl that we brought up, hard and sweat! ^_^

I just hope that she could feels deep down inside that how much we loved her and how much we will loved her forever. And trying beyond all we might just to give her the most happy childhood life that we could provide not in terms of material wise but something inside her heart!

“My little Angel, mommy and daddy's wishes for so x 10 many greatest things for you just to tell you how much we love you. But all and all, it only came down to 4 little words that we hope that you could remember, that is "WE LOVE YOU" ... more then you could have ever known.”



Blow out those little candles my little Angel! Mommy and Daddy wishes you a very Happy and full of love 4th Birthday!

Homemade Bread / Buns

^ ^ My first bake of Ham & Cheese Buns and our all time favourite Sausage Rolls
These are my first few attempts in bread baking ever and since then, I am crazy about these homemade bread / buns totally! Initially I was thinking to make a mini bite size sausage bun for Angel after looking at those I got from the bakery is either too large to hold or to fit into her tiny mouth while she 'struggle hard' to push the huge buns into her mouth!! I really didn’t anticipate that bread making can be so addicting!! The bread kneading part is really the torturing part (or should I say the most interesting part?) but I guess that doesn’t stop me from bread making either :P I think I really need to go get myself a bread maker soon, or a cake mixer cum bread maker will be even better!!! Errrmmm ……. there is right??

^ ^ Western Style Char Sau Bao (Barbeque Pork Bun)
^ ^ Plain Butter Bun and Raisin Bun
Normally it take around 2 ½ - 3 hours before the bread is freshly out from the oven. I just love the house fill with the aroma of freshly baked bread / buns. Hubby and Angel certainly loves those bread a lot! They are the happiest when they saw me kneading the bread dough again :) But due to my sensitive hands, I will have to stop for 1 week + before I can make another round of bread for my 2 sweet ‘babies’ at home :) But when I look at the happy faces of daddy and Angel while munching on those bread, a house filled with aroma fresh from the oven while i watched my 'hard work' vanished one by one in a day ……. I think that’s my perfect picture of my ordinary yet simple happy family moments, and a place where I call ‘Home’ :)

^ ^ Angel’s Super Mini Size Cocktail Sausage Rolls and Sesame Seed Bun
^ ^ “Come! Come! Aaaaammmmm ~~~~!”
She looks so happy everytime I gave her the mini bun fresh from the oven. It's made to a super-mini toddler bite size to suit her small hands and appetite ^_^

P/S: Sorry ya .... I didn't have time to put up all the recipes as usual as I am pretty busy house moving lately ;) But if you were interested, you can refer here for a Chinese version of the sausage rolls recipe (for the bread dough) I normally used :)

Portuguese Egg Tart [pix updated]

I am not going to share about my egg tart baking tips this time but instead, I would like to jot down my first ever hilarious moment in my baking journey :P

In order to make sure that the pastry (outer skin of the egg tart) to be well cooked, some did advised us to pre-baked the skin for 10-15 minutes, then only add in the egg liquid in the middle and into the oven once again. I follow just that, prepare the skin nicely into the greased mould (I use the aluminium cupcake foil mould which is a BAD IDEA) and it took me quite an effort to make sure the skin stay put, pop it into the oven and baked with so much anticipation waiting for the next step to be done i.e. adding the egg liquid! As I was checking on those egg tarts, to my horror I saw that the pastry doesn’t wish to stay on to the side of the mould and instead, starts ‘shrinking’ in the oven, immediately my heart was screaming “Noooo !!!! Ohhhh Nooooooo !!!” but I can’t do a thing but to watch my nicely shaped pastry keep shrinking from a cup shape into a smaller circle shape pastry lying flat in the middle of the mould when it’s out from the oven!!! Oh ..... GREAT!!!! *Feels like bagging my head on the wall*

What to do, since it’s already shrunken so much but I told myself to be POSITIVE, at least the pastry still fit nicely at the bottom of the mould so I guess I will just have to settle with the tarts with pastry only at the bottom but not the side then (some sort like a cheesecake where the crunchy base only at the bottom) So feeling a little motivated again, I start working with the egg liquid and praying that my tart will still look ok without the pastry on the
side and start pouring the egg liquid one by one carefully into the mould. 1st mould done, 2nd mould done, 3rd mould done and when I came to the last mould …… suddenly I noticed something strange happened to my 1st tart coz it doesn’t look right!! OMG ….. what the ....... guess what, the pastry at the bottom decided that it doesn’t want to stay at the bottom either, and floated up to the top of my egg liquid instead!!! That goes the same with the 2nd and 3rd and the rest of my tarts!!! Some pastry even do a 45 degree or a 90 degree vertical float in the middle of the egg liquid!!! Uurrrghhhhhh …… !!!!! What have I done???!!!!!! How to bake the egg tarts with the pastry half floating on the top??? Tell me ~~~??!! #$%^& *head banging hard on the wall* Hubby still with a cheeky smile walk into the kitchen and asked me what’s that on my tray …… auurrggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! I really feel like biting him at that point :P However, the tarts turned out quite tasty although a bit too sweet apart from the indescribably ugly 'different' looks (have you seen an upside down egg tarts before??) :P

^ ^ My disastrous 1st attempt >"<I can't believe that I am actually posting these pictures up here ;P
So for my 2nd attempt, no more greasing on the cups and I make sure that the pastry sticks to the cup like a glue before I pre-bake them and once I saw they starts shrinking, I quickly pull them out of the oven and pour in the egg liquid :) The final outcome is as the picture above, looks ok right?? The tarts taste great after I have cut down more then half the sugar stated in the recipe. I am glad that my 2nd bake turns out pretty well as hubby was having one egg tart after another :P :P.
I wonder is it only me who has such disastrous experience in the baking history? Hahahahaha …… Happy weekend everyone :) :)

Cotton Soft Japanese Cheese Cake

I am a cheese cake lover so these will be another of my favourite bake for sure - The Cotton Soft Japanese Cheese Cake ^_^ So embarrassing to say that I still don’t own a cake mixer until this day but yet, I am so desperate to try out this recipe so I asked hubby and Angel’s grandma to give me a hand when it’s time to whisk those egg whites :) So you know how desperate I am to get this cake done :) After googled on the net, I found a nice Japanese Cheese Cake recipe from this site here and decided to give it a go.

The outcome ….. the cake is so soft, very fluffy and extremely delicious with that extra hint of lemony taste :) Simply superb!!! The texture and flavour are very much alike to those I bought from the bakery. Even hubby loves it very much and the cake is gone within 2 days :) I even gave Angel a tiny piece to share and she told me they are “nice” even before I asked for her comment with her mouth wide open chasing for the rest of the cake ^_^ This recipe is definitely a keep for me, so to all Japanese Cheese Cake Lovers out there, why the wait?

Ingredients
140g fine granulated sugar
6 egg whites
6 egg yolks
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
50g butter
250g cream cheese
100ml fresh milk
1 tbsp. lemon juice
60g cake flour /superfine flour
20g cornflour (cornstarch)
1/4 tsp. salt
*1 tbsp lemon zest (optional which I added in)

Method
1. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. Cool the mixture. Fold in the flour, the cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well.

2. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Add in the sugar + salt and whisk until soft peaks form. *I add in lemon zest last.

3. Add the cheese mixture to the egg white mixture and mix well. Pour into a 8-inch round cake pan (Lightly grease and line the bottom and sides of the pan with greaseproof baking paper or parchment paper).

4. Bake cheesecake in a water bath for 1 hours 10 minutes or until set and golden brown at 160 degrees C (325 degrees F).

(above quoted directly from the original recipe)

Notes:
- may add in some lemon zest for the extra ummpphh!!
- may change the lemon juice for orange juice too :)
- if using springform tin, always line it with aluminium foil to prevent water sipping in from waterbath. - waterbath means 'bake the cheesecake pan while it's sitting in the couple inches of water in the larger roasting pan. It is also called Bain-Marie.'

^ ^ You can see a darker hand in the picture which belongs to hubby, and a hand with nail polish which belongs to Angel's grandma. The kitchen was so happening that night ^_^
*P/s: However I noticed that my cake will 'fall' a bit after it was cool down and also it has some 'water vapour' inside (although it’s still soft and cottony). Anyone know what is the reason please??

Steam Ma Lai Ko Cup Cake

I’ve always searching for ‘diary free’ baking recipe for my little Angel waiting for her to outgrow her lactose intolerance while doesn’t missed out the fun of sinking her newly erupted teeth on those yummy biscuits and cakes once in awhile. Can’t bare to see her not knowing what cakes taste like / how crunchy a biscuits were because I personally love food very much and so does hubby. I particularly love steam cakes because I think they are less heaty for our little one (just my perception though) and also for the baker (yours truly), I do not required to stand in front of the RED HOT oven sweating as if I just fallen into the longkang, watching closely worried that my precious cake will get burned badly if I were to miss out a second or two :) So again, I have found another diary free recipe – Steam Ma Lai Ko Cup Cakes from ChowTimes again (after the Steam Banana Cake) and decided to give it a try.

After some sweating in the kitchen, finally the cake was done. I personally love this very much as it taste like the crossover between a Steam Egg Cake (鸡蛋糕/ Kai Dan Gao) and Pak Tong Gou (白糖糕) and the texture is a bit chewy too. I don’t know how a Ma Lai Ko should taste like but I like this version too but remember to eat on the day itself coz keeping overnight the texture will turn a bit hard for mine. I am glad that Angel enjoyed her steam cake and once the cake was out from the steamer, Angel – 1, mommy – 3, Daddy – 3 ….. hahahaha, I was thinking to make another round but feels too lazy after having 3 cupcakes so maybe tomorrow if I wasn’t too lazy, then maybe I will make another round for my Angel and also hubby (with parmesan chesse version for hubby) since hubby said that he only gets to eat 3 out of the 7 wor. See … I got 2 babies waiting for mommy to bake cakes for them!!! Anyway, I am glad that they enjoyed my baking even though I am not a ‘pro’ in all that and I could also have a peace of mind too when I know that Angel is happily enjoying her cakes while I do not need to worry that it will trigger another round of her allergic reaction again. So all the sweat and hard work in the kitchen really worth it I think :)

‘发糕’(Huat Kueh / Prosperity Cake) & Steam Banana Cake

Last week after I have read Alyse’s blog about how she makes ‘发糕’ (Huat Kueh / Prosperity Cake) herself, I am tempted to try too. So here is my first ‘发糕’ (Huat Kueh / Prosperity Cake) which was made last Sunday, the night before the 15th of Lunar CNY. Phew, I must say that I am very relief that my ‘发糕’ (Huat Kueh / Prosperity Cake) really raised so much *wipe sweat*. Angel loves this too and she finished 1 whole ‘发糕’ (Huat Kueh / Prosperity Cake) that night. Hubby was very happy that I know how to make this cake as normally during some special occasion, he will be searching high and low for this cake to do some praying rituals because they were selling like hot cakes :P The method of making this is very simple. Below is the recipe which Alyse provided in her blog. Thanks so much to Alyse for sharing this nice recipe with me :)

Ingredients:
10 tbsp of Self Raising Flour
5 tbsp of Sugar (I use 6 tbsp of brown sugar)
Water (I use 10 tbsp of water)
Food colouring
(I also add in 1/2 tsp of baking powder)

Method:
1) Mix Flour, Sugar and Water together until reached a consistency slightly thicker then a cake batter
2) Add in food colouring (and baking powder)
3) Steam for 10 – 20 minutes




And also, I have done Chow Times' Steam Banana Cake again but this time, with a proper flour weighing machine which I got before CNY ….. finally!!! (Last time I am doing it without a weighing machine for my flour … sigh!) I must say that once weighing all my ingredients accordingly for the very first time, I manage to get the right texture of a Steam Banana “CAKE” finally, not bread or kuih texture which I normally gets like my previous attempts, although I must say that all of them still taste as nice *Smile*.

Preparations for CNY

It has been a busy day for the past few days. Part of the reason is that Angel is getting demanding and nap lesser and lesser and also, really so many things to be done right before CNY!! As hubby is still very busy with the office work so until today our CNY shopping for me and hubby is not really done yet. I only manage to get myself 4 pairs of trousers, a pair of shoe and only 1 top while hubby still has none :( But I am glad that Angel’s new clothes and shoe are all done which can last her for at least a month (no time to upload these :( ) and also I just noticed that I even bought too many of her CNY ‘traditional costume’ for this coming CNY too, don’t know whether she would wear them all during this coming CNY.



I have been very ‘hard working’ too this year. Although I don’t really like cooking and baking but in order to make hubby feels at home and also feel the mood of CNY, I for the very first time baked him Barbecue Meat (Bak-Gua / Yuk-Gon / 肉干) which I got the recipe here. Although it doesn’t taste 100% like those we bought from the shop but I must say that they taste close and do taste good. Actually this one is the 2nd round that I make them coz the 1st round which I made which was yesterday night was all finished up by hubby before I even have time to cut them up nicely :) So these are my Barbecue Pork and also Barbecue Beef. Angel gets to have a share on them too :)


Besides the Barbecue Meat, for the first time I also made ourselves some CNY cookies :) I have made hubby’s favourite Peanut Cookies and also Angel’s Green Pea Cookies (as Angel couldn’t take any peanuts at this moment). Actually the peanut cookies I am using the Green Pea Cookies recipe which I got from a very talented mummy Lydia from her fantastic blog - 'My Kitchen' here and substitute the green pea with peanuts instead. They really taste good although it take me ages to do the moulding for the cookies :) So after the entire day in the kitchen, I really feel unwell maybe because of the heat!! Gosh …. Really solute those who make CNY cookies in bulk! I hope I don’t get sick during CNY as many of us tend to fall sick because of ‘over’ exhausting ourselves :). So I guess that’s all for my CNY baking and cooking in the kitchen and started to do some last minutes shopping for next few days :)




Gong Xi Fa Chai and a very Happy Chinese 牛 (New) Year to all of you ya :)

Steam Banana Cake

I have seen so many blogger mommies making this lovely Steam Banana Cake and I was eager to try it out for my little Angel too. I love the fact that It doesn’t involve any oven for this cake and the best thing was this cake is basically diary free (and you can opt for egg free too)! That is simply perfect!!! If I can make this cake without any dairies, that’s mean Angel could have her first taste of a ’cake’!! Hurrya!! So I quickly went over to the stores to get the ingredients and also the bananas ……. When talking about Bananas, normally it will not last longer enough for me to make the cake before all ended up either in hubby’s or Angel’s tummy. All of us love bananas so much especially my little Angel. Until at one point we have to hide our bananas away from her sight or even doing a fast forward on her DVDs which shows a bananas. When she sees one, she wants one. Yes, Angel goes banana over bananas!!

Ok … back to the Steam Banana Cake. So I let Angel plays the baker for the day again and she was so happy (as you can see .... :D :D). Of course some mess happened because I instruct her to pour those flour into the mixing bowl without assisting her and of course, half of it when onto the floor :P Then I handed over the bananas meshing responsibility to Angel while tiding up the place and when I return, to my surprise Angel was happily ‘enjoying’ herself with those bananas (Oh, how could I left those bananas under the care of a little monkey :P :P) but luckily, I managed to ‘rescue’ the remaining for my cake :) So after everything was done, there goes the well mixed batter into the wok and it’s done in just 20 minutes.




So here’s my Steam Bananas Cake. It looks more like a ‘pau’ (bun) rather then a cake. I think the original recipe also looks more like a pau to me too. The texture of the cake is not fluffy enough and somewhat feels like a mixture between a cake and a bread. Although I have cut down the sugar but still, the cake taste a little too sweet. Maybe I should cut down on the sugar a little bit more next time. So at the end, I eat 1/8, Angel took 1/4 portion and the rest were polished off by darling hubby. I will definitely going to make another one soon as it’s very easy to make and also taste nice.

Look Who's Baking?

Do you believe that Angel is making muffins for Daddy and Mummy? Hahaha …. I wanted to do this with Angel long time ago but always cannot find the right timing until yesteaday :) After she woke up from her afternoon nap, I brought her into the kitchen and sat her down on the kitchen floor where it will turn into our kitchen table top for the day. I am using a pre-mix this time and handed the flours to her, let her have a good stirring fun before I started mixing the wet ingredients. At first she paused for a second and insisted me to hold her hands which I did. I taught her how to stir the flours which probably is new to her since she never stir anything that texture especially in such a huge bowl with so much flour fun!! Then I let her hold the eggs which she accidentally let go on the floor and looked at me with tears rolling in her big round eyes, poor girl …… so that is clean up no. 1. After the eggs were in and milks were added, we really had a great time doing the stirring game where I am trying very hard to make sure the batter remains in the mixing bowl instead on the floor / on both of our face while Angel happily stirring in all directions and screaming out of excitement :) After the stirring game, I handed her some muffin cups and let her arranged those cups on the baking tray but she is more interested to do her ‘stacking game’ instead which really took me a lot of effort in pouring the batter into the muffin cups. Once, I almost pour the batter onto the oven tray when Angel suddenly snatched the muffin cups away from its position. And when I am almost done with the batter, all of a sudden Angel grabbed her balls which she has brought along into the kitchen and put it onto one of my muffins and spilt it over the tray, how ‘fun’ could that be :P :P ….. so that’s clean up no. 2. Finally everything is done without more ‘unexpected events’ and all they went into the oven. 20 minutes later, the first and ever Angel & Mommy’s first Blueberry Muffin was done!!!! *wipe sweat*

I think both of us do enjoy the muffin baking fun so much until I almost forgot to take pictures until we were almost done! I hope I will get to do more of these activities with Angel since she is having so much fun and so am I (of course apart from those cleaning ups) :) Of course Hubby will be having so much fun eating those muffins too. But hubby says it is kind of 'entertaining' to actually seeing me cake baking with my merely 1 ½ years old “assistant” in the kitchen and I also looked funny in actually repeating phrases like “This is an EGG, Angel, look here …. E is for EGG” etc in the kitchen while both my hands were so busy with the batter and with Angel. LoL Oh ya ….. Maybe next time, I should let hubby take the lead instead. Oh …. How entertaining would that be?????

P/S: If any mommies is interested to play this little baking game with your little ones, remember to get ready a good disposable kitchen towels which definitely will comes in handy :P Actually I have used up at least half a roll of my mine solely on that afternoon :)