Chocolate mania

Bought a new recipe book yesterday. Sometimes I wonder why there are still so many recipe books being sold, because everything can be found on the Internet. I contradict myself...haha..because I actually bought another recipe book when there was a 30% discount coupon I could cut from the Saturday newspapers and use at Borders.

Pictures, pictures! I am attracted to nice pictures of food. I would flip through the book. If it's one of those "500 recipes for everyday cooking" and there are no pictures, I would not even think of it.

I bought a book on wholly chocolate by Donna Hay. Looks fantastic and just makes me drool. Chocolate cakes, cupcakes, muffins, panna cotta, biscotti, brownies, cookies... The close-up shot of the double chocolate cookies with melting chocolate in the middle...heavenly! I wish I have a camera like this...and photography skills like this too. It makes the most normal food turn into heavenly tantalising craves. Soon, I shall try something from this book soon. Just wait for my pictures! :D

Seafood Trio

This has nothing to do with baking. But still, let me put it on "record" here..

For a change, I went for cooking class. Held by a local forum owner, who is a self-taught chef, at her home. Was supposed to be held in a kitchen studio, but there were no other participants other than me and another lady (people these days prefer to bake than cook).

This class is much anticipated because it's all my favourite dishes! Chili crabs, sambal mussels and black pepper prawns. Yes, I love spicy food and these are local favourites for many people. More importantly, we were taught how to "silence"the crabs. This is important if I want to cook crabs isn't it? No fishmonger will kill a crab for you. You have to kill it just before you cook it.

I've seen the killing being done before, so I know what to expect. It may sound cruel or feel cruel as you hack your cleaver through it...at least it's not bloody..so it's not that scary. The trainer recalled how in an earlier class, one participant was so afraid she waited in the dining room and refused to go into the kitchen while the rest were killing the crabs there....hmm...why had she joined the class? Maybe she just wanted the recipes, but I wanted to know all...haha!

Here are some pictures of what we did.

Seafood Trio...mussels, crabs and prawns

Fried rice with no salt added..because there is bacon!
The trainer even cooked fried rice for us as dinner! So thoughtful. She knew we would be there from work and probably had no time for dinner. We packed almost all that she taught us to cook, and even the remaining fried rice!

We started at about 7 plus in the evening and I reached home at 10 plus. Ate the crabs as they could not be kept. Wonderful. Crabs are my favourite...so much so that my hubby calls me "crabby face" whenever my eyes light up at the mention of crabs.

The green mussels were good too. Unfortunately some of the mussels were bad, and we had to discard all of them as we do not want to go to bed with an upset stomach. I shall keep the prawns for tomorrow.

The fried rice was good as well. The other participant asked how she managed to coat each grain of rice with the egg. Hmm...I am not self-bragging, but this is how my fried rice is as well. My mum used to cook fried rice, somehow one day I took over the job, tried to do it my own style, and voila, it's all coated nicely with egg....a little smart eh? There was another time I did the same with another dish....but oops...enough of self-bragging....

Vanilla cupcakes

So, it was my sister's birthday yesterday. Our family went for lunch at a nice restaurant and we brought along the vanilla cupcakes I made.

I made the cupcakes on Friday night. Why not on Saturday?... because I had to go paint my new place on Saturday. But it was only on Sunday morning that I made the frosting.

For the cupcakes, I followed a recipe from the book given by my friend. It is quite funny to call it vanilla cupcake, because out of the whole recipe, vanilla is only added in the frosting part.

It turned out ok, but it was oily. It tasted much like butter cake. I did not alter the amount of butter, so I am not sure why there was so much oil. So much oil came out, that when I took the tray out of the oven and tilted it, I could actually pour out the oil. Any idea why? This did not happen the last time I made other types of cupcake.

I made some minty green frosting on Sunday morning. I like the green! The word "Minty" just comes to mind when I see this colour...but no mint is involved here. Then the lazy me just put a silly-looking penguin candy on top to decorate it. They all looked like they are sleeping on some fluffy mattresses haha.

My sister liked the cupcakes...but her comment was "the candy was very nice"! Err....how about what's inside.... "it's a little hard, but it's ok". Hmm...not exactly the greatest compliments, but I'm glad she appreciated them.

Missing in action!

Sorry I went missing!

I spent the past week missing the time I spent in Taiwan, and the food I ate there. Also have been spending some time over weekends buying stuff for my new place. We have bought a new cooking hob and hood and kitchen sink. The renovation contractor has just started some work and I can't wait to see it completed.

My husband and I have also planned to paint the walls this weekend. But Sunday is my sister's birthday and we are going for a meal, so that leaves only Saturday...and this means we will need a few more weekends to paint the whole place.

Today, I finally chose a receipe from the recipe book my close friend gave to me. It is a belated birthday gift, and it is a beautiful book with equally nice pictures and is called Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell. I guess I will be home tomorrow morning to make some cupcakes for my sister. It has been ages since I baked (the last one was a flop, so it's not counted). I hope that it will turn out delicious and pretty!

Back to reality!

I'm back! Was away for a week's holiday in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Arrived home last night and was sadly back at work today.

Had just finished unpacking a few minutes ago. I think this week and the next few weeks, I have to restrict my diet. I seem to have put on a few inches over the past week. There is just so much good and cheap food in Taiwan! It's the first time I've been there, so I feel more excitement than Hong Kong. But HK is not too bad too...because I know what to expect there - shopping and good food!

Stay tuned for some pictures!