Lemon Biscuits

Friday was the last day for one of my colleagues in my office. She is transferring to another department and thus would be moving to another office. What a pity, I will have one less lunch company. She is one of the few ones I feel more comfortable talking to in the office.

For the whole week, I was thinking of what I could give her. Cupcakes....chocolate flavour would be nice, but oh dear, the doctor has advised her not to take chocolates or "heaty" stuff for the time being due to some health reasons.

I finally decided to make some biscuits and put them into a nice jar, with a nice ribbon. But by the time I decided on this, I did not have much time, and I did not manage to get any nice jars. Without chocolate and nuts as ingredients, I thought I could use lemon to make lemon biscuits.

My small oven could only handle one small tray at a time, so I spent the whole night baking the whole dough. I started at 8pm, and finished almost at midnight. I was almost going to fall asleep while waiting for the last few trays of biscuits to be baked.

But it was worth it. I like the lemon taste. I made several shapes - rolled into small balls, rolled into "S" shaped, some were cut with cookie cutter. The small balls looked the least pretty, but they tasted the best. One bite and the lemon taste was there instantly. Those cut with cookie cutters had the faintest lemon taste, it's funny and I wonder why. They are all from the same dough. But I sure will roll them all into balls next time I do this, saves more time!

Check out the recipe in my recipe blog.

Banana pancakes with caramel banana syrup

I was in a banana-ish mood on Saturday. I bought a bunch of bananas, choosing a very ripe bunch on purpose. I made banana smoothie on Saturday, but I couldn't wait to eat the rest of the bunch.

On Sunday, I was the first to wake up, as usual. After washing up and finding nothing to do, I woke dear up and asked if he wanted pancakes or muffins. He mumbled pancakes. Ok, I told him to go back to sleep and I would wake him when they are ready.

Happily, I went to weigh the ingredients, and I realised weighing ingredients is the step which usually takes up most of my time. Not only am I not in good in maths (when it comes to halving recipes), I am always careless and slow when it comes to conversion of units, even though I prepared an Excel table to make things easier for myself. As long as it involves numbers, my mind works like a snail. It's no wonder god did not make me a millionaire...by the time I finish counting all my money, I would have celebrated my seventy-ninth birthday and probably do not need the money anymore.

So back to my pancakes. When I finally got the ingredients ready (or so I thought), I started work. As I was poured the sugar to make the syrup, something told me I had measured the sugar wrongly. The recipe I had printed from the internet was a little confusing to me. So, I added more sugar, only to be realise later that what I had initially measured was correct!

By this time, dear had woken and came to see what I had done. I took my time to make the pancakes one by one, there were eight of them in all. Let's say about 2 minutes on each side, 4 minutes for each pancake, about 32 minutes for 8 pancakes...not forgetting the time I had took to weigh ingredients and make the syrup.

Dear almost went back to sleep when I quickly shouted "pancakes are ready!"

He did not regret the wait. The pancakes were great, though the syrup was obviously too sweet (with double the normal quantity of sugar). I love them too! It was brunch for us, and it filled our stomachs almost the whole day, till before dinnertime.

And after washing up, the first thing I did was quickly changed the recipe to a format that my snail-brain understands better. :p

Ham and cheese mini buns

The past weekend was a wet one.... I mean the weather. It was raining on and off. I was watching the reruns of one of my favourite shows, intending to go out for window shopping/strolling/aimless loitering with dear at Vivocity after that. Just as the program was about to finish, it began to pour again. What better thing to do than to stay indoors?

I stood at the window watching the rain. I love to watch the rain. I could have pulled up a chair and sat by the window whole day, enjoying the cool wind, saying out the brand and model of every car that went by (it was tough! It's an expressway and the cars were continuous!) and watching the wipers of the cars below doing their left-right-left-right routine. When I was young, I would stretch out my legs and move my feet left and right, imagining they were the wipers of cars. For what? I do not know. It's this crazy, I-love-cars thingy in me, that exists till today.

But I decided I did want to spend the whole Saturday imagining my feet were wipers. So, I picked up one of my recipe books on breads, and chose to make a sweet dough. I love breads. Whenever I pass by the local bakeries, I would stop and look and always could not resist the temptation to buy a few, especially when in recent years, many of them came up with mini versions. For about $2.80, I could choose 5 different buns, and that totally satisfy me.

I happen to have ham and cheese in the fridge and they came in handy. It was also a good decision to make bread, as I could make use of the milk powder and remaining bread flour, which were reaching their expiry dates soon.

This is only the second time I am making bread, but I remember when I used this recipe the first time, I ended up with so many sausage and tuna buns! I remember being so amused at the proving of the dough, when it just grew and grew non-stop, like Jack and the Beanstalk (hey! it rhymes!). But silly me, I forgot to use my Kitchenaid to knead the dough...yes, I knead it by hand! How silly, no wonder my arms ache.

This time, I halved the recipe and made each bun smaller. For some reason, the dough did not grow that much too. At least it did stop growing. I ended up with 6 mini ham buns, 4 cheese buns, 2 plain ones (for my mum who eats neither ham or cheese). My guinea pigs gave it a thumbs up.

Click here for recipe of sweet dough and add filling as you like.

Mango muffin flop

I like mangoes, and I bought 3 of them the other day. On that very night, I ate one mango...yummy and juicy! I kept the other 2 so that they would ripen more.

The next night, I decided to make mango muffins. Mango muffins? It was a totally new idea to me and I have never heard of it. But I found a recipe on the net and decided to try it out. That was why I went to buy the mangoes in the first place.

I wanted to print the recipe and then start baking. Of all times, the printer ran out of ink. So, I scribbled the recipe on a piece of paper with my antsy handwriting. You know how our handwriting gets worse nowadays when all we do is type and text on the handphone..but ok, let's not go into that now.

Excitedly, I cut, mashed the juicy mangoes, prepared everything according to the recipe and put them into the oven. The mixture was rather wet, I thought, but I went ahead anyway. Waited anxiously by the oven, hoping it would rise high. When it was rising, I shouted "it has risen!" Dear came to take a look and I said "come, share this moment with me!"...and we both stared inside the oven as if we were looking at some spectacular happening, hahahaha!

When it has slightly cooled, I tasted one. I was thoroughly disappointed. The inside was wet, though I had already extended the time. What am I to do with a 2-cup-flour mixture!? And I had another tray just popped into the oven, with 2 extra big muffins. The muffins were so dense, by the time they were all cooled, I was convinced that someone can get bruised if I throw the muffins at them.

Dear said it looks like the "huat kueh" (prosperity cake) that we usually use in praying to the gods. Not a bad idea, for once, the gods have a mango flavoured one, I said!

I checked the recipe again, and then read all the comments and reviews! Yes, I had forgot that someone had warned about the quantity of milk being too much, but I had forgotten about it.

Anyway, I took a picture of it, but I will not post the recipe until I have got it right...and I totally dislike the feeling of such flops. Feel so bad about wasting my ingredients.

My birthday (chocolate) cupcakes

This evening, I came back later than usual from work. So, we had dinner later than usual. By the time we cooked, ate, and washed up, it was about 8pm.

Still, I wanted to make cupcakes. It was quite a wrong decision, in the sense that I stood there to make the cupcakes all night long. Making the cupcake and making the frosting is so tiring.

By the time I'm done with washing up (there's so much to wash for cupcakes! And so oily!), it was just nice, 11.59pm. When I snapped the picture, it was 12 midnight, MY BIRTHDAY!

Happy birthday to me!

I wanted to bring a few to the office for my colleagues, but dear said why give to the people who do not appreciate them? Let's keep them for ourselves, haha. It's quite true. He loves the buttercream....my colleagues would have scrapped them all off, even though I had already spread it very thinly.

*notice my silly penguins making their rounds again*

Baked Miso Fish

For dinner the other day, I made Baked Miso Fish. I first tasted this dish in a chinese restaurant many years ago and has liked the taste ever since.

I like to eat fish, especially oily fish like cod and salmon, so this is wonderful. It was simple and fast, yet it tasted very good.

I got the recipe from a cookbook I have, but I adjusted the quantities of the miso paste and sugar.

The pictures could have been better though....when I took them out of the oven, I just snapped 2 pictures and couldn't wait to tuck in.

(afternote: I made the dish again and retook the pictures. They look nicer, but the fish skin was not crispy :( ...)
(afternote 2: I recooked this dish..again! Retook the pictures, it's less hideous than the one below. Revisit this dish here)

For the full recipe, go here.