when it comes to baking, you just need a little more patience.

Woo, I recently got hooked to baking again!

Initially, I just wanted to bake carrot cake, as I chanced upon the recipe in Women’s Weekly. I remembered that my bestie (Bangala!) loves carrot cake.

Apple Decoration for my Carrot Cake :D

Mr. Popcorn Robot loves Carrot Cake!

The recipe was unusually healthy. There was no need for butter but it was replaced with vegetable oil. Instead of using plain flour, I decided to use the healthy wholemeal flour! This is a live example of girls and their obsession with healthy ingredients to bake/cook unhealthy food. (:

Anyways, wholemeal flour is recommended to replace plain flour. Substitute maybe ½ a cup of plain flour for wholemeal flour. Wholemeal flour is not only healthy, but it gives a nutty flavour to cookies or cakes. As I only had one egg in my fridge, I could only make 3 ramekins of carrot cake.

Surprisingly, my second attempt of making a cake turned out well. Why was it a surprise to me? Because I tried making wholemeal banana cake for the first attempt and it failed miserably. My sister and my mom were so pleased with the carrot cake that they wanted more. But there was only 3 ramekins. ):

So, I decided to go to http://community.livejournal.com/bakebakebake/ as recommended by Women’s Weekly for people who simply love baking. That community is simply such a joy such for me! As a amateur in baking, I cannot follow these hard recipes by renowned chefs. But the recipes stated in this community were quite simple. I managed to source for easy recipes but sounded astonishingly delicious.

As I had no egg or butter in my fridge, I had to source for recipes that did not need these ingredients.

I managed to find the recipe for my favourite cheesecake, which is tofu cheesecake! (: This tofu cheesecake is healthy as instead of using cheese or oreo cookies, it uses tofu as a top substitute. I managed to bake granola biscuits as the base of my cheesecake. Sounds healthy, right? (: Instead of using sugar, I used honey as it is a better substitute. The tofu cheesecake was relatively easy to make as I only need to blend the stated ingredients and pour it on top of my granola biscuit base (:

Tofu Cheesecake!

Fruit Paradise Decoration For my Tofu Cheesecake!

Fruity Sunshine Rays Tofu Cheesecake!

Also, I managed to do a batch of raisin cookies. Initially, I got quite turned off by the idea of putting soya milk as one of the ingredients. Last time for the first attempt of the wholemeal banana cake, I used soya milk, as the result was horrible as the oil from the soya milk could not blend in well with the cake and the texture of the banana cake was not moist but hard because the soya milk could not give the cake a creamy feel. Anyhow, I did my batch of raisin cookies and once again, voila! It was crispy on the outside and moist in the inside! I loved the raisin cookies!

cookies with sunmaid raisin sunshine! :D

I tried to make another batch of cookies, oatmeal cookies as well as jam cookies. The oatmeal cookies tasted rather bland and a little difficult to chew as I did not use the instant oats but I used the wholegrain oats which needed a longer time to bake. The jam in the middle section of the cookie gave it a sweet taste to it, however, it was not cloyingly sweet but it tasted just nice. (:

Jam And Oatmeal Cookies (:

All these recipes also suited my dad’s palates as he has diabetes and the ingredients used were not granulated sugar or castor sugar but honey or brown sugar.

If I could have a dream, I would love to be a stay-home mom and bake for my family! HAHA!

Cheezelmomeezel,
Cereal

Friends

Today, as I was sorting out my 2008 and 2009 photos. It was seriously astonishing how people change! The changes are due to their appearances as well as their characters.

There are people who often appeared in my 2008 photos but have yet disappeared when the New Year (2009) began. Yet, there are people who have remained during the both years. In addition to the 2009 collection, there were new faces whom I’ve tried hard to keep in contact with.

It amazes me how the friends whom I was not even close with during the secondary school years are my good friends during these polytechnic years. Even though we belonged to the same school (SCGS), the classes were probably in close proximity, but yet, our paths never crossed till we entered into polytechnic. Example of these friends are Xinyan, Zhiying and Audrie. Although we did not belong in the same polytechnics or junior colleges, we were closer than we were during the SCGS times.

zhiying and i (2007)

zhiying and i(2009)

It is also fascinating that I’ve still managed to keep in contact with some friends ever since primary and secondary school. Jazreel…my primary 2 hello kitty friend. Yvonne, my primary 4 friend, we created this campfire which was made of straws for our first primary 4 project. Abigail, my desert buddy as well as Saturday Morning Walks buddy. Gloria, my big sister who has always been there for me since the day I met her. Amelia, this funny valentine's day dinner girl as well as bangkok FACEB buddy! Angela, whoooo, this best friend of mine.. there were so many struggles and differences we faced during the NCC days, but we’ve really persevered till today (: I still remember the day when Angela and I were separated. When she was posted to St. Andrews Junior College and I went to Serangoon Junior College, we spent many hours crying on the phone, I was sitting in my room and she was crying at her house car park area.

abigail and i(beginning of 2009)

abigail and i (end of 2009)

amelia, jazreel and i (2007)

amelia, jazreel and i (2009)

angela, emily and i (2007)

angela and i (2009)

Whether or not these friends last till the day I breathe my last breath, I’m not exactly sure myself. But they were definitely friends that were blessed by God. (:

My Love For Food

This is about my ravings about deserts and other food. I just came back from breakfast at Shunfu Mart with my dad and sister. I tried the abacus yam balls, it was $3 a plate! What a rip-off. The mushroom pieces weren’t big enough for the juices to penetrate into the mushrooms, but yet at the same time, the yam balls were smooth and tasty though.

Due to my dissatisfaction about my breakfast, (breakfast is the meal where I happily gorge myself) I decided to try oneh oneh from “Bake Fresh” by Tina Sum as well as the egg tarts. I think I have a fetish for egg tarts. Be it Portuguese egg tarts or the normal bright yellow ones, whenever my eyes are fixed on them, I just have to taste them.

Let me first comment about the oneh oneh. At first, I had my doubts about it, as it had looked pathetically small. The tag in front of the oneh oneh stated “3 for $1”, I asked the shopowner if it was tasty, she smiled at me and nodded her head. I thought to myself, “Since I had asked such a rhetorical question, I have to purchase it now.” So, it was more of an unwilling purchase by a reluctant customer. I also bought the cute bright yellow egg tart.

I decided to leave the egg tart alone first and devour the oneh oneh. I had wanted to leave the best for the last. I bit into the green ball with white coconut around it. It tasted good. It was succulent and the brown sauce was flowing down my throat in a satisfying manner. Initially, I wanted to save the other 2 for my project work later. But temptation had set in and I finished them off. Next up was the egg tart. Much to my disappointment, the crust wasn’t crispy and the egg filling was not cloyingly sweet. Not that I like my egg filling to be too sugary, but it just did not have much sweet taste to it.

It’s nearly impossible to find a good egg tart in Singapore though. Although, I had eaten one at the Takashimaya food fair. It had cost me $2 a piece but yet, the crust was thick and crispy and the egg filling was moist and sweet.

If I could choose, I would rather have deserts as my regular meals. But that is if provided I do not balloon up after the sweet main courses.

I remember a few weeks ago, I met up with Abigail to eat at Miss Clarity’s Café at Purvis Street. We ordered the caramel steamer, banana tart, mud ooze, bread and butter pudding as well as rhum baba.

The caramel steamer was nothing to boast about. But the banana tart was simply gorgeous. The tart was baked to a beautiful brown colour and the heat from the baked tart and bananas combined with the cold vanilla ice cream was the greatest match ever. It’s still my most favourite desert to date. Abigail and I could not stop “ooh”-ing and “aah”-ing at the deserts. We set our eyes on the mud ooze, which was literally oozing out chocolate from the chocolate brownie. Once the vanilla ice cream and the mud ooze goes into your mouth, you can immediately feel the sensation of happiness going down into your stomach. The ice cream immediately melts into your mouth, mixing together with the chocolate. The last desert we were impressed with was the bread and butter pudding, which was Abigail’s favourite. I loved how moist the desert was. Especially when we ate the pudding together with the special sauce, the combination of the two was good for our palates.

The desert that I was looking forward to but was deeply disappointed was the Rhum Baba. It looked great, it had two creamish white cakes with light brown sides and cream with berries coulisse. I suppose it could only satisfy the prepubescent, it showed goodness but tasted really weird. The cakes were rock hard and the cream was not cold. In addition, the sugar syrup that drenched the cakes was awful.

But all in all, the deserts from Miss Clarity’s were great. Next up, we went to search for the famous “Food For Thought” which was near Purvis Street. We opened the doors and the whole cosy café was filled with the aroma of baked pizzas. Although Abigail and I were only searching for deserts, the pizzas were tempting enough. The boss at the café was a nice gentleman who offered his advice on which deserts we should choose. I was enticed by the red velvet cake with cream cheese. But as we decided we wanted something different, we left the café but felt guilty due to the boss’ nice attitude towards his customers. Abigail and I made a pact to go back and patronise that place next time.

We went to Jidechi and decided to order their favourite desert, durian Puree served with fresh durian. Although the desert suited our palates, but perhaps we had previously stuffed ourselves too much, hence the durian puree was unable to satisfy both of us.

Deserts were made for mankind to get pleasure from. Hopefully, I can get my hands on the red velvet cake with cream cheese soon!

Cheezelmomeezel,
Cereal