Bake Cook & Love

~ Life IS this simple

Monthly Archives: October 2012

Coconut Raisin Butter Cake

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by xTina in Bake-s

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desiccated coconut, loaf cake

 

I had recently gotten 4 small loaf pan from Diaso and couldn’t wait to test them out. Though with a slight flu, I couldn’t resist going on a date with Mr Oven. He never fails to make me feel better.

 

This recipe is really simple. I doubled the recipe from my Coconut Raisin Cupcake, and in no time, I have 4 small loaf pan in the oven. And 30mins later, I have 4 loafs of amazing tasting cake. During the middle of the bake, I remove the pans from the oven and attempt to ‘cut’ a line in the middle to have that loaf-cake-looking-line. But somehow, my line wasn’t very distinct looking. Nonetheless, it helps with the cutting after that.

 

This is simply delicious! I love the texture of the desiccated coconut and the mix of sweetness and sourness from the raisin. And not to forget the softness of the buttery cake. They are really a pair of prefect couple in this butter cake marriage. I couldn’t stop popping the cubes of cake into my mouth. And surprisingly, the pan is really a breeze to use. The cake can be easily remove after baking for cooling. Really a good buy. (p.s. i greased the pan and laid with grease-proof paper for easy removal of the cake)

would you like to have a bite?

Ocean Spoon @ SAF Yacht Club (Changi)

29 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by xTina in Food Steps

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saf yacht club

Over the past weekend, my team at work had a 2D1N retreat at SAF Yacht Club (Changi). It was our first retreat and spending more than 24hrs straight together. It was fun! And I have my first overnight MJ. A true Chinese now (most of the Chinese friends I know play MJ).I kept telling myself that I must remember to take a photo of the main door of the restaurant but I forgotten still. O well. Anyway, there’s only one restaurant at SAF Yacht Club (Changi). Otherwise, you can always liaise with the clubhouse for BBQ. If both are out for you, please get your own food. There’s no food available any where near the place.

We (12 adults, 4 kids) are all very full from our ‘buffet lunch’ where we ordered and brought food in, there’s roast pig, roast chicken, roast duck and fried noodles and bee hoon. So instead of ordering seafood and meat dishes, we went for something light.

Fish Maw Thick Soup. Small, $8. This is suppose to serve only 4 pax, but two serving of these can’t be finish by all of us. Nonetheless, I assure you this is very tasty. The taste of the soup is exactly that of shark’s fin soup of a very good hotel/ restaurant. Been ages since I had such a flavorful bowl of thick soup. I’m guessing it’s due to the crab meat in it. The fish maw had been prepared nicely without the oil taste. I only wish I can stomach more of this. Kung Bo Boneless Chicken. Small, $12. Not well received. There’s not much taste to this but pure spiciness. Can skip this.

Chinese Spinach with 3 types of eggs (三色蛋). Snall, $12. Seeing this, I’m reminded of a similar dish I had at Tung Lok, so you can imagine, it’s hard to beat that standard. However, this is pretty good too. Good to have with kids as there’s lots of gravy. But I wish they are more refine with their preparation, the eggs can be cut into smaller pieces of these big chunks of century eggs and a messy salted egg.

Salted Egg String Beans. Small, $10. We all love this! Each string beans are coated with a crispy layer of salted egg yolk and egg mixture. Imagine Deep-fried Butter Prawns with salted egg yolks in the butter mixture. It is something similar to that. A tad oily though. But generally, a very well-like vegetable dish. Both kids and adults will love this. Fu Rong Omelette. Small, $8. Very normal omelette. Nothing special and nothing bad to say about this. The only downside is that Mr Boyfriend found egg shell bits in his serving.

Generally, after a very meaty meal in the afternoon, I welcome all the vegetables in this dinner. Scanning through the menu, they do have a very comprehensive menu from Asia to Western to Seafood. I would love to try their seafood menu but sadly we are all too full to do that. Price wise, it is still pretty reasonable. But I doubt anyone will specially make a trip down to the clubhouse for dinner, but it’s really a place to go to feel you are away from the busy city and have a view for dinner (dinning by the sea).

Would I want to dine there again? Yes. I will if I ever get a chance to go there again.

Ocean Spoon
110 Tanah Merah Coast Road
SAF Yacht Club S(498800)
Tel: 6389 3783

California Creamery Nacho Cheese Sauce

28 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by xTina in Convenient Food

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nacho cheese sauce, tortilla chips

Tortilla Chips had always been my favorite ever since my first tray of nachos at GV. But sadly, this heavenly delicious snacks is only available at cinema. I can’t seem to find the cheese sauce any where. So please pardon the photo quality, I was too excited with what I found at 7-11 and didn’t bother to use a proper camera or a proper background.

I found a pack of On The Go pack of tortilla chips with cheese sauce packed by California Creamery Nacho Cheese Sauce! But it doesn’t come cheap (edited: but pretty reasonable as it’s hard to come by), the pack consist of 2 small box of nacho cheese sauce and a small pack of chips, cost $4.50 at 7-11. It seems like a new item as there’s no price tag, but I just love it too much to bother asking how much it cost first.

I’m not sure whether all the 7-11 sell this, I found mine at a neighborhood 7-11 at Jurong East. And it makes a heart-melting supper snacks for me.

Previously I did see this individual packed nacho cheese sauce selling in a pack of 4s at supermarket, but it wasn’t there again when I went back. So either the stock brought in is in small amount or it really sells so fast! If memory did not fail, it’s $4plus for a pack at supermarket. And the best way to have the cheese sauce is warm it up in the microwave, I did mine for 50s, stirring every 10s. Taste-wise, it seems to have a hint of heat/ spiciness in them, and I love that its not overly salty.

I couldn’t stop pop-ing the nachos into my mouth while watching drama. A very fattening snacks to have in the middle of the night, but it’s not always you can have such a snacks at the comfort of your home (in my case, bed). It’s too yummy to think about the fats gained.

All nachos-lovers should try this. Or at least buy the individually-packed nacho cheese sauce and a separate big pack of tortilla chips to go with it, or serve it over a plate of fries and you get cheese fries! You won’t regret this, I promise.

90 Posts

27 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by xTina in Uncategorized

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journey of discovery

I actually thought of writing this short write-up after I need my 100th post. But today, I just suddenly felt for this little space of mine, and the hobby and favourite past-time of mine.

This space was initially started to share with any interested reader the review of the convenient food that we can find in supermarket (e.g. processed frozen food, instant noodles etc) as I basically live on them if I don’t wish to have outside food. Though almost as unhealthy as they are ‘processed’ but I can threw in other stuffs to ‘balance’ it out and not all processed food are unhealthy nowadays, for instance, there’s the chinese dumplings and frozen vegetables and fruits. Since I buy them so often, might as well share my views.

But after starting this space, my heart and mind slowly went back to baking and cooking. This two are still my love in life. Though there’s little possibility that this space will become popular due to my bakes and cooks as there’s much more established spaces out there, I just wish to note down and share my little journey of discovery with anyone that interested.

To me, both baking and cooking is not just simply ensuring the ingredients are edible and accepted by majority. Of course the main objective is ensure the end product is tasty to prevent any wastage, but to me, the process of baking and cooking taught me lots. Little lessons that can be apply to our daily life too.

For instance, before we start baking or cooking a new recipe, we would not have a single idea how the end product will be, as there’s multiple steps to get a satisfied result. But, we just have to try, don’t we? Otherwise we will never even know whether we can succeed or not. But before even starting the preparation stage, we got to find that little (or at times HUGE) courage within ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and try new and more complicated recipe. The result might not be satisfying or exceed your expectation!

Just like Life. If we never try, we will never know what will be the outcome. But unlike baking and cooking, the price to pay for in life, should there be any mistake or failure, will generally cost you more than a failure in baking or cooking (think throwing away of awful tasting food or wastage of ingredients VS a scolding from clients and bosses and OTs). Of course it’s heartbreaking to fail a bake or cook, but the lesson learnt is great – there’s always room for improvement. As similar with Life.

So in many ways, Baking and Cooking had enriched my life and taught me much more than creating tasty snacks and food for my family and friends. It heal my tired soul and mind and enable me to share the joy of the successful end products with people around me.

Baking and Cooking is definitely a huge part of what makes up this little girl who is typing this. Definitely not just a simple past-time, it’s much more than that.

And I’m truly thankful to those who visited this little space and hope everyone who visited find the posts useful in a way or the other. I definitely wish to hear any comments from you, who are visiting this little space.

Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake

22 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by xTina in Bake-s

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cream cheese mixture

Like all my first bakes of something new, my heart will always be uneasy from the point I start preparing the batter to putting it into the oven to removing the product from the oven and finally, tasting it. Similarly for this bake. My heart had been unease for quite a good part of the day. Mr Boyfriend said – fail then fail ba.

I didn’t know whether I did the egg white correctly or not – soft peak. I only tried stiff peak before! So I can only cross my fingers and toes. And guess what? It wasn’t too wrong!! It raised perfectly and didn’t collapse either. The only thing was…

It cracked! I read through some blogs and there’s two possibilities – egg whites and temperature. But it didn’t collapse after removing from the oven, so I think it’s more likely to be the temperature was too high in the oven, hence causing the cake to raise too much and eventually cracked.

love the height

What you need (as seen at The Little Teochew)

(A)
250g cream cheese
50g butter
100ml milk

(B)
60g cake flour (sieve)
20g corn flour (sieve)
1/4 tsp salt (i omit)
6 egg yolks

(C)
6 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tar tar
140g sugar

Method
1. Prepare a 8” round pan (either removable base or springform), greased and line with baking paper (see Cook UK). Wrap base with aluminum foil to prevent seepage (i wrapped just in case and it did not seep!)
2. Preheat oven at 160degree C with 4 muffin mould filled with water at the four corners (i’m thankful for this method instead of water bath as i didn’t have suitable pans)
3. Using double-boil method, melt (A)
4. After (A) cooled, fold in (B) and mix well (sieve mixture if desired for a finer texture)
5. Whisk egg whites with cream of tar tar till foamy and add in sugar. Whisk till soft peaks form
6. Fold in egg whites into cream cheese mixture in 3 portions and mix well
7. Transfer to pan and bake for 1hr 10min
8. Leave to cool in oven with door ajar for 30mins or more to prevent sudden change in temperature (might cause the cake to collapse)
9. Serve warm or chill (i prefer warm, it’s softer and more cotton-like)

This might not be the best looking Japanese Baked Cheesecake, but, to me it already is! Though there’s still big air pockets/ holes, it’s alright! I’m satisfied as a first try already. Despite the cracks during baking, it did not affect the texture. It is indeed cotton soft! So soft that I was shocked. So soft that I wish they are in small cubes so I can keep pop-ing them into my mouth. Close enough to store-bought and even better, because there’s taste of ‘home’ and my sweat.

Why is this cake pretty costly? Because it’s kinda tedious melting the cream cheese. And it’s pretty temperamental.

Will I make this again? Yes! But I really hope I can manage the temperature better to prevent the crack next time. The melt-in-your-mouth texture is definitely worth getting ‘fatter’ for. I couldn’t stop eating.

want a bite?

You don’t try, you will never know
As it is in Life, it is in Baking

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