Sandwich Bread

Baked 2 loaf of sandwich breads, 1 in a sandwich tin I just bought, and another 1 in loaf tin. I adapted the recipe from Alex Goh's Magic Bread.

This one was baked in sandwich tin, but I didn't wait til it raised fully, thus it wasn't really a square loaf =( Must give another try again...

This was baked in the loaf tin, it was shorter & fatter than the sandwich tin's.

A closer view of the sandwich bread...

after waited long for it to cool off, sliced to pieces...

please excuse me of the ugly looking sliced bread, I blamed it to the bread =p, as it is so soft n spongy...

another closer view of the inner super spongy bread.

Little girl requested to have marmite & butter spread on the bread for her supper:

Me: How was the bread?

LG: Soft.

Me: Does it taste like Gardenia's?

LG: Not really... * gave another bite * this is sweeter...

Me: Which one do u like?

LG: This one!

Hahaha.... little girl so 'bei min' (give face, or appreciated) =)

The sandwich tin I used (20 x 11 x 11)

Flossy Milk Shake Bun & American Butter Cheese Bread

Baked 2 batches of breads on Sun, again playing with the recipes gotta from sifu Alex Goh's Magic Bread.

The 1st batch:

Flossy milk shake bun

(funny why he name it milk shake, as it has noting to do with milk shake?)

And the 2nd batch:

American butter cheese bread

The inside of them:

Hehehe... looks ugly isn't it, cos I was in a rush while wrapping in the fillings, they all stayed at the bottom of the buns. The buns r very soft & fluffy, the fillings r sweet, milky, with a hint of salty and very buttery, but some found the taste weird.

The cheese bread is very fluffy, little girl likes this very much, she kept asking me where was the cheese, there was no sign of the cream cheese, not even the taste ;( will add some cheddar cheese next time.

This was a cute version of the American butter cheese bread I baked for little girl, in a mini chiffon cake mold.

Overall, the recipes from Magic Bread I tried so far have given me plenty of successful soft & fluffy breads, really love this book now.

DIY 3D Stickers

As little girl started her holiday early (due to few H1N1 cases reported) n we preferred not to bring her out to crowded places, she stuck at home felling terribly bored. I let her made some 3D sticker with the following materials (I learned it from 生活智慧王):

A bottle of white glue, some water color paint, plastic plate, tooth picks...

a plastic and some beautiful drawings...

As I'm one who is not good in free hand drawing, I traced the drawings or characters that little girl wanna from her sticker books, comics or magazines.

a closer look of the drawing...

after filling it with colors, waiting for drying up.

Others little girl made for her cousin Y

more for herself...

she made this sometimes ago...

to beautify her study chair.

Introducing Grains to Family

In order to improve hubby & little girl's health, I'd tried all ways to introduce grains to our meals.

There was once I heard from my aunt that she cooked rice with barley, it is not only more nutritious, also enhance the taste of rice. I tried adding a bit of barley into rice, both of them didn't give me any fuss, and gradually I added more, and til now I added a handful of barley/wheat to a cup of rice. At the beginning, little girl asked me 'What is that?" meantime pointing to the cooked barley among the rice, after informing her that they r barley, she said she like it and since then she would question me 'why the rice is white today?' whenever I forgot to add in the barley/wheat =)

Here is the goodness of barley, sorry that it is in Chinese.

Then, one day, when I was buying barley, I discovered this wheat for making wheat porridge (mak chok 麥粥), I tried cooking it with rice too, it doesn't taste any different from barley.

Both barley & wheat r slightly chewy after cooking, u may need to chew a bit longer than rice, thus I believe it it a good excercise for our cheek too ;p

Here is the goodness of wheat, again it is in Chinese.

Little girl used to eat wholemeal bread since toddler until hubby introduced her the white bread, she started refusing wholemeal bread =( I explained to little girl about the goodness of wholemeal bread and even emailed hubby this link, then both of them have agreed on buying loaf of white and wholemeal bread alternately, phew! After started on baking bread, I'd always try to add in wholemeal flour too, but hubby always complain that the breads r dense & dry after keeping for more than 1 day. Hopefully with sifu Alex Goh's new book - Magic Bread, these problems may be solved.

Then, both of them dislike drinking leong shoi, especially those with strong herbal smell or taste. They even refuse simple drink like barley water * roll eyes * Therefore, I tried adding barley to some soups (like this one), at least they wouldn't give me any complains.

Do u have any interesting ways on adding grains to ur meals? Please do share with me.

Durian Butter Cake

Durian Butter Cake

My MIL loves durian, and whenever she ate one which was very delicious, she'd keep a few for us in the freezer, however, hubby & me don really fancy frozen durian (we'd told her not to keep for us, but she still insist), thus she'd either gave them away or kept them in freezer longer. I felt a bit sorry when I saw a box in the freezer thus decided to use them for baking cakes .

I adapted the recipe from Wendy Kor's Baking Recipe - Cakes' Talk, it is rich with durian, soft and moist. If comparing with the Condensed Milk Pound Cake I baked few weeks ago, the pound cake was so dry and coarse.

the texture

My SIL couldn't resist to cut the cake when it was just out from the oven, it tasted a bit dry when it was still hot, but after resting for a day, it turned moist, yum, I ate a lot for breakfast =p

P/s Little girl's school has declared close on Mon after discovering another 2 suspected case of H1N1, therefore there won't be any bento posting until Sept. Happy holiday!

Butter & Sugar Bread

Butter & sugar bread

Read from other blog that Sifu Alex Goh has a new book - Magic Bread. Went to Chang Tong last Wed and found it! Of course gotta try the breads out since spent money buying the book, so here is this butter & sugar bread.

The book

Sifu's version...

my version... any different?

Verdict: The breads r soft, little girl said they r delicious, I love it too. The bread stay soft even after the next day, yummy!

Watermelon Skins & Sugared Wintermelon Sweet Soup

Some of u from FB (Facebook) oledi aware that there is a H1N1 case reported in little girl's pre-school on Wed. The school has closed the affected class but hubby & me decided to let little girl skip school til this weekend, I know we acted a bit too paranoid but it's better be safe than sorry.

Thus there was no bento yesterday, but here is a sweet soup I wanna share which I cooked on Wed when my throat felt a bit irritating after returning from the preschool (being paranoid again =p)

It is a simple soup, just boil watermelon skin & sugared winter melon (糖冬瓜) together. After cooking it, I let it chilled in the fridge, it tasted marvelous & refreshing too.

Believe it or not, the itch from my throat was vanished after consuming it! Amazing right? Just 1 little advice, don't drink it b4 u sleep, cos these soup may trigger u to urinate more, it may affect ur sweet dream =p

For those of u able to read Chinese, here is a posting on goodness of winter melon. Also, I found something informative here & here on watermelon & winter melon.

Stuffed Yau Char Kuai Bento (103)

Last nite, my SIL (and hubby) has told me the yau char kuai selling at SS2 market (in the morning) r very crisp & nice, this bento has jumped into my brain immediately. Since I need to check somethings out there this morning, I decided to get some yau char kuai for breakfast & bento. The bento was completed in less than 15 minutes.

I stuffed the yau char kuai with ham and cucumber, it was tricky as the ham & cucumber roll was too big to tuck in =)

4 pieces of halved fish balls

2 fruity jelly little girl got from pre-school (classmate's birthday party) last Fri and some watermelon slices.

It was a small bento, little girl managed to finish all her food today, I'm so happy! =p

Black Sauce Noodle Bento (102)

This was a speedy bento, took only 15 minutes to get everything done, ;)

3 octopus sausages laying on top of noodle and vegetable which I mixed with bit of oyster sauce, tomato sauce, dark soy sauce, soy sauce and garlic oil.

Hooray! Nectarine is back! It is one of our favorite fruit!

Little girl ate the nectarine 1st when she opened her bento in school :) She finished all the nectarine & sausages, left half of the noodle & vegetable but she said she wanna keep it for her snack later. However, by the end of the day, she still left a tiny bit of those.

Tomatos, Mushrooms & Minced Pork Pasta Bento (101)

Made little girl a small bento as she has just recover from flu. The bento was ready in less than 15 minutes, as I only need to cook the pasta & quail eggs, reheat the minced pork sauce (store in freezer), and cut the pear.

I used crest shaped pasta, mixed with lot of minced pork sauce, top with a few edamame (for color)...

2 halved quail eggs for more protein (and color)...

3 cherries...

a quarter of pear for extra vit-C and more edamame.

Little girl left 1/4 of the pasta and a cherry, considered ok from her usual appetite.

Condensed Milk Pound Cake

I baked this cake last wed, thot of using it to make a picnic bento for the next day, however..... I saw this recipe from here on wed morning, baked it quickly after sending little girl to school. I found the batter of the cake very dry, but I didn't add in any extra liquid, just dumped into the oven just like the recipe told. It rose up nicely, I cut the cake after 15 minutes of cooling (couldn't resist myself any longer), not very moist, but bearable.

As I said earlier, this cake was supposed to bring to picnic the next day, but little girl has fallen ill after I picked up my cousin & her daughter CW from the airport (coming from HK), CW was ill too. Therefore, we canceled the picnic trip. Little girl had very high fever at the nite of Wed and the entire Thu, luckily the fever was gone by thu's midnite. Kids were recovering on Fri, none of the symptom on fever returning at all, phew! Good for them, as we'd planned to bring them to PD for the weekend. As for the cake, we ate it for breakfast and tea.

P/s I'd sprinkled some toffee bits to the batter b4 baking it.