My 1st Sewing Project

Little girl's modern dance teacher has requested for a black legging as 1 of her costume at the soon coming pre-school concert. I'd been searching high & low for it, there r plenty of purple, white & pink but couldn't get 1 black at all. At last, I managed to get it at Anakku, The Curve, a very simple, bare & expensive legging =>

It is so basic looking and I'm afraid little girl won't wanna wear it again after her concert

I promised little girl I'd do some magic on the legging, and I got these:

Pink color lace,

a rope of sparkling 'diamonds'

and 4 sparkling crystal buttons

Thus, with a few hours of 'ouch' (needle poking on finger), 'ooh man' (thread was straggled into knob), 'hai' (sewed at the wrong place) and .... (holding breath while sewing) I managed to get this =>

Doesn't it look much girlie & pretty now comparing to the 1st photo

A closer view, I'm so proud of myself ;p

P/s Little girl wear it to her modern dance class today, there r ppl asking me where did I buy the legging, see, it'd turned into an eye catching legging, I tell them where I gotta it and proudly announce that I added the lace myself, hehehe....

Hot Dog Bento (123)

I kept one of the plain bun for this from last nite's bread basket. This bento is a speedy, I only wasted time on the 2 tiny shaped sausages.

Don ask me what animal is this, I just stuffed in the split sausage into the bun and stick on the remaining nori

The left one is quite obvious is a frog, whereas the right one => I don know again ;p

As I don wanna the moist from the cucumber & tomato to make the bun soggy, I placed them in separately

Some ketchup & mayo for dipping and plum slices.

Little girl waked up very late today, having stuffy nose and keep sleeping back after waking up in the morning. It turned out that she is quite moody & lost of appetite today. She ate the 2 shaped sausages, 1 or 2 bites from the hot dog, all the cucumber slices and a few of the tomato.

Hot & Spicy Buns/Breads

Baked 2 batches of breads on Sun, little girl & picky eater Y requested animal shaped buns, made them happy with the followings:

2 elephant curry chicken buns

and 2 piggie curry chicken buns

Found a few sticks of leftover chili sausages in mum's fridge to make do this sausage buns

And a pack of nearly expiring spicy bbq pork slices (don know where mum & dad got it from) to make these

Made this 3 tiny hot dog buns plain with leftover dough

Mum cooked 2 pots of curry chicken, the wet version to go with rice and the dry version to stuff into the bread

I forgot to capture a photo b4 we feast on the curry chicken bread, sorry, that proofed that everybody just couldn't wait to tear the bread out for the curry, ;)

Brownies

I am crazy with chocolate lately, as little girl loves chocolate, I always like to see her devouring it happily & keep asking for more, especially the moist chocolate cake baked a week ago.

Saw Happy Home Baking's lovely brownies, can't wait to bake one for little girl!

Ingredients

150g semisweet chocolate, chopped

120ml sunflower oil (I used corn oil)

215g light brown sugar (I cut down further to 180g)

2 eggs

5ml vanilla essence

65g self-raising flour (I used 65g all purpose flour + 1 tsp baking powder)

4 tbsps cocoa powder (unsweetened)

4 tbsps milk chocolate chips

75g chopped walnuts (I omitted this too)

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly grease/line a shallow 19cm/7.5 inch square pan
2. Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water
3. With a electric mixer, beat together oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla essence in a mixing bowl
4. Stir in the melted chocolate then beat well until evenly mixed
5. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the batter. With a spatula, fold thoroughly until all the flour mixture incorporates into the batter
6. Stir in walnuts and chocolate chips. Mix well
7. Pour the mixture into the prepared square tin. Spread the mixture evenly to the edges. (The mixture is rather sticky and gooey)
8. Bake for about 30 - 35 mins until the top is firm and crusty. Cool in pan before cutting into squares

Usually when I baked cakes, little girl would give me a hand in the kitchen, either reading me the measurement of ingredients, sifting the flour, mixing the batter, etc As for this time, after step 4 above, I passed her a very important job - clean the chocolate bowl, well, not washing it but licking it, hehehe, she didn't disappoint me at all, the bowl was basically shine after her careful 'cleaning' process, ;p

I had a piece after cooling & cutting, the texture was a crusty at the outer layer & chewy at the center, and again, love the chocolate, but was rather too sweet to my liking. The next morning, gave 2 pieces to little girl as breakfast, she told me she dislike it (she ate a piece only), though is so chocolatie, :( I ate 2 pieces in the morning, the texture had changed, the outer layer became very crusty & crumbly and the center still remain moist, yum, but too sweet :( Everyone who ate this brownies complained that it was too sweet, next time must cut the sugar down to 150g.

Monsters Prawn Mee - Non Spicy Version

A backdated dinner in the month of Halloween. I cooked the prawn stock based on The momster's kitchen's recipe, a not so difficult recipe ;p I made it a non-spicy version as little girl can't take in any hot ingredients at all.

Little girl's monster prawn mee

Hubby's

Mine, with a spoonful of sambal dried prawn

Pork Stew & Pocket Monster Pasta Bento (122)

Cooked a big pot of pork on Wed nite with lots of tofu, konnyaku jelly, mushrooms and quail eggs. The preparation of this bento was rather fast, just cook the pasta, flavored it with the sauce from pork stew and assembled everything into the box. I used most of the time on crafting the apple, took me 10 minutes, I know, I'm pretty slow on this, sigh!

Pocket monster pasta flavored with sauce from pork stew & a bit of soya sauce

Little girl has been crazy with pocket monster lately, when I saw this at Carrefour, couldn't hold myself back to give her a little surprise. She was so delighted to see the pasta and asked me to cook it right away, ;)

From top left: 2 quail eggs, 1 tofu, 3 mushrooms and tiny cubes of cut pork

Didn't include the konnyaku as little girl prefers the noodle version than this jelly/tofu type.

Checkered apple slices

Bought a big Washington apple on Tue for RM2.50, as I like the redness of the apple and it looked so juicy and crunchy too. However, during the crafting process, I was rather disappointed with the texture, not as crunchy as I tot, not nice!

Little girl leftover quite a lot again, half of the pasta, half of the stew assortments and totally forgot of the apple, :(

Drunken Chicken

This is a back dated dish I made a few weeks ago. I gotta recipe from a cook book namely "all about chicken". This is a easy recipe, just need to cook it a day b4 to get strong flavor. If u like alcohol drink or alcohol added to ur meal, then this is a superb dish.

Ingredients

2 pieces chicken thigh meat

1 tbsp wolfberries

5-6 slices huang qi (I omitted it)

Seasonings

6 tbsps fish sauce

1 cup shaoxing wine (I used 2 tbsp Hennessy & top the cup with home-made ginger wine)

Direction:

1. Cut away the bone from the thigh meat, then slit the meat halfway through the thickness, without cutting through. Add 3 tbsps of fish sauce and 1/4 cup of water, leave to marinate for 1 - 2 hours.
2. Roll up the chicken and wrap with aluminum foil, twisting the ends to seal. Make 2 rolls.
3. Bring water in the steamer to a boil, steam chicken rolls over medium heat for 45 - 50 minutes.
4. In a deep dish, pour in 3 tbsps of fish sauce, shaoxing wine and 1 cup of cold water and combine well. Add wolfberries and huang qi.
5. Once the chicken rolls are completely cooled, remove from the foil and soak chicken in the wine mixture together with the juice resulted from steaming the chicken.
6. Cover with cling wrap or a lid, refrigereate for 2 3 hours. Cut into slices to serve.

I'd say I had this 2 pieces of chicken thigh almost all by myself, as I didn't give it to little girl (as it contains alcohol) and hubby is one dislike the taste of alcohol, ;p ooh... yum...

Bacon Carbonara (121)

This is another simple and consider fast to make bento, I used about 20 minutes to get it done.

Crispy bacons & a fried quail egg r placed on top of creste pasta in creamy carbonara sauce

Hami melon balls and edamame

Little girl didn't eat much again today, ate only half of everything, :( The remaining went into my tummy as lunch, don wanna waste food.

Moist Chocolate Cake

I bought a Kenwood stand mixer last Tue, (thanks 2 Yew & Gene for the Jusco vouchers), in order to try out the new mixer, I got little girl to choose the type of cake to bake on Fri, and she chose this - Moist chocolate cake.

I went to Cold Storage during little girl's school time, thinking of buying a box of Hershey's coco powder and chocolate bar, however, I didn't see the brand, thus briefly took a tin of the trade mark Van houten coco powder from the shelf, paid and went home. Once home, while unpacking, to my horror that the said tin was not Van houten's at all, it was a brand called "Tudor" (it looks so close to the Van houten's)! What a careless me, didn't open my eye big enough, sigh! Gotta go back to Cold Storage to get it changed, what an incident!

I found the moist chocolate cake from My Kitchen, the cake is really moist and so full of chocolate flavor, this recipe is definitely a keep, little girl oledi reminded me again & again to bake her the cake next time, ;)

Moist Chocolate Cake

Ingredients (5' x 8' loaf pan)

1 cup cake flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup caster sugar (I cut down this by 2 tbsp)

2 large eggs

125g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

Chocolate Paste:
½ cup cocoa powder
½ tsp instant coffee (I excluded this)
¼ cup sugar (again cut it down by 2 tbsp)
½ cup hot water
¼ cup fresh milk
Pinch of salt
Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degree C. Grease the loaf pan and line the bottom with baking paper.
2. Chocolate Paste: Combine cocoa powder, instant coffee, sugar, hot water and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Whisk the mixture until the sugar is melted, then add in milk and mix well. Set aside for later use.
3. Sift together flour with baking powder for 2-3 times. Set aside.
4. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter together with sugar until creamy. Add in vanilla essence, and eggs one at a time. Beat until light and fluffy.
5. Fold in sifted flour in batches, alternate with chocolate paste. Start with flour and end with flour.
6. Bake for 45-50 minutes.
   
   
   

While the cake was baking, the hse was infused with chocolate aroma, it was pretty difficult for me not to eat a piece after it came out from the oven, ;p I cut the cake half (of course I did steal a slice, too tempting!) after cooling off and got each placed on a container cover (used the container upside down, as the following pic), this not only was easier for me to fill the cake with ganache, also to store it neatly and keep it away from the ants to party b4 little girl gotta see it in the morning (don have to buy any cake board or box).

Ganache

Ingredients

8 ounces (227 grams) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, cut into small pieces

3/4 cup (180 ml) heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons (28 grams) unsalted butter

1 tablespoons cognac or brandy (optional, I omitted)

Direction:

1. Place the chopped chocolate in a medium sized stainless steel bowl. Set aside.
2. Heat the cream and butter in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat. Bring just to a boil.
3. Immediately pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Stir with a whisk until smooth.
4. If desired, add the liqueur.

Read here for more details & tips.

As the ganache recipe makes enough to cover a 9 inch cake, I had plenty leftover, spooned it to little cups to make some sinful chocolate cups.

Chocolate anyone?

Bunnies Bento (120)

I received the quail egg mold and a multi expression seaweed puncher I bought from Bento Craft last Fri, didn't get to open up the package til Tue nite. Little girl told me she wanna have some quail eggs in her bento and chose the bunny this morning.

I didn't really time my bento today, just know that I was in kitchen for about an hour to prepare breakfast (will show the pic later) and bento at the same time.

The bunnies - made from quail eggs, ham and seaweed

Korean sesame seaweed onigiri

Little girl always ask me to make her this onigiri whenever we visited Jusco, cos the one auntie (the promoter) made was very delicious

Leftover chicken nuggets (from breakfast) bits and baby green peas with a dash of mayo

Hami melon balls

Bought a big hami melon from market yesterday, very sweet & juicy!

Mini plum tomatoes

Little girl didn't finish up the bento today, left quite a lot :( Could it be the breakfast again (she had a nugget pita melt, 1 onigiri and 1 cup of honey)? She gave 1 of the bunny to her best friend R, ate 2 onigiri, 1/2 of the green peas salad, left 4 hami melon balls and a tomato. I asked her to keep the remaining for her snack later, hope she will clean it up.

My breakfast bento, nugget pita melt and some plum tomatoes

Didn't have time for breakfast this morning, gotta tapao (pack) & munch while waiting for little girl in the school canteen.