Christmas Tree - 2009

We put on our christmas tree at the evening of 1st Dec this year, same old tree with same old balls and lights, with a slightest different:

Little girl is pointing it out to u....

Duck from Littlest pet shop

Little girl is a big fan of littlest pet shop's soft toys lately, she had begged hubby & cried once to get her this littlest pet shop VIP's doggie few months ago:



And when she found some new series at Ikano, she begged hubby again, she chose to have the duck last Mon, but we made her promised to unwrap/play with it only after her birthday or Christmas day, however we let her slept with it with the box on for a nite. She found a best place to hang it on the Christmas tree so that she able to touch and kiss it when she wakes up in the morning.

LG: Mummy, why u said Tweety is a duck?
Me: The label said it is a duck
LG: No, it is not a duck, it is a bird!
Me: It is a duck!
LG: Urrrrr..... Is a bird * showing a angry look *
Me: Ok, ok, ok.... Bird-lah!
LG: Yeah!!!!

Tadika Diyana

Due to safety reason and mutual agreement with hubby, I have yet to mention the name of little girl's pre-school. Since little girl has graduated, I would like to share with u more about the pre-school: Tadika Diyana.

I came across of Tadika Diyana 3 years ago after I did a search on the web. My 1st thot about the pre-school was it must be very expensive. However, after paying it a visit, I fell in love with it immediately, I like the school's environments, having its own hall, canteen, field, playgrounds, computer room, music room, library, day care and of course lots of class rooms.

Mega 2

Little girl was 1st going for the Montessori program, she was in Mega 2, who was taught by Ms Mei Fern (there is an article on Ms Mei Fern here, sorry Mei Fern, I have exposed u, hope u don mind). She is a pretty, soft-spoken and caring teacher. Little girl was fine during the 1st 2 weeks in the class, but started crying after I was late to pick her up 1 day. She cried only when she reached the door of M2, usually Ms Mei Fern would signal to me and scooped her into the class, and of course, little girl would screamed and cried more. It was a very tough time for me, most of the time, I would peeked from far to see her settled or sometimes even rushed to car and cried out loud myself :p silly ya? Little girl was famous as a cry baby since then, she cried every morning for close to 2 month, finally ended after some punishments and praises, phew! Anyway, Thank you, Mei Fern.

Mega 6 (5 years old)

Mega 8 (6 years old)

Then I enrolled little girl to the Mandarin session to get her ready for the Chinese primary school. She was in Mega 6, taught by Ms Lee. Ms Lee is a caring, responsible, and a bit strict, but I really like her teaching methods. Little girl didn't speak Mandarin b4 that, but after 1 month + with Ms Lee, during Chinese New Year, lots of my relative were surprised to see little girl communicating in Mandarin. Ms Lee really build up confident for little girl, not only on verbal communication, in proper written format as well.

Little girl was back to cry baby again at the beginning of the school year, it was only due to a male gym teacher, she felt uneasy with him I presumed. She would cling to Ms Lee, cried and not wanting to go to gym class. But after her gym teacher praised her once for not crying, she stopped the crying drama immediately!

I let little girl continued with Ms Lee after knowing that she'd teach the 6 yrs old this year. Throughout this 2 years, Ms Lee has not only taught little girl, she corrected me of some Chinese words too though I am one formally from Chinese school. Little girl speaks confidently in Mandarin now and able to complete her school works with less supervisions. I really appreciate all the efforts and times u put, Ms Lee, 謝謝你，李老師!

Left - school hall

Right - canteen

Center - field

Little girl had her gym, exercises class, school assembly, and some play times with her mates in the hall. At the beginning of this year, she asked to send her to the modern dance class which was conducted in this hall too. I am glad that I'd sent her as I was so happy & proud of her during her dance performance at the school concert.

We had our bento time at the canteen every Thursday of last year and every Monday & Thursday this year. Usually after sending little girl to her additional classes (kids yoga for Mon & modern dance for Thu), I would wait for her at the canteen, either reading some manga or playing the Nintendo DS. Of course, little girl enjoyed her snacks prepared by school (except the red bean soup) too, everyday after school, she'd inform me on the number of bowls she enjoyed, without fail, :)

We had some fun moments too at the field, during Family days and School Open days. Little girl loves running around with her mates after school.

Playground

This playground may look small, but it holds lots and lots of fun moments for little girl. She played with her best mates HS and friends from other classes, everyday (except Fri, as she need to goto mental arithmetic class) for almost an hour after school, we were usually the last to leave school :p

They liked to play in this little hut next to the playground too.

Remember Nick and Roy, little girl's pet tortoise? They have settled well in the little pond, guess they won't go hungry as they r love by all the kids.

Last but not least, I would like to thanks Mrs Yee (administrative) and Ms Lau (MD) for listening to us (Rachel & me), to reconsider on holding this year's school concert, though it was delays, it means a zillion to us seeing our kids performed on stage. Thank you!

And to Mr Ng (the principle), though has seldom speak to u, u did a great job on leading all the teachers and act as the fierce teacher most of the time. Used ur name to threaten little girl a few times, it worked all the time! Thank you!

Well, I'm sure, not only will little girl miss her pre-school, I'll definitely miss my time there too...

Gifted Awards Again

Gotta thanks Javapot for this 2 lovely awards, like the top 1 most cos I don have to type anything extra to claim it ;p

To claim this, I need to list 7 items about myself, so here u go:

1. I'm a simple person, think simple, dressed simple, eat simple, etc
2. My most concerned of all is my family
3. My top interest (still) is bentoing, though has been doing it for almost 2 years
4. Next to bentoing, I like baking, be it breads, buns or cakes
5. I love little snacks, that's why u able to find plenty of it in my blog
6. The little smiles or chuckles from little girl always make my day
7. I love traveling, wanna re-visit Europe again if possible, especially Germany, just love this country very much.

As for the 7 bloggers I'd like to nominate:

• Bentolicious - a bentoing mama from Indonesia
• Jess
• Wen
• ??
• ??
• ??
• ??

Sorry, I don know many of the bloggers I frequented and lots of them do not post up awards too, thus I keep it simple, posting this 3 cooking mama 1st.

Tempting Biscuits

X'mas tree biscuits

It has been a very eventful week for little girl and me, due to little girl's pre-school concert full-dress rehearsal (Mon), pre-birthday celebration (Thu), children day & farewell party (Fri) and concert & graduation day (Sun).

I baked these biscuits for little girl's children day & farewell party celebration. I baked them on Wed after icing little girl's birthday cake, and decorated them on Thu. The recipe was adapted from Famous Cuisine magazine issue 41 (11/2006).

Biscuit ingredients

160g unsalted butter

100g icing sugar (sifted)

1 egg yolk

1/4 tsp vanilla essence

2 hard boiled egg yolk (grated)

240g plain flour

1. Cream butter and sifted icing sugar until creamy. Add in egg yolks, vanilla essence and gated hard boiled egg yolk. Whisk until light and fluffy.
2. Fold in sifted flour to form a dough. Wrap well and refrigerate for 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 175 C. Roll out the dough between two sheets of silicon paper, about 5mm. Use shape knife to cut out snow man shapes. (I used some molds to help out)
4. Bake for 10 -15 minutes or until golden brown. Leave to cool. Decorate with ornamental icing.

Bell biscuits

Ornamental icing ingredients

125g icing sugar

1 egg white

1 tsp lemon juice

1. Sift the icing sugar. Beat with egg whites and lemon juice in a mixer over low speed. Beat until soft and smooth, about 20 minutes.
2. If not using icing immediately, keep bowl covered with a damp tea towel to prevent the icing too dry.
3. Spoon icing into paper piping bag with tip cut to make a small hole. Pipe decorative outlines and design on each biscuit.
4. With another paper piping bag fill with difference colored icings. Pipe your design color on the biscuits.

Magic wand biscuits

Verdict: my cousins tried out a few, they said it tasted like the famous Kjeldsens Denmark cookies, hahaha... The differents r I made it a bit too thin and it is not as crunchy as the Kjeldsens'. Little girl's classmates liked the biscuits, I think they were more attracted to the colorful icing and sprinkles, ;p

Pikachu & Fried Kuey Teow Bento (126)

This is the final bento for this school year, though I don have much time & ingredients left at home to prepare it, I wanted to make something special for little girl. I used about 45 minutes to complete the bento.

Little girl is a big fan of pocket monster lately, she has a booklet introducing all the characters of pocket monsters, I tell u, she loves it til she flip thru it almost everyday, & it is a bit worn out now. She loves to trace on her favorite characters and sometimes even reading the booklet while doing her big business in the toilet.

Though Pikachu is not really her favorite, I think she'll be delighted to see it in her bento. Pikachu is laying on a bed of fried kuey teow with cabbage & bacon. The Pikachu is made of cheese & seaweed, ketchup for the rosy cheek.

Shaped grass jelly & a little mandarin.

Little girl was too excited to eat today, she was more looking forward for her snack, cos she was going to celebrate her early birthday with her classmates (see the cake I baked her here). At least, she managed to eat all the grass jelly and 1/2 of the fried kuey teow.

Pre-Birthday Celebration 1-2009

Times really fly this year, all of the sudden, it has come to the end of the school year, and this means it's getting closer to little girl's birthday. Since this is her final year in her pre-school, I decided to bake her a cake, instead of buying it from Bread Story (like this & this last year), as I able to get the cake topper easily from Bake with Yen.

I used the strawberry cake recipe from Cake's Talk by Wendy Kor for the sponge cake. I planned out the baking & icing of the cake on different days as I afraid if something goes wrong, I'd had spare time to make another one. Luckily everything went well, the only mistake I did was I used peanut oil instead of corn oil for the sponge cake, thus the cake carry the smell of peanut butter, ;p

I split the sponge cake to 2 layers, iced a thick layer of cream and placed lots of cubed strawberries at the center of the cake. I really need more practices on icing the outer layer as u may see from the pic, it is not smooth at all.

Little girl requested to place the shinny sugar beads at her cake and I got them placed at the side of the cake. I'm very happy on how the cake turn out, it really build up my confidents now.

Verdict on the cake: very soft & spongy, strawberries was too sour, but luckily it turned out ok after blending with the icing. Little girl & her classmates enjoyed it very much and so did I, happy ;)

Marble Cake

I baked a cake for little girl's early birthday celebration with all her classmates in her pre-school. (That cake was a success, will post it up later on.) After baking the cake, dad was flipping the recipe book I used, then he told me he wanna a butter cake, hey, of course gotta quickly bake 1 for him ;) I chose this marble cake to please my ah ba ;p. The recipe was adapted from Wendy Kor's Cake's Talk.

Sorry about the photos, were taken by my mobile as I'd left my camera at home.

It looked slightly burned as I baked it 10 minutes longer than the suggested time as the center was not quite done

It rise highly, love the contrast of dark & light brown

I'd have stirred the batter more b4 baking it, as it don really look like marble

The verdict: taste very milky, buttery & chocolaty, yum! Dad likes it, so does little girl, me => happy!

Devil Eggs & Mashed Potato Bento (125)

Promised little girl for a mashed potato bento last nite, just b4 I slept, the image of devil egg 'pop' into my mind, since little girl will be at pre-school very early today for her concert's full-dress rehearsal (on modern dance), I'll have the whole morning to play in the kitchen, ;p

I spend about 1 1/2 hours in the kitchen, yeah, had so much fun, especially when playing with those nori expressions.

Ms devil eggs - stuffed with mashed potato, green pea and sausage

Ms elephant mashed potato and Mr bear mushroom gravy

2 Ms cocktail sausages & 2 Mr mandarin oranges

I'd to rush little girl to eat fast today, as she'll need to change for her afternoon class rehearsal, thus with no surprise, she ate only 1/2 of Ms elephant, 1 Ms devil egg and both Ms cocktail sausages. However, she cleaned up the remaining bento (except the tomato & mandarins) after her classes at the evening, she told me she forgot to eat it during snack time, luckily I always pack her the ice pack & the weather is quite chilly the whole day.

Pan Fried Baos 生煎包

Have u ever eaten this soft at the top & crisp at the bottom type of bao? I don remember where did I 1st eat this, HK? Shanghai? Taipei? I just remember they r very delicious and I'm dying to try cooking it myself for a very long time, but couldn't pull the guts together til this morning.

I saw the recipe at Florence's Do What I Like, after comparing it with Carol's and Angie's, I decided to put my hands on Florence's.

Ingredients

Dough 1:

100g plain flour (I used bluekey brand pao flour)

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp oil

45ml boiling water

10ml - 15ml water (to regulate dough, I didn't add this as I find my dough enough with the boiling water)

Dough 2:

160g plain flour (I used bao flour)

40g cake flour (I used superfine flour)

1 tbsp sugar

3g instant yeast

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp oil

105ml water

Frying mixture:

230ml water

2 tbsp flour

1/2 tsp sesame oil

1. Mix all items for dough 1 together using a pair of chopsticks. If dough is too dry add in some water. Leave to cool
2. Mix all items for dough 2 together til u get a smooth dough. Rest dough for 20 minutes
3. After 20 minutes, knead dough 1 and dough 2 together. Rest dough for 20 minutes.
4. Divide dough into 20g pieces. Roll into flat round disk of about 8 - 9cm in diameter. Wrap in 1 tbsp full of pork filling
5. Heat a little oil in a flat based frying pan, arrange the baos in the pan and fry for 1 minute on medium low heat
6. Pour in the frying mixture, make sure the baos are at least 30% but not more than 50% submerged in the frying mixture. Cover the pan with a lid til the frying mixture has dried up. Half way through the frying process, remove the lid and sprinkle some sesame seeds onto the sticky baos

Pork Filling:

150g minced pork

1 tsp sugar

1/2 - 3/4 tsp salt or 1/2 tsp salt + 1/4 tsp chicken stock powder

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tsp sesame oil

1 - 2 tsp oil (I used 1 tsp fried garlic oil & 1 tsp corn oil)

1 tbsp water or chicken stock

1 tsp Chinese wine (I used ginger wine)

pinch of pepper

some grated ginger (omitted as no ginger)

some minced garlic

a) 200g Chinese cabbage, diced

b) 1.5 tsp corn flour (I used potato starch as I couldn't locate the bag of corn flour)

c) 1 - 2 stalks scallion, thinly sliced (used the chopped spring onions I stocked in the freezer)

1. Cook the diced cabbage in hot boiling water for 1 - 2 minutes. Drain and leave to cool. (I lightly squeezed out the water from the cabbage)
2. Mix all items in the pork filling together except a, b & c, stir with a pair of chopsticks till mixture is sticky and paste like. Add in a & b. Chill in the fridge til ready to use. Add in c only when u are ready to wrap the baos

This was the 2nd batch I cooked, we emptied the 1st batch so fast that I totally forgot of capturing a pic

I'm so satisfy with the baos as they r just like what Florence promised: the dough is soft but 'Q' (springy) and the meat filling is very juicy.

Little girl ate 3 (in 1 go!) for her lunch, and 2 after her pre-school, as for me, I lost count, ate so many of it, keep popping 1 into mouth whenever I walked to the kitchen (intensionally or accidentally, I can't figure it out)!

Tarako/mentaiko & Sake Angel Hair Bento (124)

This is another yummy & simple version of angel hair other than the usual carbonara version I cooked previously. The original recipe of tarako spaghetti asked for tarako (salted cod roe), butter & soy sauce, but I use salmon & fish roe (sample package shown on bento 119), some mayo, pinch of salt & pepper for my version. Total preparation time was about 20 minutes for 2 bentos.

Today's bento menu:

Tarako & Sake (salmon) angel hair, top with some nori

pan fried long beans & egg omelette

red & yellow plum tomatoes, 2 pieces of persimmon & a tiny mandarin orange

Little girl has fewer leftover today, only a bit of the angel hair, a piece of the omelette, 1 tomato and the persimmon. Little girl dislike persimmon tho it is so sweet & delicious.

My box of bento for lunch