Long Bean

Long Bean

This is my long bean plant and there is only one long bean!  Not enough even to feed one person ha!ha!  Maybe my soil is not rich enough.  I can see more flowers at the top.

Basket weave Cake

Butter cream cake

Here is my butter cream cake I decorated yesterday.  I have been baking cakes for so long but never attempted to do any make-up for them and finally I have done it.  Though not perfect, I am happy with the result.  Tomorrow I will take it to the office to celebrate a colleague's birthday.

Birthday Boy Jonathan

This is one happy birthday boy!   He is so pleased that he is the only one in the office whose birthday falls  in November and thus gets to cut the cake.  Everyone said the cake was very nice but when they bit into the cake,  argh! it was so super sweet.  Well, it has to be because it is icing sugar and butter ... very rich indeed. Certainly goes down well with a cup of coffee.

Cutie Pots

Aren't they cute?  Pretty little pots of  daisies that can be eaten.  Made them during my class on Thursday.

I was fascinated by the beautiful and cute cakes  that I saw in those cake books and that made me sign up for a fondant cake decorating class.  Glad I did.   Now I know why these cakes are so pricey.  It takes a lot of patience to make the little flowers and leaves one by one.

Loh Mai Farn

Here is the loh mai farn I made on Saturday morning after I came back from my Yuanje exercise.  I followed my sister-in-law Pat's simple recipe and it worked.  I have to steam it for one hour.  Another half an hour if you want the texture to be softer.   The whole tray is only half a kg of glutinous rice which is quite a lot.

Beef Rendang

Made beef rendang for dinner.  Also a first time doing it and was glad it turned out well too.  I have no exact measurement of ingredients though.  Got the ingredients from watching Chef Wan's Hari Raya cooking show  on TV and also some tips from my line dancing friends who are such good cooks themselves.  The only complaint from my daughter was the beef should be cooked longer to make it a little bit more tender.  I used Australian beef.  Anyway I am satisfied with the outcome and that the family rated it an 8 or is it just to please the Mama??  We couldn't finish the whole lot and I kept half in the freezer.

Butter Cake

This is the second attempt of baking an almond butter cake. I used the normal pound cake recipe and added 125gm ground almond.It received good comments from my colleagues who tasted it. It is delicious when eaten warm. This cake reminds me of the kind of plain butter cake that we used to eat when we were young.

250 gm butter

210 castor sugar

4 eggs - slightly whisk

230 gm self raising flour  -  sieve

125 gm ground almond

8-9 tabsp milk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1)   Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.

2)  Add in eggs one at a time and continue to beat at a low speed.  Add in vanilla essence

3)  Add in flour, ground almond and milk alternately.  Pour mixture into a 8" buttered pan.

4)  Bake at 180 deg C for about 50 mins.    Check with a skewer and if it comes out clean, it is done.