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Since young, I have great interest with everything to do with food (from preparing to eating). My mum wasn’t very much of a good cook, though I must admit I still love and miss her cooking (my childhood taste) nowadays. I have always love my grandma’s cooking, but I din have the chance to learn from her as she always finds that I was a nuisance in the kitchen when I tried to help (most probaly at that time I was too young to handle fire Now I have got all the time in the world to learn and experience. Hence , I decided to learn to bake. Picking up a good local baking book, and some ingredients (gosh, they are expensive !!), i decided to do a cheese cake. Thanks to my nanny, who has offered me to do my experiments in her house as she has all the baking accessories one needs. With a high enthusiam to bake, we decided to bake again last night. With the help of my brother, baking till washing is pretty fast. But of course we bake only a normal butter cake since it is already very late at night. Can’t wait to lie on my sleep number bed with a tired body like that..HAHA!

This cream filling taste great when it goes with cream puffs.

Ingredients:

• 100g castor sugar
• 2Tbsp flour
• 2Tbsp corn flour
• 3 egg yolks
• 400ml milk (I used UHT milk)
• 1Tbsp butter
• 1 tspt vanilla essence

Method:

1. Combine sugar, flour and egg yolk with 2 Tbsp milk into a paste
2. Warm remaining milk and pour into the paste
3. Stir over low fire until it turns into a custard
4. Removed from fire
5. Add butter and vanilla essence
6. Once cool, keep in fridge

Points to remember

My cream filling becomes a little bit dry. Maybe I overcook the batter or I used too much flour. However it still taste fantastic. When it is ready and left to cool, it should be covered so that the exposed top layer of the custard would not harden. See how much I can do with my new oven that I got from the great sale.

With a new oven this year, I guess I was over ambitious. I am tempted to try out all the recipes I know, making things I love to eat. Let me show you how DIY bak Kua is made from home, using just my new oven.

Ingredients:

• 500g meat
• 120g sugar
• 1tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sau sing wine
• 1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
• 1/4 tsp cooking oil

1. Mix all seasoning into mince meat, stir in one direction with a chopstick until gluey.
2. Best marinate a day before, say 24 hours.
3. Spread it out flat and evenly on the baking tray, on top of a baking paper.
4. Bake it at 130 C degree for 20 minutes. (estimation)
5. Take out and turn the other side.
6. Continue baking at 180C degree for 15 minutes. (estimation)

Well, how does that look? You think it can fetch a good price if I sell these? *you can see the price if you scan it with your barcode scanner *

Well, Audrey think they are delicious but I still prefer buying from the famous Dried Meat stalls during CNY.

Mickey & Minnie Mouse Butter Cookies

Ingredients:
100g butter (I used Golden Churn)
80g castor sugar
1tsp condense milk
1 egg yolk
100g self raising flour
100g plain flour (I added more until they are not too soft to stamp Mickey Mouse shape)
20g corn flour

Method:
1. Beat butter and sugar
2. Add in egg yolk and condense milk
3. Fold in flour. Mix well (just beat evenly at slow speed)
4. Keep dough in fridge for at least 30mins
5. Roll dough and cut into shapes
5. Bake at preheated oven at 170C degree for 15mins

Although they are delicious, no doubt they are heaty too. Can’t eat too much of these otherwise my hubby would gonna need help from his Spawn supplement.

Bingo!! I got them so right again for the first trial. These delicious tarts even look so good my Rackmount monitor

Chinese New Year is around the corner again. And since I have a big oven now, surely must bake my own cookies this year, right? One delicacy that must not be missed during CNY is of course my favourite Pineapple Tart.

Using homemade pineapple jam by Miche’s mum, I try to bake some Nyonya Pineapple Tarts today. For the pastry I used only

• flour (150g)
• Planta (about 100g)
• 1 egg yolk (I added also some white)
• salt to taste

With the ingredients above, I could make about 20 tarts. Reason I bake so little is that I want to test my oven. I preheated my oven at 170C degree for 10mins and bake them (placing in the middle rack) for about 15mins.

Tomorrow I shall bake another batch. Guess what, I am going to add some lard into my pastry, hopefully able to get the original Nyonya taste Pineapple Tarts, just like how they did it during the olden days.

My new Faber 40L oven

Hubby said I was too agree and guess what, he is right! My oven is too big and has taken a huge space on my limited space table top, leaving no more space for other pots.

I still could not get use to my new oven. Our first baking project was the Mickey Mouse Butter Cookies. Although  they are a little bit dark, they still turns out very nice and extremely tasty!

On the second day, I did some cupcakes using a butter cake recipe. Some big mistakes:

1. placing my tray at the bottom rack. Since they were placed too near to the heating rod, bottom part of my cupcakes got burn!

2. I could not estimate the heat and time for baking cupcakes. I preheat my oven for 15mins at 180C degree. I think my oven was too hot.

3. The mixture was not beaten long enough.*sigh…boys crying so I got to feed them*. The texture of my cupcakes are too coarse.

4. I think the mixture collapsed. It was left too long since I had to feed another boy. The cakes were very dry. The cupcakes taste more like cookies instead of cake!