Lemon and Lavender Cookies

Having tried the Lavender Madeleines, I tried the Lemon and Lavender Cookies from HHB. The picture of her lavender cookies was very tempting and therefore, I decided to make it.

Unfortunately, like what she said, the dough was really really wet. It was very very difficult to let it harden so that I cut out the mould. On second thought, wondered if this is to be those "drop" cookies rather than those cut-out moulds. Even when I took it out from the freezer, it melted so fast I could hardly filled up one tray. It took me at least a few times from the freezer to get two trays filled up before I can bake them. Then I realised maybe I rolled the dough too thin. True enough, after baking, the cookies was too thin! At first, I regretted trying this recipe. However, after baking and trying the cookies, it was really worth the effort! The zest from the lemon and the aroma from the Lavender, with the added melt-in-the-mouth texture, this was one of the best cookies anyone could have! I can't help putting a few pieces into my mouth thereafter. I shall called mine, Lavender Crisps instead! ;)

I still have half the dough in the freezer, will finished baking them all soon...



Updated Post: Finished baking my cookies!

Peranakan Mee Siam Workshop

Armed with a carrier of empty containers, an apron and camera, I set out early morning on Saturday, looking forward to my mee siam workshop. I met up with my dear friend and her family for breakfast at Marine Parade. After breakfast, I set off to my mee siam workshop.

As the instructor was staying at the top most floor, the scenery, facing the sea was really marvelous. With my Fujifilm Finepix, I was able to zoom and captured them far far away!

Circled in red is the vessel with steam...


Zoom in 15x using my Fujifilm, I found the vessel with the steam up close!


Back to my mee siam workshop, there were 16 of us, quite packed I should think. This is roughly what I had captured.


1. Ingredients for frying the dry mee siam.
2. Blending the ingredients for rempeh for the mee siam gravy.
3. Mrs Fong showing us that after one round of soaking assam in water, there are still a lot of "fresh" stuck to the seeds.
4. Draining out the assam water.
5. Mrs Fong showing the correct way to hold the ladle when cooking the rempeh.
6. The real way of cooking mee hoon is using tongs. This is to maintain the "longness" of the mee boon.
7. Initial basic ingredients placed on the table when we arrived.

These were the final food presentation at the end of 3 hours.
Mee Siam gravy that was simmer for 1½ hours.


Peranakan Dry Mee Siam decorated by my groupmates. Sambal Chilli for Mee Siam cooked mostly by me.


Finally, a group photo with my wonderful groupmates with team efforts!

Lavender Madeleines

My younger sister returned from Tasmania Australia last week. She brought some lavender from Bridestowe for us. When I was in Tasmania some 10 years ago, I didn't know about lavenders, nor was it so popular else where in Australia too! Now, it's so popular and common and even used for baking! Well, I actually got some from PH some weeks ago, so I decided to use them first before using those from Tasmania.

The smell of lavender was really powering. It was exactly like those smell from bath foam, or potpourri. I didn't have doubt about its smell and its taste until I saw the post from HHB about eating lavenders. I quote "Since this is the first time I have tasted lavender, I have yet to acquire the taste for it. I don't dislike it, neither have I fallen in love with it." I think I had to agree with her about this though. The smell of the madeleines from the oven was really nice, but eating and biting into the lavender, does have some bitter taste. Not sure if I had put a little too much? Otherwise, I really like the smell...though not yet the taste! Fortunately, the buttery taste of the madeleines made up for it.



Can't help but to showcase my Homemade Vanilla Ice-Cream again. :p



Recipe for Lavender Madeleines extracted from Tartelette.
Makes approx. 30pcs based on the mould from Daiso.

Ingredients
71g Unsalted butter
1 Tbsp Edible lavender
94g Plain flour
½tsp Baking powder
Pinch of salt
60g Granulated sugar
Grated zest of half a lemon
2 large eggs
1 Tbsp Honey
2 Tsp Vanilla extract

Method:
1. Melt the butter with the lavender and let sit for 10 minutes to infuse. Strain but keep half of the lavender in with butter, or discard the whole amount. (I kept the whole lavender thinking not to waste it, but found biting into it a bit bitter. Should have kept half only.)
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together.
3. Beat the eggs, sugar and lemon zest until pale and thick, about 3 minutes.
4. Add the honey and vanilla and beat for one minute more.
5. Using a rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the eggs batter carefully. Fold in the butter.
6. Preheat the oven to 190C (170C for fan oven).
7. Butter and flour your madeleines molds and divide the batter evenly. Bake for between 10-12 minutes until they are golden brown.

Traditional Sponge Cake

After my previous attempt on this steamed sponge cake, I wanted to try it again. I followed the same recipe since there are so few ingredients. I didn't add the baking soda and baking powder, and the sponge cake turns out very very heavy. Actually I found another recipe which is more interesting from Fenying's Blog. However, as I didn't have 7-Up, I didn't use this recipe. So I stick to my successful recipe from quizzine. However this time, my sponge cake did't crack on top, it was such a nice dome! Unfortunately, this wasn't baked, if it was baked, I'd wish it had a nice dome. This was supposed to have "opened" up nicely, but it didn't. *Haiz*

New Love vs Old Flame

I'm not one who is heartless, in fact, I have too much sentimental value that my house is almost like a storeroom. I can't help but to look for a new love. The current one just lets me down. Whenever I needed it, it just can't work. It drained out too much energy too fast.

Determined and decided, I have decided to look for a new love. Therefore, the final decision was Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD. Actually, I still love my old flame - Canon Powershot A570IS, very much. It's light and easy to use. Unfortunately, I think I must've bought a "lemon" piece, it drained my batteries so much so that I had to replace batteries weekly even though I only used it for a couple of shots. Isn't that disappointing?

This is the basic & main comparision.

	FinePix S2000HD	Powershot A570IS
Resolution	10 MP	7.1MP
Optical Zoom	15x	4x
Macro	Macro & Super Macro	Macro
Batteries	4 Alkaline AA	2 Alkaline AA
Made in	Vietnam	Malaysia

Another Birthday Cake

I had been rather lapse in posting lately. I had been lazy, busy and dizzy all week! When I'm in front of the PC, I felt dizzy, then lazy set in. However, I cannot be lazy anymore, otherwise, I'll have lots of backlog posts!! Goodness me!

I had been busy whole week, preparing for Saturday. I made Vanilla Ice-Cream and Cheesecake in the mid-week, prior to Saturday. As both of these needed to be refrigerated way before the actual day of consumption, I had to prepare them in advance.

1. Vanilla Ice-Cream. I went through all the ice cream recipe, wanting to find the easiest to make. As it was to be used as an accompanied to my sister's Chocolate Fondant, I want it to be easy and creamy. I finally use the recipe from Recipetips.com. I modified the recipe a little to suit my taste. Instead of 6 egg yolks, I used 10 egg yolks as my eggs were pretty small. I replaced vanilla extract with a vanilla pod seeds and used 2 cups of whipping cream instead. The end result?? Creamy, real & taste expensive!!



2. Triple Layer Birthday Cheesecake. My youngest sister requested for a cheesecake. I asked if she can accept anything exotic, she said she can't. As I've baked cheesecake for her and my BIL before, I couldn't think of what other flavour I could try. Last year was the Chocolate Torte. How time has fly! After going through my cheesecake recipes, I finally settled on the recipe from "Delicious Cakes" called Triple Layer Birthday Cheesecake. This recipe needed to steam-bake the cheese layer by layer, each layer for 30 minutes. The three layers are Coffee, White Chocolate and Chocolate. I was thinking of topping it with a layer of crusted oreos after baking. However, after baking, the top was so smooth...so beautiful! There was no cracks to be found anywhere! This was my BEST cheesecake I ever baked! So I decided to frost as little as possible, to keep the smooth top visible. So this was my final decoration!




Saturday bakes include the following.
3. Red Bean Buns. I bought the red bean paste from PH lately as I found their red bean paste to be very nice, and I remembered my dad likes it. So I made a whole bunch of them to be given to my family members. I made different designs and put them into the muffin trays, an idea I got from Honey Bee Sweets.



4. Kueh Makmur. This was in my "To Bake" list. After the unsuccessful attempt the last time, I had to try again using different recipe. I used Honey Bee Sweets' recipe this time, though quite a lot of work, I was quite determined to bake this. However, I had added the egg white while the flour were not thoroughly cooled, resulting in my dough being too wet to roll. I ended having to put them in the fridge, then adding a lot more plain flour to it. The baking caused the dough to crack. Fortunately, the overall taste was much better than the previous attempt. At least, it was still melt-in-the-mouth texture! Quite happy with the outcome, though not happy with the process!