A cake for Apple

Been a long time since I updated... Actually I feel like starting a new blog, start afresh elsewhere. Not sure if I should do that, or just continue blogging here.

I made this big sushi cake recently... I had wanted to make a sushi cake for someone's birthday but I guess I will never have the chance to do that anymore.

Looking forward to 2008, a new start!

Taking a break

Dear all,

I will be taking a short break due to studies and some personal matters. Do check this website in the future for updates! Thanks all for your support!

Mid Autumn Festival

Mid Autumn Festival is just around the corner and I decided to make some mooncakes to give to my friends. Actually I had bought a box of mooncakes earlier for my SO, but he asked me not to give any because they have a lot and can't finish. I'm sure he haven't receive any agar agar mooncake though.

I bought some organic red beans from an organic farm trip earlier, so I used it to make this mooncake. I soaked the beans to soften and then boil it for about an hour before mashing it into a paste. This is used in the "filling" part of the mooncake.

I made some "egg yolk" using agar agar. As there weren't enough space for me to lay my tray flat, some of my "egg yolks" were not a perfect sphere.

After making the egg yolks, I made the filling of the mooncake using the red bean paste and agar agar. Each filling had an egg yolk. After the filling was firm, I then made the mooncake skin using agar agar and red bean water with low fat milk (instead of the original coconut milk). As the skin and the filling are very close in color, you can't see the two distinct layers. Too bad I didn't manage to get nice mooncake moulds, or I would have made bigger ones.

Bento Packing Workshop

Sorry for not updating my site these days... have been really busy with school work. I had my Bento workshop on saturday morning, and I'm very pleased with the participants' work. It's satisfying to see that the participants have enjoyed themselves. I would like to thank the participants for their positive feedback!

Here are some photos of the workshop to share with you, taken by my good friend's husband, IZ.

Bento prepared by my talented friend Ruth.

2nd runner up for the Bento packing competiton.

1st runner up for the Bento packing competition. The votes for the 2nd and 1st prize were very close!

The winning Bento of the workshop. She won a sweet baby pink Limited Edition Tupperware Lunchbox, while the rest of the winners won other containers from Tupperware as well.

Here are all the Bento prepared by the participants. Marvellous isn't it?

I'm glad that this workshop has also given me an opportunity to expand on my expertise. Hope to bring the Bento culture to more people, and to also conduct more workshops on various topics in the future.

What to do with leftover rice?

I bought some oysters as I was craving for "Ao Jian", a chinese style oyster omelette that is common hawker fare in Singapore. As the commercial version is usually very oily (gives me a stomach upset each time), I wanted to make my own.

So I took out the oysters but I thought of having some rice to go with it. However, it's troublesome to cook rice for one person share, and rice usually turns out better when cooking for the whole family. I found some leftover rice from dinner, which is perfect for fried rice!

There is no fixed ingredients for fried rice (except that you need rice, of course). This makes it easy to use up any food that you have, to create new variations each time. So what's in my fried rice today?

Saute some chopped onions (basic step in most chinese dishes) and then stir fry the ingredients, from the ones that require more cooking time (meat items). I have oysters, crab stick, shiitake mushrooms and egg. Add the rice and mix well, before adding some seasoning (my fried rice often taste bland because I do not like to use much seasoning). I prepared a bed of lettuce in my round bento box and placed the rice on top, garnishing with a mushroom and a tomato. A sprig of parsley will be nice, but I do not have that in my kitchen.

So if you are out of ideas, why not just take a look at your kitchen and see what you can create.