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This post is coming super late and yes i know Valentine’s was like nearly 3 weeks ago!!! I know i know.. haha.. so sorry.. i had to find some time to sort out all my pictures, re-size them, etc before i could get my posts up :p
Anyway, this was my special valentine celebration with my hubby this year which i’d thought i’d share with all of you 
This was actually very similar to the very first Valentine’s Day i celebrated with him where instead of going out to celebrate Valentine’s Day he had invited me over to his place instead and said that he’d cook me a special Valentine’s Day meal. When i arrived, i was expecting him to be in a mad rush trying to get everything ready and with his hair stuck on end and a big mess on his shirt. Instead what i found when i arrived was a beautifully cooked steak with a side of mash potatoes, all laid out on a romantically candle-lit table for 2!!! He had even taken the effort to a lay a table cloth over the table!!! After the romantic dinner for 2, he then led me from the table, asked me to close my eyes and led me to my Valentine’s Day present which was a big Forever Friends Sugar Bear holding a bouquet of roses… and… to top off the whole evening, he seranaded me to a love song with the accompaniment of his guitar…. wasn’t he romantic!!!
This year, i think my hubby wanted to recapture our first Valentine’s Day experience all over again and we decided to cook our own special meal. What was on the menu, well… a delicious crouton salad, roasted lamb in an aromatic rosemary and herb sauce, fried olive rice, and for dessert, sinfully rich milk chocolate mousse.
We decided to cheat with the salad and just bought the individualised packeted salads from Cold Storage, and while hubby cooked the roasted lamb, i tackled the fried olive rice and chocolate mousse. The dinner was a really sinful affair and we both were stuffed at the end of the meal. As for the chocolate mousse, it was a sinfully rich dessert that just melted on the tongue…
I do hope to share the recipes for everything in one of my posts later on once i get everything properly organised.. but for now.. there’s only the pictures for you to drool over!!
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As everyone knows, Chinese New Year is just around the corner and we will be ushering in the Year of the Ox this year.
As usual, i’ve been baking up a storm in my kitchen with the usual CNY fare such as pineapple tarts and almond cookies of course!!!! As you can see i tried to be arty in some of my shots but wasn’t very successful.. haha At any rate, if anyone’s interested in ordering these delicious CNY goodies, feel free to drop me an e-mail or a sms
I can never get enough of these goodies and you can be assured that i made sure that each pineapple tart is filled with plump and succulent pineapple filling. You can be sure that none of my tarts or almond cookies are stingy with the filling since i myself dislike store bought pineapple tarts whose filling is sooo miserly that all you can taste is their pastry which not only is hard as a rock but which has butter flavouring added with an over-generous hand.. gross!!!
As for the almond cookies, with each bite well.. need i say more, i think the pictures speak for themselves.. see all those yummy chunks of almonds that are in the cookie! Yummy, delicious. Only problem is that with these you can never stop at just one so don’t blame me if post CNY you realised you’ve gained weight after eating these babies haha..
Here’s wishing everyone a very Prosperous Chinese New Year and hopefully the coming of the Ox year will bring a good year to the stock market!
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Posted 1 year, 2 months ago. 2 comments
As mentioned in my previous post, i promised that i would post up some pictures of a chocolate and peanut butter cookie today… well.. as promised here it is!!! Doesn’t the cookie look delicious!!
To tell the truth, when i read the reviews about this cookie i was a bit sceptical about how great it would taste.. but after the first bite of these fellas.. i was in heaven!!! These cookies were fantastic!! As with the name of the cookie, with every bite, the initial taste of chocolate would explode onto your taste buds followed by the distinct and ooo so creamy taste of peanut butter…. these chewy cookies were so fantastic that i couldn’t stop eating at 1 and i have to say… i scarfed down nearly half the batch i made at one sitting… :p
Anyway, i just have to say that these cookies were fantastic and truly lived up to all the hype about it! Give me these cookies any day of the week!!!
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Posted 1 year, 7 months ago. Add a comment
Well… as promised these are the updated pictures of the assembled cake and a couple of my hubby eating the cake The cake was a hit!! Everyone gobbled it up within a couple of minutes. The only fault i could find with it was that the frosting was a little too sweet.. at least for me :p but my hubby loved it. Think the next time i do make this, i’ll reduce the amount of sugar in the frosting
Here’s the birthday boy making a wish, blowing out the candles and of course having his first bite of cake.. i thought the last pic of him eating the cake was hilarious!!!
Dinner was fantastic as well as my hubby’s parents just arrived back from Perth bringing back with them 2 giant lobsters and 2 huge snow crabs that were feeling quite frisky after their flight. Well.. they couldn’t escape the cooking pot and they were soon served up on a platter for our dinner… mwah ha ha….
These lobsters and crab was fabulously fresh.. we even had lobster sashimi… oh god!! Delicious!!!!
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Posted 1 year, 9 months ago. Add a comment
Just realised that it’s been ages since i updated my blog as I’ve been busy during the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day period… :p
I would just like to thank all for ordering the pineapple tarts from me and I was glad that you guys loved it!
I hope going forward I can get more orders next year.. haha.. and I think I’d better make more bottles just in case. This New Year I had made a number of bottles of tarts that I originally wanted to give away to my Aunts and Uncles… however last minute I had several repeat customers from friends… many of them had originally bought a bottle from me and had brought it home about 2 weeks before New Year..
Unfortunately a lot of them did not count on their hubby’s snacking… :p Guess what.. haha.. yup… many of them had to order another bottle from me at the last minute cos their hubbies had finished the tarts instead of saving them for guest during the Chinese New Year period.. hehe.. In the end I had to sell off the tarts I made for my Auntie’s and Uncle’s… but lucky for me I had some extra pineapple filling left over and I ended up making additional bottles about 2 days before CNY just in time to give them to my relatives
Oh well… I’m glad everyone enjoyed the tarts.. and once again… thanks to everyone for your support
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Posted 1 year, 11 months ago. Add a comment
Had my Chinese New Year reunion dinner recently and in my family it’s quite a huge affair with basically my extended family coming together for dinner. As my mom is the eldest of her brothers and sisters, the reunion dinner is usually held at my mom’s place with my aunts, uncles and cousins all coming over to have the reunion dinner.
My mom usually cooks up a storm for the dinner and includes all the yummy chinese new year foods like “chap choi” which is a vegetable dish, as well as other traditional dishes like steamed mushrooms with oysters, sea cucumber and “fat choi” which I’ve always termed hair since I find it looks like it :p sounds gross but I love eating it
Anyway, decided to make some non-traditional dishes at home and contribute it to our reunion dinner. Thinking of what to make, I finally decided on making individual chicken pies, mashed potatoes to go with my mom’s beef goulash and lastly for dessert I decided to make a no bake strawberry cheesecake.
I had finished making the cheesecake, and mashed potatoes, and was half way through with my chicken pie before I realised that I had forgotten to take photos of the process! Arrgghh… so unfortunately I only have a few photos of my chicken pie to show you :p Here’s a close up view… yummy don’t you think
However, you can see pictures and process to my strawberry cheesecake in a previous post here
I started out making the chicken pie by chopping up all the ingredients for the chicken pie filling which included potatoes, onions, chicken and mushrooms. The worst was the onions.. cutting it up made me keep crying and as there wasn’t much of a wind that day, the noxious onion fumes just wouldn’t blow away which just made the tearing all the more worse. At the end of chopping up the onions my eyes were all red and just wouldn’t stop leaking. I had to wait for a while before I could go back into the kitchen to finish up chopping up all the rest of the ingredients. Once everything was chopped up, I then put everything in a big pot and began to cook all the ingredients. Of course to make it creamy, I used a shortcut and added Cambell’s Mushroom soup to the ingredients… at the end of everything, this is what the filling looked like. Of course no chicken pie filling would be complete without the mixed vegetables
To save myself some time I decided not to make the puff pastry myself but to just buy ready made puff pastry from the supermarket. After thawing it out I then rolled out the pastry and using round cutters, proceeded to cut up the pastry before molding the pastry into the pie cups… these were what the pies looked like before baking..
After putting it in the oven at 180 degrees for 35 minutes, these were what the finished product looks like…
The chicken pie was quite a hit at the dinner although I do need to work on being more consistent in adding the filling for the chicken pie.. haha… think there was some with more pastry than filling although I’ve always loved the chicken pie pastry.. haha…. Anyway, I made too much filling and still have some left over which I’ve put in the fridge. I think I’ll either do another batch of chicken pies or maybe make some baked rice with the filling… yummy…
Well.. that’s it from me… getting a little hungry from talking about all that food.. hehe.. luckily I made some extra bottles of pineapple tarts and almond cookies for myself this Chinese New Year.. think I’m going to go snack on them now hee hee…
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Chinese New Year is just round the corner and everywhere I go I’m hearing all the Chinese New Year melodies being played.. Arrgghhh.. It’s starting to drive me nuts.. haha… I mean I love Chinese New Year and everything.. but hearing the same New Year songs being played over and over again is just mind numbing!!
All around Singapore the shops have started redecorating and stocking up to include all the Chinese New Year goodies like almond cookies, pineapple tarts (which by the way is my all time favourite!!), love letters and the sweet and juicy bite sized mini mandarin oranges. Of course, Chinese New Year is also nothing without barbequed pork or “Ba Kwa” and the usual assortment of sweets, chocolates and melon seeds. To me, Chinese New Year has always been a time where any diet I’m on gets thrown out the window and I get to stuff my face with the many little snacks that are always presented to guests in every household. Unfortunately… this will be the first year that I will no longer be receiving ang bao’s from my aunt’s, uncles and relatives.. sigh.. think all my aunt’s and uncle’s are probably heaving a great sigh of relief since 3 of us cousins have gotten married this year and negate the need for any ang bao’s to be given to us.. haha
Oh well.. small loss considering I’ll get to stuff my face with Chinese New Year goodies!!! Yummy!! I remember when I was little, every Chinese New Year my mom will go over to my maternal grandma’s place a week before Chinese New Year and they would make oodles and oodles of almond cookies… which I’ve always termed “Ko Ko Pang”. I never realised that the term Ko Ko Pang was only understood to be almond cookies in my family, until I met my husband, who had a totally blur expression on his face when I first mentioned it.
The whole story of how the name Ko Ko Pang came about started when my brother, my cousin and myself were all very very young. As i mentioned above, every Chinese New Year, my maternal grandma used to make thousands of these little almond cookies and sell them to friends and acquiantences each Chinese New Year. As my mom used to bring my brother and myself to visit my grandma every Saturday, we would always be there when the almond cookies were being baked. Of course with the tantalising aroma’s of almond cookies being baked would drive all of us kids in a frenzy.. and we would eagerly await the individual batches of almond cookies as they came out of the oven. We kids probably resembled a pack of salivating hyenas, perpetually pestering my granny, my auntie and my mom for a taste of the cookies the moment they came out of the oven. Of course, we were never concerned with the fact that these cookies were piping hot and would burn our mouths if we even tried to eat one without waiting for it to cool. Arising from our impatience, my doting granny who speaks cantonese by the way would always sit me on her lap and pick up one of these delicious morsels and start blowing on it till it gets cool. As I was so young and couldn’t pronounce cold properly, I would always ask my grandma ko ko already? I.e. as in were the cookies cold enough to eat.. as such, due to this ritual of us kids always asking ko ko already, the name ko ko pang for these little almond cookies was born. Although my grandma has since passed away, her recipe has been passed down to us and every Chinese New Year, my cousin would always make a huge batch of these cookies to be given to each of our individual families for the Chinese New Year. Her kids have also started calling these cookies ko ko pang.. so it’s good to know that this small little name continues with tradition and the story of how it came about gets passed down from one family to another.
That’s my little trip down memory lane and now on to the good stuff of deciding what I should make for Chinese New Year this year. :p This is the actually the first time that I would have the kitchen all to myself, without my Mom’s constant nagging to get out of the kitchen when I was at home.. haha.. so I’ve decided that of course, I would definitely to make up a batch of almond cookies and my all time favourite pineapple tarts!!! Deciding to start with the pineapple tarts today, I started our preparing the pineapple filling and rolled out the pineapple filling into little balls that would be later wrapped in pastry.. hehehe.. don’t you think the mound of balls looks a little like piles of gold?
Once this was completed, I started on the delicious pastry that literally melts in your mouth… had to keep from drooling as I was making the pastry.. I couldn’t wait for the first batch of pineapple tarts to come out of the oven…
I had to rest the pastry for 30 minutes before I could begin assembling my tarts… so off I went to grab a quick lunch of pasta cooked with Campbell’s mushroom soup.. yummy…
After lunch, I eagerly started assembling the tarts.. and some long and back breaking hard work, I finally completed a batch that was ready to go into the oven.
As you can see.. I love the pineapple filling so I made the pastry as thin as possible.. hee hee. Once that was done, had to of course brush the tarts with egg yolk so that they would turn that nice golden brown while in the oven and then it was into the oven they went. As the tarts had to be brushed with yolk every 10 minutes, I literally hopped from foot to foot as I eagerly awaited the very first batch of tarts to hit the 10 minute mark.. Jasper my trusty little schnauzer was also a bundle of nerves, sitting quiveringly on my foot looking at me while I stared at the oven.. hmm.. maybe he was frightened by the thunder and lighting from the thunder storm rather than anticipating the baked tarts. :p
Well after brushing the tarts with the yolk several times, the pineapple tarts were finally ready….
Don’t they look delicious!! After 5 minutes of waiting time, I finally couldn’t wait for them to cool down anymore and finally picked one up and tossed it between my hands till it got cool enough to go into my mouth. Unluckily for Jasper but luckily for me.. I didn’t drop it :p
Oh god… yummy!! The pastry was just right literally melting in your mouth the moment you took your first bite uncovering the sweet, tangy and chewy pineapple filling…. heaven in a tart! Delicious!!
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Posted 2 years, 1 month ago. 10 comments
I had a sudden craving for strawberry cheesecake the other day and finally decided to try my hand at doing one… Per the recipes I’ve come across, cheesecakes usually fall into 2 categories… baked or no bake cheesecakes… I have to admit I took the easy way out and decided on a no bake cheesecake recipe :p
After pestering my hubby to bring me to the nearest Cold Storage to get all the necessary ingredients and the juiciest strawberries I could find, I finally got home and started to whip up my first ever cheesecake
After half an hour of mashing, mixing and refrigerating, I finally got to the fun part of decorating my cheesecake using the big fat juicy strawberries.. hehe.. of course along some of the strawberries ended up in my mouth.. what could I say, they were just tooo juicy to resist…
Once I had squeezed as many of the strawberries as I could on the top of the cheesecake, I then started to spoon on the strawberry jelly over the top of everything.. and then back into the fridge it had to go to set overnight.
To be frank.. throughout the whole process, I believe I actually spent more time waiting for the cheesecake to set than anything else.. and I’m not exactly a patient person.. so I did actually not refrigerate the cheesecake as long as was required, so while I was in the midst of spooning on the jelly layer, some of the cheesecake base actually ended up floating up… arrggghhhh… but overall for a first attempt I think it didn’t turn out all that bad don’t you think so?
That’s my finished strawberry cheesecake… which after the photos my hubby straight away dug into… I guess it was quite a success considering that he finished the whole cake off within 24 hours!!
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Posted 2 years, 3 months ago. Add a comment
