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Like A Boss, I should add

For someone who absolutely loves her red velvet cupcake, I’m surprised even though I’ve had a love affair with those red suckers for a long time now, I’ve never once attempted to make it!

A shame really esp since I love it so much. Maybe coz I already know, no matter how much I try, I would probably never bake it better than my two go-to places for kick-ass red velvet which can be found at Upstairs Café in Subang and of course Just Heavenly!

But on Saturday, I decided to just brave it and at least try to make it once to see how it would turn out. Mind you, it’s also been a few weeks since I baked anything but surprisingly I was not nervous at all. Worse case scenario, I would just throw everything out I told myself.

I came across a blog with the recipe in malay (credit to nani rostam’s blog!) . Everything was based on weight, and since I didn’t have a weighing scale I converted everything to cup form.

Here’s the recipe – it may look like a lot of work but is’ not. I did everything quite fast.

All translated for easy reference

Step 1: Mix 250ml evaporated milk mixed with 2 teaspoon distilled white vinegar (works as buttermilk I believe, if you’re feeling rich, you could always buy a box of buttermilk). Add in 4 tablespoon red coloring. Mix it, then keep aside. Do take a moment to marvel at the redness in the bowl though.

Step 2: In a separate bowl, mix 2 cups of wheat flour (tepung gandum), add in one tea spoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoon cocoa powder and mix it all.

Step 3: Mix 2 teaspoon distilled white vinegar with 1 teaspoon soda bicarbonate, watch it sizzle in front of you and wonder if that’s suppose to happen. The answer is yes. Keep aside

Step 4: Beat 3/4 cup of butter, add in 1 cup brown sugar followed by ½ cup castor sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence and then beat in 2 eggs. Finally add in your flour mixture and alternate it with the milk + coloring mixture. Beat until soft. Final step is to add in the vinegar with soda bicarbonate mixture, beat it a lil more and then arrange in muffin liners.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes at 160 degrees. I SO love how they look so even, my cupcakes rarely turn out this pretty okie. I used the big muffin tray simply because eating mini sized red velvet is truly a sin and waste of time.

After 20 minutes. I spent at least 10 minutes just ogling at them.

Perfections *strokes red velvet cupcake*

You can also choose to make your icing before hand or after. I chose after coz I wanted to wait for my cupcakes to cool down. I didn’t use the icing recipe provided by that blog. Instead this was something the hubby’s aunt told me about and because she makes really good red velvet, I decided to follow her recipe.

It’s basically a one to one recipe where you beat cream cheese, butter and icing sugar! It’s that simple yet so good.  I added in some vanilla essence. Try to use unsalted butter if possible. I used some cheapo butter coz we couldn’t find decent one (damn you Giant), after beating up everything, chill it in the fridge for a while.

And here comes the funny part, do not laugh at my icing skill (or rather the lack of it). The first time I did it, the icing recipe was soo bad! And while this time around, it was good, let’s just say I need to work on my icing skills la ok? Shitty icing skills aside, even I am impressed how good these babies turned out.

Some chocolate sprinkles to cover the cacat-ness

My pretty babies in a glance – each uniquely designed, lol. Make no mistake, this recipe can make up to 6 BIG muffins, and about 15 medium ones.

Mmmm MY red velvet cupcakes! My cousins and aunt popped by my mom’s place that night so I used them as my guinea pig and the results: let’s just say everyone said it was so good (including my mom!), but of course someone did say my icing skills could improve, lol.

Can you see how moist this baby is? You can always chill it and eat it the next day and it will taste EVEN better! Hubby and baby absolutely loved it as well. Overall rating for this recipe, I do give this an 8 Score of 10 is reserved for my two favorite go-to places for cupcakes coz I do realize they probably took years to perfect their recipe

And here’s a photo of the hubby’s cooking on Saturday night – he did it all by himself and made us quesadilla, it was surprisingly good.

Of course random photos taken over the weekend – am beyond stocked that my little girl is allowing me to do up her hair these days. I actually went to stock up on hair accessories on Friday.

I call this the Boo from Monsters Inc inspired hair! When I told her she looks like Boo, she went ‘WHAT BOO?’ and that made me laugh so much so I had to show her some clips from Youtube and let’s just say she believes she’s Boo right now, hehe.

And this was taken right before BabySis Birthday celebration @ Aria! I tied her hair up with 2 clips at the side and it stayed on for a longgg time until after dinner that is. Can’t have em all but at least she’s happy with mom touching and playing with her hair now. I cannot believe how grown up she looks as well, sigh. More photos to follow of course…..and believe it or not, I only paid RM10 for that dress

Now go try that Red Velvet Cupcake recipe! Wonder what I should whip up next to challenge myself, hmm….

Two easy peasy home-cooked meal that I made over the weekend and would like to share today. Not saying its necessarily healthy stuff but it’s definitely easy, yummy and can beres in less than 30 mins!

I was getting bored with the usual cream and tomato sauce base pastas so I was thinking how to make it different.

Then one word came to mind: BROCOLLI! Actually that word is always in my head coz we use it to threaten Sairah a lot. So that’s how this creamy broccoli sauce pasta came about though if you google it, there are already tons of different version.

But here’s mine – inspired by Sairah’s arch green nemesis

Ingredients:

Penne pasta

2-3 tablespoon butter

Half chopped yellow onions

1-2 chopped garlic

One box whipping cream – I use Paul’s

One small bunch organic broccoli florets – reserve half and half

5-7 basil leaves

Quarter packet of parmesan cheese (I usually use the small packet that’s either red or yellow that can be found in most supermarket, can’t remember the name but it’s only RM5)

Pepper

Half cube of chicken stock

Preparation:

Cook pasta until tender, set aside. In a pan, fry onions and garlic with butter until aromatic. Add in whipping cream, Parmesan cheese, half of the broccoli florets, chicken stock cube and let it simmer until broccoli is soft. Add in pepper. Turn off the pan after a while and let it cool off. Put into a blender, add in the basil leaves and pulse it a few times. Pulse it and don’t puree it.

Meanwhile in the pan used to make the sauce, just sauté the remaining broccoli florets and that is done purely for texture purposes so you can get the crunch from the broccoli. Add in the pureed cream sauce. Taste to see if you need more parmesan/black pepper.

Should look just about like this. Does not scream entirely sexy (then again nobody finds broccoli sexy) but it will in a minute.

We had some left over chicken fingers from Popeyes so we reheated it. But if you want, you can saute up your own chicken or use chicken ham which will go beautifully with the dish. Promise.

Mix up your penne into the batter so the sauce gets acquainted with your pennes Still doesn’t look so appetizing yet right?

That’s when you as they would say ‘plate it’ and wala.

Is it somewhat desirable now? Maybe not to broccoli haters but it was yummy and I cannot believe how easy it is to make it.  The hubby whacked the entire plate and went for seconds!

And then I had the light bulb to make some home-made burgers! I read somewhere there’s nothing like making your own patties coz it gives you so much satisfaction. Totally true! I skimped through my old blog post from years ago and noticed this recipe so I decided to give it another round and made some modification. Haha imagine, modifying your OWN recipes!

Home made Burgers with Fries

1 tray of Minced Chicken – I used the frozen Ayamas one coz I couldn’t find the fresh one. It makes 6 patties.

6-7 smashed Hup Seng / Jacobs cream crackers (secret ingredient, jeng jeng jeng).

½ tablespoon sugar

A dash of Worchsiter sauce

A dash or two white pepper

½ chicken stock granules

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 tablespoon cornflour

½ chopped  yellow onions

Butter-head lettuce leaves, cleaned

6 medium size burger buns

Cheese

Sauces – chili & Sarawak black pepper sauce

This is how you do it:

First place the minced chicken in a mixing bowl with broken crackers. Add  sugar, pepper, chicken stock granules, curry powder and coat meat well. Stir in chopped onions, cornflour and mix with your hands until everything is smooth. At this point I have to say, the mixture does smell quite wonderful but eating raw meat is a big no no. I’m most certain of it.

Feel free to add in more curry powder and chili if you prefer a slightly spicy version.

Then divide into 6 round portion and shape into patties. Flatten it and make it to the size of your burger buns. Let it marinate while you arrange your butter head lettuce leaves, and cheese on your burger buns.

But before that, don’t forget to grill your buns up a lil. No pun, I swear. You could butter it up if you want But the husband prefers it without any so….

Try to look for quality buns, ours was a lil flaky.

Fry those home-made chicken patties up and flatten it out more.

And as they say it again, plate those suckers up! And yea I know my patties are a little small -tersilap bajet!

Sauce it up with some sexy chili sauce and black pepper sauce for that kick.

Mmmm home-made patties which were GOOD! So good that my toddler ate one whole burger to herself okie! It was her first time being introduced to burgers too. So happy it was a home-made one

Serve with oven-baked fries (tons of black pepper on it coz husband went a little crazy with it) and tada – you got yourself a lovely meal peepz.  Hubby whacked not one but TWO burgers to himself and then like a greedy pig said I should make and freeze those patties up so he can take it to work for lunch. I told him there’s Ramly’s frozen burgers for that, heh

And totally unrelated – whatcha think of my minty pastel pedicure shade? Not sure if it goes well with tanned skin but I LOVE it. And I should add, those Clarks sandals – only cost me RM80

Okay, that is all!

Momma always say…eat your vegetable child coz it’s cheaper than chicken and fish

Yup, just the mention of those greens will send Sairah running in the opposite direction like as though her mother is possesed. But either way I am SO SO SO trying my hand at improving my vegetable cooking skills And ways into tricking that kid to eat it!

This was one of the recipes my mom gave me when I first started cooking. She said child take this and cook for your husband, it’s easy and tasty and there;s hope for you   no way in hell you’ll F this one up – fine, not in the exact tone but you get the jest of it.  An idiot-proof recipe.

Roger that.

Today, years on, this is my go-to recipe when it comes to cooking Chinese style vegetables. Over the years I made little changes to it like add other vegetables (though my foray with vegetables usually starts and ends with broccoli, cauliflower and carrots and yes in that order), tofu and black pepper sauce  to it which always went well. This is so easy you could literally cook it with your eyes closed!

But don’t take my advise on that, pls.

Ingredients:

4-5 clove garlic chopped

1-2 red chilli chopped

Egg tofu, one packet. Firm tofu goes well too!

One brocolli, florets removed and cut into small pieces

One cauliflower

Bottle of Oyster Sauce – best sauce ever created besides soya sauce

Bottle of Sarawak Blackpepper Sauce

Corn stach with water

In a pot, boil both vegetables until slightly soft and set aside. I usually add in some sesame oil into the pot for some added aroma. Once done, I put them in a bowl to cool, throw in some black pepper, white pepper and some chilli flakes for added oomph and let it cool down. If you’re lazy to do this, you can add in the vegetables into the pan and just cook it longer until soft.

Meanwhile, cook egg tofu (firm tofu also can) by  cutting them and sprinkling it with some black pepper , garlic salt and other spices of your choice. Cook until brown and set aside.

In a pan, fry garlic and chili using a bit of sesame oil and normal cooking oil, then add in the vegetables with little water (2 spoons maybe) and fry until soft. Eye ball the oyster sauce and this is entirely up to preference. Add more for more taste and add in more water if you want more sauce. Put in one table spoon of Sarawak black pepper sauce followed by corn starch with water to thicken the sauce. Add in some black and white pepper. Cook until soft. Dish out and don’t forget to add on the egg taufoo. This is SO easy to make and taste good too. Even the hubby’s French aunt still remembers this veg dish that I cooked for her some years ago

Chinese-shop material or not?

And I finally made Aloo Gobi! And Indian vegetable dish *woots* I modified this recipe from the original one. It’s so easy to make that I think I should make this all the time and perhaps add in more variety of different vegs in the future.

In a bowl, add some chopped ginger, 2 teaspoon coriander powder, ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper, tumeric powder and 2-3 tablespoon water and mix that to form a paste. Heat oil and add in ½ tablespoon cumin and let it fry until aromatic. Add in half chopped onions and 2 chopped green chilies and fry until fragrant. Add in the spice paste and fry. Add in one medium size chopped cauliflower, chopped half potatoes (more if you wish), 3 tablespoon water, some salt and black  pepper. Mix it well. Now close your pot, lower down the heat and let it cook for 20 minutes. Do stir every now and then for the vegs and potatoes to be coated in the paste. Once soft, serve.

You can probably add in diferent types of veg and even tomatoes I”m guessing.

Easy Peasy!!

All dished out.

He may *look* like he’s doing some serious cooking but he’s just helping me cook this chicken dish where we bought the spice paste from Ben’s Supermarket. I always tell him whenever he cooks, he looks so serious and like a god damn chef when infact, he’s cooking something out of a paste/box, hahaha.

Zero-star Michelin Chef at work, lol.

What we each brought to the table….of course mine is all made from scratch one *blows nails* Had it with Paratha (frozen one la, hell will freeze over if I can make that from scratch) and it was the perfect Sunday night meal…light and fluffly just like mah hubby.

Also sharing my brilliant take on Kung Pao Chicken. I’ll try to dig out the recipe if anyone is interested but I decided to add some boiled soft vegetable into the dish and topped it off with fried rice made from egg and soya sauce and it was heavenly!! Baby-hubby-maid all polished it off in nano seconds.

Lazy style dish – all in one. I’ll try to make this again (for the benefit of my tums) and hopefully photo quality would be a better one

Meanwhile please do stay tune next week coz I have a sponsored GIVEAWAY which involves a beauty box, ahem, any guesses which one?

SO I manage to bake two items last weekend and am so pleased to say it came out well

Hurrah *throws confetti*

First up were these chocolate chip banana muffin! I followed the same recipe mentioned earlier almost to the tee this time from Racheal Ray’s site except….yes I stuck to muffin form AND I threw in a quarter block of  melted cooking dark chocolate just because I was cracking my head as to how not to waste it

The results:

And yes I”m starting to LOVE taking photos of the process coz I think it’s really like giving birth coz you’re at it from the point of ‘conception’ until… (ignore my conception statement, am just getting highly passionate about this, heh)

It’s in FULL yummylicious form then you eat it, LOL. It’s a very exciting process really! It only gets painful when it doesn’t come out good.

And while I was baking these, the husband and baby were up to some arts and crafts and rightttt at the moment these muffins were ready, she literally ran up to me, gave me the card and a kiss and then said ‘mom, can I have the muffins now please’?

Like OMG, not sure if I should be scared of how cheeky this little girl is becoming.

I should add, the muffins were dense and filling, we had this for b’fast and my lord, I was FULL the entire morning

This was the cutesty card she made with her dad….I know why they went for ice-cream coz she keeps trying her luck with getting ice-cream all the time but we don’t give in, haha. Trying to guilt trip us that kid.

Who doesn’t love mommy?

And her boobs!

This definitely has markings of the husband’s work coz when you turn the card upside down, it resembles BOOBS. How expected of these two.

Either way, her precious art work goes up in the fridge. Just like how we put the sand art she did with her dad a week ago.

And random, we really do think she’s getting better with her ‘modern 2 year old art’ ever since practicising like almost every other day. We even bought a set for her day-care aka mom’s place so she can furiously paint away.

Art work nicely displayed in the Museum :D

We’ve also started her on music appreciation if you must. We’re exposing her to music of all kinds of genre and for the past few days I introduced to her the likes of Bond, Vanessa Mae, Robert Miles and Maksim’s flight of the bumblebee (guaranteed to drive any toddler hyper I swear) – people who have such raw talent musically with instruments. And it was interesting to see her reaction – she kept using her hands to mimic the violin and after a while, she turned to me and said ‘mommy, I want a violin….and drumstick……and get this, ‘a pretty dress’!!! Like how observant is she to notice Bond and Vanessa Mae dressed up prettily in all their videos? And then yesterday hubby showed her Led Zeppelin videos and she quickly requested for her guitar so she could rock out with the video. Btw, her so called guitar only plays baby music and annoying animal sounds, lol.

Ok I digressed.

Then on Sunday, I wanted to bake something special for the husband. He’s been requesting for Oatmeal Cookies for the longest time ever but I always end up with Banana or Chocolate muffin coz I like putting my tummy and preference first sometimes

Eventually I gave in after coming across this website. Which I stalk almost everyday.

Almost baked. And over this weekend I learnt the process of ‘baking’ properly as well coz one website gave tips as to move the trays around (front, back, side etc) to ensure a properly baked goodies and I applied that and wala! I never knew about this baking 101 previously btw.

Mmm mmm - the end results of  Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Looks professionally done or not? The only thing I did different was use 1.5 cups of brown sugar instead of granulated sugar and I only put in half cup of chocolate chips. It was crunchy on the outside and soft inside. Excellent tea time snack and definitely a healthier one.

It was absolutely yummy and hubby-baby polished off 5 cookies as they came out from the oven! I brought home some for mom and she even said it was tasty and suggested adding more nuts for added oomph in the future. For mom to approve – that means something okie *flicks proud I-can-bake-oatmeal-cookies tears*

Definitely kept the hubby a happy and proud man (even took the cookies to work!) past few days and coz of that I’m also a happy wifey! Try it, you’ll love it!

Gougères! Gougères! Gougères!

I feel so French whenever I attempt to pronounce what I baked but to be honest I almost sound retarded trying to roll my tongue around so let me just refer to these as cheese puffs!

A while ago I started seeing these all over my facebook – suddenly every mommy I knew were making cheese puffs for the lil one! Morever they were baking these for breakfast!! Supermom or what?! But seriously, what’s there not to love about these puffs? The first thing I ever do whenever I walk into a bakery is to attack cheese based buns.

The cooking method was different. It honestly was like magic seeing the flour magically become stringy upon getting in contact with water and butter in the pot. Got the recipe from Racheal Ray here and as usual, it didn’t fail to keep a smile on our tummies (if our tummies could smile that is!)

Freshly baked out of the oven. I used sliced cheddar cheese coz I couldn’t find fancy cheese in our local Carrefour outlet. Woe.

But I made these in the evening coz God knows I would not torture my soul by waking it up really early just to bake. Nuh uh.

Naturally, that also means shitty lighting for photo opportunity.

Might have gone a lil loco with the cheese so it was really filled with it. Shouldn’t complain though

Overall, a very good recipe to follow, however I made them slightly big (my bad, I like things BIG) so my cheese puffs were deflated….but its okay, deflated balls or not, it still does the job It goes nicely in the mouth. And best of all, it taste good!

And enter the randomness, this is the new phone my hubby got me a week before his birthday. That’s right, instead of me buying him something nice for his birthday, I got a present instead Also coz my old phone was giving serious problems and I think he secretly needs me to have a phone so he can monitor my movement

Did not want to spend too much so we ended up with the Samsung S3 Mini (though the ironic part is I said I like em big earlier and now I’m showing you a mini sized phone, haha). Phones have never been my cup of tea but with this phone I am liking the ability to check my Facebook (during office hours ahem) and keeping in touch with friends via WhatsApp. Plus I have a shitload of other unnecessary apps and games I downloaded for during office hour bored times. After more than 7 years of using postpaid, I finally have data plan, unbelievable or what?!

Can finally feel like a cool hipster nao, lol. Got the phone for under RM1k inclusive of my hot pink cover so anybody wants to know where I got it from – email la. The shop  I went to generally sells phones for RM200-300 cheaper. Or you can check out their roadshow happening this weekend here.

And here’s sharing some random photos taken from my new phone using the Photo Grid App which I adore. Dunno how many people are annoyed seeing my Facebook flooded with multiple photos in one post but heck it. It’s mah new hobby and talent  :D

This year for his birthday, I cracked my head until it almost bled and finally decided with a massage and pedicure TOGETHER, followed by a foot massage and a head & massage trip to Truefitt & Hill on his own for some more pampering while I baby-sat his child.

Some photos of hubby claiming his birthday gift. I paid for the coffee too btw. As  for the main gift, it was actually a GPS which I will send over to him once he moves coz surely he will need some sort of naggy woman’s voice in the car when driving coz if you know my husband, you will feel sorry for his lack of sense of direction. It’s so shit that nobody can save him.  Except for a damn GPS.

Valentine’s this year – wasn’t expecting any flowers but husband got it anyway. Hmm…I told him to give him the cash instead next year since I’m not huge on flowers. I am on cash though

Baby-Daddy love in a Hypermarket.

Poor baby brushing her fake pony….until daddy can afford the real deal that is, lol. She has so much love for something that cannot reciprocate back. Bless her.

And yes let’s move on to my new hair do! A friend recommended her hair stylist and for some reason I left it in her good hands (I swear I didn’t cock-stare her or watch her cut like a hawk this time – played it cool I did) to do whatever she wanted to do with my bushy hair and this was the end results:

You likey?? I felt so ‘rich’ like a Mak Datin stepping out from the hair salon after that, lol. But one look at my empty wallet brought me down to earth. Now if only I can employ someone to blow dry my hair like this everyday! Husband was very impressed with the cut coz it’s not every time I am brave enough to get layers AND a side fringe to go. I love my new hair stylist

And then this of course is poor me blow drying my hair on my own…..you can see the layers a lil but not as nicely when its professionally done.

Okay that’s about it, over and out! And yes I know you’re still trying to figure out how to pronounce and say Gougères