A Childhood Favourite 鸡蛋糕 : Sep-14

This is a rather hectic but fun month for me, in my own kitchen. Hahaa.. It began first with the snowskin mooncakes, followed by rice cooker cakes. Then Victor requested for me to make one of his childhood favourite, the 鸡蛋糕 with the raisins. Hey, the 鸡蛋糕 is also one of my favourite breakfast food, but I prefer the plain one with the soft paper cup and the red dot on the cake.

The 鸡蛋糕 is definitely a steamed cake, one that I can make in my kitchen!! With this basic knowledge I went on my hunt for a recipe on the internet!! I was surprised there were so many versions of this simple cake.. some were seemingly arrange ingredients like cream soda or Eno, and still other recipes with ingredients so sophisticated that I have never heard of it!! At the verge of calling it a day, I came across this professional food blogger who actually tried out d various 鸡蛋糕 recipes including the traditional one which requires only the three ingredients of eggs, sugar and flour. Naturally I chose the simplest recipe and began my trial..

My first attempt was a success!! It really had that very eggy fragrance.. I LOVE IT!! And Victor loved it too!! Especially with my pre-soaked raisins.. It was really heavenly with my kopi-o..... 😍😍

With 3 eggs, 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of flour, the 鸡蛋糕 I made did not last very long before they were all eaten up. I could not wait to make and eat another batch!!

Actually I was feeling a little guilty about consuming so much sugar. In a bid to ease my guilt, I attempted a healthier version of the 鸡蛋糕 with buckwheat flour (instead of white flour) and brown sugar (instead of white sugar). The end result was rather dry.. and not so nice. Guess if I really want a healthier 鸡蛋糕 the next time, I will mix buckwheat flour with plain white flour! Also I have to make sure I use caster sugar (which is simply grinding coarse sugar into powder form!!). 

Hahaa.. Before the month ran out, I have steamed my own 鸡蛋糕 at least 4 times!! For the 4th time, I really went back to study the recipe and made sure I followed every instruction to a T. I may not have yield the softest or tastiest cake yet, but the satisfaction was tremendous and I even enjoyed my 鸡蛋糕 even more!!

GSK Crab Feast again : Sep-14

It must be about 6 times that we had held a GSK crab feast sessions, starting from around 2004.  Apart from the 2 occasions which we held at Wai Chuan and Lily place, the remaining sessions were organised at our place.   Through these years, Lily’s pepper crabs had gained undisputed recognition and attracted many fans, even those who had left GSK would miss them badly.   After a gap of 2 years, we decided to arrange another feast this year and I initiated the invitation.  It was an easy task with Lily’s reputation on hand, some even brought along their family members to share the joy.

Set up by Papa

On the day, everyone in the family helped to prepare the gathering.  En’en was already excited a few days before the event, and kept asking if there would be children coming along and if we would like her to perform her ukulele… Papa help to clean and set up the tables and chairs, Mama cooked her famous agar-agar and curry chicken, Shin Yang prepared her best dessert and fruits, Qi helped to buy donuts and Xuan clean up the house…etc etc.  It was amazing how we worked together to serve our guests and I am so proud of our strong family bonds and mutual understanding.

Feasting

 

Personally, I could not further express Lily’s big heart in offering to cook for us.  I had volunteered to help on one occasion to “kill” the crabs, that task alone blew me off and since, learnt to appreciate the massive effort in preparing the feast.  It was a great gathering and coincidentally also Lily’s wedding anniversary date, so I bought a cake for her to celebrate with her love one as well as to thank her kindness.

Greenscreen fun@Papa's place : Sep-14

On a Sunday evening, I decided to bring our portable greenscreen to papa's place and had some fun.  And indeed, the outputs were remarkable and impressive, anyone seems to like it and we even planned for a second session which we would dress up and make up our hair!

Adventure Purple Hair!! : Sep-12

It all began with Dor. Having laid her hands on some purple hairdye, she bleached and colored Hong's then Korean-style longish & permed hair to a beautiful purple! A darkish kind of purple which was subtle and at the same time mesmerizing. I was first captivated by it when Hong attended a RHQ leaders meeting and he was sitting a few rows in front. Hmm.. Nice, I thought. At that time, I did not think it was a DIY job. It was so good, you see..

I subsequently noticed too, the ends of Dor's mane were purplish too. Not quite the same shade as Hong's but still nice. Hong then revealed that Dor was the hair colorist responsible for his and her own hair color change, and that she was about to color Van's hair soon too! Dor then offered to color my hair too if I was keen.. Of course I was!! (^_*)

We--Dor, Van and I--began to hunt for pictures which would be the end-result of how we would want our hair to look like..

It was a girly project. It was pretty fun! As I finally decided that I wanted ombré beginning with black, then blue, then purple, I dyed my own hair for the second time in my entire life, black. It was pretty disastrous, as i discovered only much much later..

The real fun began in Dor's bathroom. On that Monday late afternoon, told Ma I'm not taking dinner and took a train over. Dor did not have to work late and already had the bleach prepared when I reached. We plunged into action straight away. Van would have joined us if she did not have to be at the Project Superstar live studio.. Anyway, Jiun joined us instead! Other than the hair, we had a great time yakking like we had rarely done before.. I felt all young and girlish all over again!! Like some stayover party of some sort..

Actually Jiun juz had her hair done at Carrie's.. cut & colored. But after sitting in Dor's bathroom with Dor and me throughout the evening, she finally succumbed to Dor's temptation and had purple hairdye put onto her hair as well!! Eventually Dor also had her hair 'wet' again; not wanting to waste, she used the remaining purple hairdye on her own hair.

Juz realized I have no picture of Dor's Adventure Hair!! ) :

Results was satisfactory.. but not after we scrutinized my hair.

Dor was really meticulous. She refused to accept that a huge segment of my brown hair had remained, and that somehow the blue turned out to be more green than blue. and we spent another evening in her bathroom again! (: 

Dor was determined. She spared no bleach and thoroughly applied them all over my hair ends. I was thoroughly amazed by this DIY Queen!!

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Dor only colored the ends of her hair. She reasoned that the bleaching would surely damage hair and if she found the damage unbearable, she could juz snip off her ends and her hair would be as good and healthy as new!! I did not give her wise words much thought. However, I realized I had internalized them as common sense!

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Caring for this colored hair required some efforts. First of all, I had to get used to the color run each time I wash my hair. Although Dor's advice was to use a light shampoo and only to wash the scalp area, and not washing hair daily.. However, I defiantly did as I would normally do. And Alas!! A mini crisis of some sort, struck. Washing long hair was already an undesirable chore daily; washing long all-clumped-together straw was ten times more tedious and undesirable!! It came to a point where I missed combing my hair so badly that I decided to snip those straw away.. ) :

Once again after many many years, my hair was short again!! As Yvonne did not snip all the colored hair away, my ends were still colored, so was a lil' portion of my bleached fringe; the original purple color had ran, leaving only the bleached hair.

Not long after, Dor sent me the below picture with the message, "See you cut hair, I also cut!!".

Hahaa!! The end of our Adventure Purple Hair.. It was good while it lasted. The internet was really a fantastic invention, together with YouTube!! We could not have done what we did without them.. (^_-)

I Can Now Bake Cakes!! : Sep-14

Since time immemorial, I have loved to eat cakes and buns. Since I have been able to put together food for others and myself to eat, I have wanted to make my own cakes and buns. However, due to Victor's abhorrence to butter and that almost all baked confectionary seemed to contain butter, he came out with a seemingly valid excuse of no-place-to-put-oven-in-kitchen and left feeling unfulfilled and disappointed.

Of late, I have chanced upon a webpage on how you can steam a cake instead of baking it. Exploring juz a lil' further, I found this blogger who has steamed many successful cakes in her rice cooker since last year!! She even took some fellow bloggers' successful baked cake recipes and adapted them for the 5.5-cup rice cooker (juz like mine!!).. Stumbled upon treasure!!

Being the procrastinator I usually am especially when venturing into something new, I was toying with the idea for a while before finally springing into action.. it happened when I saw an irresistable cake which I'm not so sure I can buy from outside -- the Magic Custard Cake.

Although it was not a very successful first attempt in the looks department, the cake was delish and wiped out in less than a day!! In fact, FIL likes it so much that MIL has sort of asked me for the recipe so that she can try a baked and prettier version of it!! Hahaa.. but Victor was a lil' disappointed not being able to partake in my joy.. because this magic custard cake contains milk and butter. ) :

Next, I tried with the all-time-favourite fruit of the family--the banana!

Oh, this became our family's instant favourite!! As I substituted butter with the healthier olive oil, Victor could enjoy this banana cake without holding back! In fact, he was so thankful that this cake was customized especially for his taste buds!!

This easy forgiving cake became so popular that I have made half a dozen over the past two weeks for friends and family!! It even became a birthday cake for Huili!!

In between, I did attempt some other cake.. a chocolate banana, another of our all-time favourite flavour, using the healthier organic raw cacao powder, but reception was only lukewarm.. ) :

Determined to find another instant favourite, I tried another cake--the Carrot Orange Cake. The texture was good but the taste was not. It had a sort of bitter taste which I thought I added too much baking powder or soda but Qi insisted it was the cake flour which I used; her previous baked creation using the cake flour tasted the same bad....

I felt so liberated and empowered knowing I can 'bake' cakes even without an oven!! And you know what, I even found recipes for rice cooker buns!! Hahahaa..

My Favourite Festival, Mooncake Festival : Sep-14

I always look forward to Mooncake Festival simply because I love to eat mooncakes. For a few years in a row since Nancy taught me how to make my own moonies, I have spent much happy and also tortuous time making my own mooncakes to eat as well as to give close friends and relatives. Every year, I would swear that I will not make mooncakes again the following year!! And last year, I really lived by my swear and made none. However, last year was really a very uneventful and non-memorable Mooncake Festival.. ) :

As I was thinking about mooncakes again this year, Victor announced that he would be ordering some masks and capes from taobao for his colleagues to dress up together for their end-August company D&D, and asked if I have anything to order.. His question juz sparked an idea!! I could order some mooncake stuff from taobao and make my moonies again this year!!! I was getting fed up with my cheap plastic phoon huat mooncake moulds, which contributed to my mooncake lethargy..

I sprang into action and found some pretty impressive-looking mooncake moulds. In fact those were moulds with lever and interchangeable design plates which i would love to get.. juz that they cost a bomb here. One medium mould with four design plates costs almost $20 at sun lik! In the end I found a set of four different moulds of different shapes & sizes, each with four interchangeable design plates which cost less than SG$20!! I also ordered a design of paper mooncake box and individual transparent mooncake boxes to be placed into the paper box, which could hold eight small snowskin moonies.. I even ordered decorative stickers for the individual boxes!! Wooooo.. it was so exciting!! I felt so alive once again and so looking forward to the Mid-autumn Festival once again!!!!!!!

After placing the taobao order, I was ready to undertake the tedious task of entirely making all of our mooncakes, both for consumption and distribution!! We all love the raffles hotel snowskin truffle mooncakes.. But each year, the cost of their mooncakes would rise and now the cost of one cheapest box is almost $60 with juz a miserable 8 little cakes in it. To buy only one box for the girls would simply be inadequate but to buy more would be sheer extravagance.. So I have decided to buy truffles to make our own raffles hotel mooncakes instead!! 

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Very excitedly after my taobao stuff arrived, I began to search for mooncake recipes so as to begin my very first attempt with my new toys. I recalled one of the reasons I stopped making moonies was because I was rather disgusted by the vegetable shortening; it was so oily that the grease simply could not be washed off!! I wondered how it would grease my guts and intestine.. I turned to my moonie guru Nancy for help. She revealed that there were a few bloggers who successfully substituted the shortening with healthier oils like olive oil! Hahaa.. Armed with this info, searching for a healthier snowskin recipe became a breeze!

My very first batch of snowskin mooncakes were so ugly.. but yummy!! I had no qualms eating up these delicious cakes with the gals because they were simply not presentable enough to be given away. 

Then we made the prettier ones to give away..

As they sell a wider variety of truffles, my moonies' flavours became more varied too!! (^_^)

Then, as I distributed a few individual moonies to some friends, one of them suggested that I make some to sell to her!! Although I dismissed her idea almost immediately, she insisted that I should think about it and reply her only later as she did not need the mooncakes immediately. Well, as it goes, the more I think about it, the more I thought, "Why not?"  So I did it!! Two boxes of big mooncakes to be picked up on different days. It was more stressful than I thought because these snowskin mooncakes could not be made too early in advance as the skin would turn hard after a couple of days..

This time, I could even give QQ a separate smaller box, according to his preferred flavour!! (^^)

Qi also made some--actually she brought quite a lot as I also made a dozen for her--of moonies to school as Teachers' Day gifts for her teachers..

Alone, I have put together more than a hundred moonies.. Indeed, I made to my hearts' content! Even Qi & En had fun joining in the process and all of us including Xuan and Victor ate to our hearts' content!! You know, I'm pretty pleased with myself this Mid Autumn Festival!! *\(^_^)/*

Watch Lion Dance at Takashimaya : Sep-14

Since earlier this year when I participated in the planning for XinYang and YongYang anniversaries in November, I had been kept well informed by Adrian on their activities. Performing and watching Lion Dancing had always being a passion for myself, and I could feel the similar passion exhibited by these younger generations. Their boundless display of energy and enthusiasm was encouraging and one of my easily achievable role was to support them to my best ability.

The troupe continuous effort finally reaped off a remarkable result when YongYang won the championship in ladies’ open division this year. They were also invited to perform at Takashimaya during the National Lion Dance competition in conjunction with the Mooncake festival. On this happy occasion, I brought along the family to watch their performance and also took the opportunity to exercise my L-lens.