Morning Breakfast Treats

I still did not get into the mood to make any cupcakes yet. In place of the cupcakes, I made pancakes for breakfast the other day. Hubby said no need to blog about making pancakes since I used pancake powder to do… heehee but I am sure some would still like to see the steps in getting hot delicious pancakes made.

I would recommend you to get the NISSHIN HOT CAKE MIX & the Japanese brand maple syrup. The taste of the pancakes is really good and best of all easy to prepare.

On top of the pancake mix, you will need eggs and milk. I use butter instead of oil for the frying. & if you remember I still have some left over strawberries jam and I whipped up some fresh cream to go with the final products.

A busy week

My blog has been up for a few weeks now and I am encouraged by my friends' who commented on wanting to try out my recipes and wanting to share it with their friends and family. I am seriously touched! Thanks!! Now I am even more determine to take more pictures and put more recipes on this blog.

I hope to find some time to make the cupcakes tomorrow and after which I think I will try to find some time next week to make a cheesecake. =) Probably will make one that does not require any baking - understand some of my friends do not have an oven so this will be a good one to upload. =)

Since last Thursday, I had been busy meeting up with friends who flew in from HK. One of them was a girlfriend whom I have maintained a long online friendship with (about 3 years) but never met get to meet face to face and the other was a girlfriend whom I thought we would never get to meet again in person. All in all it was a good feeling. =) Sadly there were not much interesting place I could recommend to go in Singapore and not when all the shopping centers closed at 9pm at night.

Here are some photos taken with my precious Nokia N82.

I managed to drop by the PC show twice last week and ended up purchasing an OKI printer (rather hubby paid for it). Both hubby & mine hearts stopped for 2 full mins while making the purchase but after we compared the features & price with a similar make Canon printer, we started to breathe again. If you guys are seriously thinking of getting a laser color printer, do take a look at the OKI brand. The print out is really good. Will make a scan of the print out & a pic of the printer after it gets delivered here.

At the PC show, my hubby also pointed out the new Nokia N97 to me. I tried out the live phone - very very user friendly and the touch screen sensitivity is just nice to navigate your way around the system (I tried Samsung & LG - both of which I felt like I am giving acupuncture to the phone & many a times I felt like smashing it). The features of N97 is indeed very tempting but its price of $1288 is enough to make me run away from the counter. But truth be told, the spec is very very powerful so much as that it made me rethink my desire to get the latest iPhone 3G 2 (S stands for speed). Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.........

Here are two articles that I got from the Straits Time Urban 17 June 2009:












If you are around Suntec city, you might want to try out this Japanese dining outlet (MOF - Ministry of Food). If you are mango crazy like me - you might want to try out this Kakigori Crushed Ice dessert that I ordered. It came with a small container of special mango sauce (you can ask for more) and was served with soft ice cream on crushed ice. Topped with the sour/sweet mango, it was very refreshing.

Gracious Service begin with who...? Singaporeans gracious?? Who are we trying to kid?

Good news of the day is that Hubby passed his IPPT despite his back injury. He could have have passed his last IPPT if not for his back that caused him to come in 3 seconds late for his 2.4KM run. So to celebrate him getting a silver, he said he wanted KFC.

When we arrived (a branch on the east side), there were two counters in operation and each serving a customer. Very soon it was our turn. Our service crew, a young Malay lady, gave us a smile and took our order and began to prepare our meal. Meanwhile I realised the 6 pieces meal seemed to be more worth it (even if we add on the cheesy fries we would only need to pay about $18.30 or so as compared to the $18.00 for a two pieces meal, three pieces meal and cheesy fries). While I was contemplating this with my hubby, the service crew turned to us and gave us a smile but did not say thing. Even when I asked her if it was more worth while, all she did was to get her manager to come out to change the order (hello, I didn't even ask to change order, I asked if it was worthwhile to change). Though she wasn't rude, she certainly wasn't helpful or provide enough information to help us with our decision.

The Manager was a different story. She immediately came out and gave us a smile. My hubby asked if it was ok to change our orders and she was able to advise us that the $14.90 6 pieces meal do not come with drinks and if that was ok with us. It helped us to decide better then because we didn't know that! We apologised and said we would stick to our order (because previously our service crew had prepared the drinks first). The Manager said it was alright and repeated our orders and indicated that we had an additional cheesy fries to go.

Despite the nice change in situation, our young service crew did not maintain that service standard. In fact everything slowed down to an incredible speed. I think we stood there (after the manager left) for close to 5minutes before she finally packed our food in the bag. Then she took another 2 minutes to get our money ( could see her count the two dollar note!!!), and to return our change with both hand (points added for politeness but deducted for slowness). But!! She forgot to put the bags closer to us and as a result my hubby had to reach across the counter for the bags while she tried to return the changes to us (octopus hands all over). Also by then the queue of maybe 2-3 customers was forming behind us. Efficiency & speed is definitely not a top priority there because on the next queue were also another 2-3 customers. *sigh*

Then we prepared to leave the restaurant with our food. My hubby reached forward and pulled the glass door opened for me and before I could go out, this young, neat looking (JC looking- maybe 20 years old) chap charged forward and rushed into the door nearly knocking me down (my hubby was still holding the door opened for me). My hubby at that point made an irritated noise and scolded him D***head.. and I turned around to look into the glass panel and saw that young chap looking at us dumbly like "what the hell? what did I do?!"

To me is.. "My gosh!! What is happening!! Are you blind, simply ignorance and dumb!! You don't even have the courtesy to say Sorry! or Beg your pardon! Can you open your own door? There are two sides to the glass door!"

Actually if you look around you would notice there are so many cases of ungracious services and behaviour (heck care attitude). If only we could put them out in bright lights and embarrassed them. Now that we all have become more educated, it seems like we have also become less cultured. Thinking that money, law and English accent language equate a superior self. Some time I even think our common sense has gone to hell as well with all the self-centered behaviour. *sigh*

I seems to feel my blood boiling again as I wrote this down...
Whoever you are and if you happened to read this, you better know what to do next time.
If not I will say you are a bottomless pit for KFC which turn you into a mad caveman!

Black Pepper Pork Chops W Tomato Spaghetti

My Hubby asked for the same dish again and so I made it again. But this time I managed to take down the steps in preparing this dish. =)

What you need for the Pork Chops:

1. 4 pieces of pork chop
2. Chopped garlic
3. Coarse Black Pepper
4. Mixed Herbs (Basil, Rosemary, Savory, Thyme, Fennel, Pepper)
5. Salt

Add salt, black pepper and herbs to the pork and mix well. Then add the garlic.
Leave to marinate for at least 30mins to an hour before pan flying in hot pan.

I figured out a trick to cook the pork. Drizzle some oil on the pan, and bring the oil to heat up. To check that the temperature is good enough, I would drop a small piece of garlic into the pan. If you see the garlic dancing in the pan, it means the oil is hot enough. You can then put in the pork to cook. Turn the heat up high and then cover the pan. Check in 2-3mins time, when you see the pork being cooked through to the surface, you can then flip it over. This way you get the nicely brown crisp pork chop. =)











What you need for the tomato Spaghetti:

1. Spaghetti for two
2. Prego Italian Sauce (I go for garlic & mushroom)
3. Onions (slice)
4. Some sugar
5. Tomato Sauce
6. half a bowl of water

I used a sauce pan to fry the onion & garlic till they turned golden brown. Once ready, add the prego mushroon & garlic sauce (about 6 to 8 tablespoon) and the half bowl of water (the water is to help the sauce mix well - otherwise it will burn easily). I would usually add sugar and tomato sauce to enhance the taste. If you find the sauce too bland, you can always add more prego sauce for taste. Because I am cooking additional pork chops to go with the spaghetti I did not add any mince beef into the sauce. The end result is shown on the right... & is served with red wine =).

Fresh Strawberry Fruit Cake - Part 2

In my earlier post, I have only showed you how you can baked your own strawberry sponge cake. Now I will show you how to decorate your cake with fruits, and whipped cream.

What you need are the following:
1. Fresh Strawberries (12-15pcs)
2. Strawberry Pie Filling (you can get it at Poon Huat)
3. Whipped Cream (300g)

Before you start whipping the cream, you need to cut away the top crust of the sponge cake and then cut the rest of the cake into three parts. I used the chopping board as a make-shift turn plate. This helps me to cut the cake while turning the chopping board.






Once you have the cake cut, you can start to prepare the whipped cream. Remember to keep the cream cold before you take it out for whipping. You need to whip the cream on fast speed until it is soft but stiff (shows a tail when you check the consistency). Do not over beat or you will have very rough cream texture and it will be ugly when you "mop" it across your cake.

Once the cream is ready, you may now start to put the cream on the cake. As there will be crumps on the cake, you need to put a generous amount of cream on the cake before you attempt to even it out. What I have on the right is still not enough. If you do not want too much cream in your cake, you can always smooth it away after the cake has been properly covered. Once you have the first layer covered with cream, you can add cut strawberries slices on the cake & thereafter add some cream over it before you put the second layer of cake on it.

After putting the second layer cake on top of the first layer, repeat the steps in getting the cream to cover the cake. Then you would need to prepare a piping bag filled with cream to pipe the cream around the circumference of the cake before you put the strawberry on the cake. I do not have a piping bag so I used a plastic bag, filled the cream on one side and then cut a small bit away at the tip so that I could squeeze the cream out.

























Near this stage, you are almost done. The most challenging part of this process is about getting the cream looking neat and clean on all round edges. Like I mentioned before, I placed the cake (with the cake base) on the chopping board and using a long spatula I put lots of cream on and around the cake, then gently rotated the chopping board while cleaning the excess cream along the cake.
Here is the end result.