Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
Did you know that Wyevale Garden Centre is currently running an Easter event for you and your family to have breakfast with the cute Easter bunny? The session lasts for approximately 90 minutes and is suitable for children between 2–10 years old.
Both children were so excited when I told them that we were going have breakfast with the bunny! They both were looking forward to sharing their meal and of course getting a lot of chocolate too!
This Easter, Choc Nibbles set us a challenge to use a variety of Choc Nibbles flavours by either baking them, eating them or decorating with them. I decided to create an Easter Garden. I filled the flower pots with a mixture of different flavoured yummy delicious Choc Nibbles.
Did you know that Sweetdreams Ltd have been manufacturing Choc Nibbles in the North East for nearly 30 years now? They are unique and the only manufacturers of this type of product in the UK. They have seven different varieties: Original Choc Nibbles, Toffee Crumble, Choc Lick, Orange Choc Nibbles, Mint Choc Nibbles, and two brand new to the range: Jammie Choc Nibbles and Posh Original Choc Nibbles.
Many Chinese sweet desserts are quite light and refreshing. They are not very often found in the UK Chinese restaurants with plates of fresh fruits or fried banana fritters the more common options. I love eating sweet desserts after a heavy meal in Singapore especially like ice kachang, grass jelly and many more yummy delicious desserts.
For this Easter, I decided to make these delicious hidden mini Easter egg chocolate truffles for my little guests. This recipe is inspired by Co-Operative Food Home Bake’s March week 2 chocolate truffles recipe. I was going to make a huge centrepiece dessert recipe – a chocolate egg filled with chocolate mousse but changed my mind at the last minute, and decided to make these simple chocolate truffles with hidden mini eggs.
Learning to make creative cakes is something I’ve always wanted to do. Having only a couple hours of a sugar craft course, I did made a few creative cakes like a Batman cake and Spider-man cupcakes I made for my son’s birthday.
Baseball cakelet is a recipe I found on Cupcake Envy by Amy Eilert published by Tuttle Publishing. She is a self-taught cake designer whose love of baking and working with her hands found a perfect outlet in cake making. She founded Cupcake Envy in Wake Forest, North Carolina in 2006. In this book, it showcases a range of her cleverly single-serving cakelets that resemble a stylish party dress, a desktop humidor, a cheery coffee cup, an adorable baby bottle, a wicked voodoo doll, a stylish purse and even a baseball!
This coming Mother’s Day, I decided to bake and make this mini Cake Bouquet. I have a sweet tooth and I can eat cake all day long. This is perfect as a Mother’s Day gift or even breakfast with tea!
Dr. Oetker wants everyone to celebrate the great and good about chocolate and get experimental by trying new chocolatey bakes you have never attempted before. To get everyone excited, throughout March, Dr. Oetker is running a Twitter competition to encourage everyone to have a go at baking their own yummy chocolate cakes and bakes. To enter, simply Tweet @DrOetkerbakes a photo of a chocolate bake you have made and tell them who you will be sharing it with using the hashtag #evenbetterbaking for the chance to win a deluxe hamper of Dr.Oetker chocolate products! What are you waiting for!
We are a huge fan of chocolate and I frequently bake chocolate cakes or cookies to share. Chocolate always tastes better if it’s shared with your loved ones and friends. I tried baking traditional chocolate profiteroles recently, but this time around, I decided to make a creative linked heart effect pattern on the Choux buns. This chocolate recipe can be found on Dr. Oetker’s website where you can find lots of baking inspiration for chocolate cakes and bakes.
Last week, we popped by Star City and managed to catch Honey Monster on the last day of his tour of the Midlands to share some of his yummy Honey Monster Puffs! They were re-branded from Sugar Puffs to the new name last year 2014.
As we walked into the main building at Star City, the cuddly monster was standing in his stand waving at us! We had a family photo taken by their lovely staff and both children were very excited to give Honey Monster a cuddle!
I have never tried to bake a marble cake from scratch as it is often easier to use a pre-mix to bake with my children! We all love marble cake for its chocolate swirls in the cake! But there isn’t much choice of marble cake pre-mixes on the market.
Anyway, recently The Happy Egg Co have kindly sent me a signed copy of Eric Lanlard’s Totally Chocolate cookbook, which features all his favourite chocolate recipes! I was so excited when I saw this chocolate and vanilla marble cake recipe which also happened to be his first listed recipe. I was thrilled to make it from scratch!
The fabulous chef, Eric Lanlard also created Peanut Butter & Chocolate Egg Cups for the Happy Egg co which can be found on their website.
After I watched Comic Relief Celebrity Bake Off, I really wanted to bake chocolate profiteroles too! They are my favourite desserts! However I was temporarily stopped in my tracks when my mixer went kaput. I managed to find a new affordable mixer so here’s how I got on with the profiteroles.
I am so thrilled to learn Alō drinks have recently launched in Waitrose, Holland & Barrett, Ocado, independent health stores (such as Whole Foods and Selfridges) and directly from their website.
I am very familiar with aloe vera. Since young, my family has been growing aloe vera plants at home as they are very useful for skin problem. If you ever have skin rashes or sores, simply cut off the stem, remove one side of the skin and apply/rub the ‘gel’ onto the affected skin. While living in Singapore, I frequently drank bottles of aloe vera juice as they have quite a few health benefits too.
This Valentines day, OXO Good Grips set us a new challenge – to cook a 3 course meal for our loved ones. So I decided to make crispy duck pancakes for starters, duck breast with cranberry sauce for main and waffles with strawberries for dessert.
In order to help me with this challenge, I have picked the 3 piece large bowl & colander set, mandoline slicer and 9” tongs with silicon heads to use along with all my other OXO Good Grips kitchen accessories.
Last week, we had a unique and lovely meal at Fiesta Del Asado, Birmingham’s first Argentinian restaurant. The white historic building is located on the busy main road of Edgbaston and they have their own car parking at the front and back. When we arrived inside the restaurant, the place is deceptively large with a nice comfortable atmosphere. It is very well designed high end restaurant with plenty of beautiful ornaments around.
Peanut cookies are one of my favourite snacks to eat during Chinese New Year. Normally we will buy them from shops in Singapore but now living in the UK, it is impossible unless I buy them from Chinatown. So I decided to make it myself using the recipe book given to me by my aunty.
The first obstacle I found to making this recipe was trying to buy roasted peanuts without added salt. In the end I bought raw peanuts and made everything from scratch. You can usually find packets of raw peanuts in the health food aisle of a supermarket. To make roasted peanuts, I chopped the raw peanuts in a blender and roasted them in the oven at 160°C for 15 minutes. I stirred the peanuts every 5 minutes of baking.
