Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
This is a very easy craft that we made during the Easter holiday break. Both of my children love fishes and so we decided to make this fish mobile to hang it in our conservatory. We spent at least 20 minutes to colour all the fishes and took me around 10 minutes to thread them into this simple yet beautiful fish mobile.
Caramel Almond Crisp is a cookie recipe from The Secret of Cookies by Gu Huixue. I absolutely love this book my friend bought for me in Singapore and have been trying out many of her recipes!
Steamed rice cakes are one of my favourite childhood snacks when I was in Singapore. I grew up eating them for breakfast. They come in various bright colours and you simply dip the cake into orange sugar (brown sugar coloured orange) to eat. The cake is very plain by design, so dipping sugar makes it more delicious to eat. I bought a packet of orange sugar when I was in Singapore in August and have wanted to bake this cake for a while. Now I have finally got around to do it. It requires minimal ingredients but it takes a long time to prepare. So if you want to have it for breakfast, remember you need at least 2 hours.
In addition to the ingredients, it’s also useful to have these small aluminium cups which I bought from Singapore too. This recipe is to make with coconut milk but I have replaced it with fresh milk which is a good substitute.
Mr K is a huge fan of Skylanders and with the new additional, Trap Team, our collection is getting bigger and bigger. Early last month, his aunty bought him the Trap Team kit for his birthday. Yesterday, we were sent this fun Christmas kit to create our very own Skylanders Christmas snow globe.
Over the years, I have grown from amateur cook to a mom to three kids (including a massive old one). During my free time, I enjoy looking at Pinterest for ideas, baking Chinese cakes, learning piping etc.
I always find working with good food brands really rewarding. So when I was approached by Gü Puds, the purveyors of decadent desserts, to make an edible tea cup, I was very excited! Gü is famous for its chocolate puds and have recently launched a new, ready-to-heat, hot chocolate (or chocolate milk if you prefer it cold). Now I have seen edible tea cups that you can pour hot chocolate into, but the techniques required here are beyond my skill set and I’d be worried of it leaking. I believe it requires a really thick cookie base with a thick fondant icing. So instead, I made an edible tea cup cake to go along with the Gü Hot Chocolate instead.
I’ve always wanted to bake colourful cookies whenever I saw the picture on Pinterest. So last week, I managed to spend some time with my daughter to bake them. This is a very easy recipe but it does require time to bake and is a workout for your arms. To mix the dough with four different food gels took me a long time to get the perfect colour. My daughter did get quite impatient with me mixing the food gel into the dough so I had given her a plastic glove to help knead the dough too.
To make the cookies colourful, I opted for food gel rather than food colouring liquid. Gel is much easier to mix than liquid and liquid may make your dough too wet and soft. This is my first time I bought the gel and the colour is not too bad. I had also used the food gels for my icing when I made my gingerbread house.
This December, OXO Good Grips set bloggers an ultimate Christmas challenge to bake a gingerbread house, letting our imagination run wild with all the possible ways we can decorate it. They have also teamed up with Stork to provide us this challenge. We have received a baking bundle including Stork margarine, OXO’s new bakers 8 piece silicone decorating set, compact food scale, measuring spoon set, 11” whisk and a medium silicone spatula.
Last year when I tried to bake my gingerbread house, the whole house collapsed with cookies breaking off as I didn’t have the proper tools and maybe because I used too thin icing. So this year, I am challenging myself again to make a house that won’t crumble!
Last week, I baked a chocolate cake, cut out cylinder shapes and made icing. Unfortunately, my icing was too runny and it ruined all my mini cupcakes! So I had no choice but to cheat as my guests were due to arrive. I bought the ready-made vanilla icing and a packet of cupcakes! So if you ever ruin your Christmas party snacks or need a quick Christmas recipe to impress your relatives and friends, look no further! This is very simple Santa Hat cupcake and won’t take you too long at all. You will need a piping star nozzle and piping bag for this.
Thanks to Nick Jr and UKMumstv who shared this tutorial on how to make a Ben Elf Hat. My daughter complained why I didn’t make a girl elf hat. To make a girl elf hat, you just need to add a pink flower instead of a green leaf.
Christmas is coming thick and fast and I have a few crafts that I would love to share with you. Thanks to Nick Jr’s Christmas Craft Twitter party for the materials we received and guides to make them.
This week is the National Cupcake Week (15 – 21 September) and I am very pleased to join in to celebrate it with OXO Good Grips and Sugar and Crumbs. I have received OXO Good Grips’ new cupcake corer (RRP £6), cupcake icing knife (RRP £4.50) and baking duster’s wand (RRP £10), along with chocolate cherry powder and pistachio icing from Sugar and Crumbs.
In our summer activities A – Z letter L, we did two craft posts which is the egg box lion and egg box lion mask. This is how we did it. I had a few half dozen cardboard egg boxes laying around for a weeks which came in handy for this craft.
DIY Coca-cola Fairy Light Bottles! Recently, I had a mini task from #cbias to do a World Cup #BigMatchPlanner #Shop with Coca-Cola. This has inspired me to make some World Cup crafts with my children. We recently made football paper plate crafts, England straw flag and England flag topper. I bought the pack of Coca-Cola Zero along with mini Coca-Cola bottles. So now I am upcycling the bottles into a fairy light bottles.
Earlier this week, I made a batch of yummy delicious scones and now I have tried out another recipe from Cathryn Dresser’s Let’s Bake cookbook. This time I am making pitta pockets. They are great for stuffing your favourite foods and enjoying for lunch or dinner. Besides that, you can also cut into strips and use them to dip in to your favourite dips or soup.
Last Friday, I received a letter from school that there will be an Easter Bonnet competition. My son loves to get involved in each of the school activities and so we decided to make one. I have to be honest that I always love to recycle their crafts as much as possible. I did a bonnet hat for Ms C and won a prize before but I couldn’t find it. So we had to start again.
