Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
A few months ago, I tried to bake Jamie Oliver’s Butternut Squash Muffins and it was a great success. I am not a big fan of vegetable cakes like carrot cake but I love the idea of hidden vegetables in cake. Ever since I tried the muffins, I’ve loved it. So I decided to make a Butternut Squash & Raspberry traybake for my Lichfield Mandarin Club’s party. This was my first time baking it and all the children and parents loved it. They all couldn’t detect the butternut squash. The only let down was that the raspberries were slightly sour!
As many of you may know, the brand new Minions movie hits cinemas on 26th June 2015! We can’t wait to watch it now! To celebrate, Green Giant is challenging bloggers to create the ultimate Minion-inspired summer snack.
So I created these Minions sweet corn steamed cakes! I can understand that it might sound weird for some people but in fact, in Asian countries, sweet corn is used in many recipes. We even have sweet corn ice cream, sweet corn jelly and not forgetting the popular chicken with sweet corn soup as found in many Chinese takeaways and restaurants.
Most children love cake! But not all children love vegetables! By combining these two together, we made sweet corn cakes! Sweet corn is naturally sweet, healthy and nutritious!
My husband and I enjoy eating Thai food but I have yet to learn how to cook it from scratch. Normally, I use ready-made packet sauces. Thai food is famous for its balance of sweet, sour, salty and hot flavours. One of my favourite dishes is Tom Yum soup. It is a clear soup base and very spicy! I love the hit of the spiciness.
Last week, my little girl turned six and you wouldn’t believe that if you saw her in real life. She is as little as a three or four year old. Anyway, I asked her what type of cake she wanted and she requested a Princess Castle cake for her big day. So on her birthday eve, after putting them to bed, I started whisking and baking. It took me nearly 3 hours just to bake alone. I didn’t have enough baking equipment resulting in having to wait until I’d finished with some items so it could be washed and dried before reusing for the next task.
So I made two tiers of Madeira cake and a sponge cake for the top. The reason for the different cake was because I ran out of baking ingredients too! Then I iced it with strawberry flavour icing. For the castle, I dipped the ice cream cones into candy sauce and sprinkled lot of sprinkles onto it. Once dried, I sliced a few into half for the sides of the castle.
Then I made a flag from a cocktail stick and paper. Once everything was in place, I mixed two different icing for piping. The green is for the plant and red icing for the flower.
Recently, I came across MeinCupcake’s website and was very pleased with their online shopping experience. They have a huge range from baking equipment, baking ingredients to cake making supplies.
I am a very keen baker and like to bake at least once a week. I always find it hard to get all the items from one shop but Cakemart has it all. I love the brands that they stock like Dr. Oetker, Renshaw, Wilton, Kitchen Craft and many more. The website is easy to navigate with clear titles and categories. For each product, it will show you how many items are available online. One quirk I discovered though – some pages have not been translated from German to English as they are a German company with international web pages.
I have recently received this Wilton baking tray dippers for review and at the back of the instructions is this breakfast dippers recipe provided by Wilton. This Cinnamon Waffle Dippers is very simple to make and you can also use any waffle recipe for this tray.
Happy Egg Taste Makers recently partnered up with food stylist and instagrammer, Marte Marie Forsberg, who has provided her Top 5 Tips for creating the best looking food. So they set us, the Happy Egg bloggers, a challenge to take part and create our own style using her tips for a chance of winning some great prizes.
I love baking and I have always wanted to make roulade. I have tried a few times now and had made a rainbow roulade and vanilla sponge with strawberry. This time I am going to make this Blueberry Chocolate Roulade. This recipe is from the Favourite Cakes book by Best Baking.
Need a quick fix for your cookie cravings? You need this quick and simple recipe from 150 Fast & Simple Recipes book from Parragon! This beautiful little book offers 150 easy-to-follow recipes from light bites like Spicy Chicken Noodle Soup, to more adventurous dishes, such as Salt & Pepper Squid. This small hardback book is available to buy from Amazon and good book retailers. Please do note that this book is pocket size, so all the wordings and photos are quite small! It is very well written and all the recipes look delicious! Best of all, this book is very affordable at RRP £3.
One of my polytechnic Chinese friends from Mauritius has always told us how beautiful his country is. Since then, I have always wanted to visit Mauritius. It possesses a range of natural and man-made attractions, tropical climate just like Singapore and with clear warm sea waters and attractive beaches.
I was thrilled when I received the Winner of Masterchef 2012 Shelina Permalloo’s Sunshine on a Plate cookbook. This book is an introduction to the homely cooking of Mauritius. Looking through the book, I found that there are a few Chinese influences on Mauritius recipes which made me even more excited! Anyway, my hobby is mainly baking cakes and pastries! So I decided to bake an Almond & Cinnamon Cake. This is my first time baking a flourless and gluten free cake. I have no idea if it will taste like an egg sponge. Very much to my surprise, it was excellent! I would definitely bake it again as it requires minimal ingredients.
Last month, I was fortunate to win two places to attend Sacla cookery school at their headquarters. So Mr C and I took over 3 hours to drive down to Buckinghamshire! This was their first time hosting the cookery school and once we arrived, we were joined with other competition winners.
Did you know that Jamie Oliver has teamed up with Moshi Monsters favourite character Furi to inspire young budding chefs around the world to get into the kitchen and learn how to cook? The duo have been cooking up a storm in Jamie’s kitchen to create a delicious Butternut Squash Muffin.
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.
