Chocolate Indulgence

I was motivated by the previous successful tiramisu cake that I made, this time, I thought of challenge making cake with chocolate glazing.

First of all, prepare a 20cm round chocolate sponge cake. Making of sponge cake kindly refer to: http://unprofessionalphotography.blogspot.com/2011/03/lemon-peach-mousse-cake_29.html (instead of using 100g plain flour, mixed 85g plain flour with 15g cocoa powder)

Chocolate Cream
Ingredients:
60g dark couverture (chopped)
30g sugar
2 egg yolk
180g whipped topping cream

Method:
1. Place dark couverture over simmering water, stire until it has melted.
2. Place sugar and egg yolks over simmering water, stire until it thickens. Remove it and whisk until cool.
3. Add in dark couverture, mix until well-blended.
4. Add in whipped topping cream, mix until well incorporated.

Chocolate Glazing
Ingredients:
300g cooking chocolate (melted)
75g milk
75g whipping cream
10g butter

Method:
1. Cook the milk and whipping cream until boil.
2. Add in the melted chocolate and mix until well-blended.
3. Add in butter, mix until well-combined.
4. Set aside to cool to pouring consistency, serve immediately.

Chocolate Indulgence Cake
Method:
1. Cut the cake into 3 layers. Place 1 layer of cake onto the cake board and spread a layer of chocolate cream onto the cake. Top with second layer of cake and spread another layer of chocolate cream onto the cake.
2. Cover the whole cake with a thin layer of chocolate cream. Keep in the fridge for 2 hours.
3. Remove the cake from the fridge. Pour chocolate glazing over the cake to coat it evenly, leave it aside for 10 minutes to let it set. Place it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
4. Remove the cake from the fridge and pipe the edge with cream shell.

Beautiful coating with chocolate glazing, but it is not as easy as I think, a lot of glazing was wasted. Lesson learnt: need to really let the glazing to cool to almost room temperature, hot enough to be able to pour and cool enough to be able to coat the cold cake.

Due to the side was not coating evenly, I decorated the cake with nibbed almond. (roast the nibbed almond until crunchy and frangrant before decorating the cake).

I always very eager to cut the cake and see the layers... nice nice!! Another boost of confidence!

Recipe taken from Baking Code by Alex Goh

Kuantan Day Trip 18.04.11

In return of 2 working weekends, I’ve got a day of replacement leave and my boss instruction was, I need to clear it within the month. Coincidently, Chloe, my close friend was planning a business road trip to Kuantan, that’s the reason why I tagged along.

We started our journey at 6.45am, a raining morning, not a heavy one but drizzling. And the sun only come out when we were almost reaching.

Photos were being edited, enhance the beautiful and warm sunlight penetrate the cloud and shine on the earth. What a pleasant trip! Not too hot, not too gloomy.

We reached Chloe workplace around 9.30am, everything was in order at the workplace and supermom Chloe managed to finish her work by lunch, as planned. At first we wanted to eat banana rice for lunch (although we know after eating banana rice, driving back home without feeling sleepy is a big challenge for us), but, the restaurant has moved to another place, and nobody can tell us where it has moved to. Then, Chloe suggested a Chinese restaurant, again, the restaurant is closed on Monday. Because we were starving, so, to be safe, we decided to settle our lunch at Kemaman Kopitiam.

Cucuk sayur for sharing, nasi lemak for me and laksa for Chloe. Not a bad choice tho, I think the sambal and chicken are very nice!

Because it’s drizzling on and off when we were in town, so, we didn’t go to the beach, however, before leaving the town, we did shop a little for souvenir.

Anchovy, salted fish, fish/ prawn cracker and other dried seafood product are famous in Kuantan, so, we bought some back for family and friends.

On the way back, we also planned to stop by Bukit Tinggi to eat big prawn glass noodle. That’s the last mission we need to accomplish.

Although we were still half full, but we didn’t want to miss good food. We ordered a vege and the noodle, yum… love the noodle so much, fresh prawn, soup cooked with Chinese wine with a little taste of spicy, perfect combination. We even got free green apple as dessert too! (Very good for us to freshen up our full stomach)

P/s: we saw a couple sitting at a table opposite, they were watching the Hokkien show on TV while the wife was drinking Chivas and the husband was drinking beer, they truly know how to enjoy life!

The road trip wasn’t as long as I thought, or probably because we have so much to talk, gossip, share and laugh, we actually didn’t notice time flies! Thank Chloe for the invitation, I really enjoy the trip, if wasn’t because of the trip, we hardly got time to sit down, and share our lives like this…

Knit Dress for Michelle LyTze Buettel

Who is Michelle? She is my friend’s new-born daughter, I haven’t met her in person, but friends were saying that she is a blondie, because her father is a German, mother is a Chinese, so, I can imagine, she must be a very cute and pretty baby girl. As I have promised that this group of friend, who give birth to a baby girl, 1st baby girl, I will knit the baby a dress…

When I was driving to the yarn shop, I already know what colour I want, either pink or purple… then when I was there, this colour caught my attention, it’s pink in general but I think it has a little touch of purple. Then pattern, flipped a few books, but I still prefer this, I noticed this 1st and yeah, love at first sight!

 

 

Just like the previous projects, or maybe because I stopped knitting for a while, I did a few time of “re-do”, at least now I think I have more patience compare to the previous “me”.

After knitting the body, I learnt crochet for the lace too… I find it very interesting, because with a few twist and turn, the lace came out nicely… salute to the one who invented the technique.

Final touch is sewing the purple flower and button on the dress… What do you think? Do you like it?

7 Wells Waterfall, Langkawi

Compare to Langkawi cable car, this 7 Wells Waterfall obviously has less tourists and visitors. We noticed, in order to reach the 7 wells, the steps that we need to climb is not funny…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but there is an exit half way (maybe not even half way, just 1/4 of the way), with no objection, we both agree to take the exit…

 

No regret! After the exit, with just a minute or 2 walking distance, we came to a beautiful waterfall (not superb beautiful, but beautiful enough for city girls like us)

What can do @ the waterfall? Posing, photo taking… leg spa-ing & pretending… (pretend that I can read book under hot sun)

When we finished pretending… we hesitated, shall we proceed to the peak or go down? We saw a group of tourist walking down, we asked them how they feel when they were up there, some shook their heads, one explained to us, there has nothing much to see because it’s not rainy season… I think, since we were already there, will it be a waste if we didn’t go up? So, at last, we flipped coin to decide… wuhoo… “God” told us not to go up!!! (sorry God, we used You).

Misc.:

1. Very special seed/ fruits everywhere along the steps.

2. The car that we rent to travel around the island. RM100 for 2 days… trust me, worth spending.

When Parents are not @ Home…

A… a… a… Don’t get me wrong… I didn’t do anything naughty when they were away for 6 days 5 nights to HK & Macau, I just want to share how did I settle my meals when my mom’s not around @ home.

Day 1, Friday: breakfast & lunch as usual, as I still need to work, I usually eat outside. For dinner, I took meal replacement liquid and study recipe the whole night, decide what I want to try and was planning to cook a dinner for friends, hence, for an in-experience cook like me, it’s a must to make a “shopping list”!

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Day 2, Saturday: meal replacement liquid as breakfast, then rush to morning market and bakery ingredient shop to buy everything in the list. Okay, I did a pretty good job so far… Friend called when I was busy “shopping”, she has mistaken her tuition class schedule and asking me out for drink, lucky me! I’ve got my 1st guinea pig .

I cooked 椒盐排骨 (Salt & pepper spare rib) for lunch, can you imagine, we girls finished 800 grams of spare rib that afternoon!

After lunch, we made Tiramisu cake… This was also in my plan, getting a free helper was a bonus to me

At night, I cooked baby kailan with ginger, wolfberry and pork slices with half bowl of rice for dinner… healthy huh?

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Day 3, Sunday: My friend was coming to get her reward of helping me in the making of Tiramisu, and she treated me dim sum breaky! I was super happy because my tiramisu turned out very pretty and nice.

I have knitting project yet to finish, and I need to get it done by May. So, I was at home for the day… Initially I have a lunch cum movie date with my friend, but he couldn’t make himself back to KL that afternoon, so, the date has cancelled and I was having these for lunch – a mango, 2 pieces of tiramisu and a bottle of Yakult.

At night, I had one of my favourite – Shin Korean instant noodle!!!

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Day 4, Monday: SHOW TIME!! (Working day, breakfast I had it outside and I was so busy that day, I skipped my lunch) 

I worked until 5pm+ and I knew I was late, I haven’t de-frost the chicken legs and the fish!!! And my guests (5 of them) will be arriving at 7.30pm… Guys, if you have a wife who is working and she is still willing to cook for the family, please appreciate her…

1st thing 1st, I marinated the chicken with lemon juice and some seasoning for an hour, cook potatoes until soft and cut into pieces, put everything in bowl and sent it in the oven and cook for 1 hour.

At the same time making chicken soup base (boiled the chicken bone in water). Put bbq duck heads, mustard, chicken feet, dried fish and some seasoning in the soup and left to cook on the stove. (I purposely choose this recipe because the weather was crazily hot and this soup can help us to cool down our body temp.)

Then I fried the tilapia fish, set aside, cooked the minced meat with DongChoi (preserved vegetable) and poured over the fish.

Last but not least, fried lotus root with macadamia nut, pepper and carrot.

Tada…

I didn’t manage to prepare everything by the time my friends arrive at my house, some of them still need to help out here and there. They even helped me with the cleaning too! Big to them.

Comment from friends: look nice, smell nice, but taste wise, there are still a lot of rooms to improve… (should remove the seed from the lemon to prevent bitter after taste in the gravy, shouldn’t put too much of black pepper as seasoning in the lotus root, should rinse or soak the preserve vegetable in water before cut and cook, the gravy for the fish was too salty…)

Then after dinner, we had mango, tiramisu and Baskin Robin’s ice-cream as dessert… wow… what a satisfying dinner plus lots of laughter and fun with friends at home! Will definitely do it again…

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Day 5, Tuesday: had all of my 3 meals outside, had a very expensive dinner tho @ The Garden with friend.

Day 6, Wednesday: had all of my 3 meals outside too, initially I thought my parents will be back in the evening, so we could go out for dinner together, but they came back late, so, I had my another favourite dish that night – Cantonese fried noodle & meehoon! Yea…

See? I’m not a kid anymore… in fact, I think I know how to take care of myself… Although in the bottom of my heart, I still hope that I can be taken care by others…