Christmas Eve dinner

That time of the year again. Christmas. This year I don't feel like Christmas. I think it is because I just came back from Europe and had a really good holiday break. Of course spent a lot of money over in Europe, I am not prepared to spend more money here to buy presents... anyways... Christmas is about giving. I might as well do my best - be creative.

This year we had our family dinner on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. I prepared something really simple - well... good food are the simple ones and not have to fuzz over 10 recipes to create one thing...

I was given this fresh dill over a week ago. SO fresh that it has not died after being in the fridge for a whole week. I stuffed the dill in the salmon - best salmon ever!! rubbed with some good quality olive oil and drizzled with lemon juice and lemon zest. The crispy skin was awesome and the salmon was really fresh. 

We invited a friend over, who is a vegetarian, so I adopted some dish that is vege friendly, I made a zucchini, chickpeas cous cous dish - it was delicious and SPICY. I flavoured it with curry that I bought from the market - man.. that was hot!!!! The cous cous is not like the normal cous cous. This is called pearl cous cous. They are hugh and the texture is really different to the normal cous cous.

I also made a roasted pumpkin and eggplant rocket salad with pine nut. It was really simple. Toss the cut up pumpkin and eggplant with olive oil and a bit of soy sauce for the eggplant and chilli flakes for the pumpkin. After the veggie is cooled. Toss with the rocket with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice... the pine nut added an extra texture to the dish. It is very nice!!! We were pretty full after the 3 dishes... 

Wait... how can you dine at Mandy's kitchen without desert??? 

Mango ice-cream!!! I did a quick version of this mango ice-cream. It was refreshing in a hot summer night... but I will do a long version next time. I think it will worth it...

The quick version is not bad. I used store bought vanilla ice-cream. Let it melts then add mango puree and mango chunks to it. However, the texture of the ice-cream changed during the process. When it refroze... the texture is more like a granita... it lost the creaminess of the ice-cream,

I am making a pavlova for Christmas lunch tomorrow. Yes, Pavlova... which involve a lot of eggwhites... so I will have a lot of egg yolks leftover... that is a formulation for a creamy ice-cream...

Macaroons

The time starts now!!!
I received an order for a birthday cake. The client gave me less than 24 hours notice about what he has in mind for this cake. Thank goodness that he just wanted something simple, but with a green and purple theme.

I only (successfully) made macaroon once, so my thoughts of putting macaroons on this cake was quite risky, but I had so much egg whites leftover, so I gave it a crack. A bit of green colouring and a bit of purple... few hours later, the green ones were perfect. The purple one... hmmm... to save my reputation, I did not use them since the colour was a bit deep, not as flamboyant. To redeem myself, I used purpled chocolate and drizzled over the macaroons.

After a few hours of hard work, I finished on time :)

A twist of the chocolate panel cake

White chocolate strawberry boxI made this for Dennis' friend. It was for a birthday party. She loves white chocolate and strawberries. Since I was making the strawberry cake like a daily chore. I thought I would use the white chocolate instead of the dark chocolate to make the panels.

It was easy and the colour was perfect!!

Running

My first Mother's Day Classic
In between all the baking and working, my friend and I ran the 4km Mother's Day classic as well.

As a pharmacist, I see a lot of people who have cancer or have family or friends who have cancer. With the fundraising, I hope the research will one day find a cure! Or I pray that people will run to Jesus, who has the power to do miracles and has the healing power to cure all the sickness and disease. Nothing that is impossible for HIM!!

Sustenance

Something naughty, something fun!After a wonderful workout at the gym, I thought I deserved something NICE - naughty ice cream XD.

I mixed some leftover caramel sauce with some vanilla ice-cream, a scoop of that... and a scoop of peanut butter ice-cream and a scoop of vanilla bean ice-cream. The healthy part of this is the banana - the energy food after a workout... and a few of the leftover KitKat from the swimming pool :))) and I present you my very own banana sundae.

I had to make a cake the next day for a customer.
I had a bit of fun with the leftovers cake lids... so I made a pac-man cake.

Swimming pool part 2

After the successful swimming pool project, I was commissioned for a second one. This time is for a 50th birthday. This guy likes swimming and participated in a number of triathlon. So the cake needs to be slightly more sophisticated compared to the previous one.

I added some markings on the buttom of the pool... and a spa...

A ladder to the pool was under contruction...



The swimming pool from the top view



After a few hours, the palm tree has grown... the pool is filled with jelly... a few signs were up... a diver, swimmer... a guy in the spa!! Coooool :)







Wedding Anniversary

50th Wedding Anniversary for a lovely couple
It has been a while since I uploaded my blog. I was caught up with making the cakes and taking the photos, but not blogging...This cake was actually made in the end of April (v_v", so it was a while ago)...

Anyway, the daughter of the couple wanted a simple but gold and delicate cake. I simply iced the cake with vanilla butter cream. Piped golden white chocolate around the cake.  

Some random food that I made...



Chocolate Hazelnut brownies for Easter




Smoked salmon with salad-dle: it is made out of thinly sliced vegetables that is almost like noodles, that's why it is called salad-dle. I served it with special wasabi mayo!






Chocolate pizza with banana, strawberries and marshmallow. It is pity that I don't have homemade peanut butter jelly ice-cream to go with it :(

 



Something really random.... but may be I will call it the Berries cake

 



Profiteroles giant cake

Vanessa's birthday again. I made the flourless chocolate cake with profiteroles!!!!

The reason behind this giant cake is because it is actually for two! For Vanessa and her partner, Santi. Santi's birthday is very close to Vanessa's, and he complained a few times that I only make cakes for Vanessa and not for him.... argh....hmmm.... well, I know that both Vanessa and Santi love profiteroles, so I decided to make this cake for them!!

For the profiteroles, I usually make fresh custard cream. Since I was making tiramisu on the other side of the kitchen. So I decided to use marscapone cream to fill the profiterols this time.

I think the mascapone cream is slightly lighter than the custard cream. It was yummy either way! :)

Italiano!!!!!

I made something that is not sweet this time!!!
We had special guests coming over for dinner. So, for the special guests I decided to have special food that I would prepare with my special asssistant, Dennis :)

We decided to make homemade pizza. It was fun. It was Dennis' first time making homemade pizza. He was a great assistant!! He chopped everything for me, included the onion!!! A few tears, but we had a lot of laughs in the kitchen!!
 

Ummm... coming to Mandy's kitchen to have dinner without dessert... that's sounds soooooo wrong... how about a tiramisu to finish off the dinner????



How to make a monster cake

This is how... Monster, here I come...
For a 5-year old boy, who wants a monster cake. It is kinda difficult, because I don't know how scary I can make the cake to look. I guess the sharp teeth, big nose, blood shot eyes are ok... may be adding a little bit of boy factor to it to make it fun?

So I made the teeth and nose out of gum paste. The cake itself was bright green with strawberry whipped cream. I wanted the cake to look like there is blood dripping out when they cut the cake. For a little boy, I thought bright green is quite cool as well XD.

The blood shot eyes: it was like a cake pop. I mixed some leftover cake with white chocolate icing. Rolled it in a ball, pipe some red icing all over it.

To add the boy factor: I added a green snot to the 3-nostril nose.

It was really fun to make this cake!!! I love the hair

Happy BIrthday

Happy Birthday Cath!!!
It is ANAZC day again, so it is Cath's birthday.

As usual, we had breakfast in bed and opening pressies. Breakfast was bacon and egg on soy and linseed bread. It was yum - so high in cholesterol that we just can't afford to have it everyday (from a pharmacist prospective...)

I made this flourless chocolate cake a few times, but for Cath, I decorated it slightly different to the others. I think with this design, it does not look as massive, the strawberries were lined up perfectly with the white chocolate instead of dark chocolate panels. It looks slightly more sophisticated and classy - just like Cath!! We wrote happy birthday in 3 different languages on the side as well. Everyone enjoy it - the dark chocolate ganache, the cake, the strawberries - all are good antioxidants. I think everyone should try this one!!! 

Wedding Anniversary

Happy 50th Wedding AnniversaryA Friend asked me to make a cake for her sister's 50th Wedding Anniversary. It s SOOOOO special!!!

When she asked me, I was really excited. She told me that the couple have kept the ornament that was used to decorate their wedding cake and they would like to use it on this anniversary cake. How romantic!!!

Since it is a 50th anniversary, so the theme was gold. I decided to have some patterns on the side of the cake. I used white chocolate and painted it in gold. Sprinkled the top with gold dust and glitters. It was simple but great!

Relikkuma bear cakeRilikkumma is a combination of the Japanese pronunciation of relax and the Japanese word for bear.

 

Cheesecake

Oreo Mini Cheesecake

I loooooove Oreo, it is my favorite!!!! I twisted the orignal recipe a bit. Instead of lemon, cream cheese and some butternut biscuits. I added chocolate bits and coconut to the cream cheese mixtture. Instead of butternut biscuits, I used Oreo - this took the flavor to the next level!!!

Baby Shower

Melting Moments

Hmmm... what do you feel like eating when you are pregnant??? ..... Melting Mements!!

I went to a baby shower, the mother-to-be asked me to make some melting momemts. So I brought out my beloved Poh's Kitchen cookbook out and there it is - melting moments with lemond curd!!

When I first read the recipe... from a pharmacist point of view, it is more like a blocking moments than a melting moments. The amount of butter and sugar in this baby - oh my goodness... it is like when it melts in your mouth the moment you eat it... when it gets down to your arteries - it blocks.... anyway....

Well, everyone enjoyed it!!! Really it wasn't THAT bad. Not that you can many of those anyway. I adjusted the amount of sugar as well. So the lemon curd wasn't too sweet and the acidity of the lemon just gave it a bit of punch - a job well done!

Happy 21st birthday - Part 2

Zebra Whimsical Cake - Part 2 of this 21st birthday party is a Zebra cake. Really need to work on my skills in rolling fondant!!!

Happy 21st birthday - Part 1

Winnin the Pooh with KitKat and Smarties

I was asked to make a cake for a friend's 21st birthday party. She wanted a smarties cake with KitKat. This girl loves Winnie the Pooh, so she wanted me to incorporate that to the cake.

I made Winnie the Pooh and Piglet out of coloured chocoalate. This is a 3 layer- chocolate mud cake with caramel cream filling. So... what do you think?

International Women's Day 2012

Muffins time

I made this chocolate fudge muffins to celebrate the International Women's Day at the local high school.

These muffins are covered with purple icing because it is the colour for the event.

I also made some extra ones with the chocolate drizzle for our afternoon tea lol!!!

This is how you make a swimming pool cake

A swimming pool cake...

Hmmm... This week's challenge was to make a swimming pool cake for a birthday party. After browsing the internet and done a few sketches, I started making my boys. I wanted this cake to be fun, exciting, energetic and colourful, so water slides, pool noodles, palm tree, water pistols, lifesaver, beach balls, crazy boys' hairstyle, swimming pool signs etc would be what I aimed for!



Also, it is because the cake is for a boy's birthday party, I wanted a lot of chocolate and lollies on it!

The cake is made out of vanilla sponge, then covered it with white chocolate ganache. The ground is made out of white chocolate and chocolate rocks. Instead of sculping a lifesaver, I used the Lifesaver lollies instead. The fence of course is made out of KitKat - I think the kids will go nuts with that!!!