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.