Pizza Dough

Just so I remember the ingredients, I better jot it down here.

500gm plain flour
350ml water
1 packet yeast
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Method:

Knead dough and roll up into a big ball. Put in bowl & clingwrap to proof for at least an hour. Remember to oil bowl first before placing dough in. (which as you can see I didn't). :P

One hour later...

Divide dough up and flatten with rolling in. Place ingredients on top, and bake at 180 deg C for about 10mins. (this really depends on the thickness of the dough)

Here you have it... before

And after...

All-time favourite Hawaiian

Master chef's secret recipe - Garlic & olive oil-base with a topping of sliced fresh button mushroom, basil leaves and mozarella.

Thanks KY for so kindly sharing the recipes. I still have a long way to go in perfecting these pizzas.

Mooncake time!

After my first ever mooncake lesson last year, I decided to test the waters again all on my own this time. As usual, I started off lazy, but last Sunday saw hubby at work, leaving us two girls on our own, so after church, we took a walk to the baking goods shop and picked up the flour, sugar, pastes etc needed to make these lovelies. I hope I am able to attempt the baked ones next year.

Thus began my mooncake making journey... the first lot I made only consisted of 5 haha, before we went out to dinner that evening. The skins were left in the fridge for a few days before I made them at a friend's house again yesterday.

These were what we made yesterday using the boy moulds of car & Shinkansen. I love the car one very much. Love the imprints on the mooncakes.

I picked up some black sesame paste yesterday at KCT so will do those hopefully this afternoon.

Radish Cake (Lor Pak Gou)

I have been wanting to try out this recipe from My Kitchen Snippets since I spied it a long time ago. However, I never got round to it. I caught sight of some beautiful radish in Cold Storage last week and bought one in order not to have any excuse to procrastinate further. Please do not compare mine to hers as hers are more beautiful.

Having set my heart to it, I spent a long time that afternoon cutting, shredding, dicing all the ingredients.

Unfortunately even though I followed the recipe exactly, it didn't turn out well. I now question if the cups of flour were actually cups for measuring cake flour or rice cups because the recipe resulted in a very dry mixture and I had to add more water to it. In the end, the original flavour was dampened (literally) by the addition of excess fluid.

I just had to keep my fingers tightly crossed while steaming it and was feeling totally discouraged. But in the end, after leaving the cake to rest and cool, thus hardening it, I felt better with the end result.

Still lots of improvement needed but I do intend to attempt making this cake again.

New friend from Penang

As bloggers and mums, we make friends from far and wide, sharing a common love for food, and the common topic of kids. Once in a while, a few of them living overseas come home, and some simply to visit our shores or use our island as a stopover point to further their journey to Australia.

One of these new blogger friend hails from Penang, and while on her short stopover in Singapore, decided to meet up with us. I feel so privileged as she only had 2-3days here before she left for Perth, and yet she chose to spend time with my girl and I one morning. We were both late as there was heavy traffic due to the preparation of the F1 race happening on our shores this weekend. Thus, we only had one hour together before I had to send princess to school.

As with all first time meetings, there were a bit of jitters on my end. Erm, will we get along, or will we be at a loss for words? Well, I was totally put at ease the moment I spied them. She is totally nice, and very bubbly by nature. She told me about all the food she'd been gobbling up in the span of one day and one morning. Haha. And right after, going for more makan. Lol. There was no 'warming up' needed. A lovely lady indeed. I got to meet her hubby who was just as nice, and her little boy who was very cute and got on with princess from the word 'go'. Even my princess who was left at the table, while I went to place our orders, was chatting to them like old friends haha. It was a short but sweet meeting and I wished we could have spent more time together that morning, but time did not permit. Sorry poor D that che che had to rush to school and couldn't play more with you. Poor dear was so upset and started crying when we said our goodbyes. Maybe on her next trip here, or if I do go to Penang, I have one more friend to visit. ;)

I think I have been spoilt by my friends from Penang who have visited in the span of 2 weeks. I got a whole lot of goodies from both parties. Haha! First there was tau sar piah, now there is phong pniah, durian cake (or dodol as friend calls it), Shat Kek Ma & some alphabet cutters. Tks pal! And it was lovely meeting the family. Have a safe trip.

Very lovely homemade durian cake which she ordered specially. I love this. Look, pure durian, not flour.

Weekend bento

Hubby spent last weekend at work. Thus I decided to make him bentos on both Saturday & Sunday. In the bento are ham & cheese sandwiches, cherry tomatoes, biscuits, Spanish melon & corncob. Bentos on both days were pretty similar.

Playdate

We were invited to our first ever playdate in a classmate's home two weekends ago. However, as we already had plans, little one was very disappointed not to be able to go. So this mummy had to be thick-skinned and call up the friend's mum to request for another playdate for last weekend. She agreed to it so last Saturday right after ballet, we made our way over. I made these at the last minute, only that morning before ballet class and the chocolate wasn't even set before we had to leave for class. I was afraid that the ballerinas would topple over but they stood tall all throughout till we made it there. I used Maya's brownie recipe & topped them with some chocolate sauce and some fairy sprinkles which Sis got me. I love the pearly colours on those sprinkles. Thanks Sis.

Food I cooked

The omelette was inspired by the tiny silverfish that I picked up while out shopping with the bff one afternoon. I loved the look of the tiny Japanese silver fish which is 1/3 the size of the normal ones. I knew my girl would be in love with this, as I recently discovered that she likes crispy ikan bilis. This one's even crispier and not salty at all. But more tricky to fry as they are very tiny. I decided to cut up some spring onion, gave it a quite stir in the pan, then added 2 beaten eggs and made an omelette with that. Then I sprinkled the silverfish over the top as garnish. Lovely and simple dish. As expected, she loved it!

I decided I needed to give this dish another go, this time with all the ingredients on hand. It was beautiful and hubby loved it, for sure this time. Haha. Although I thought the pineapple juice was a bit sour. I should have used the lychee juice instead. I'm not going to write out the recipe here. Please check HK's blog for it.

I bought the above packet of mix in Mustafa's shopping with the bff on another occasion. It looked very tempting and I do love cereal prawns which they serve at seafood restaurants. I cooked this for our Friday night dinner, substituting the prawns for sliced fish as the little one doesn't like prawns. I omitted the chilli padi required in the recipe in order that she could partake of this dish. I think the chilli would give it some kick.

Verdict - It was lovely, but I think there might have been a lot of MSG as I was very thirsty, lips all dry after dinner, and for a few hours after. So, eat at your own risk.

To accompany the cereal fish, I made a veg using leftover lettuce, some young corn, crabsticks & fresh button mushrooms. I also made an Oden soup but didn't bother snapping a picture of that.