Sushi or Cheong Fun?

Our local hawkers are getting more innovative each day. Call it competition or creativity – it doesn’t quite matter ‘cos it makes me happy as I get to try new types of food.

I happened to chance upon this stall at the People’s Park Food Centre (opposite China town). I call this Japanese fusion… it looks like a sushi roll but it’s actually cheong fun (made of paper thin layers made of rice flour, steamed and rolled up), Japanese style.

There are three outer layers – rice flour roll, seaweed and crepe. You can choose either Ja Jiang or Pork Floss versions. – followed with healthy filling of either zha jiang meat, or pork floss. Both versions have lots of carrots, cucumber and shredded vegetables and meat (depending on whether it’s the Ja Jiang or Pork Floss version), followed by a generous topping of delicious black ja jiang garlic sauce.

While some people may complain it’s expensive at $3 per roll (especially since it’s only at a hawker centre), I think it’s reasonable given it’s innovative, extremely healthy and delicious too!

PS: The stall serves a healthier version of Western food with brown rice ; )

Rum ‘n’ Raisin Muffin vs Green Tea Cupcake

And the winner is... ME 'cos these bakes have made me really happy today!

It’s amazing… I’ve been quite busy past two weeks coping with a new workplace which requires me to take an hour to get to work (compared to the past when I take only 10 minutes by foot) and new challenges, and yet, I’ve had the time to make two different bakes every weekend ; )

Today, I decided to try out a new recipe which a friend found on the web – quick muffins which uses ice cream and self-raising flour. I decided to use Bud’s Rum and Raisin ice cream – this originates from San Francisco and uses skimmed milk – yes yes, I’m trying to lessen my guilt of over indulgence on fattening food and skimmed milk is definitely not as sinful as full cream milk. I also replaced 25% of the ice cream with non-fat yogurt. The recipe required sugar which I omitted ‘cos I thought the ice cream was a bit too sweet. And then, alcoholic me decided to add half teaspoon of rum so that the muffin will have a nice and strong rum taste. As a result, the batter was a bit too stiff and the muffin turned out soft but not sweet enough. Since it’s so easy to make, I won’t mind trying again and add some honey and white choc chips instead.

My next bake turned out much better. It’s the first time that I’ve attempted to make cupcakes and I decided to go for healthy green tea cupcakes which use egg whites (yes, less fattening) instead of whole eggs. Very little butter is also needed. The results were great – while the cupcake isn’t that pretty, it was fluffy and the sweetness was just right. So, I was glad I didn’t beautify it with any icing or it would have been too sweet. Will try added some cooked red bean and do a swirl green tea red bean cupcake for my next attempt ; )

A Dog’s Life

Having seen quite a number of postings on French Macarons and doggie cookies, I have been inspired to try out these new bakes myself. Yesterday, I attempted Macarons for a third time and the Horlicks doggie cookies (my second try).

The Macarons were not that good – there are just too many things that I have to improve on. First, the piping technique – there was just something very wrong ‘cos I dunno what is the correct of way of doing this. (Since I’ve never even attended Home Economics when I was in school, everything I’ve made have been DIY and what I read in books and the Net.) Needless to say, my Macarons came out in all shapes and sizes. Second – I think I baked it for too long, resulting in a rather hard cookie and a bit too brown on the underside. Third – this green tea option is not that sweet – so, I won’t down the sugar the next time I try it. Fourth – the white chocolate filling was too watery resulting in the filling dripping out. Quite a failure, isn’t it?

I was definitely happier with my doggie cookies. I made two types of batter – using horlicks and the other, milo. Since Happy Home Baker’s website stated that milo was sweeter, I added some cocoa powder to this option to cut down on the sweetness and make it darker. Since no two dogs are similar, I decided to mix some of the batters – and I was really happy with the little doggie faces staring at me when I took out the bakes from the oven. They all look so cute! Even my brother complimented me ; ) I think a couple of them looked like the Starhub doggie… Even though it took me about three hours to make just 51 cookies, the effort was worth it. But I’ll only do this once in a while ‘cos they’re just too tedious. Will give some of these to the kids at my next yoga lesson and hope they like it.