My Kitchen Produce

I planned to make something special for my friends on our routine monthly gathering. I searched and planned on doing something special like a Sundae cupcakes or Black Forest cupcakes. As usual, I don’t really have enough time or preparation to do so. I decided to do something simpler and work with the ingredients available at home. I decided to do these Nutella cupcakes.

Don’t be fool with the word Nutella cupcakes because the Nutella was only added to the frosting. These Nutella cupcake wasn’t my cup of tea. The cupcake itself was tasteless and quite dense. The frosting was way way way too sweet for me. I guessed the cupcake and the frosting were quite a good combination because of the plain cupcake taste and the sweetness of the frosting. For me, I wouldn’t make it again. However, I would still like to share this recipe for the Nutella lover out there.

I had some left over chocolate ganache in the fridge, so I just did a quick whip with a hand held mixer and voila. I prefer the one with the ganache, they were not as sweet as the nutella ones.

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These were the cupcakes I prepared for Nathan’s preschool Christmas gathering. As usual, I always chose the easiest, simplest, quickest cupcakes recipes to prepare . This recipe is super easy yet tasty. They were gone pretty quickly after serving. In order to give them a Christmassy feel, I added a snowflake pattern on top of the ganache using let over swiss meringue buttercream.

If I have to compare them with the previous Chocolate Cupcakes that I posted, they taste pretty similar. In fact, I can’t remember the difference, maybe because I don’t have them at the same time. Well, I don’t know, but this recipe only requires 1 egg.

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I received an email from one of my loyal commentator on my blog saying that she have given me the award and that I don’t have to follow the rules. I absolutely honored to receive this award knowing that some people actually enjoys my blog. Having this award passed to me really made my day. Thank you Christine You can read her post about it here.

Thank you Christine for understanding my situation (busy busy busy with one toddler and a baby) and saying that I don’t have to follow the rules, but I feel guilty to brake one chain of this award being enjoyed by other bloggers.

So, here are the rules:

• I need to thank the person who passed this award to me.
• I need to pass the award to 10 blogs that I enjoy.
• I need to share 7 things about myself.

Firstly, thank you so much Christine. You really made my day.

Secondly, the 10 blogs that I enjoy (in random orders)

1. Bisous A Toi – for Rima’s beautiful baking and gorgeous photography.
2. Tested & Tasted – for Doris’s authentic Asian’s baking and sweets.
3. Glorious Treats – for Glory’s dessert, cute decorated cookies and brilliant party planning ideas.
4. I Heart Cuppy Cakes – for Clara’s beautiful cupcakes. Love her step by step instruction and personal ratings to the cupcakes.
5. Another Lunch – for Melissa’s creativity in creating clever bentos to her children.
6. Frosted! – for Linda’s exciting cupcakes recipe and frosting.
7. Ambrosia - for Anne’s authentic Indonesian cooking recipes and bakings.
8. Paty’s Kitchen – for Paty’s authentic traditional sweets and dishes.
9. Aroma from Alley Kitchen – for Lisa’s inspirational tumpeng decorations.
10. i eat sweet… – for Oni’s creative macaroons and fillings, and her beautiful fondant cakes.

It took me a long time to list my top 10 blogs, because there are so many blogs that I really enjoy. Well, I have to ask my husband how to make the blog roll on the web, because I have no clue about this computer high tech thingy

Lastly, 7 things about my self. Hmmm let me think…

1. I am a mother of 2. My first born is almost 4 years old (in 4 months time he will be), and my second one is almost 10 months old. They are both boys and very handful. Apparently my oldest son like to help me in the kitchen. He want to know what I am doing or whether he could help mixing things. He loves mixing things Now, he is into making lots of colourful jelly and spooning the liquid into small cups.
2. I am Indonesian with Chinese background. Don’t ask me about Chinese, I don’t have a clue Even from my grandparents were born in Indonesia, so I don’t know which generation of great great great grandparents came to Indonesia.
3. I am a bachelor of Design in Interior Design. I haven’t really had a chance to apply my knowledge professionally but i did design our bedroom in Jakarta. The bedroom is actually for the wedding thing. It is all in Chinese tradition that you have to have a bedroom… something like that, I don’t really understand the tradition thingy. Even though we only spend few months in Jakarta, and the bedroom is left without occupants while we are in Sydney. We come back home once every 1 or 2 year.
4. I have a dog phobia. I am terrified of dogs. Big dogs, small dogs, cute dogs, not so cute dogs, you name it, I am really really afraid of them; which make me difficult to bring the kids to the park, because I feel haunted all the time. I try to ignore them and have a good distance, but sometimes there are few aggressive dogs that scare me. Especially living in Sydney, where almost everybody loves dogs and having them as the man best friend. I had lots of “screaming my lungs out” incidents, but they were so many that this story would goes on and on and on
5. I love staying at home, which somehow I think is supported with no.4 stated above I don’t remember loving staying at home that much while I was in Indonesia. Well, I could stay at home for few days, but in here I could stay up to a week.
6. I hate shopping clothes and others stuffs that normal woman usually want or crave for. I don’t enjoy exploring shops trying new clothes or shoes and the whole experience. Trying then feel “oooh it’s doesn’t look good on me” or “the colour doesn’t fit my skin complexion” or whatever.. and then hop in to another shop, and same things happen… then you ended up wasting the whole day with nothing. I shop whenever my clothes just gave up on me , if you know what I mean. I remember when I was in secondary, my mum forced me to shop for new clothes for Chinese New Year. I said “you can shop for me mum, any styles you like, I will be waiting for you in the bookstore next door.” After few dramas, my mum just gave up asking me to shop for new clothes.
7. I love trying new exiting and challenging recipes, as well as decorating cakes.

Thank you once again to pass this award to me Christine, and thank you for reading folks!

 

Nathan’s preschool was doing a fete to raise some money for buying the Air con. It is always a harsh summer and this fund raising is for our kids comfort and well being . So, all we mums would do anything in our power and abilities to help. All mums were handed an empty cake box one week before the day. We can make absolutely everything, it doesn’t matter. I made up my mind with cupcakes as usual. Easy, quick and yummy

I have always wanted to make red velvet cupcakes. Almost every reviews on any version of rev velvet recipes on the web are really positive, and I felt like missing out on these amazing cupcakes. It must be really really good.  I decided to make Ms. Stewart’s cupcakes. Well, I couldn’t take any chances and chose someone else recipes. If the cupcakes failed, I am doomed. I made the cupcakes in the middle of the night to be used the day after. And Ms. Stewart’s recipes never failed me.

I had been researching on how to frost and decorate the cupcakes for days. Lots of interesting ideas but couldn’t be achieved due to time constraint (another self excuses of mine). I was thinking of doing chrysanthemum flower frosting, but then I don’t have the tip. Then I decided to make sunflower frosting, but my leaf tip is way to big. Oh whatever, I just went with the sunflower idea using my big leaf tip, and taaaa daaaaa. They didn’t really look like a sunflower, but it didn’t matter. Nobody know what they supposed to be anyway, except they were pretty flower cupcakes.

All the cakes slices and cupcakes were sold $ 2 each, except mine and one box of cupcakes (a mum bought them in cupcakes store). Ours are sold $ 3 each. How flattered I was to be sold as expensive as the well known store bought cupcakes.

If you could see the colour of my Swiss Meringue butter cream, you’ll notice the colour varied slightly. It wasn’t intentional. The frosting literally melt while I piped them. It wasn’t the beginning though, it was the left over icing on the bag. I try to put just enough butter cream to be piped within 5 minutes time frame. More than that time frame, the butter cream left would slightly melt and darker in colour. To make it worst, we don’t have air con in our apartment and it was summer.

My verdict for these red velvet cupcakes is LOVING them. The textures were moist and soft. I think it was because the recipe asked for cake flour instead of plain flour. We don’t have cake flour here in Australia, so I followed this method. Although the flour need to be sifted 5 times and requires muscle work, they are worth the hassle.The only thing that I will do differently next time I make them is to omit the red colouring.

For the recipe, click here. For the frosting, you could use cream cheese or butter cream. I think cream cheese will taste so much better. I am a big fan of cream cheese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

These lemon cupcakes are to die for. They are my ultimate favourite as far as my journey in making cupcakes. The lemon cupcakes by itself, without the frosting were divine. They are soft and very lemony. I absolutely falling in love with the lemon curd. What can I say, thank you Ms. Stewart. You are genius.

The things I did different or would do differently are:

• I omit the salt, and will still omit the salt.
• I would reduce the amount of sugar from 2 cup into 1 1/2 cup.
• I would use the torch to brown the meringue, instead of baking them for few minutes in the oven. Well, I didn’t have a torch then.

For the recipe, click here.

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

This post was intended to celebrate Halloween day. It is about 6 months late now but still worth to be posted. These cupcakes were my project with Nathan. We searched through Ms. Stewart’s website and Nathan chose to do the wicked witches. He had lots of fun cutting the hair, dipping the sugar, and of course eating the “eyes” chocolates. The expression on the cuppies were his ideas. Thank you honey

The thing that both of I and Nathan don’t like is the licorice. No offense to the licorice fans but YUUUCCKKK. They taste like a cough medicine. The licorice was intended for decorations only. We licked them and store it for future use. Hahaha… kidding…

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Who like to watch Luke Nguyen’s cooking show on SBS? Well I do. It is always entertaining and the food looks so appetizing. Inspired with his dipping fish sauce, I decided to make deep fried pork chop, Taiwanese style cuisine.

If you ever have a meal in Chinatown food court, at least one of the stall sell Deep Fried Pork Chop. Some of them are served with this kind of dipping fish sauce, but others aren’t.

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If there is a good cupcake recipe, using less time and kitchen utensils to make them, I am on it. This is one of them. Martha’s One bowl chocolate cupcakes. So easy and simple yet so yummy and divine. You only need a hand whisk, a bowl, and cup measurement. Less washing and cleaning always made my day a little bit brighter

I made this few times already. The first time I made them was for my son’s third birthday. I used cream cheese frosting instead with a sprinkle of brown sugar on top and a burried strawberry inside the cupcake. The idea is from I Heart Cuppy Cakes, thank you They taste so much better with strawberry buried inside them. So fresh yet creamy and so sweet yet sour at the same time.

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I made these Hummingbird cupcakes and Chocolate cupcakes (will be posted next) to give to a special friend. Her birthday is days different to her husband, so I thought that it would be nice to give them “His & Her” cupcakes.

I used Martha Steward recipe. Martha never fails me, at least until now. I trust hers because the cupcakes always turned soft, fluffy, and light. They are quick and easy to bake and always please the crowd.

The trickiest part is the pineapple flower. To slice the pineapple very thinly was the hardest part. I was struggling to get a full thin round cut. Using a very sharp knife would be a great help in this task. I think  I got around 18 good slices out of a pineapple. Then to bake them at around 100 C, it took me more than 2 hours to get a tray of pineapple flower done in the oven, and there were 2 of them. It took me half day to get them done. I will try different approach next time I made them. Patting them with paper towel to drain the juices may speed up the baking process. I will update the post with my new attempt to conquer these pineapple flowers.

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I think I cook chicken at least 3 to 4 times a week. I prefer chicken than beef or pork, and so is my boy. I try my best not to cook them in the same style though. One of our favorite chicken dish is Ayam Goreng Mentega. It literally means fried chicken in butter, however the margarine is used instead. Funny, it should be called Ayam Goreng Margarin. The dish is popular with using “Blue Band” brand margarine. This brand is so popular that people spread them in their bread, fried their egg or omelet, cooking their fried rice, baking a cake, you name it. It is a staple ingredient in most of Indonesian kitchens.

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It was 30th of September 2010, our fourth wedding anniversary. I haven’t prepared anything to celebrate. I always prepared something special, but I just haven’t got the time. Since my baby was just 2 months old, I was overwhelmed with my new routines.

My husband came home after work around 7 PM and brought a cake. He said that his office usually ordered this Chocolate Mousse cake if someone has a birthday. He said it was pretty good. Well, either this cake really tastes good or they had no choice but to buy this particular cake from the nearest available bakery, since their office is kinda in the middle of nowhere :p

I was really looking forward to taste this “favorite birthday cake for office people”, they were good. The chocolate mousse cake was basically just a chocolate mouse in  a cake shape. What I mean is there was no layer of chocolate cake stacked up together with chocolate mousse. The cake was topped with cocoa dusting and 2 tubular shape of meringue.

However, I found a 3 cm thin metal rod in the middle of the meringue. Shocking and very dangerous. I couldn’t imagine if Nathan was the one who ate that meringue. I managed to keep that rod thinking that my husband probably want to show the bakery that on his next visit. Well, as far as I know, he haven’t go there and I lost the metal rod thingy.

Well, getting inspired by this Chocolate Mousse, I myself try to search for the recipe high and low. After searching through lots of recipe, I decided to make “Milk Chocolate Mousse Cake with Hazelnut Crunch Crust” without the milk chocolate (I was using dark chocolate), without the hazelnut crunch crust, and without some other ingredients. I know, I completely turned and improvised this recipe accordingly to suit my ingredients available. While typing this, I couldn’t believe why in the world would I chose that recipe since I wasn’t really following everything it said.

Since, I wasn’t really using the correct ingredients, i.e. gianduja bars (I used Nestle dark chocolate buttons), and this was where the nightmare begun. The instruction says to mix 3 tbsp of water with the melted chocolate. Since mine wasn’t Gianduja bars, it turned like an overcooked melted chocolate. If I have to make it again, I will stick with my usual Chocolate mousse recipe. I am happy to combine my Chocolate mousse with the cake recipe though. Here is the link to the recipe.

I also decided to make lots of meringue sticks as decoration. I used the recipe I posted earlier. However, I don’t think this meringue recipe is suitable for this cake though, because they all became spongy and quite soft overnight.

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

I found a bottle of soy sauce alike in the Coles shopping isle. It was $1.65 for a 150 ml bottle. It is called Japanese Ponzu Sauce. I never heard of it and have no clue what it is for. I read the label and it is said: “Ingredients: Citron juice, sugar, water, natural brewed soy sauce (soy bean, water, salt, wheat flour), rice vinegar, rice white wine, corn starch, spices.” I thought I could probably use that for teriyaki sauce.

I never cook with Trout before. I am not really a fish person, not that I don’t like them, in fact I loves them. It is much proper for me to say that I am not really a fish cook. I don’t really familiar with how to cook fish coming from the sea as I grew up in the place with riverbank. Usually me and my grandpa had this fishing trip with his boat  on the weekend. My grandmother prepared our lunch early in the morning and she would just waited for us in the car while we were fishing. Then, we  had lunch on the riverside with our feet tapping under water. I wish I could turn back the time and go back there. Thank God, Indonesia doesn’t have as much crocodiles as Australia does.

The way we cook our fish was mostly in curry sauce (which need some tropical ingredients that is not available here), asam pedas (meaning sour and spicy, but different to tom yum), fried with or without chili, grilled with soy sauce or with thick coconut sauce. I think Asian cooking is really rich in their sauce and ingredients that sometimes we forgot the simplicity of cooking and the originality of the fresh taste itself. I can only recall the taste of the sauce rather than the fish itself. And this is where I am lacking much, I couldn’t cook something simple with few ingredients. The simple the food, the harder I find myself to cook with them. Or it is probably just in my head.

Well back to the topic, this ocean trout has a very similar texture and taste with salmon. I couldn’t really tell them apart. The distinction between them is that I found salmon has much creamiest taste compare to the trout.

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OMG!!!! It has been ages since I updated the websites. Please read all of my excuses

• I had busy months with my Tumpeng, Layer Cakes, and other homemade snacks orders couple of months towards Christmas and after Christmas.
• I had a 3 weeks holiday from end of January till middle of February.
• I have a newborn baby (he is 8.5 months old now). Since the holiday, he becomes a very handful baby and currently suffers from a separation issue with me. I couldn’t be an inch away from him therefore I have a long list of house chores to be done while he is sleeping. Currently, I am training him to feel comfortable with his surrounding so I could do home tasks one at a time. So, there is no way I could do my blogging, since we had our dinner at midnite (Yes, it is that bad)
• Good news is that my 3 years old goes to Pre-school 3 days a week now (starting this February), so I could dedicated some of my time to do my blogging

Now let me show you some images that you have been missing out

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(60 cups of Black Forest Pudding ordered. I wish I had more whipped cream on top, but it was the first time I made them and I didn’t expect that they need so much cream )

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(please mind my moulds, the tumpeng will be delivered in 45 minutes journey, so I don’t want anything to happen to them)

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(Grrrrr blurry image… It was midnite and my hand was shaking. This cake was ordered together with the Tumpeng shown above, dozens of Rainbow cupcakes, and 50 pcs of Lemper Ayam Panggang)

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(Thank you for ordering and trusting me)

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(45 egg yolks in this cake.. how healthy huh… but they are absolutely to die for)

and(Christmas presents for families)

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(Thank you for ordering and trusting me)

I promise you that I will be posting those recipes on the upcoming weeks and months. I have to try hard to recall those recipes You could also suggest me which of those recipes would you like to be posted on the website.

It has been a while since I thought of making my own sushi assortments. I even bought the sushi rice and rolling mat for months and kept them stored in my pantry drawer.

One fine afternoon, I just thought to pay a visit to my neighbor, Sydney Fish Market. I forgot the last time I went there. Getting a pram ready for Nathan and the baby carrier ready for Theo. We were on our way to the fish market. My shopping list were teriyaki eel for my unagi nigiri, salmon sashimi for my sushi rolls and nigiri, crab stick for california rolls and fish eggs for my sushi decoration.

We were there around 4 o’clock which was a bit too late because some of the shops were closed already. Thank God, I still got what I need. I bought the avocado as well in their fruit market because they were ripe and at reasonable price.

I had been researching on few websites on how to cook a perfect sushi rice. They say that the key to a perfect sushi lies in its rice. You need to do your rice right to have a decent sushi. I found this perfect website with great instructions and tips. If you would like the recipe, click here.

I took my chances on cooking the rice using a standard rice cooker not a sushi rice cooker. It turned out perfect, and I was relieved and happy as I could do my sushi quick and easy. Here are some photos of my first attempt sushi making. I did some tuna cucumber rolls, tuna avocado rolls, and chicken katsu rolls as well the next day but didn’t do the documentation.

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

This was my fun cooking project with Nathan, the birthday boy. We had lots of chocolate cake left over from the pirate ship cake cut outs as well as some creme cheese frosting left over from Strawberried Treasure Cupcake. They had been sitting around for few days and I just had to make something out of them, or they would be going to the rubbish bin for sure.

I had been looking for the recipe on how to make cake pops. There is a measurement on how much the cake and the frosting should be. AH stuff them, I would used my own instinct instead.

So this is how it works.

• Crumble the cake.
• Mix them with cream cheese frosting until they are easily to be work with. It is messy to use hand but the mixture will be well combined. I used spoon at first and had a go with hand last.
• In order to have the same cake pops size, weigh them individually.
• Store them in the fridge, so they retain their shape better.
• Dip them in melted chocolate and sprinkle with hundreds and thousands.

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!