Double Chocolate Chips Cookies

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
225g butter
1 cup cup sugar (I reduced to 2/3 cup)
1/2 cup brown sugar (I reduced to 1/3 cup)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (I omitted)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup oat
50g almond flakes

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Combine flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in small bowl, set aside for later use.
3. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add in egg and vanilla extract and mix till well combine.
4. Gradually beat in flour mixture till well combined.
5. Fold in chocolate chips, almond flakes and oat.
6. Shape cookies and bake in preheated oven for 15min.
7. Cool cookies before storing.

Yam Sandwich Cake

Blueberry Smoothie

Ingredients

125g blueberries
100ml milk
1 bottle of your favourite yoghurt

Method

Blend everything together and serve cold.

Christmas Log Cake

First Yule logcake for the year, shabbily done I know =p, hopefully will get better!

Watami @ Raffles City

Met up with some friends for lunch and ended up at Watami @ Raffles City.

These were what we ordered (all sets comes with salad, miso soup and drink)

 

Corn Jaga Butter ($4.80) - Potato with Corn in Basil Sauce

Hotate Butter Yaki ($6.80) - Hotplate scallops with butter

Ishiyaki Bibimbap Set - Beef and Kimchee Stonepot Rice

 Chicken Katsu Tamago Toji Set ($9.80) - Hotplate Chicken Cutlet in Sizzling Drizzled Egg, served with Rice

 

 Torinegi Teishoku Set ($9.80) - Crispy Fried Chicken in Spicy Sauce, served with Rice

Chocolate Chip Raisin Muffin

Muffins with an overdose of chocolate chips!

Ingredients

250g plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips (I used about 1 cup)
1/2 cup raisins (I used about 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
60g unsalted butter, melted
175ml milk
150g granulated sugar (I reduced it to 100g sugar)

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180degC (350 degF).
2. Melt butter in a saucepan, over low heat, set aside to cool.
3. Sieve together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a mixing bowl.
4. Add chocolate chips, raisins and mix with a spatula. Make a well in the centre.
5. Place egg, melted butter, milk and sugar in another bowl. Mix until thoroughly combined.
6. Pour the liquid mixture into the flour. With the spatula, gently fold all the ingredients to form a wet batter. Just mix until the flour are incorporate into the batter. DO NOT Over mix.
7. Spoon batter into paper muffin cups. Bake for 15~20mins until muffins turn golden brown or a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
8. Let cool on a wire rack.

Banana Chiffon Cake

Ingredients

5 egg yolks
30g sugar
50ml canola oil
170g banana, mashed (I used 200g)
100g cake flour

6 egg whites
30g sugar
Dash of cream of tartar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175C
2. In a bowl, manually whisk yolks with sugar till pale in colour.
3. Add oil and whisk till combined.
4. Add in banana puree.
5. Sieve in cake flour and mixed till well-combined
6. In another bowl, whisk whites till frothy. Add sugar slowly to the whites and whisk till medium peak. (I whisked till stiff peak)
7. Fold the whites into the banana mixture in 3 batches.
8. Pour batter into cake tin and bake in preheated oven for about 40-45min till skewer inserted into centre comes out clean.
9. Invert cake tin immediately when cake is ready and let cool completely before serving.

Lunch at Sungai Rengit

We were very hungry by the time we finished the fruit farm tour. A quick check with the guide points us towards Sungai Rengit, which is famous for their seafood.

So off we drove again the the direction of Sungai Rengit, which is about 35km away from Desaru, and ended up here

 

Jade Garden Seafood Corner, one of the best seafood restaurant in Sungai Rengit. We were there on a Saturday afternoon close to 3.30pm, I guess everyone have had their lunch by then as the place was quite empty (which is good for us). I'm sure this is a super duper popular restaurant as again there were lots of photos of celebrities pasted on the walls.

There were only 4 of us and after polishing up 4 packs of fruits from the fruit farm on the way to Sungei Rengit, our hunger level decreased. Hence we only ordered these

 

Stir-fry Lala with Ginger and Spring Onions

 

Stir-fry Veg

 

Tofu with Assorted Veg - This is one of their "chef recommendation" and tastes really good.

 

Steam Fish - Simple but so yummilicious! So good that only the bones were left!

Desaru Fruit Farm II

More pictures on Desaru Fruit Farm

Clockwise from top left: Intro to jumbu (I didn't know its called waterapple), budding flowers, withered flowers (or soon to be jumbu), finally JUMBU!

Clockwise from top left: Mulberry, Coffee seeds, Bitter gourd, Mini bitter gourd

 

Left: Papayas? Mangoes? Papayas? Mangoes? Its Papayas!! I wonder why this tree is so "botak"

Right: Rolls of normal (non-botak) papaya trees

 

I don't know the name of this flower, but I love its colour, and its dainty look. 

 

Huge beetle

Now, on to the mini zoo =), am only showing some of the animals

This is the pack of fruits each of us get at the end of the tour

Desaru Fruit Farm I

We continued our drive and soon reached the fruit farm.

Entrance to the fruit farm. Photo taken from inside the car as we drove straight into the main building.

 

Entrance fees...

The first thing that greats you

Photos of celebrities who had visited the farm plastered on the shop window.

We bought tickets for the farm tour and started on the tour. Each group (min 4 to form a group) will be assigned a guide. This is the "truck" that brought us to the starting point of the tour.

Unfortunately our guide told us that the fruiting seasons are usually between April - June and November - December each year, so we would not be able to see fruits on some of the plants. Nonetheless, we saw and learned a great deal.

Here are some of the plants / trees we saw

Left: Dragonfruit

Right: Dragonfruit flower

Left: Gigantic Jackfruit

Right: Tree full of jackfruits of all sizes. Some young jackfruits withered early and didn't have a chance to grow up.

Left: Breadfruit Tree. Breadfruit is a flowering free from the mulberry family (same family as jackfruit). It has both male and female fruits on the same tree but only the female flower grows into fruit.

Right: My favourite plant in the whole plantation because I love the name - Buah Long Long!!! The fruit of the buahlonglong plant is small and oval shaped, is a little bit sourish and tastes absolutely fantastic with plum powder! Can anyone tell me where to get buahlonglong in Singapore??

 

Left: Variety of bananas with a flower that points upwards (most banana flower points downwards), unfortunately the flower is blocked in this photo.

Middle: Rare banana tree with 2 bunches of bananas (I never know most, if not all banana trees only give a single bunch of bananas per tree, so this is unusual)

Right: Very rare banana tree with 3 bunches of bananas.

 

Left: I was so caught by surprise by this variety of banana. Its called the "Thousand Fingers" banana. As the name implied, this variety can produce up to 1000 bananas, and will continue to produce fruits until the stalk reaches the ground. According to the guide, the fruit is not edible.

Right: Another variety of banana.

Left: Pomelo plant

Right: Mini guava waiting to grow up. Guava leaves are very sweet smiling.

to be continued......

Desaru Crocodile Farm

This and the following 3 posts are long overdue posts that I've meant to put up but didn't get to doing.

I was in a "enjoying nature" mood couple of months back. So after visiting Zhengxin Organic Farm, I was looking out for other "nature vegetation" to visit. If you live in Singapore, and is a avid listener of radio station 95.8 (well my mum is, not me), you would probably have heard waves of publicity on Desaru Fruit Farm. Finally decided to make a day trip up after hearing so much about it.

We were driving along the road to Desaru when we saw a sign on the right that points to a crocodile farm. Out of curiosity, we turn into the side road. After driving for 10-15min along a deserted road through what seemed like a huge palm oil plantation (we also passed by a huge palm processing plant and saw trucks of palm coming straight out of the plantation), following signs set up along the way (and wondering if the crocodile farm exist at all...), we finally arrived at this place

 

We were sooooo relieved when we finally reached! At least we didn't turn off the main road in vain!

Now the next question is, are there really crocodiles in this place? Well, it says on the signboard at the entrance that they have more than 1000 crocodiles.... We went into the place and were vastly disappointed. The whole place was so empty, even the small shop (souvenir shop??) in front had its shutter pulled down. There were only this roll of crocodile skulls (I think) displayed on a table

Did we traveled all the way here to look that this?! We must have looked really disappointed, cos a kind old man signaled us to what look like water containers by the side of the shop. And we saw this

Baby crocodiles! Aren't they cute haha. And this marks the beginning of an interesting (and most importantly, free) tour of the crocodile farm. We went further in and saw these, just to show a few

A cluster (is that how you group them?) of crocodiles lazing around in their huge pool

This fellow was basking under shade

This crocodile "keeper" deliberately "played" with a pool of huge crocodiles to spice things up a little for us

 

Now this crocodile is unique. Did you notice his body is almost black? His spikes on his tail look so sharp and piercing, trust me, you wouldn't want to mess with him.

On our way back to the main road, we spotted this

The building of a mega structure! This huge bridge (I don't know where the bridge links and have no idea what the bridge is called) is almost complete, save for the small part in the middle. Call me ignorant, but I have seriously not seen an uncompleted bridge and hence got all excited. If anyone know what the name of this bridge is and where does it connect, please let me know.

Shepherd's Pie - My Version

This is a quick and easy lunch, mainly because I used the leftover meat sauce from making lasagna and hence I only need to prepare the mashed potatoes. Quick and simple and a great way to use up my balance meat sauce haha

If you have a craving for meat pie, why not try out shepherd's pie. Its easy to make and I believe will be more healthy than pastry meat pie.

Can you tell from the photo how creamy and smooth the mashed potato is. Contrasts with the slightly crisped top layer.

Ingredients

2 large potatoes, boiled and mashed.
1/2 to 1 cup milk
50g cheddar cheese, soften
salt and pepper to taste
meat sauce (I used balance meat sauce from my lasagna making)

Method

1. Combine mashed potatoes, cheese together and add milk to it to make it creamy and soft. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
2. Fill half of your baking dish with meat sauce and spread mashed potato mixture evenly over the top.
3. Baked in preheated oven of 180C for 20-25min till the top is golden brown.

Spinach Lasagna

Hmmm, the lasagna looks thin right, will slap on more meat sauce in future.

My super big bowl of meat sauce. I still have half a bowl left after doing the lasagna. 


Ingredients

Meat Sauce
300g ground pork / beef
1 onion, diced
1 big carrot, diced
1 red capsicum, diced
4 large ripe tomatoes, deseed and pureed
1 6oz can of tomato paste (I used the whole can as I do not want to have any leftovers)
A few bay leaves
Salt, pepper and Italian herbs to taste

White Sauce
1 cup milk
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
50g cheddar cheese

Mozzarella Cheese (I used low fat)
1 packet of spinach, boiled and chopped
Instant lasagna

Method

1. Heat oil in saucepan. Prepare meat sauce. Brown onion in pan till soften and translucent.
2. Add meat in and stir-fry till brown, add capsicum and carrot and fry. 
3. Add in tomato paste and tomato puree. Add in bay leaves and italian herbs.
4. Cook till mixture boils, and simmer over low heat for 20-30min. Season with salt / pepper to taste. Dish up and put aside for later use.
5. Boil spinach in water for 5min. Drain and chop into smaller pieces.
6. Prepare white sauce. Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in flour and cook for 2min over gentle heat.Remove from heat and stir in milk. Return to heat and stir till mixture is thick and smooth. Season with salt / pepper as desired and add cheese. Continue to stir over low heat till cheese melts.
7. Preheat oven to 180C. Pour meat sauce into a baking dish. Alternate layers of lasagna, white sauce, spinach, meat sauce ending with white sauce on top. Sprinkle top with shredded mozzarella cheese and bake in oven for 35-40min until cooked through. 
8. Let stand for 5min before serving.
   

Almond Raisin Bread

Adapted from Alex Goh "Bread Magic"

Ingredients

Water Roux Started

80g bread flour

55g boiling water

Dough

240g bread flour

80g plain flour

65g sugar (I reduced to 50g)

5g salt

20g milk powder

6g instant yeast

130g cold water 

1 egg

60g butter

Almond Filings

50g butter

50g sugar

1 egg

1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

100g ground almonds

100g raisins

Method

1. Prepare water roux starter by mixing flour with boiling water and stir into a rough dough. Keep refrigerated for at least 12 hrs.
2. Mix dough ingredients (except butter) and add in starter. Add in butter when the dough is smooth. Knead the dough till it is elastic and non sticky. Proof dough till it doubled in size.
3. Prepare filing. Mix sugar and butter until well blended. Add in sugar and mix till well-combined. Add in ground almonds and cinnamon powder and mix till well combined. Set aside for later use.
   
4. Punch out the air in the dough after the first rise. Mould the dough round and let it rest for 10min. Roll it thin into rectangular shape.
5. Spread on almond filings and sprinkle raisins over the top. Roll it up swissroll style and let it proof for 45min.
6. Egg wash and sprinkle some almond flakes on top. (I omitted and just made a slit on top of the bread dough before baking)
7. Bake at 175C for 25-30min.