Mini Strawberries & Chocolate Chips Muffin

I had a little 'free' time this morning, so I thought I could quickly whip up a tray of muffins rich in strawberries flavour by using the balance of the strawberries milk and yogurt in the fridge. At the same time, I was really excited each time getting my daughter involved in my baking projects. She loves helping me to crack eggs, add in the different ingredient and do the mixing. Watching her stirring gently the batter amazed me! It is so wonderful to see her so happy doing all small little things together with me in the kitchen each time!

I didn't refer to any particular recipe but just recalling the ingredients and the volume used for the sunny morning muffins. I think they are still in my head as I had baked them not long ago.. I hope :) I substituted the orange juice with the strawberries milk and maintain the amount for most of the ingredients used except the walnuts and other fruits. I made a mistake here. I should have increased the volume for the strawberries milk since the chocolate chips that I added in to the muffins were dry and create no moist as compared to the strawberries juice and blueberries for the sunny morning muffins!

The muffins were heavy and a little bit dry. I would not pose the recipe here as I think it wasn't a success project. Nevertheless, the consolations that I had were that they looked really cute, sweet and adorable in the pink mini muffin cases and that my dear husband and daughter liked them!! Think they didn't mind the heavy texture nor the cakey one :)

Fried Angel Hair ala Peranakan

We are supposed to have spaghetti with mushroom tomato sauce on Sunday but my husband mistook the angel hair with spaghetti. So we had that for our Sunday's dinner. I didn't know how to estimate the amount for the three of us so I ended us cooking more than what we could finish! I was thinking hard what was I supposed to do with the balance boiled angel hair that was still sitting in the fridge. I wish to have something Asian for today's dinner and cleared the balance of the noodles. I decided to fry the angel hair Ala Peranakan.

If you are a die hard fan of yellow noodles which the original Peranakan fried noodles should be, you may not like this dish as much. All the three of us aren't so I thought of giving it a try and fry it following the peranakan fried noodles recipe. It tasted very good as the angel hair didn't absorb the gravy as much and as quickly as compared to the yellow noodles. The noodles were not soggy nor dry even if you were to consume much later. As the taste of the angel hair is light it didn't spoil or deviate much from the original taste!! In fact to me I think it gives the traditional recipe a twist of new taste. I will cook this again as my daughter and husband like this much more than the authentic peranakan fried noodle!!

Ingredients (for 3 pax)
8 pcs of prawn
24 prawn heads
1 tbsp of salted soya bean paste
1 palm size fish cake (sliced)
3 tbsp of minced pork
2 stalks of off spring leaves (cut into 2 inch length)
8 slices of Chinese cabbage (chopped)
1 red chili (chopped for garnish)
2 cloves of garlic

Method
1. Boiled the prawn heads with 1 cup of water for about 20 minutes and leave aside for stock later

2. Fry the garlic and bean paste until fragrant

3. Add the minced meat and continue to stir fry. Add in the prawn and fry for about 30 seconds.

4. Add in the cabbage and the spring leaves. Continue to fry for a while.

5. Add in the fish cake and the stock and let it boil.

6. Season to taste.

7. Add in the noodles and stir fry for another 30 seconds.

8. Garnish with chopped red chili.

Notes:
1. The authentic peranakan fried noodle calls for shallot paste instead of garlic but to make my job easier and since I don't have any more shallots left at home, I just improvise!

2. The original recipe will taste much better with chye sim instead of cabbage and uses the pork belly rather than minced pork.

3. Needless to say it is best to eat the original one with 'belacan' = shrimp paste chili but not for this new dish which i think best to eat just with chopped chilli!

Pancakes with Blueberries & Strawberries Syrup

I still have craving for blueberries and bought another two punnets from the supermarket since they are having discount now. Never planned to cook this simple meal for breakfast. It was very impromptu as I was lazy to go out to get breakfast this morning. Thought of making strawberries syrup as there were still some balance in the fridge. My daughter and I love the blueberries syrup a lot. The only drawback was that the pancakes were not fluffy enough as I didn't add enough baking powder to the pancake batter. Just wanna to use less chemical ingredients as possible at home! :)

Ingredients :
Pancakes
1 cup of plain flour
1/4 baking powder
1 egg
1 tbsp grapeseed oil
1 tbsp castor sugar
1/2 cup of milk

Blueberries syrup
125g blueberries
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 of water
1/4 tsp cornstarch
(Cook all ingredients in a saucepan and add cornstarch the last to thicken the syrup)

Strawberries syrup
4 - 5 pcs of strawberries (chopped)
1 tbsp sugar
(Add sugar to the chopped strawberries and let it rest for half an hour until the juice is oozed out)

Method
1. Mix all ingredients (except oil) for pancakes for about 1 hour and let it rest in the fridge.
2. Add in the oil and stir well just before frying the pancakes
3. Use a ladle and scoop the batter to the non stick frying pan. Flip the pancake over when the bubbles stop forming
4. Cook for another 30seconds to 1 minute and serve hot with your preferred syrup!

Sunny Morning Muffins

I bought some bananas, strawberries and blueberries over the weekend and happened to stumble to the Food Network.com website when I was searching for other blueberries recipes. The craving for blueberries is still lingering in me!! I baked the muffins following the recipe this morning for our breakfast. My husband and I both ate 5 each. My daughter enjoyed it very much too and she has it again for her snack later in the day at school. I thought of freezing some for snacks for the week but they are too good to resist or keep for the rest of the week. You just can't stop eating them especially when they were just out from the oven!!. It tasted so good that I know I will bake it time and again. What's more it is healthy and smart way to get the children eating more fruits and use up whatever balance of fruits you have in the fridge.


The muffins are moist not dense, fruity, fragrant with the mixture of berries, bananas, lemon and they are nutty. The light cinnamon and nutmeg spices blended in extremely well with the fruity flavours of the muffins. The taste of the strawberries, blueberries, bananas, lemon is significant by itself but none is overpowering the other. It was really a balance and a good combination!!

Sunny Morning Muffins

Ingredients

Wet ingredients:
1 cup strawberries, chopped and mixed with 2 tablespoon of sugar.
1 cup of sugar
1 ripe banana, mashed
2 large egg (room temp)
1/4 cup vegetable oil/ 56g melted butter
1 lemon, zested

Dry ingredients:
1 1/2 cup of flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
pinch of ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg

Fold in :
1/2 pint or about 1 cup of blueberries
1 cupped of chopped walnut

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. Line the muffin tray with muffin cases

2. Mixed the chopped strawberries with the sugar and leave it aside for at least 15minutes to let the juice out.

3. In a mixing bowl, sift the flour with baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt.

4. Melt the butter (if you are using butter) and leave it cool to room temp. In a medium size mixing bowl mix the butter with egg, banana, lemon, sugar and strawberries.

5. Add the dry ingredients in 3 batches to the wet ingredients until just combine.

6. Fold in the blueberries and walnut and fill the batter 2/3 full in each muffin cases.

7. Bake for about 30 minutes*1

Notes:
*1. I have increased the baking time to 50 minutes as I find that the muffins are still very wet at 30 minutes.

2. The amt of salt is high compared to other muffin recipe but it wasn't salty at all.

3. May try to use more lemon zest if you prefer strong lemon flavour. I may try to substitute the lemon with orange zest and I think the muffins will turn out nice too! :)

4. I divided the batter into 2 as I want to make some without walnuts as I know she didn't know how to eat them

5. Both version i.e with or without walnuts taste as good. I love both infact i find the ones without walnuts are more intense for the fruity flavours.

6. Sprinkle some walnuts as topping if you prefer.

7. The muffins are flat and perhaps due to the fruity ingredients.

Blueberries Yogurt Muffins II

I have craving for blueberries lately. I bought 2 punnets of blueberries and intended to use one of the punnet to bake a tray of blueberries muffins. I came across this blog which has now become my favourite cooking and baking blog. I refer this site for the recipe but yet again I didn't follow it exactly as I didn't want to have a dense and heavy muffins this time. So I thought of not using the 2 mixing bowls method but creaming one instead. I have also replaced the vegetable oil with butter though not as healthy but I just have the craving for light buttery muffins. I did a comparison of this recipe with the one which I did sometimes ago. The ingredients used are almost similiar except that this recipe replaced the full cream milk with orange juice, added the vanilla flavour and used less one egg. As for the topping, I used about 5 tablespoons of flour with 2 tablespoon of butter and about 1/4 cup of brown sugar mixed with nutmeg and cinnamon.

The muffins were moist, soft, cakey and light with strong blueberries flavour!! I would said that this is an improved recipe from my previous experiment. Yummy! Yummy!!

Blueberries Yogurt Muffins

Ingredients

220g / 2cups of plain flour
170g brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
(Sift the dry ingredients together)

1/4 cup of freshly squeezed orange juice
56g unsalted butter (room temp) or 2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup vanilla yogurt
2 large eggs(room temp)
250g blueberries

Topping :
5 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp cold butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
Cinnamon & nutmeg (to your liking)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190 deg C. Line the muffin tray with muffins casing.

2. Cream the butter and sugar until light, pale and fluffy. Add in the egg one by one and then vanilla essence follow by the yogurt and orange juice.

3. Lower the speed of the mixer and add in the sifted dried ingredients in three batches until just incorporated. Do not overmix.

4. Fold in the blueberries in 3 batches. Do this gently and fast.

5. Using 2 spoons, fill the muffin cups 2/3 full.

6. Bake in the oven for about 18 - 20 minutes until a skewer came out clean when inserted to the muffins.

Homemade Popcorn Chicken

I was thinking very hard what I should do with the small packet of minced chicken that I bought from NTUC Fair Price (local supermarket). I knew I would definitely use a small portion of it for my stir fried mixed vegetables. I decided to cook popcorn chicken at the end using some of the balance cornflakes that I have in the fridge. I have never cooked this dish from scratch before and this was really an experiment. What I did was just marinate the minced chicken with a generous amount of salt, ground white pepper and cornflour. I then scooped a teaspoon of marinated minced chicken and coat it well with the crushed cornflakes. Bake them in oven at about 180deg C for about 20 minutes. Turn the popcorn chicken over after the first 10minutes of baking.

My daughter loves the popcorn chicken a lot and obviously I didn't cook it enough for everyone as this is really an unplanned dish. She demanded to have this as snacks for her tea break at school! I will cook this dish times and again as it is so simple, easy, fresh and healthy.

Mama Pork Chop

Today is a public holiday in Singapore. My husband is busy rushing out some documentation for a new project. I was having very bad tension headaches again and had not been sleeping well past few nites due to it and the pregnancy. So, we both decided to stay home and keep the activities minimum and simple with our daughter. My husband likes to cook some of his favourite dishes whenever he is inspired to fill our stomachs with love his ways. Frankly he cooks quite good pork chop and 'begedel' (potato croquette). In fact, he has tried many different flavours and versions of the latter. The original gravy's recipe for the pork chop was from his late grandmother but he changed and added new flavours to the original. That inspired me to name this special simple dish after my late grand-mother-in-law. My husbanf and I enjoyed the time spent together cooking in the kitchen, chatting away and at the same time kept our daughter involved and occupied with simple activites like peeling snowpeas, crushing the crakers etc.


I cooked a simple stir fried mixed vegetables with prawn and pork as a side dish. I just wanted to add vege to the main course to balance back my duaghter's diet for the past one week as she has not been eating much vegetables since she was sicked. I am so happy to see her enjoying her snowpeas, carrots and baby corns. Of course she loves the pork chop too!! I reintroduced the snowpeas (yesterday) and baby corns to her today though both were rejected a few times previously. As a mother, I am so pleased to see her finishing up the vegetables. She is a vege lovers since young but has her own preferences somehow. I am in particularly lazy today and changed my mind to have just bread and butter instead of rice or mash potatoes with the pork chop. It was a simple yet delicious meal we have had together