Homecooked Food (*^_^*)

The poll for the Presidential Election 2011 was on 27 August and I was simply excited about it as i just cast my virgin vote After I did my voting, I met up with my makan kakis and went to BL's house for dinner and gather to watch the live telecast of the Presidential Election result on TV. We had planned an enticing menu for our dinner ~ with such delectable food and great companies of friends ~ what could we ask for more ~

Chilli Crabs ~ Our chef had put too much tomato paste and it turned out not spicy as what we wanted. But we applaused for his effort and getting all the fresh ingredients

Another good job done by our chef's wife ~ Green Salad with tomatoes and pine nuts. Fresh leafy greens and she also bought an organic herbs and spice salad dressing which was very refreshing.

Dried Mee Siam ~ This was a recipe which Linda wanted to cook. It seems an easy recipe but frying the bee hoon was not easy. Anyway, that would leave to our chef to handle it ~ haha

Ngoh Hiang ~ These super yummy minced pork rolls were made by BL's mum. The minced pork was well marinated and I like the crunchiness of the finely chopped chestnuts in the rolls. Thanks to Auntie and I had brought home 5 pieces to cook for my tomorrow's lunch

Stir-fried Chilli Squids ~ The squid texture was just nice and not overly cooked.
Very appetizing!

Garlic Clams ~ Very fragrant and I could slurp up many at one go ~ Yummy!

This is another recipe from Linda ~ Thumbs up for this dish as the sauce was so creamy and flavorful. The big juicy prawns absorbed the sauce flavor and tasted heavenly good. This was the first dish that we all eaten up.

There was another delicious dish which I did not take a photo ~ Crispy Prawn Paste Chicken Wings. Yet another popular dish as all of us were licking our fingers and asked for more servings.

After eaten our main dishes, we had grass jelly (oops ~ no photo) for dessert which J & C bought from Alexandra Village Food Center. So far, that's the best grass jelly I have tasted. The grass jelly has mild herbal taste and it's so cooling after eating it since we had so much heaty food.

Next, our chef and wife bought us the delicious soft swiss rolls (orange and durian flavors) from Rich & Good Cake Shop @ Kandahar Street.

Wow! We really ate a lot for the night and felt utterly full after such a scrumptious meal

Another Baking Session o(^V^)o

Another baking fun time with Li. She had specially taught me how to bake pineapple tarts which she usually only bakes them during the Chinese Lunar New Year. In addition, we also decided to bake cookies and muffins again as we felt that we did not get the right textures and colors previously.

Cooking the pineapple paste fillings can be tedious so we bought the ready-made paste from Phoon Huat. However, Li told me that the ready-made paste is usually very sweet and she would buy fresh pineapples, grate and add into the paste to less sweeten it. Anyway, it is still the best to cook your own pineapple paste fillings so that you can control the sweetness and flavor. Hmm, it will take take hours for me to prepare the paste.

Thereafter, we rolled the paste into small balls for the open-faced pineapple tarts and oval shapes for the closed ones.

Li prefers the closed filling pineapples and I like the open-faced ones. Looks nicer (^.^) So I was assigned to mold the tarts base. Well, it was indeed a challenging task as I thought it was easy since I had the mold. But stamping the dough out from the mold was not easy leh! I had to re-do as I did not get the perfect shapes ~ either too thick or too thin; or the edges came out with extra dough or torn as I pressed too hard ~ (T___T)

The closed filling pineapple tarts were much easier to do. Li actually weighed each tart dough to get a consistent shape and right proportion.

Woohoo ~ my 1st time baking pineapple tarts ~ not too bad lah ^0^ except the pineapple fillings were too much ~ haha!

Wow ~ the shapes were quite the same ~ for those were not so, they were actually done by me hehe ^0^!

We must praise ourselves for baking these coffee chocolate chips cookies ~ we managed to get the correct cookies texture ~ crispy and tasted yummy! Of course, the cookies cutter was nice too ~ Hearty shapes ^.~

Another successful bake was the blueberries muffins ~ moist texture-neither soggy nor too dry ^.~ not over burnt on the surface ~ nice golden brown 0^.^0 We are going to use the same recipe and do with other flavors such as banana walnut, carrot, pumpkin, orange and many more.

Surprisingly, we took quite a short time to finish baking all the above recipes and all turned out beautifully good and tasty. Successful baking ~ it completely made my day H-A-P-P-Y ~