Chinese New Year 2012 ^__^

My celebration of the Christmas and New Year was just over last December.  Now I am looking forward to welcome the next festive season which is the Chinese New Year (CNY).  As always, I am eager to taste all the CNY goodies that I ordered and received from my friends.  To avoid myself from getting sore throat and ulcers, I have started to drink 凉茶 (herbal tea) and aloe vera drink to cool off the heatiness after consuming so much of the CNY cookies ^.~

Before I started to write this page, I went to read the post on my last year CNY goodies.  Well, it seems like I have bought quite a bit this year.  Now, let's get on to have a look on my delectable goodies.

I receive this multi-layered cake from Boss. Her sister-in-law bakes this cake perfectly well. 

 This is a traditional sweet snacks. It tastes like mochi ~ so soft & chewy. This was made by an ex-colleague's mum and we always get a box during CNY.

This is a packet of BBQ sliced pork (Bak Kwa) from a gift hamper given to our dept.  The bak kwa is in vaccum-packed and instructions given either to place it in a bowl of hot water to warm it up before eating OR microwave the packet (we used this method as it is tastier. Just microwave it for 20mins).  It's fun to microwave the packet of bak kwa as it blows up like a big bubble.  We thought it will explode. But when you remove it from the oven, the packet flattens.  However, I still prefer to buy those freshly BBQ at the stalls rather than the vaccum packed bak kwa.

These tarts are a MUST-HAVE cookies during CNY .

 They are so many sold in the stalls as well as homemade.  

These are the open-faced pineapple tarts.  The pastry base is buttery and soft which melt in your mouth

Hey don't get deceived by the unappetizing look of this snack. Let me tell you ~ it's so yummy and I just can't resist to eat more after having 1 piece. This is a great snack to go with bi-ru too.

So I'm gonna keep all for myself ~  hehe!

Pretty flower patterns cookies.
They taste similar to the Bee Hive cookies that I bought from Home's Favourite last year.

Cornflakes cookies ~ crunchy

Qi Gu Chips ~ This chips are made from Arrow Head plant. The plant is cut into thin slices and fry them.
I still prefer my potato chips...hehe :P But mum and my aunty like it.

Prawn Crackers ~ such a big tub which my friend bought it for me. Thanks E-san!

Biscotti ~ I like to have this together with my cup of coffee.  Thanks Li-san for giving me this biscuits.

These are like mini spring rolls ~ it's wrapped with spicy dried shrimp fillings.  Another type of fillings is pork floss which is non-spicy.

Walnut Sesame Cookies ~ fragrant!

Kueh Bangkit ~ this is my all-time favourite cookies that melt in my mouth.

Such cute shapes and patterns.

Tomorrow is CNY eve and we will be having our reunion dinner at home ~ Big feast again ^0^ 

I will be offline for a few days to enjoy this celebration and promise to be back soon with more foodie posts.

Wishing all a Happy Chinese New Year!

新年快乐!万事大吉!合家欢乐!财源广进!恭喜发财!

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 ~