Halloween Coconut Buns

Happy Halloween folks!

Halloween Coconut Buns

Rainbow Cube Bread Loaves

It's the end of 2015. Yet another farewell to a year. Let's see, in the past year, I traveled to five cities, feasted on loads of good food, got a lil loony with purple streaks and had a job change. A pretty decent year of trials and changes I would say.

I thought I should celebrate by posting something special. So many things came outta my oven this year, but I thought that I should save the best for the last post of the year. While bread itself is nothing too extraordinary, I think the rainbow hues makes it special hey?

Rainbow Cube Bread Loaves

Purple Sweet Potato Buns

Age is just a number. Certainly rings true when you're getting on your years eh?

Purple Sweet Potato Buns

抹茶クリームパン (Matcha Cream Pan)

I have a looooooooooooooon backlog of baking posts to upload (since I've only been posting about my travelogues). I actually made these buns last year. Like waaaaaaaay last year. Heh.

 抹茶クリームパン (Matcha Cream Pan)

Herb Garlic Butter Three Cheese Pull-Apart Bread

This is one helluva bread recipe.

 Herb Garlic Butter Cheese Pull-Apart Bread

Earl Grey Figs Buns

One thing most people would normally do up at the end of the year (or right at the start of the year) is a list of new year resolutions. I've stopped doing that cos...well, my resolutions always end up being the same, and it just reminds me of a quote I saw somewhere "This year, my new year resolution is to fulfill last year's new year resolutions." So true isn't it?

Anyway, I wasn't actually going to post a recipe today, cos I thought I had forgotten to note down which recipe I used, but thank gosh for my iPhone, I had snapped a photo of the recipe I used (screenshot of my laptop at that moment). So, I guess one thing I should (try to) do in the new year is to procrastinate less - lest my backlog get jammed up too much/ I end up losing recipes.

Earl Grey Figs Buns

Brunch: Blueberry Brie Bake

It's been some time since I posted about our homemade family brunches. I have a few backlogs to go, but here's one of the brunches we had three months ago in April (yes, I went back to track the date through Instagram...).

On the table

Cinnamon Rum Raisin Swirl Bread

Been baking loads of breads too for the past few months. Baking bread is like making macarons (well, at least for me). Many people have lamented about having problems with macaron making, and well, I used to feel the same about baking bread. Yeast has sorta a life of its own, there's often some science behind bread baking (not that I've cracked the code or anything), and I get a sense of achievement (weird I know) every single time I pull a loaf outta the oven.

Cinnamon Rum Raisin Swirl Bread

Cinnamon Swirl Brioche

I'm really bad at public speaking. We had an event at work last Friday, and it was a baking demo. I was the event organiser, and had gotten one of my work friend to share his knowledge about bread baking. Feeling sheepish that I've already asked him for help several times already, I agreed to "co-host" the event with him. Since he was baking bread, I decided to do something complementary and much simpler - homemade nut butters. Oh Em Gee do I really suck at public presentation. *cringes in mortification and tries hard to shove the memories away* On the contrary, thank gosh my friend was a really good speaker so everything went on without a hitch. *phews*

Anyway, back to the bread. I've been baking tons of brioche lately cos the Sister loves her butter, and what better than to bake but a buttery brioche. This is one recipe I've tried some time back.

Cinnamon Swirl Brioche

Chocolate Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

Oooy gooey cinnamon rolls. Add chocolate to amp up the ooze, and toasted pecan nuts to provide a crunch. Hands up, anyone?

Chocolate pecan cinnamon rolls

David Lebovitz's Chocolate Bread

It might seem like I'm spamming my blog with posts recently, but really, my backlog of posts is no laughing matter. I have posts on my baking and restaurants lined up all the way to end December (and I haven't even included my travel posts!). So, pardon me while I try to clear some of it before the year is up...

I was craving chocolate bread. And stumbled upon David Lebotivz's recipe for chocolate bread, which seemed to have quite a lot of rave reviews. Fate, so be it then.

David Lebovitz's Chocolate Bread

Chocolate Nutella Brioches

I actually really enjoy baking bread. But due to time limitations, I don't really take the time to bake bread as often as I would like to. And also, there's also the factor that I have an innate fear of yeast.

Oh. Oh. And the fact that bread equates carbs. Going low carbs is probably the way to go for losing weight, but I'm in love with everything carbs-y, thus even though I've been exercising regularly for the past few months, I'm just not seeing any weight loss. Sigh. Perhaps it's time to sever loosen my relationship ties with carbs.

Anyway, here is a recipe for the most buttery brioche, that is filled with awesome chocolate, AND nutella. What can I say? These are definitely NOT diet friendly, to say the least.

Chocolate Nutella Brioches

Stuffed french toast with bananas and maple whipped cream

I've always wanted to make stuffed french toast. As you know, I'm a breakfast kinda person, so I love having all kinds of breakfast foods such as waffles, pancakes, french toast, big breakfast, scrambled eggs, granola yogurt, cereal with berries and milk. Yeps, I practically like every other breakfast option.

So, I told my Sis that I'll be making french toast. And since I know she's not really a fan of french toast, but she loves peanut butter, I decided to make PBB stuffed french toast. And that reads peanut butter banana (in case you were wondering...).

While I don't mind peanut butter (only the crunchy kind please!), I'm actually more of a Nutella girl myself. Thus, I decided to make both PBB, and NB (yeps, nutella banana!) for breakfast.
 

Stuffed french toast with bananas and maple whipped cream

Maple wheat bread

Like I said earlier, I'm on a streak to bake more bread this year. And here's another recipe that I tried out last month for some tasty maple wheat bread.

Maple wheat bread

Tomato basil bread topped with brie and grilled cherry tomatoes

I'm back from my vacation in Vietnam. And that's just sad, cos I had barely half a day to rest, and I'm back to work again. Sigh. Thankfully, the first day back wasn't that busy. Well, I coped.

I've a lot of photos to share about my trip, but it'll probably take me some time to look through, process and upload. It's okay, I have a handful of backlogs to clear - first up being these tomato basil bread I baked before I left for my vacation.

 Tomato basil bread topped with brie and grilled cherry tomatoes

Homemade ciabatta

Happy 2012! 새해복많이받으세요!

I borrowed a couple of bread baking books from my work place's library. Yes. We actually have a library at my work place - one that loans books from the National Library Board. My office is cool like that.

Homemade ciabatta

Black sesame buns with goji berries

I'm still currently stuck in limbo between houses. I've just received news from the Dad that our new house renovations are going to be completed soon and hopefully we'll get to move in soon. (next week perhaps?)

I really miss pottering about in the kitchen. Cos there's just so many things that I really want to make. One of them being a really chocolate-y chocolate cake to celebrate a new chapter. You can bet that that's gonna be one of  the first things I'll be making when I say 'Ello to the new oven.

One of the last things I baked before we made the move was bread. I made a matcha chocolate loaf (posted previously) using the tangzhong method, and after making the matcha choc loaf, there was still half a portion of tangzhong leftover. Needless to say, I had to use it up. More bread? Of course. Black sesame buns.

Black sesame buns

Matcha chocolate loaf

Whoops, the half written post got posted last night before I could actually finish with it. I was going to finish it up yesterday night and post it accordingly. As it was so, I spent the whole day out yesterday.

I woke up and we were all ready to head out furniture shopping  at Ikea for the new house. After an awesome lunch of Ikea meatballs, fried chicken and Diam cake, we continued walking around a bit before heading to the Furniture Mall. Then after a whole day of walking, we went for an early dinner at Da Paolo at Rochester (and ordered the super yums mushroom truffles pizza again...).

And my day didn't end there. I had plans for the night too. It was Beerfest 2011 - it was effin' hot and super packed but I had a mad rockin' time there, and then got persuaded by my girlfriend to head out clubbing afterwards. But in the meantime, I had to head home for a quick shower cos I was so sticky from the Beerfest. The final cab I took home from the club got me home at around 4 in the morning. Mad tired.

Thus, do pardon me for my half-completed post prior to this. :)

Matcha chocolate loaf

Chocolate brioches

Happy CNY 2011! I bet everyone around me is happily enjoying the long Chinese New Year holidays. Well, as for me, as I can't celebrate the festivities this year, the holiday period is just going be just like any other days for me. In fact, I find that as years go by, my excitement at the approaching CNY period seem to be dwindling. Perhaps as a kid, CNY means more - two and a half days break from school, memorising the various festive greetings together with my cousin, getting red packets, buying and dressing up in new clothes, gorging on festive goodies. In recent years, the only thing that remain constant is the getting red packets and gorging on festive goodies? It's like I don't really immerse myself as much into the festive mood anymore. I wonder if I'm the only one feeling this way...

Chocolate brioches

Matcha brioches

I have several food blogs that I love perusing periodically. Fanny from Foodbeam being one them. She has a really gorgeous food blog, and lately, I saw her repost her matcha brioches recipe. I think I had bookmarked them some time back, but never got around to making them. It's been a while since I've baked any breads, so I decided to try my hand at these pretty buns.

 Matcha brioches