Coconut Meyer Lemon Cake

I made this cake last May for my good friend's birthday. Wow, it's almost her birthday again (soon). Time flies indeed...

Coconut Meyer Lemon Cake

Crepes

Following the Meyer lemon cake, I had leftover lemon curd. So I decided to make breakfast with it.

Crepes Filled with Meyer Lemon Curd, Mascarpone Cheese and Kiwiberries

Meyer Lemon Blueberry Cream Cake

Ever since I started blogging primarily about food, I've always had a huge interest in food ingredients. One of the things that I've seen before (on many food blogs) was Meyer lemons, which is a cross breed between a regular lemon and a mandarin orange. It was reputedly sweeter than regular lemons, with a much aromatic smell and taste than regular lemons. I wanted it. Yet, I've never seen it before on local shores.

That was until I saw a local food blogger upload pictures of it on Instagram. Want. Much. Need. Now. Many thanks to Pick Yin, I managed to procure a bag of those bright golden orange orbs. Swoon.

Meyer Lemon Blueberry Cream Cake

Lemon Blueberry Poppyseed Belgian Waffles

One of my girlfriend came back from her vacation in Aussie and gifted me with a bag of poppyseeds! It's not found locally, so I was quite excited with the possibilities. The first thought that came into mind was naturally lemon. I've always seen the two flavours complementing each other just like milk and cookies, honey and tea or coffee and cake.

And since now that I have a spiffy waffle machine and all, I decided to make some lemon poppyseed waffles for breakfast. And because I know for sure a threesome (flavour) party is the way to go, I threw in blueberries into the mix as well.

Lemon Blueberry Poppyseed Belgian Waffles 

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

A while ago, I was, for some weird random reason, in a cupcakes phase. I was dreaming about cupcakes non-stop, googling for recipes, and fretting over which flavours I should make first to satisfy that urge. I know. It's really weird yeah. I've never been much of a cupcakes person - I'm more of a cake girl (or rather, an entremet girl) most of the time.

I stumbled upon the loveliest sunshine yellow cupcakes at Shirley's site > here. And I knew I just had to make it. I absolutely love all kinds of citrus, especially lemon. And though I'm not a fan of meringue in general, I knew I had to make these. Oh yes, I must. And yes, I did.

 Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Candied kumquats lemon tart

Remember when I spoke of the orange jewels previously? I made some candied kumquats as I knew I could keep them longer in the fridge before actually deciding what I should do with them.

Candied kumquats lemon tart

Lemon almond cake with vanilla buttermilk panna cotta and lemon curd

Before I do my little prelude into my baking post, I must say that I'm currently in a major phase of my life. I'm gonna be moving. And that's from the place that I've stayed for as long as I can remember (say, perhaps a good 17, 18 years?). There are certain reasons for the move, but all I can say is, while on one hand I'm excited about planning a new room, on the other hand, I'm a bit sad cos I've grown up here and I've never actually thought about the possibility of myself ever moving out of this home of mine cos we've just been rooted here for ages. Oh well, guess that's about to change.

And since I'm currently deep in the midst of packing/moving (it's sorta a last minute rush thing going on here that's quite hard to explain), I'll not be able to bake much in the coming few weeks! Reasons being - no time and I don't think the oven's gonna be set up so soon yet anyway. But it's okay, I have quite a few backlog posts, so by the time I get baking, perhaps I'll actually be more up to date with the posts? ^^

Lemon almond cake with vanilla buttermilk panna cotta and lemon curd

Lemon tart

It's been a long time since I last ate a lemon tart, so I decided to make one to indulge. I reused an old recipe that I had made before, just to see if the recipe was still as good as I remembered.

Lemon tart

Lemon curd and lemon cranberry oatmeal scones

The egg yolks were accumulating. Day after day, three new sunshine yellow orbs will make their appearance in the yolks container in the refrigerator. The bright coloured rounds beckoned to me. I hate the thought of seeing them go to waste. Instead of the usual ice creams that the Sister has been churning out, my mind was on a luscious creamy lemon curd.

Homemade lemon curd

Farewell macarons

It's the Sis's last day at work today, and we spent the weekend baking macarons for her to give to her colleagues as byebye presents. We made the shells over the weekend and stored them in containers. Then did the fillings over the past two days, and sandwiched them and packed them so she can bring them to work yesterday and today.

Lemon macs with lemon curd filling & Milo macs with Milo buttercream and Valrhona crunchy pearls

A girlfriend's birthday cake

I bought two new cooking books recently. What's surprising is that:

1) I rarely ever buy cooking books, most of the time I borrow books from the library and scan the recipes I like to keep as jpeg files in my laptop.

2) The books are in Chinese! (Okay, one is fully in Chinese, the other is English/Chinese). Although I scored A1s for my O AND A levels (don't ask how I did it, I really have no idea), my Chinese is actually pretty sub-par and it's been so long since I last wrote any Chinese characters that most of the time, I find myself forgetting how to write even the most basic characters...(I'm always fearful that I'll forget how to write my own name in Chinese. Haha). I mean, I can read Chinese pretty okay, just don't ask me to write, so to buy the Chinese cookbooks is really a rarity indeed. It's just that I love layered cakes desserts and most of the pretty intricate looking entremets cookbooks are all in Chinese (or Japanese or French, which sadly I know neither). Thus, it can also be that reading the books I buy will allow me to brush up on my Chinese reading? :)

Anyway, exactly a month ago, it was one of my best girlfriend's birthday. Since I've been baking a cake for most of my besties this year for their birthdays, this was no exception. She, who doesn't like sweets stuff muchos, will probably suit a fruity cake yeah? And looking through one of my new books, I decided to make a grapefruit mousse cake.

Leftover miniature cakes...

Wishing I had some lemony goodness now

This week has been a total mad week for me.

Tuesday - client meeting, dinner with girlfriends to celebrate belated birthday.
Wednesday - client meeting, boss's surprise birthday lunch @ Manna, movie date with Jos
Thursday - event 3pm - 11pm (ended early at 830pm! phew.)
Friday - event 715am - 330pm.

It's no wonder with all these late nights, and early mornings, and the feel of the rushing here and there, that I'm falling sick now. It started with an itchy throat on Thursday, then the throat and a migraine today, which then developed into sorta flu like symptoms after the event. I was feeling so horrible I took a cab home after the event cos I just wanted to get home and rest.

I was downing Korean Yuzu tea and barley water these two days to cool my body down. I made raspberry ice-cream, cos I wanted to use up my leftover cream from a dessert I made last week. At first, I wasn't going to eat it, cos I'm sorta sick, I was just going to get my Sis to try before she flies off to the US of A tomorrow morning :( But she was like, eat lar, it's cooling anyway. Me, being the very obedient sister I am, (heh), complied. ;) But only a small cup though. Mmmmmm.

Anyway, citrus is good for me right now, and it's no wonder I'm looking at these pictures and thinking "I need my dose of citrus now!"

Triple lemon (lime) cake

Chocolate lemon tart

I made this cheerful yellow tart some time back when I was craving citrus. My sister suggested a chocolate lemon combination. I thought it sounded pretty good. What could go wrong with my two favourite flavours? Thus, I set about searching for recipes to make a chocolate lemon tart. My mind envisioned a crisp chocolate tart dough, layered with a chocolate ganache, followed by lemon cream, then topped with candied lemons. And the tart came out looking exactly like how I had dreamt it to be.

 

Chocolate lemon tart

Back from traveling. And some macarons pictures.

I'm back! From all my trips. Loads to share, loads to share. Just not in the right frame of mind to piece my thoughts into coherent sentences. It's 11.50pm and I'm daaaaaaaamn tired cos I went for a jog just now with the Sista. Instead of attempting to sort through my memories, I opt for pictures instead. Nothing beats pictures, right? (:

My Aunt Susan wanted to learn how to make macarons, so one day last month, she came over and we made two batches of coffee, chocolate and lemon macarons. The lemons were a flop - they didn't rise! How sad, thus no pictures of the disastrous flat lemon ones, but here are the coffee and chocolate ones.

June baking Part 2

I had a short hiatus (say less than a week? snigger) from the last post of goodies before I baked again. This time round, in the final week before I flew off, I managed to squeeze in three more baked goods. Sticky date pudding. Lemon melt cookies. Apple tarts.


Sticky date pudding has a special place in my heart. Whenever I think of sticky date pudding, I think of Palais Renaissance's sticky date pudding. The one that the Sister and I are crazy about and would gladly fork each other to see who gets the last bite of the shared dessert. Though we havn't lunch there in ages, whenever we do, an order for sticky date pudding is always, and I mean always, placed.

It would be right to say that when I think of sticky date pudding, I think of my sister. Here's to a shared love for the dessert Sis!



I always wanted to attempt to make my own sticky date pudding from scratch. I recalled that someone had asked me whether I watched MasterChef Australia (the answer is no) and was really surprised (since I'm a foodie) and recommended me to watch it (I still did not haha!). The person, I forgot who, also mentioned about the sticky date pudding that the chefs made. Well, I googled MasterChef, and voilà, a recipe for it was available on the website! It was fate. I had to make it. The method looks easy, and it really is friggin' easy to make it.

It's the first time I bought fresh dates, and I must say, there are really interesting fruits. They are very very sticky, and has a pit in the middle. The smell of the cooked dates was quite dubious, but when I pulled the puddings from the oven, the smell that filled the house... I'm a happy girl with my puddings. And when I started making the butterscotch sauce... I was in heaven. (:

I had bought some Madagascar Vanilla Bean icecream (Coles Finest) to match with the dessert. The icecream was average, nothing spectacular, but combined with the sticky date puddings, it proved to be simply divine. Some things really mesh well together like butter on toast, coffee and chocolate and of course, sticky date pudding and vanilla icecream. One by itself is just not the same without the other.

As mentioned many times before, I love lemons. When I think of cookies, the image of double chocolate chip cookies zoom straight into my mind. Yet, I crave for alternate flavours other than the usual chocolate. I wanted something buttery, that melts in my mouth. Since I had forgotten to copy the Melting Moments recipe we use for CNY baking into my recipes notebook, I searched the web (seriously I salute the person who invented the Internet) for melt away cookies recipes. I found one that was delicious. Lemon melt cookies - The original recipe uses limes, but with an abundance of lemons at home, limes did not even cross my mind. I'll try using limes the next time round as I bet it will produce a great flavour.



I think I'll leave apple tarts for another post as I went a bit overboard snapping pictures for my babies (tarts). You'll know when you see the entry. ha!

Finally finished backlog. (:

Here's all the remaining backlog of food pictures! This is for the month of April. The previous post was end Feb/Mar baking. Finally. I almost feel a sense of relief that I've uploaded all the pictures. (: Now, there's the bento pictures to tackle...haha. But then I think I like to mass upload a month's worth of bentos at a shot, so I'll only post bento pictures up at the end of each month.

Omg. My eyes are drooping so badly now that it's 3am. I'm supposed to go gym tomorrow morning. So I better head off to bed lest I wake up late and then decide that I'm lazy to walk to Fitness First. Ha.

Ingredients to make?

Quiches. It's my first attempt and I even made the pate sucree from scratch! It was wasy, but it took time rolling the dough out and cutting it to fit into the pan. I wanted to experiment with two flavours so I went with spinach for one, and mushrooms bacon for the other.

Waiting to go into the oven.

Ingredients for making homemade soup.

Vienna mini bread rolls.

The roll on the far right is from Woo Aa! She bought this Korean premix sesame bun pack and tried it out. It tasted pretty chewy and unlike a bread, but it was nice though.

Homemade beef barley vegetable soup. Bread + soup during cold weather is simply the best.

Uber mini burgers. About three mouthfuls each and they're gone. ;)