Happy Mother's Day

Yesterday, we had a family gathering at my mom's place. It was like a "last supper" dinner for us. Coz Aunty Katherine will be flying back to USA on 3rd May, so its a time for the whole family to gather together to eat, dine, wine and catchup again.

I decided to bake 2 cakes to celebrate Mother's Day with Aunty and also with all the mothers in our big family. A must have flavour is the Bailey Cream's Sugee cake which is my mom's all-time favourite. Since it was a rich and 'solid' cake, I decided to add a nice chocolate fondant over it and painted it with lustre powder and food colourings making it shine.




The second cake was more for the rest of the family who are not into rich cakes. Its a light, cottony and fluffy Fresh Lemons Sponge cake.

Even so, this proves to be a favourite with uncle Wong..who quickly ate half of it.


We all chipped in to cook or bake something..it was more of a potluck than anything.
Uncle Andrew was busy in the kitchen cooking his famous Chilli Crabs with lemon, Black Pepper crabs too..i didn't take a photo of the Black pepper crabs as I was too busy digging into the Chilli crabs instead..super finger licking good!



my mom instructed my Brother in law to go and get some nice curries from the famous Rendevous Curry..these are what we had..




Auntie Aileen made desserts...almond jelly with icy cold fruits.

We had a good time despite the hot weather. and I am now off to get pineapples to make Pineapple tarts for Aunty Katherine to bring back to USA !!

Down by the riverside

These photos were taken some time back. Today I had decided to bring Jing Jing down to the river side for a stroll. She's getting way too fat now. Today there was a tide coming in and the migratory cranes have flown away. Even the king fishers have not been seen. Showing you some old photos I took of the river that runs thru my 'back yard'. This river flows through my estate (literally opposite my apartment block) and out to the sea. It passes by our Singapore Changi International airport too..

Enjoy...the breathtaking view...

Days of Wine and Roses...!

This is a challenge I set up at my forum : Kitchen Capers. We now had a new section called Daring Enough? Where a member starts a challenge in all things culinary...either cooking or baking using a specific ingredient or a particular method. My challenge for others to join in was to make Wine at home. Either fruits or rice. So far this is what I made..and its still on going. We have to update the posted thread with photos and explanations of our experiments and report on any failures or progress along the way. We must also share the full recipe of how to make the end product.

I am testing 3 types of rice grains:

Black Glutinous Rice to make Black Glutinous Rice wine.
This process will take 21 days to complete. Picture here shows the 4th day..wine is showing at the bottom of the jar.


Basmati rice wine to make another version of White rice wine.
Also a process that will take 21 days to complete. This picture shows 12th day. Much wine is collected at the bottom of the jar now.


Mulitgrain rice. This is only Day 2. Nothing much to see..only that its wet. means wine fermentation in progress. Hopefully to see some wine by the 4th day.



And this...Fruit wines



My first fruit wine : Green Apples
The process will take 14 days..its showing good progress.
This photo shows Day 2



this is Star fruits mixed with small limes. This is done just today. harvested some 600g of fresh starfruits from my neighbhour's starfruit tree. She said i could have it!


If you wanna join the challenge, join Kitchen Capers forum and join the Daring Enough challenge on wine. Learn from others on how to make your own nutritious and healthy fruit wine.

one of the BEST!

A fellow member at my KC forum told me that Kitchen Capers was listed as one of the 45 Best Online shops. I had to rush off to 7 Eleven just to get a copy to see. Here it is!




I thanked God for blessing me with skills and courage to do this alone..! I am running Kitchen Capers as a forum and online shopping site and all the classes all by myself. On top of them, I do my own food styling and photography and fix the website too. All the food photographs on the website are cooked or baked from my humble home, and taken with my digital camera.

Although the website and forum has been in existence since July 2004, the online shopping cart only started in late January. Only 3 months in the running and I got it listed as one of the BEST, its very encouraging for me as I started out on my own.

Thanks also, to my many customers who have purchased things from me and gave me valuable feedback on the things they have bought to use.

This has been a wonderful way to start the year!

I still HAVE it!

Well, I thought that I have lost my skill in painting after the numerous surgeries I had to go thru since young. Until recently, I decided to paint again. But not on canvas. Its on sugar paste instead.

These delicate medallions look-alike were moulded from a plastic mould made for Moon cakes. WF said it look like chinese tiles. I guess it really does look like it.



It took me over 2.5 hours just to paint all of it. Its painted with food dyes and I had played around with colours, mix and using different techniques in painting which I learnt when I was a kid in school.


And though it was tedious, it was great to look at all of them when its done. Surprisingly, it looked nothing like sugarpaste but like a piece of mosaic or kitchen tile ! Like those tiles that adorned the front yard of an old Peranakan home.





I wanna try to paint my shetland sheepdog on a fondant next..I hope I find the time and energy for that..

Patience and love..

Does patience and love go together. I think so. I don't have the patience to wait for anyone, or even for bread to rise. But somehow, when love is concerned, I guess I can have a little bit more patience.

Today I wanted to try something different on fondant. I wanted to paint roses, flowers and leaves. In normal circumstances, I wouldn't have bothered with these. Its just too much work. But my mom hasn't been well lately. She was moody and grumpy. As you have read about her love for all things floral in my post about making a cake for her last year. My mind filled with her as I painstakingly painted these delicate embossed strokes.

I have to practice now..so when Mother's Day comes next month, I will have nice floral cake for her again.