An attempt to eat healthy

It’s been a while since I’ve baked anything.  Grateful for the mid-week public holiday, I was kinda desperate to get busy in the kitchen.  In an attempt to try and eat healthy, I thought of baking granola.  Been seeing loads of pictures by instagrammers and recipes on the www, so I was really tempted to try my hand at making some.

I eventually settled on using this recipe from E over at missus C’s reverie.  I figured that the recipe looked relatively simple and something I could manage.  Well, I was wrong….

Breakfast Granola
adapted from missus C’s reverie

Ingredients:

• 5 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• Handful of walnuts, roughly chopped
• Handful of sliced almonds (I used whole almonds)
• 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds
• Handful of dried cranberries
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
• 1-2 tbsp light brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 tsp salt

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Line an 18×13-inch baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together maple syrup, vegetable oil, brown sugar, and salt. Fold in rolled oats and nuts (except sliced almonds). Mix until the dry mixture is thoroughly coated.
3. Transfer mixture to prepared baking sheet. Spread evenly to form an even layer.
4. Bake for 45 minutes until mixture is golden brown in color. Stirring every 10-15 minutes. Add in sliced almonds and dried cranberries at the last 5 minutes of baking.
5. Let granola cool completely before storing in an airtight container for up to one month.

While the granola was slowly baking, my kitchen was filled with a lovely maple scent.  I was so excited thinking that ‘I did it! I’m going to make an awesome batch of home-made granola good enough to share with friends!’

Turned out I was wrong.  The nuts that I added into the mix?  Well, some of them got burnt along the baking process.  Despite this baking boo boo, the granola still tasted great (enjoyed with yogurt/ ice-cream or on its own as a snack).  So, I had the burnt nuts removed and kept the rest stored away.

I’m not going let this little mishap stop me.  I’m going to try to whip up another batch of these bites.  This time round, I’m going to keep stirring the granola during baking to prevent the nuts from burning and put the baking tray a little lower from direct hit.

Send some luck along my way, wont’ you?

And E, if you are reading this?  Maybe it really is time for you to send me a batch of your granola to try? ;p  Hehe…

Winter in Hakuba 2013 ^_−☆

Been so tired almost every other night. Though I may not be the most hardworking of the lot but I did my fair share of snowboarding the last 2 days when the weather got better. Here are some shots to remember the holiday by:

Where will we be going in 2014? I wonder..

I’m turning into a…

snowbunny for a while..

off to hit the slopes so see you in a week’s time!

My 2012 in review

Just like that 2012, you are coming to an end and what do I make of you this year?

I often describe life as a roller-coaster ride in Space Mountain. There are ups and downs. You take the good as it comes along with the bad. You don’t know what each turn may bring as the ride happens inside a dark tunnel. But you either scream to chase away those fears or squeal in delight when it’s just a bump that doesn’t send your heart plummeting.

That’s what 2012 has been for me. The highlights? The travels we’ve done in Europe before packing our bags and moving back to Singers. Despite me saying that I don’t really enjoy living in Geneva, it has been kind. We made some really good friends and it was the perfect springboard to most of our winter snowboarding trips.

The Man and I finally got to spend more time with my fur-kid and my loved ones. We welcomed a new nephew to the family and we saw many of our dear friends add a new life to theirs. My youngest sis is back for good and embarked on her career. While I initially experienced difficulty in going back to the workforce but eventually went back to The Company. Phew! On retrospect, the couple of months that I took looking for a suitable job saw me embarking on a daily exercise regime and taking up a hobby which I always wanted to do – floral arrangement.

The low-lights for the year? There are some but the one that tops it all is tumbling down the stairs. I now gotta pay extra attention when climbing up or down the stairs. Thankfully the episode left me with some superficial scars and not anything more.

So 2012. You have been good to me really on this roller-coaster ride and I hope that 2013 will be kind to me as I buckle my seat-belt in anticipation for the ride when the clock strikes 12 tonight.

To all who has been following my adventures or misadventures on this little blog of mine in 2012, a BIG THANK YOU to you! I hope 2012 has treated you well and I would like to take the opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a Happy 2013!

A simple Feast with these easy recipes

Thought I better get round to posting some of these recipes of the dishes that we whipped out during our simple Christmas feast for we will definitely see most of these back on our dining table when entertaining at home.

The starter was these really delicious stuffed portobello mushrooms with chopped mushroom stems, prosciutto ham, onions, parsley, rosemary, thyme and since we didn’t have any bread left at home. The helper crushed some crackers and I threw them into the mix. Pan-fry the ingredients and then stuff them into the mushroom caps. Drizzle a little olive oil and pop them into the oven. After approximately 20 mins, these babies should be done.

Next, we always need a side of veggies to make our meal a little more wholesome. This is simple to put together. We got some pumpkin, broccoli and corn for the roast. All we did was to drizzle the olive oil liberally, add some salt and srigs of rosemary and thyme. Pop them into the oven for about 20 minutes. Remove broccoli and pumpkin from tray, pop the tray with the corn into the oven for about another 10-15 mins and it should be done.

Highlight of our meal has got to be this Truffle Butter Roast Chicken recipe that I got off from Lavishley. Simple yet extremely flavorful! This is definitely making a comeback at our parties!

Last but not the least, the Man’s favorite molten chocolate lava cake with salted caramel ice-cream that I got from Marks and Spencer.

Hope these simple recipes would inspire you to cook more for the coming year. It definitely has inspired us to come up with a New Year menu.

Can burgers be healthy?

Well, yes, if you make them yourself.

I was in the mood for some home-made burgers but wanted a twist in my previous recipe.   So I surfed around and realised that I could substitute the Panko (Japanese bread-crumbs) in my recipe with tofu.  And the best part?  You won’t even know the difference.

If you like to give this recipe a try, click here and follow the steps.  Just omit the Panko and the milk if you are using tofu.  As for the type of tofu to use, I would recommend that you use the firm type of tofu and drain the moisture out of the tofu with paper-towels before throwing it into the meat mixture and mashing them up to form the hamburger patties.

An easy and wholesome dinner idea served alongside rice or in our case, a soup and potato gratin for a full meal.

 

The purple butterflies cake project

If you have been following my misadventures on my recent cake decorating course that I took, you would have known how stressed out I have been over my final cake project. There were only 5 lessons that we had to take in this basic cake decorating course, but it was enough to ‘stress’ me and Germsy out. In between all the cake talk, I guess we bonded even more with a glass of wine in hand. Fun times indeed!

In order to ‘graduate’ from this course, we each had to assemble a two-tier cake and decorate it with fondant. We were told to select a design by the end of lesson 2 and this was the cake that I chose – a gorgeous Anna Sui cake adorned with black fluttering butterflies.

[Image taken from http://www.hannahgracecakes.co.uk

Looks mighty challenging huh? And it was! I was told by my teacher to bake 2 X 6-inch cakes and 2 X 8-inch cakes and have them stacked one on top of the other. I honestly thought I had a 8 inch cake pan at home but it turned out I baked 2 X 7-inch cakes instead. I only realised the error when I stacked the 2 different sized cakes together and they look abit odd. But I was simply too tired to whip up another batch of cake batter and begin the process. So I chose to live with the mistake.

A lot of prep work was needed in order to make this cake. Besides covering our 2 cakes with fondant, I had to make the fondant butterflies a couple of days before, make sure they harden and bring them into class for the final decoration.

I made a total of 20 big butterflies and 14 small ones. 10 odd or more butterflies were broken in the process. Total time taken kneading of fondant plus making of the butterflies: close to 3 hours.

After settling the fondant butterflies, the next step was to cover our chocolate cakes with the fondant of your choice. Since mine was a purple-based cake, I had to tint my fondant which took me 1 hour to tint 1kg of white fondant. This was really getting to be quite time-consuming. Thereafter, I had to transport my cakes to Germsy’s place to have my fondant rolled out and covered there. Thankfully, Germsy’s daughter was a whizz at rolling and covering the cakes with fondant. So the sweet gal helped us with all our cakes with us taking a supporting role. Total time taken to cover 6 cakes : approximately 2.5 hours. Of course it’s not all work and no play, the wonderful host poured out some drinks while we worked.

Covering the cake with fondant is truly no easy feat. You have to make sure that fondant is rolled out to the desired thickness before laying it on the cake and slowly covering the gaps without breaking the fragile sugar piece. Well, didn’t have much luck in that department for a part of my fondant cracked really badly while covering the cake. So in order to ‘rescue’ the cake, I cut out a piece of fondant and covered the cracked part. This became a joke in the class for my cake looked like it had a stamp over it. I guess that’s my signature then.

Okay, now to the very last part – assembling the cake.

At our last lesson, we were taught how to stack our cakes and making sure that it had the right support without collapsing.

Next, we were given about 2.5 hours to put the finishing touches and decorate our cake.

The mother-and-daughter team doing a far better job than me in their cake decorating.

This was me, initially, working on my cake.

Towards the end, the rest of the gals chipped in and helped add the sparkles to my black fondant butterflies, simply because I added way too much cornstarch and the white specks couldn’t be removed. Yikes! But I guess it was good fun!

And just like that we’ve ‘graduated’ from cake decorating course 1! Don’t you think the pals’ cakes are also very lovely? I absolutely adore Germsy’s white cake with neon pink bows! Classy and funky all rolled into one!

And here’s a shot of us gals with our teacher.

My Anna Sui Butterflies fondant cake – it ain’t pretty but I guess I’m really proud of the cake that I’ve put together.

Of course, there’s room for improvement and hopefully if I ever do get the chance to make one of these cakes again, I hope to do a much better job at it.

Till then, we will be eating loads of choc cake here at the loft!

This has certainly been one pretty ‘mammoth’ and fun project that I’m glad to have done with friends on my career break. Doing this project has also opened my eyes for I’ll never look at any fondant cake the same way again.

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