Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Pizza bread for lunch



I have half a packet of block cheddar cheese leftover from making sausage and cheese buns.  I had no idea of what to do with it.  


Recently, my Aunt gave me some slices of ham.  And so ham and cheese together with some tomato base pasta sauce make up the ingredients for our lunch today.


Spread the pasta sauce over a few slices of wholegrain bread, top it up with ham and grated cheddar cheese, whack them into the oven and toast till the cheese melts.


Simple, hassle free and convenient way of using up leftover ingredients.

I think the kids enjoyed this simple treat.  

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Weekend cake making workshop

Went for a cake making workshop over the weekend and produced three different types of cakes. 

Even managed to decorate all of them.  Of course, the standard of decoration awaits much improvements.  

The sense of satisfaction is immense.  The class wasn't too big and I had a lovely partner.  We share one similarity, fastidious about cleanliness and tidiness.

This is the first cake we made, Japanese strawberry shortcake.


The sponge cake felt soft, light and moist to the fingers.  Most important of all, it is an easy sponge cake to make and not too sweet or oily.

The next set of cakes we made is the Hokkaido cupcakes.  The recipe looks like a chiffon cake.  The only difference lies in the filling.  So I guess Hokkaido cupcakes are chiffon cakes with fillings?

I love these pink cups and the simple custard cream topping that my partner piped for me.




And finally from the afternoon workshop, I made a 6 layer rainbow cake.  Yes, rainbow has seven colours but I guess two of the colours are too close in shades so we made do only six.  The cream that was used to cover and decorate the cake is something new to me too.  It is called a Swiss meringue buttercream.  It does't taste too sweet nor too creamy/buttery, a type of buttercream that I can tolerate.



These three cakes took me eight hours to bake and decorate.  No wonder tasty and beautifully decorated cakes are costly treats!