2nd Hands On II

Next up the bread. Ciabatta bread with sundried tomato and olive. I could say this lesson is hell-killing time. Lots of ingredients and steps needed for the cake while this bread needs darn lots of time for it to rise. We're like almost doozing off while waiting..zzzzzzzz...

Ingredients:
(SPONGE DOUGH)
- 240gm of water
- 8gm of yeast
- 225gm bread flour
- 90gm of virgin olive oil
- Herbs

1. Mix well the water, yeast, herbs and flour together
2. Then add in the olive oil. Mix it well
3. Cover the dough and rest for 40 minutes

For this bread, we used oregano and basil instead. Low or medium speed is recommended while mixing the dough. No high speed as it would make the dough super watery in the end. It can be put in the fridge overnight too. After resting it, some other ingredients and steps were add on.

Ingredients:

- 1 tbsp of fine sugar

- 1 tbsp of salt

- 120gm of bread flour

- 60gm of sundried tomato

• Stir down the sponge dough 
• add in the balance ingredients
• Mix it well to a smooth dough texture
• Put the dough on a lightly oil tray and let it rest for another 30 minutes.

• Put the sundried tomato on it and dust flour/cheese on it
• Let it proof to double the thickness

• Lastly bake it at 200degrees celsius for 30 minutes

TADAH final product! sorry about the pic being blurish. Its best to eat it freshly out from the oven, with the cheese melting in your mouth. But do one thing to take note, try to get healthier version of sundried tomatoes as some do taste salty. If you had the bread overnight, just put in the oven for about 30 seconds before enjoying it!

2nd Hands On I

Managed to find some time to post this thingy.. busy these few days plus the weather went haywired. Kept on raining then sun popping out followed by rain & sun again. Can't even trust the weather forecast to plan my morning exercise routine at Macritchie Reservoir. Ok last friday went to Phoon Huat again for class. Skipped the previous one as there was like no much difference for the cake we gonna bake with the cake i learnt from my 1st Hands On. Its squared chocolate special cake with just hazelnut fillings. Same ingredients and method. The bread was black seasame wholemeal bread with diced cheese fillings. Not interested in that too...

Well this lesson, the menu was White Forest Gateau & Ciabatta bread with sundried tomato & olive. Ah Ha!! finally some western bread instead of the chinese bread from those previous class. First up the cake.

And as usual the vanilla sponge cake was already prepared for us by the chef. Even the cutting the cake into 1/2 has been done too. Haix... when can i be able to really bake one of my own??. Well the steps are quite basic & easy actually. With that we were left with the white chocolate cream and cherries fillings to be done. This time round i didn't even dare to lick at the melted white couverture as my partners were quite sensitive to hygiene. (*&^%$#$@#$^%^&. Added some liqour called Kirsh into the cream mixture to make it more tasty too but i prefer adding more passion fruits!! Fruits are healthier than liqour. LOL

Ingredients:
(VANILLA SPONGE)
- 250gm super sponge cake mix
- 5 eggs
- 50gm of water
- 50gm unsalted butter

1. Put all the ingredients into the mixing bowl except the butter
2. Whip up the misture to 2.5 times volume
3. Add in the melted butter and mix well
4. Pour on the tray and bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes

Ingredients:
(WHITE CHOCOLATE)
- 3 Egg yolk
- 40gm fine sugar
- 1/2 pcs of vanilla pod
- 80gm of UHT milk
- 1 tbsp of Gelatine powder
- 3 tbsp of Hot water
- 50gm of Frozen passion fruit
- 100gm of melted white couverture
- 250gm of whipping cream (dairy)

1. Cream the egg yolk and sugar to creamy. Speed at 3 if possible
2. Boil the milk and vanilla. Add into the egg yolk & sugar mixture and mix until is cool
3. Whip up the cream to soft peak and add into it
4. Add in the passion fruit , white couverture into it and mix well
5. Lastly dissolve the gelatine with hot water, add in and mix well

Ingredients:

(CHERRIES FILLINGS)

- 200gm of dark sweet cherries and sour cherries ( optional usage of which as long as its 200gm)

- 200gm of water

- 1pc of cinnamon stick

- 10gm of unsalted butter

- 10gm of corn flour

- 25gm of fine sugar

1. Boil the butter, water, sugar and cinnamon together
2. Dissolve the corn flour with water and add into it
3. Lastly turn off the flame, adding in the cherries

This cake needed darn lots of items. Luckily we used the time for our bread dough to rise to make these stuffs or else we wouldn't be able to go home at 10pm. Well with those necessary things done, left the finishing.

• Cut the sponge cake into 2pcs
•  Put 1 pc into the cake ring and put the cherries fillings into it

• Pour in 1/2 the chocolate filling into it and put the 2nd layer sponge
• Repeat the steps of putting in cherries and chocolate filling . Level it after that
• Keep in the fridge to let it set
• Take out and unmould the ring, coating the whole cake with whip topping cream
• Last decorate it with white chocolate curl and cherries on it

And TADAH!!! hehe better looking than my first chocolate cake. YAY!

The F-outing III - Icekimo

After all those yummy stuffs, we still reserved a place for ice-cream which we headed down to Icekimo.

8 Sin Ming Road #01-03, Sin Ming Centre
6455 7585

It was around 9plus when we arrived which there were no customers at all. So we helped ourselves to the lovely, cosy sofas at the side of the shop. It was a wednesday which they were having promotions for their dessert combo at $8. The Combo consists of 3 scoops of different ice-cream choice together with one belgian waffle, 1 waffle biscuits and 1 chocolate fudge.

Left to right - sour apple, horlicks, lychee sorbet

We chose the sour apple , horlicks flavours and the lychee sorbet as we wanted to try something special instead of those common ones again. The sour apple taste sour at first taste but slowly it became more and more sweet. There were traces of apple in it but they taste powdery. The horlicks was ok nothing special much together with the chocolate brownie below it. The lychee sorbet was also average. I think the only thing that up to my liking is their belgian waffle. Its freshly from the oven, not soggy and kinda of have the crunch.

We did not notice that there D24 ice-cream available until we're about to leave. GOD DAMN IT. D24!!! AHHHHHH a must try for us next time. Overall I could say this ice-cream cafe would be a good chill-out place on hot sunny days.

The F-outing II - Old School Delights

215M Upper Thomson Road, 574408
6458 4518

Next up, we went on to find some cafe for us to sit down and continue our gluttony. Came upon this nice cafe called old school delights. It kinds of brought us back our memory lane when we're still primary school students. Vandalising, drawing cartoons on the walls while some old teachers nagging throughout the morning. Hahaha ok apologies to them. 

On every table, there was a box which contains some of the old school games that were played. Donkey, five stones, snakes and ladders and many other more. Chalks can be found in it too. Yes you're right! They were given to us to vandalise on their chalk walls. Scribbling, drawing whatever we want to do. F3 drew a Flamingo logo & a flamingo on it. I hope those drawings are still there. Old school food like mee siam, nasi lemak, curry chicken were sold but since we just had some main meals at LittlePart1 Cafe, decided to order some of their signature cakes. 

Lemony Cake
F3 ordered this cake, thinking that its gonna be filled with lemon cream but to our disappointment, it was just a normal lemon cake..... Not only that, it was dry with no bursting of lemony goodness like they describe on their webby. Haiz bad choice.

Old School Delights' Special Banana Cake
F2 actually wanna have their banana cake but then their waitress recommended us to their cafe special banana cake. Hmmm.. Isn't banana cakes too? wads so special. From her description, its less sinful with the ingredients used and its steamed instead of bake. OMG the cake really tasted awesome. It was moist and with a strong banana taste. Thank you so much for recommending that to us!! :D:D

Sticky Chewy Chocolate cake
Sweet tooth F4 does really love chocolate cakes. This cake was described as detectably sinful & not for " calorie-counting" faint hearted ones...oooo i think im included. It consists of 4 layers of gooey, fudgy, sticky and chocolate goodness. No wonder its sinful. OOOLALA. The cake taste perfect even its not placed in the fridge. Man this chocolaty cake cnt be consume often due to the sinfulness of it, but still Im gonna come back to enjoy again!

Crinkled Fries with BBQ coating
Regretted ordering this. Its far from the curry fries we had at LittlePart1 cafe. They were salty with the salt added, oily and its not spicy at all from their description. The fries were not coated properly, some with lots of powder some with none. But one thing for sure their service was excellent as they offered to change a whole new basket of fries as we feedback to them that its really salty. Didn't want to cause any trouble so we asked for more spicy powder coating for the fries instead. 
Even though we didn't like some of their food, but still its  sure recommend for a re-visit. Wants to try their signature dish and their drinks like teh-bing, lemon tea in their glass jars!!

The F-outing I - Little Part 1 Cafe

Alright alright i know this post is overdue way long. Even F2 who had 100++ photos had them posted on fb before my teeny tiny post. She even Photoshop them. We THE FLAMINGOS finally got to meet up after so long like since.....hmmm.... forgotten. LOL. super duper missed them, well the purpose of this meetup was at first a venting-out-anger HTHT but in the end it turned out to be a food outing for us. :))) I LOVE IT!! Met up at upper thomson road since F2 and F3's workplace is around there. First up we came upon this little cafe located right beside Thomson Plaza.

15 Jasmine Road 576584
6451 7553

This little cosy cafe is a regular hotspot for office workers to come down after a day of work, relaxing & have a drink. They serve german beers, british beers as well as some tasty treats. * Note to german beer lovers, they have 25% off for all german beers on wednesday night. Haha so do go down and grab yourself some of it!!

silken tofu salad
First up salad as an appetiser. To quench our thirst but most importantly to make us feel less guilty from the sinful stuffs that we going to have later on. The salad was fresh and the tofu was really silky. Together with the pumpkin seeds, its very refreshing. Definitely a good choice for dieters.

Buffalo wings - original spicy
Their signature buffalo wings were indeed spicy but up to my liking! These were served with some cucumber sticks and a sweet sour thai sauce. We love the sauce that we even mix it together with the salad!! HAHA.

Louisiana Crepe
The serving was quite big. Had it cut into 4 for us as we had to save some space for more food later on. Their crepes were normally served with salad but since we had the delicious salad beforehand, we requested for a change to their curry fries. The fries tasted heavenly... coated with curry powder not salt, crunchy and not oily, we regretted not getting a basket of it instead. Moreover there was no additional charges to the change made too!! But something caught our attention... the crepe was suppose to be black pepper ham but instead it turned out to be having the black pepper sauce on the crepe. Come on so we paid $3 more for this crepe than the italiano crepe with the ingredient just that there's black pepper sauce on the crepe.... -.-".

Earl Grey Tea
Ordered an Earl Grey tea as im allergic to beer, would grow rashes the next day everytime. Nothing special about the tea since its from the same packaging as anywhere. But this tea sure do help me digest these food.