Chocolate Orange Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

I went nuts playing with frosting, and not in a good way. It's not as easy as I thought it'd be. I squirted some frosting out trying to draw a circle...and my circle got disconnected all the time, my frosted cupcakes looked pretty...pathetic! We all had a lot of fun though...SC, myself and my helper each got to frost at least a cake...and here are the horrible ones we did...

I did the horrible circles (they were meant to be "roses", but I failed miserably) and the wobbly heart, my helper did the "flower" with just four petals (she meant to draw five petals but somehow overestimated the space heheheh) SC did the star and...

....the Chinese character which could be interpreted as "yum" (jeng!).
How creative of him!

I also did a little smiley face...which also meant that this cake had too little frosting, too bad!

I used recipes from all recipes, I just reduced the portion to eight cupcakes, added a teaspoon of orange essence in the cake batter (recipe link here), as well as a teaspoon of orange essence and a drop of orange food coloring in the frosting batter (recipe link here). The chocolate orange cupcakes turned out wonderful, chocolatey and moist, the frosting gave a delightful tang to the combo. I'll be making these babies often ;)

Speaking of writing with food...it all started when we went to a Japanese BBQ joint for a lunch and SC wrote the same word using thick, juicy, tasty ox tongue chunks.

He said that this should be every food blogger's favorite word, yum!
I couldn't agree more ;)

My Weekend Breakfast & Baby Marcus' Food - Grass Carp & Choy Sum Congee

Now baby Marcus has started eating various solid food, we prepare it daily, super fresh, using ingredients which are normally organic and even better than what we normally eat every day. Ahhh...things we do for our kids...new parents syndrome.

Marcus would only eat a bit, so we get leftover ingredients which we sometimes used the next day. But since we want to use the freshest things, these days we try to consume the ingredients used for baby Marcus' food, just like what I saw in this wonderful blog, Yummies for your little one's bellies. I saw her making two different versions of dishes, one for the baby and one for the big kids, and I was truly inspired!

Last weekend, I was on congee making duty, and I made grass carp and choy sum congee for baby Marcus. I ate the same congee, mine was just cranked up with a lot more seasoning. Heheheheh

Recipe
- 1/4 cup rice
- water to rice ratio: 5 to 1
- 2 small stalk of organic choy sum, finely chopped
- a small slice of grass carp belly (about 3cm x 10 cm)
Cook rice in hot water until soften (to congee/porridge consistency). While rice is cooking, clean and steam the fish. Once the fish is done (it's done when a chopstick could go through it very easily), mash the fish and remove all the bones. Once the rice/congee is done, add the shredded choy sum, let cook for 1-2 minutes (we don't wanna cook it for too long, w, e want to retain as much nutrients as possible, that's why we chopped the choy sum so finely), add the mashed fish, remove from heat.

For the baby, pour congee into a food processor/blender, pulse for a couple of minute, serve warm. No seasoning necessary, the rice actually makes the congee pretty sweet.

For me, I surely didn't food-process the congee, added fish sauce, pepper, topped it with crispy shallot. A very comforting hot weekend breakfast for me.

Slurp~!

Ching Ming Festival 2011

It was the Ching Ming festival last Tuesday, and here are the pictures from that day.
The offerings...

SC's parents called us to come over as it was baby Marcus' first Ching Ming and they'd love baby Marcus to pay his respect to his great grandpas.

Joss sticks and candles were lit at the corner of the entrance...


...by the window...


...and grandma led baby Marcus to pay his respect...


Some of the treats...homemade fried fish, salted steamed chicken...

Some store bought Chinese sweets, oranges and peanuts...rice and Chinese wine.

...roast pork, bananas...

...and rose chocolate cupcakes with buttercream topping that I made the night before. They were supposed to be for SC's parents, but they included them in the offering. It was kinda cool ;)

Warning! Please do not do this at home.

A bag of paper offerings were "sent", including paper hat and various clothing.

But no iPhone/iPad...heheheh. Oppps.

In the evening, we had a family dinner at SC's parents'.

Roast pork and chicken from the offering spread earlier...

Super delicious prawns and eggs with chopped scallion.


Pork belly, dried mushrooms, fat choy, lettuce and dried oysters in oyster sauce.


Super tender beef shin Chinese style curry with potatoes and carrots.

I can't make this dish this yummy!

And I made another batch of rose & choco chip cupcakes with rose buttercream.

Did you celebrate Ching Ming?

Weekend Picnic at Hong Kong Park

We were dying to take baby Marcus for a picnic. Getting outside, breathing some (fresh?) air...ideally, playing around knowing that he'd land on a soft pillowy bed of grass when he fell, and enjoyed some homemade picnic spread.

Ideally being the operative word, since there was no field of grass to sit on anywhere, we surely didn't prepare any homemade picnic food, and the air's probably polluted ;)
But at least the sky was blue, the temperature was the perfect 26C, and we got to sit outside surrounded by trees, flowers and grass field we're not allowed to sit on.

Where were we?
Hong Kong Park, the back terrace of the Tea Museum. Heheheheh. Opps, we're probably not supposed to camp there, but there's no other place to sit T_T

What did we have?
We bought some food from Great supermarket, started our meal with a refreshing salad...


Various pieces of Thai snacks...

The fish cake was especially spicy and delicious!


Shrimp cake's not bad...

The seafood paella was probably a bad choice.

Mushy rice with overcooked seafood bits...the flavors were good though.

A bowl of fruits to end our meal with...

All fresh, all good.

We let baby Marcus taste each and every piece...


He was enjoying himself.

We were stupid enough to let him "taste" a grape, he almost swallowed and choked on it. Luckily we removed the grape in time. Whew! An important lesson for us.


Baby Marcus got to try something new too, baby food made of turkey and vegetables. Yikes (shudder). As expected, he didn't like it. Oppps.

What else were we doing in the park? Check out the pictures here.

Easy Cheesy Baked Egg Breakfast

I made some cupcakes last night, but was in the mood for a hot savory breakfast this morning, so I just dumped an egg, some milk, a bit of oil, salt, black pepper, nutmeg, mix it up, topped with grated parmesan cheese and baked it in 250C oven for a few minutes....and done.


Hot cheesy, eggy, savory, quick and easy breakfast.
I wish I had some bacon/nice sausages/ham on hand...