Monday, January 31, 2011

Year of the Rabbit- for Annie and friends

The first bunny( the big one ) or I will call it Mama Rabbit was purchased first. As usual, every time we went to a shop, she would bring home one pet ( toy). Who is 'she' here? none other han the one and only..... I remember her first pet ( or rather one of the first pets ) was a black and white cat bought in Johor Bharu ( when we went for my youngest brother's wedding), followed by a (not in chronological order ) white and red zebra in Langkawi, a monkey in Penang, and many many more animals, it's like a mini zoo here with all kinds of animals. the small bunny, baby bunny was purchased a few weeks later, from the same place.


2rabbit2carrots, = 2011-year of the Rabbit
HappyNew Year
Sinien kuai lek
Gong Xi Fa Chai!
Kong Hee Fatt Choy!




fancy cookies a mixture of chocolate and plain sugar cookies decorated with colourful royal icing using assorted cutters.










another bunny on another banana walnut cake





and another



and another.....



and ah....all six of them....



for makan-makan



boxed and ribboned-red /'ang' for 'ong'








se se ni Annie for this order, wishing you and your beautiful family, a Happy chinese Rabbit New Year. gong Xi Fa Chai!













Sunday, January 30, 2011

Chinese New Year -Year of the Rabbit 2011

Where is my sweetheart, duduk lama dah ni, sampai dah terteleng kepala, pakai cun dah, siap duk bawah pokok cherry blossom ni, buah hati tak sampai2", my daughter's interpretation of the impression on this bunny's face.
pilihlah aku,
jadi temanmu........
six bunny wabbits on six carrot walnut cakes covered with cream cheese frosting and fondant with cherry blossoms deco.

this is the year of the Rabbit



cherry blossoms







10 packs of fancy cookies as gifts for her friends.





Makan Ingat Kami

"Makan ingat kami", was the message which she wanted me to write on the MCB. She's in Manchester and her family or her husband's family is in Alor Star. Her sis in law is getting engaged and she wanted to get something for the ceremony as well as something for the family and decided to order this MCB after seeing them in my blog.

it's raining hearts in Manchester and the people of Taman PKNK are showered with love, lots and lots of love from these three lovely people in Manchester, the daughter in law, the son and the new baby. They might be miles and miles away but their hearts are close together


the MCB for the 'majlis bertunang'. no need to deco the box since they would do the necessary. All I had to do was bake them and deliver them to her in-law's house in Taman PKNK.

Met her MIL, FIL, BIL, auntie in law ( all in-laws because it's the in-law's house.) Didn't get to see the sis in law bwcause she was out getting ready for the ceremony. Very nice and warm family. HEr MIL is such a sweet lady.


Hope your family enjoys the MCB and hope that when you come back for the holiday, you too, Alisa will get to taste my MCB plus other ' heaven on earth' creations from Zue's Oven. in the mean time, take care of yourself, hubby and baby in Manchester and thank you from me in Alor Star.



bunny and bat

she's helping her sister to make the chocolate mousse tart

waiting for the cakes....


bunny wabbits cupcakes - third batch


Ma, can you make me five more sets, please?

five sets ready, a combo of vanila cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes


Chinese new year cuppies- second batch






















Chinese New Year Cupcakes- first batch

"Ma, could you please, kindly make me ten sets of Chinese New Year cupcakes, dear, sayang, honey, sugarbum......:-) "
Red velvet cupcakes, the most talked about cupcakes in the few blogs that I visited ( besides macaroon ). The first time I made this was for a friend's husband's birthday ( the camera lense cake ). I thought of making this again, since hubby didn't mention any flavour ( anything goes as far as he is concerned, as long as they are presentable and nice, he's not a sweet tooth person )

and pair it with Devil's Food cupcakes.



My first batch of chinese New Year cupcakes , to usher in the Year of the Rabbbit is a combo of Red Velvet Cupcakes with Devil's food cupcakes, with simple deco, as usual, cherry blossom is a must with the "Gong Xi Fa chai" wish on red angpow packet for 'ong' with none other than our bunny wabbit in the hole ( which was inspired by Kak Min ( from her book )thank you Kak Min. could only make this version for this package




All ten sets , ten bunnies waiting eagerly to pop up in the house of the Tionghua friends , colleagues, and clients.




















swirly wirly buttercream on top of chocolatey chocolate cupcakes

Sya SP - nak makan2 je, topping macam ice cream tu .sya and adik sya, sya jugak, thank you for always having me ( Zue's Oven ) in mind whenever you feel like indulging yourselves in these heavenly ,chocolatey, moisty ( no such word, just for the fun of it ), sinfully rich chocolate cupcakes with buttercream swirl and sprinkled with colourful edible manik2. Enjoy! and thank you gals!


Areena - from a friend to another friend, to celebrate a colleague's birthday.
either you enjoy the creamy and chocolateyness of this chocolate cake ( be it in a form of a cupcake or the whole cake on your own and savour the goodness and richness of the chocolate melting in your mouth in the comfort of your own home or
having and sharing them with friends, it is just pure indulgence, for a minute there, you forgot all your sorrows, all your unpaid bills, all you have is ... you and your chocolate cake!
haha......layan jiwang sat....
Chocolate moist cake with chocolate ganache with simple and minimal buttercream deco. thank you dear for always suporting me. you, yes you.. and your mum



Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Rabbit, massage, nan and chicken tandoori




these bunny wabbits are eagerly and anxiously waiting to come out of their holes, to usher in the new Chinese New Year next week. In less than two weeks, the Chinese people will bid farewell to the Tiger and will welcome the Rabbit.



What's up Doc? Bugs Bunny's famous line. More photos of these cute bunny wabbits later cos I have to go make more rabbits!




I spent the whole night **( not really, up to almost midnite ) and thot I would take a short doze but forgot to ask my kids to wake me up after half an hour and I ended up sleeping until 5 am! there were only 3 bunnies ready and I had to make seven more!took my bath and continued making them . I only had less than an hour , as I had to send my kids to school by 6.45 am, but thankfully I managed to make all 11 ( one spare, just in case ) of them.




** and the whole morning and afternoon getting them ready, all 10 packs with 8 cupcakes in each ( a combination of Devil's Food cupcakes and Red Velvet cupcakes ) . Around six in the evening, knowing and guessing that I might be tired from making the cupcakes, my other half asked if I'd like to get a massage ....macam orang mengantuk disorongkan bantal........




a good one hour of body massage by a Chinese lady masseu ( no, not by my hubby , he himself had a foot massage at the same place ).




What am I getting at? just sharing my thought on 'rezeki'.


coming back from the massage and feeling famished!, hubby suggested that we ate out at one restaurant near our place since if I were to cook it would take quite a while. After freshen up, we decided to change the venue to Nel*yan in Kuala Kedah for ikan bakar, but when we came to the roundabout, we took the first exit to Jalan Teluk Wanjah instead of the second or third exit which could lead us to Kuala Kedah and so we decided to go for ikan tiga rasa at Sala Restaurant at Jalan Alor Mengkudu through Jalan Tanjung Bendahara instead.


Then again, we made a de tour ( all because we had to stop to give way for the train . ). Instead of taking the right to Jalan Langgar, we took a left and entered Jalan Datuk Kumbar! there goes the ikan tiga rasa!




since we were at Jalan Datuk Kumbar, we decided to search for our favourite nan with chicken tandoori place which to our knowledge had moved to a new place and for months we still had no clue to where the new place was. we tried looking for it a few times but unsuccesful . However, last night, we were determined to find it and we drove further up .


"Okay kids, keep a look out on your left and right for this place


Tsara, take the left, Ameer, take the right, whoever spotted the place first will get an extra chicken tandoori!"




we passed the traffic light, the rows of shop with Taman Sultan badlishah mini market on the right, we passed the government Vet place ( where Willie used to have its shots , may he R.I.P ), and suddenly there it was, on our left. Hubby spotted it.




the signage with "Chapati, nan, tandoori" and the familiar scene of chicken tandoori hanging with the men ( err. the man wasn't hanging with the chicken..hehe....)who did it couldn't be more beautiful. We found it! Three plates of chicken drumstick tandoori, one nan each, dhal curry, minced meat curry , sardine and chutney ( for hubby) and we cleared our plate in no time. this was what we call 'rezeki'. It's written that we were going to eat chicken tandoori with nan despite our earlier plan of having rice with ikan bakar or ikan tiga rasa



okay, tandoori aside, got rabbits and cupcakes to make and a daughter to pick up from school. ciao!


Sunday, January 23, 2011

our version of the chocolate mousse tart

A slice of pure decadent, 'blissful', 'heavenly', 'divine',' 'mouth watering', to die for', a few words to describe a chocolate lover's ( moi! ) feeling towards this slice of chocolate mousse tart..
to add to the sweetness of this 9" round about one inch thick ( or thin) biscuit based tart was that it was baked by my daughter ( the big one, not the small one ).
She threw the idea of baking a cake for her sister's birhday and my reaction was, hey, why not, by all means. she can use whatever she can find in my Cekmekzue's kitchen . there are many recipe books where she could choose the recipe from or perhaps she could create her own if she liked.
After going through the recipes, she showed me one, looks good but required the use of alcohol and we scrapped that one out.
the next one was this chocolate mousse tart recipe and so I said " go for it", after all, where chocolate mousse is concerned, you wouldn't be disappointed.
however, after scrutinising the recipe, we discovered that we were short of a few ingredients and I told her to improvise, after all, it is us, who were going to eat it and no harm would come out of it.the worst was that it didn't taste good...hehe.... but we would not have any customers complaining because 'WE' were going to eat it.
'Ma, what's this digestive biscuit? Just use marie biscuit or whatever you can find in the larder.
Ma, what's amaretti biscuits? perhaps you could use the cream crackers or the sugar cookies as a substitute,
I don't know, what harm could the different biscuits used do to the tart, right?
Search me! I didn't know it myself! An expert in baking I am not.Expert? No. Passionate? Yes!
Ma, what's plain chocolate,
what's milk chocolate
what's caster sugar'
and the list went on and on. It's her first time doing it on her own. I was just guiding her along the way, what she had to do,
from double boiling the chocolate, to making the biscuit crumbs, melting the butter, pressing them into the spring form tin and
making the chocolate filling , separating the egg yolks from the white, to whisking till she got the soft peak, folding the chocolate mixture with the egg white and finally chilling it in the fridge.
It was easy for her as there was no baking required and she didn't have to use the mixer either. she did everything herself, I didn't touch any of the ingredients ( except when handing her the chocolate:-) ) as I was busy making banana walnut cake ( the bananas was more than ripe and I didn't want to waste them and banana walnut seemed to be the best option. She even separated the eggs herself.Well done girl!
speaking of 'girl' I remembered this 'Cerekarama' aired last Saturday, with Eman Manan and Jasmin Hamid as the parents and they only called their kids 'BOY' and "GIRL' , till the end I didn't know what their kids real names were ( in the ceritalah ). A very shocking and revealing story about a modern Muslim Malay family who had totally disregard the good moral values , not practising the Muslim way of life. Is this drama potraying what is really happening in our society? It is a good reminder for us all and to me too and i pray and hope none of us would be following or practising this way of life. Nauzubillah.
back to reality.....


We left the tart in the chiller overnight and the next day, while I was out , the three of them indulge themselves with this tart.
The minute I came back, my son said to me,
'Ma, sedap lah kek kakak buat"
these words, coming from my son , who was not too keen on cakes , that's quite a compliment and Batrisyia said the same thing ( don't blame her , she's a chocolate mousse fan just like me)
Well, this I must try, but before that i wanted to eat my left over spaghetti goreng from this morning. While I was eating the cold spaghetti, Ameer was cutting another slice of this chocolate tart for himself and I said to him,
'let me take a bite of that, and another bite and another and I said,
"why don't you cut yourself another slice cos I think I am going to finish off this one"........hehhe.......
The tart took a few minutes only to be left with about a quarter portion . Unfortunately, my daughter must have forgotten to snap the picture with her sister's name on the tart. This was your first tart and hopefully this won't be your last okay dear...Good job Tsara'
mmmm...look forward to May, perhaps you could make a birthday cake for mama? and come September for Abah and december for Ameer? why not, right? just follow the recipe and you won't go wrong:-)