Weekend and stuff

Lemme see, what did we do?

Friday, went to HH briefly to see ppl after the festive season, was nice to see everyone although it does seem everyone has got lurgies. :( Get well soon!

Saturday, we walked to Hillsborough, browse around and then went to Morrison's to get some stuff and went home via bus. Had lunch with Paul at home, watch some tv and then we had a small spat resulting me going to town to blow some steam off (nothing serious or worth gossiping abt but I don't deal well with yelling). Went to New Look who is doing very good sale bargains this year compared to other highstreet retailers and tried on more clothes. Bumped into _edy and glassrat in the changing room which was cool! I bought the long brown panel skirt for £3!!! Cool! It had a full price ticket on it but I thought I would ask since it was in the sales rail. Then went to Meadowhall where I did very small stock up at Bodyshop. Their dry mist body oil sprays are fab in this cold winter and they had the sesame and brazil nut ones at half price at £3 each so I bought one of each to stock up. Then went to Monsoon to nose around and they have a lot on sale but as Monsoon is fairly expensive b4 sale, during sale it is still far too much for me to spend money in on an item of clothing. Went to Evans who are having extra 20% on all sale items inc shoes and their boots have alot of money off and another 20% is a bargain. Sadly, their sizes that they have are far too big for me (size 7 onwards). I am a size 6 (and they are very slightly loose at the back but 5 is too small) there for shoes and boots. However I did manage to get a pair of gorgeous funky leather platform shoes called Renoir for £8 after the 20% off. Normal price was £40! Not bad eh? Well, that is mostly all more Xmas money gone. A Maltese lady managed to get a tanned pair of leather boots for only £18 and she bought abt 5 pairs of boots for £58 in total. Needless to say, her hubby was really chuffed that his credit card hasn't taken a bad hit. Anyways, after that I went home and cooked a cajun pork fajita with griddle veggie for dinner. Yes, Paul and I made up over the phone when I was at Meadowhall. :)

Sunday- Mainly lazy day but Nessa rang and asked me to join her for dinner at Cha Cha's as she had a 2 for 1 voucher. Was FAB catching up with her and the lucky thing is now in HK to celebrate Chinese New Year with her family.

Monday- Was suppose to meet Nessa for a quick meet but she had to cancel but that is fine since she is busy packing to fly off that nite. So went to town and paid of BT bill and went to watch Just Friends by myself (might as well since I was up and abt). Anyone fancy watching Memoirs of a Geisha with me? I heard the film is not great but the shots are beautiful. Paul doesn't want to watch it, so am gonna watch it maybe in the week.

Anyway, have a good week and thanks for the awesome replies to my last post! :) Great to get some perspective and a few laughs on the way! :)

Testing new icon

Just wanted to see if this icon looks good here. :)

Yes, another cake bake

I baked a cake last Thursday since we have a tub of 300g of cream cheese that needs to be used up, so I decided to an experiment. Some might remember I made a Japanese sakura cheesecake for his b-day last Dec. Anyways, I decided to make a different flavour one. So I made a pandan Japanese cheesecake. _edy will know what pandan is. :) It is a fragrant plant leaves that Malaysians and Thais use alot on their cooking. It is like the vanilla of the east. You can use it to cook savoury dishes or desserts. I cut the leaves into small pieces than liquidise it with one cup of water and then strain and squeeze out juices from the pulp. Using this juice, I mix it into the cream cheese mix. Yes, it is slightly green in colour cake but it is all natural! :) The smell was awesome when the cake was in the oven. I don't have a photo of the cake but this is the birthday one earlier. It is crustless and very light in texture, hence it is also known as Japanese cotton cheesecake.


Sakura cheesecake from Paul's b-day

This is the original recipe if you are curious or would like to have a go:

Ingredient A:
70 g of fine granulated sugar
6 egg whites
1/4 tsp of cream of tartar

Ingredients b:
70 g of SUGAR (this was forgotten in the 1st post so am putting this in the edit!)
50 g of butter
250 g of cream cheese
6 egg yolks
100 ml fresh milk/ 60 ml coconut milk if making pandan cheesecake
1 tbsp of lemon juice (omit if making pandan cheesecake)
OR
40 ml or abit more of pandan juice or few drops of pandan paste (available in chinatown in London).
few drops of vanilla extract

Ingredient C:
60 g self raising flour (mixed with 2 tbsp of tapioca flour)- sift twice
20g of corn flour (chinese corn flour not yellow cornmeal)

1) Melt cream cheese, butter and milk from Ing. B over a double boiler (a pan of hot water over low heat and a mixing bowl on top on pan) and stir well. Then allow to cool down before adding the eggyolks, lemon juice (if using) or pandan juice (if using), SUGAR and vanilla extract. Stir till well combined.

2) Then add the flour into the creamcheese mix and combine till well incorporated.

3) Whisk A till egg whites stiffened and form soft peaks. Then add abit ofthe egg white mixture (A) to creamcheese mixture (B) and using a metal spoon to slowly fold it in. Then add the rest of egg white and mixture in and fold it gently in to combine well. Be careful not to over stir or all the air whisked into the eggwhites will bugger off so you will end up with flat rich cake.

4) Butter and lighly flour a 9" springform round cake tin and wrap double layers of foil outside it to protect it whilst it is in in bain marie in the oven. Just make sure the bottom of the cake tin and the sides are well protected. Then wrap cling film (microwaveable type) around the foil for more protection. Put tin a roasting tray, pour batter in. Then pour hot water till it reaches abit below the foil and clingfilm line around the tin. Baked at Gas mark 4 for 1 hour and 10 minutes or till the cake is golden brown on top and firm to light touch. Cool down in its cake tin and then chill in fridge for 4-5 hours before serving. Enjoy!

Note: I had problem dislodging the cake from the springform tin this time, but never mind! :)

I have edit this post to include the missing 70g of SUGAR in Ingredients B and in step 1. Sorry! If u have saved this post, just add in the missing sugar. So in total, you use 140g of sugar, 70 g for egg whites and 70 g for cream cheese mixture. :)

Also, pandan leaves (fresh are available from Thai shop on London Rd. Will take photos of the leaves so you know how it looks. :)

Stumbled upon this! :)

I stumbled upon this in one of Paul's favourite cartoon files! :)*laughs* A geek cartoon I understand! ;)

http://www.little-gamers.com/