I am quite careful about choosing a cake recipe to make. First of all, the majority of the cake recipes I find on the Internet are suitable for large pans, normally 9” or 10”. I only have one 8” springform pan, so I often have to scale down the ingredients. Moreover, since I have only one pan of each type, the recipes that require baking two or more pans at the same time cause some difficulties for me.

Secondly, cake recipes often call for large quantities of many things, so unless I understand the recipes and directions, I won’t dare trying everything since I would feel very miserable if I fail making the cakes and have to throw away them all. What a waste of time, ingredients and money, which makes me uncomfortable.

The website Joy of baking is one of my dependable sources for cake recipes. I hardly fail when I follow the recipes and directions shared by the author of that site. This coconut cake is also adopted from there. This cake attracted me since the cake contains some ingredients that I really love eating, which are coconut and lemon custard. Another reason is that the frosting is actually the whipped egg whites, which is less fatty and cheaper than other kinds of frosting.

As usual, I reduced the sugar used in this cake. For the frosting, I also reduced the sugar, which caused me more difficulty in handling with decorating the cake. However, the overall taste worked well to my family’s liking.

So, you may see the original recipe from Joy of Baking website. If you prefer less sugar recipe, you may refer to my recipe here. The recipe calls for two 8” springform pans, but I have only one pan, so I used two heart-shaped pans of different sizes to make this cake. 

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I bought a large squid and seeing that after I cut the its body into rings, they look so nice that I decided to make these fried squid rings.

In Singapore, it is not so convenient for me to go shopping frequently. I really want to plan the menue for a week ahead, so when I go shopping, I just grasp all the ingredients in my list. However, it is not always as such easy, especially when it comes to fresh ingredients such as seafood or meat because these ingredients are not always available fresh on the day I visit the supermarket. So, it often happens to me that when I go shopping, and there, the fresh squids are available, I will buy some. Or there, the prawns look so fresh and they are on promotion, then I will buy some. Coming home, I will look into my books or search on the Internet to see what I can do with the ingredients I got for the week. 

These squid rings are covered with seasoned flours then deep-fried. I am not a fan of deep-fried stuffs, so I just made a few rings out of the whole squid, just to provide a new taste and flavor to our appetites. It’s interesting to eat these rings. They are chewy inside and crispy outside. I used a small saucepan so that I still could deep-fry the squid without using a lot of oil. The left-over oil, if not to be used with other dishes, would be a waste, and I really don’t like that feeling of wasting something. 

This dish is suitable as an appertizer dish for a dinner party. I followed the recipe in my book about appertizers and party foods. 

Ingredients (serves 2)

- 115g prepared squid, cut into rings

- 2 tbs seasoned plain flour

- 1 egg

- 2 tbs milk

- oil, for frying (if affordable, use olive oil for healthier)

- lemon wedges, to serve

- mayonnaise, to serve

Cooking:

- Toss the squid rings in the seasoned flour in a bowl or strong plastic bag. Beat the egg and milk together in a shallow bowl.

- Heat the oil in a large heavy frying pan. 

- Heat the floured squid rings, one at a time, into the egg mixutre, shaking off any excess liquid. Add to the hot oil, in batches, cook for 2-3 minutes on each side, until evenly golden all over. 

- Drain the fried squid on kitchen papers. 

- Serve when still hot or warm with lemon wedges or mayonnaise. 

In principle, this cakelet is exactly the friand, or financier, which use almond meal and egg white in the ingredient. I once made raspberry friands, which tasted so good though that time I only had frozen raspberries to make them.

This time I happened to see fresh blueberries ‘on promotion’, so I bought a small box of them to make these cakelets. I like berries in general for their liitle cute shapes and their colors always look very attractive to me. Blueberries, in particular, have a gentle sourness and very juicy, which i really like since I often like it sour than sweet.

These cakelets should be made with small cake tins or muffin pans, however, I got only one old 12- muffin pan which I didn’t want to pour the batter on it directly. So I lined the muffin pan with paper cases. Remembering a dozen of brioche tins that I got in my pantry, so I used them to make these ‘flower-shaped’ cakelets. They turned out more beautiful and perfect than I had expected. It was very easy to take the cakelets out of the brioche tins as well.

These cakelets are very moist, and they are best served while still warm. However, I could not consume them all within the day of baking, though I did share some with my flat mates. I kept the left-over cakelets in an air-tight container and place in cool place. And in the hot and humid Singapore’s weather, the cake could last for 2 days at most.

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The dish has authentic flavor of Sichuan-style food, which uses chili bean sauce frequently in cooking. However, following the original recipe turned out too spicy for the taste of my family. So I reduced the chili and chili bean paste used in this dish.

Though I do not feel completely comfortable to eat spicy food on hot days. However, in Singapore it is hot all the year round. So, in order to bring in some new and strange flavor to our meals, particularly with spicy foods, I often choose to cook them on cool days, normally after the a long chain of days with heavy rain. The weather does have some effects on what kind of food I feel like eating for the day.

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It can be said that chicken is the most frequently used ingredients in my cooking. Simply because chicken is the most affordable of all kinds of meat. Almost every week, chicken is included in my shopping list. I often buy a whole chicken, breaking it into separate parts to use in different dishes.

Sometimes getting tired of the old flavor and the familiar way of preparing a chicken dish, I would read my books or searching about on the Internet to find a new flavor for my chicken dish. And this is a recipe I found from my book ‘Bowl Food’. This dish is full of Asian flavor. I often cook braised chicken with ginger and fish sauce. However, this time there are some changes in the ingredients, which makes the dish totally different in flavor. The flavors are richer and there are more to experience: the fragrance of ginger and especially the typical smell of star anise, the sweetness of honey, the tender saltiness of soy sauce. All bring in great taste to this simple chicken dish.

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It is no controversy that tofu is a all time favorite food of Asian people. And I am a fan of tofu. Each time I came home to visit my family, my Mom often asked me what I wished to eat for the first meal at home. The first thing I always remembered was a simple dish of fried tofu.

Tofu is very popular in Asian countries, however, the taste and the texture of tofu differ from country to country. And of course, tofu comes in a great variety of dishes. I am not a vegetarian, however, I never hesitate to try any dish made with tofu.

So this time, I am attracted to another Korean dish made with tofu. Tofu Jo Rim is the name of this dish in Korean. I have to admit that right from the first bite, I really loved the tofu cooked in this way. The only matter was that the tofu was a little too salty for my taste. So I remembered to omit the salt used to sprinkle the tofu slices before cooking them.

This dish goes well with hot cooked rice, vegetable and salad.

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This pasta is very simple and offers authentic taste and flavor. Italian ham – such as Parma – is recommended to this pasta to attain the most original flavor.

Parma ham is very popular, but no way I could have this ham here. Therefore, though I really wanted to try the real taste, I coudn’t afford that. I used normal ham in this pasta.  

Ingredients: (serves 4-6 ) 

- 500g pasta (short pasta)

- 150g ham, diced

- 50g grated parmesan 

- 1 small onion, diced

- 50g butter

- salt, pepper

Cooking:

- Cook the pasta until al dente. Drain and keep warm. 

- Heat the butter in a large skillet until melted, add the onion and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the ham and cook for another 2 minutes. Season.  

- Pour the ham mixture over the pasta, sprinkle with parmesan.  

Okra is one of the favourite vegetables by the Vietnamese. It is a popular choice among ordinary people. Not only is it cheap, it also contains good nutrition. More importantly, it can be cooked in many ways to bring about delicious dishes.

The dish is very simple in ingredients and cooking. However, it tastes really good. This time, let’s try the combination of okra (lady fingers) and tomato paste. The okras are just cooked through and still sustain their crunchiness. The tomato paste is a little bit sweet and sour, which covers the small pieces of okra, adding great flavour to them.

When choosing okras, I often choose ones with light green color. As my experience, I find these greeny ones younger and easy to chew. You will not have the feeling of hard fibers when chewing these young okra.

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