American Carrot Cake

Presenting the American Carrot Cake I baked last night. It took me quite a while to make this because one, grating the carrots took damn long; two, my oven is small I had to bake twice and three, I had to wait for the icing to set overnight in the fridge. If you remember, this is not my first time making carrot cake. My first attempt was about a month back and my carrot cake was like this. It looks deceivingly nicer there. The first attempt didn’t go quite well because the inside of the cake was not thoroughly cooked while the outside became charred I ended up with a really thin layer. This time round, it was a successful attempt :) I baked two portions to make a two-layered cake and both layers came out nicely cooked, though I’d prefer a fluffier cake (this probably has got to do with adjusting the proportion of the ingredients because I adapted two recipes) Only big regret was not trimming the edges of the cake before icing it!  Hence, the final product turned out ugly because the middle section was caving in (look at the photo and you’ll get what I mean). And that means you’ll probably see a third attempt at carrot cake; I still have leftover walnuts anyway.

 

English Carrot Cake

Preparation time: 1 hour 30 minutes (Refrigerate overnight). Serves 8.

Ingredients:

Cake

• 1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
• 2.5 cups carrots, finely grated and soaked in one cup milk
• 2 cups self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
• 4 large eggs
• 1.5 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup oil
• 2 tsp vanilla essence

Icing

• 57g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 227g cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 cup icing sugar (add more if you like it to be sweet)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease two 8″ by 8″ baking tins.
2. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and ground cinnamon. Set aside.
3. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Add sugar, oil and vanilla extract; blend everything together.
4. Add the flour mixture to the large bowl and mix well.
5. Fold in the grated carrots, together with the milk, and chopped nuts.
6. Divide the mixture evenly into the two greased baking tins.
7. Bake for 40 minutes or until thoroughly cooked. Set aside to cool.
8. To prepare the icing, whisk together the cream cheese and butter. Sift in the icing sugar and mix well before adding the vanilla essence.
9. Cream the top of one cake layer with one third of the icing mixture. Place the other cake, top facing down, onto the icing and spread the remaining mixture on the top and sides of the cake. Refrigerate overnight for the icing to set and the cake is ready to be served!

Credits to Joyofbaking.com and Yochana’s Cake Delight.

Mushroom and Ham Cream Pasta

I planned on cooking Lor Mai Kai initially but after a tiff with my mother (she didn’t get the glutinous rice for me anyway) I decided to make something easier – pasta. I went grocery shopping with the intention of making aglio olio with prawns, inspired by the tasty pasta meals I’ve had recently at Wild Rocket and The Wine Company, but the small supermarket didn’t have the spices I needed and I wasn’t sure if the grey prawns I saw were the right ones (after googling I realize that all prawns are grey when raw, a fact which had stupidly slipped my mind then) or how to choose the fresh ones. In the end, I grabbed a packet of shitake mushrooms, honey-baked ham and cream to make Al Funghi Pasta. I’d seen the chef’s demonstration on CNA the other day, cooking a carbonara dish seemed easy.

This time round, I decided to do it my way instead of following recipes. I was very tempted to add onions and garlic; I’d probably add them to every dish if I can but I decided to keep the dish true to its origin. Personally, I don’t really like ham (I’m a bacon person); mushrooms would suffice for me but my sister is the opposite hence I thought I’d add some ham so she wouldn’t resist the dish. I wasn’t sure if the mushrooms could be washed (the internet offers mixed reviews) but I did it anyhow cos they looked dirty and was shocked to see them absorbing the water! After serving up the dish, I was rather skeptical about the taste because of the lack of ingredients and seasoning. However, when I tried it, (not meaning to be boastful) I thought it was superbly delicious! :) Much thanks goes out to my Italian flatmate for her block of Parmesan cheese which I’ve finally put to use!

 

Preparation time: 45 minutes. Serves 3.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 packet of spaghetti
• 250g Shitake mushrooms, sliced
• 3 slices of honey-baked ham, sliced
• 200ml cream
• 25g butter
• Ground pepper and salt to season
• Parmesan cheese, grated

Instructions:

1. Cook the pasta in boiling water.
2. In a frying pan, sautee the mushrooms with the butter. When the mushrooms are cooked, add the ham and cook for a few minutes.
3. Add the cream and let the sauce boil.
4. Add the cooked pasta and continue stirring. Season to taste with salt and ground pepper.
5. Serve with grated parmesan cheese.

BOSS Bidding

BOSS bidding started on Monday and ended this morning. After all the drama – my wireless connectivity screwed up last night so I couldn’t verify my modules and bid for a D.I.C.E. module – I’m thankful that I’ve gotten all my modules phew.

Here are my modules for next semester:

• Creative Communications
• Strategy
• Biological Models for Business Applications
• Inter-cultural Communications
• Strategic Brand Management

5 modules which took me a long time to decide because of the really limited choices and overlapping timetable but looking at it, I’m rather pleased with them now. And I managed to pack all these into a 3-day week!

While I’m enjoying working now, I’m also actually rather psyched about going back to school, having been away for so long. Clearly, I have forgotten how it’s like to be working in groups, rushing projects/assignments and suffering from sleep deprivation.

The Blue Mansion

I caught The Blue Mansion over the last weekend. I’ve never been a huge fan of local productions, especially those blatantly satirical ones scripted by Jack Neo (no offence though). The ones which actually made me go to the theatres were, not surprisingly, those with Qi Yuwu ♥ in it – 881 and A Leap of Love. I saw The Blue Mansion trailer when I went to catch (500) Days of Summer and was pretty intrigued by the Cluedo-inspired storyline which I thought was fresh and interesting for a local production. So, Wei and I made another movie date.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. Having the entire theatre to ourselves (we went for a noon film) allowed us to chit-chat in between the movie to speculate on the murderer without worrying about being noisy and irritating. Although the movie turned out rather theatrical, that was also one of the reasons I enjoyed it. The storyline, revolving around family dispute and relationships, picked on several poignant aspects of our culture and society and the cast acted their parts very well.

On the other hand, I thought the movie was trying to pack too many themes – homosexuality, racial discrimination, a wee bit of politics to name a few – into one and a half hour, resulting in subplots which could have been better developed. The ending was rather disappointing as well as many issues were left hanging in the air. Oh did I forget to mention that there is also a semi-nudity scene in the movie which was very artistically shot. That was merely just to share some extra bit of interesting information for you to know so if you’re curious, find it out yourself by watching the movie ha.

Just to sum it all, methinks The Blue Mansion is a tastefully produced local movie which I’d recommend all to catch!

Creamy Potato Gratin

Tonight, I made potato gratin for the family. I love potatoes – french fries, chips, mashed potato, baked potato and so on – it’s pretty amazing how a simple thing can be cooked in so many tasty ways! I even have a recipe book consisting of recipes just for potatoes!

Preparing this dish took a shorter time than I’d expected. Much of the time goes to baking. One difficulty I always face when making potato dishes is that they take a long time to cook, especially when baking or frying. Boiling is easy because I can leave it in the pot for as long as it takes to cook but baking means that the temperature control must be right so that the other ingredients don’t get burnt before the potato cooks.

Anyhow, the potato gratin came out pretty delicious. Not everything was perfect though. The onion and some potato slices in the bottom layer were a tad hard. I think the temperature wasn’t high enough so it took longer than the prescribed time to cook the potatoes. Also, the cream seemed too much I had to take some out before putting the tray in the oven again. So, I’ve fine-tuned the recipe according to my experience.

Preparation time: 1 hour. Serves 5.

Ingredients:

• 750g potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 125g grated cheddar cheese
• 300ml cream
• 2 tsp chicken stock powder

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Arrange a layer of overlapping potatoe slices in a baking dish and top with a layer of onion rings. Divide the cheese into two portions, setting aside one to use as topping. Sprinkle a little of the remaining cheese over the onion. Continue layering in this order until all the potato and the onion have been used, finishing with a little of the grated cheese.
3. Pour the cream into a small jug. Add the chicken stock and whisk gently until thoroughly combined. Pour the mixture over the layered potato and onion and sprinkle the top with the reserved cheddar cheese.
4. Bake for 40 minutes in the oven, or until the potato is tender, the cheese has melted and the top is golden brown.