How to Bake a Cake Like a Pro - with Piece of Cake.

That's right.

Now I know that you must be thinking in your head, "She doesn't even bake and now she is giving advise on how to bake like a pro?"

Well, that's why you need to trust me on this because if a noob like me can bake cake like a pro, you definitely can bake cake like a boss. Hah.

If you want to know my secret to baking like a pro, continue reading. You will not waste your time I promise you :)

I have never done any baking my entire life. Wait, actually that's not very accurate. I have baked once last year in July for his birthday - a banana cake.

Let's just say that I gave up baking after that.

I am not and never will be a good baker, be in baking a cake, muffins, cupcakes or bread. Please, who I am kidding.

There is more hope in my cooking talent than having to do anything with flour or baking soda or vanilla essence.

Not until I found this solution.

It's the clever-est thing ever for people like me.

It's called Piece of Cake.

So much hope already just by hearing its name okay.

Piece of Cake had given me an Baked Oreo Cheesecake bag and a Tiramisu bag to give it a try. Now, I know how the Oreo Cheesecake would taste like already because both my mom and sister had tried baking them, and they tasted superb!

So what Piece of Cake really do is that they prepare and pack all the needed ingredients for a specific cake and provide the step-by-step guidance. Now, I know that a lot of the bakery shops already have this 'service' but the question is do their cakes taste as good at the end and do they provide clear step-by step guide?

What I really love about Piece of Cake is that they pack all the ingredients individually according to the recipe (without me having to refer and measure by myself) and labels them from Step 1 to the last step, so there is absolutely zero percent of it going wrong.

They even pack the eggs for us and not like add in a 'note: add 2 eggs' in the recipe guide. Lazy and uninterested in baking people like me will find this very useful and convenient.

Plus, I do not have any essential baking ingredients at home except for eggs. Not even normal flour or vanilla essence or baking soda.

So, I decided to give baking another try with Piece of Cake.

If I can bake a cake, excuse me, I mean if I can successfully bake a CHEESECAKE that tastes really good, I really win in life please.

So, we decided to give this Baked Oreo Cheesecake a try on the day we were going to celebrate my mother in law's belated birthday with the entire Koay family. No pressure at all. Heh.

Koay was in the kitchen with me too because he wanted to see if this really works.

 Since all the ingredients are labeled from A to J for us, all we had to do was read the instructions and follow them through one-by-one.

Please don't be keh-gao-gao and skip steps because then you will screw up everything. Koay almost did! Heh.

The only thing you have to have is your bowls and mixer okay. That you have to settle yourself already. They do provide the baking tray/bowl for you so you don't have to get stressed up trying to find the perfect tray to bake your cake in.

You can tell that we were really bad in our baking sessions because you can see like bits and pieces of the 'ingredients' on the sides of the mixer bowl. We really cannot handle it. Heh. 

We try la.

I was afraid that there were going to be lumps and all that but you know what, their instructions seriously very good for noobs like us. 

It tasted better than it looked, because we're no bakers.

It could have looked better but we were in a rush so it looked a bit messy and we should have done it a day earlier so it has more time in the fridge.

When we were eating the cake at the Korean Restaurant, it was not chilled enough but it was so yummy okay!

Not too sweet that's why everyone loves it!

Needless to say, Koay was very impressed so I am guessing that he will be making more orders through me now. Even my mom-in-law repeatedly saying that she was surprised to see that we took so little time to make this yummy cake.

We are so in love with baking now thanks to Piece of Cake MY, like seriously.

We are going to make the Tiramisu soon and obviously I'm going to blog on that too because hello, not everyone can make really good Tiramisu but with Piece of Cake, I am so confident that I'm going to slay it.

Just wait for it okay.

Again, thank you Piece of Cake for making me feel that there is hope again in baking. Now, I can start making cakes to pot-bless dinners and not spend on overly-priced cakes outside on birthdays!

I'm going to start baking cakes for my friends' birthdays! Hah.

So, thank you again. I bet you will receive more orders from me (potential VIP member here please! Heh).

For those of you who are hopelessly-still-trying, give this a try seriously. You will love it.

Here are some of the options that they have now:

• Baked Oreo Cheesecake (RM43.50)
•  Tiramisu Cup (RM40.50)
• Chocolate Walnut Brownie (RM26.50)
• No Bake Matcha Cheesecake (RM34.50)
• Matcha Lava Cake (RM23.90)
• Chocolate Lave Cake (RM19.90)
• Nutella Chocolate Tart (RM29.90)
• No Bake Kit-Kat Cheesecake (RM33.50)
• English Scones (RM18.00)

Let me know what you think once you have tried it! :)

Till then, bye now. 

Four Cooking Needs.

Koay has been dropping little hints here and there about cooking. 

Hints that make one wonders if he's too afraid to tell directly to the face.

In one of our pre-marital counselling, we listed down all the expectations that we have of each other, and I remembered one that particularly made both of us and Pastor Cowan laughed was on cooking. 

His list:

I expect my wife to (try) cook meals at home. 

My list:

My husband will not ask me to cook.

Do note that we did not write these expectations knowing what each other was going to write. We wrote on it separately and then shared it with each other. 

So funny oh goodness. 

How like that?

I never have the liking towards cooking. Not since young, not since puberty and definitely not since engagement. So this was going to be a big problem for both of us. 

How to manage this expectation? 

We decided to try cooking at home at least once a week after work. So far, we've only tried once. Once was enough to make us wait for few weeks months before we should do another cooking session. 

By the time we finished cooking, it was close to 9pm, and the amount of $$$ spent on the ingredients summed up to about RM50. WHAT! With that money, we could have gone to Harvest Times and have a great complete set dinner each. So nope, not very practical at this point. 

Here are two of our cooking experiences together that I manage to blog about.

Koay's Chicken Spaghetti
Banana & Egg Pancake

Anyways, I tried to cook Green Curry Chicken Thai Style with recipe but of course, it didn't taste as good I was hoping it to be. 

I didn't give up okay. 

Few days later, I tried frying some marinated chicken breast fillet, and I got the whole kitchen area splattered with oil because the fillet was wet. Water in oil, not a very good combo. 

Then, I give up. Hah. 

I told Koay that I  don't like cooking and after trying a few times, I'm not going to be cooking for a while, unless you give me an oven, and I will cook all kinds of western meals for you. That won't be a problem. 

Growing up, my mom tends to cook more of western dishes than eastern so don't ask me to cook Belachan Fried Chicken because you will be beyond disappointed okay. 

I actually detoured from what I originally wanted to share here. Hah. 

After trying for a few times, I came up with a summary shopping list of things that a our kitchen needs in order for a better cooking experience I must say. Heh. 

Yes, Mr Adrian Koay, this is for you so take note. 

Here goes. 

A Food Processor

If I may represent my mother in law who is a fantastic cook, I would say that having a food processor will help in the food preparation. 

I've seen her waking up at 4am in the morning to start de-skinning them onions and garlic, chopping them into small pieces, and she usually does them in big bunch because usually these foods are prepared for a lot of people. 

So, with a food processor, all she needed to do is peel the raw items and throw them into the food processor and they do all the chopping for her by pushing the button a few times. 

Not only that, food processor can cut basically anything into small pieces. 

It can mince meat for you, mix all your pasta ingredients, grind cooked mushrooms to become mushroom soup (I kid you not because I've seen it when my mom does it), cuts your tomatoes and coriander to make salsa and grind nuts et cetera. 

I cannot think of a reason why we should not get a food processor, serious. Maybe this can be a potential Christmas gift to the house. Hmm. Not a bad idea huh. 

An Oven

This one I am speaking for myself. With an oven, I can make pizza, lasagna, shepherd's pie, bread, quiche, roast chicken/duck/pork and et cetera. 

I don't know how to yet but with an oven, I bet I can master all that in no time. 

I can even make homemade nuggets and cookies. Okay, maybe not cookies since baking is a big no-no. 

The point is I think an oven is one of the must-have in a kitchen. I bet out of 10 homes, 8 of them confirm got an oven at home. CONFIRM. 

That and I grew up having an oven at home, where I can just make healthy supper at night so it will be nice to have an oven at my new home now. Heh. 

A Garlic Press

My mom will roll her eyes at me if she sees this part of the whole post. She always think that it's faster to do it by hand, but a garlic press produces a pureed garlic and it's not the same as chopped garlic. 

I'm no Masterchef but I would think that a pureed garlic will release more aroma when it's cooked? I don't know la. I mean like for some foods, you need to have like puree kind of garlic. For example, do you know that if you mix pureed garlic into your mashed potatoes, it will taste heavenly? That is if you don't hate garlic. 

So, yeah. It would be nice to have this but then again, if you have the food processor, you actually don't have to get this anymore, but it will be nice to have this as one of the cooking tools. For show-off perhaps or to make the drawer not seem to empty. Hah.

Moving on. 

A Waffle Maker

This one is no brainer. Every house should have one of this so that we won't always spend RM4.90 whenever we go to the malls. 

With this at home, you can have it for breakfast and supper! How awesome huh. 

Now I know what you are thinking. It's going to be a waste because you will not be able to cook the entire waffle batter at one-go. 

Well, I just googled and good news for all you potential waffle-maker buyers, you can keep your waffle batter in the fridge to be used next time! Hah! 

This is a good investment if you want to create happiness at home, which is crucial, because if you are not happy at home, you will not be happy outside. Hah.

So let's choose happy and get a waffle-maker together. Maybe got more discounts if buy more than 1. 

That's all for now. 

I will let you all know when got sales on these kind of things okay. 

Bye now. 

Koay's Chicken Spaghetti.

I remembered that I was in the office, drafting an email to a client when he called out of a sudden. It's quite unusual cos you see, when we are at work, we don't usually call each other that often cos well, we are working right. Ain't nobody got time to talk. Kidding. 

Anyways, he called and he asked if my Saturday noon that week was going to be free, if I already have plans and stuff. Well, no because my Saturdays are usually spent at home while he's away at training. So, that Saturday no exception also.

Then he said that there will be no training that Saturday and they have like a pot-bless gathering at night and he needs to bring a dish. Initially he wants to bring his mom's all-time-yummiest-charbeehoon but someone else taking already so no choice but to decide on another dish.

Since he wanted to cook the dish by himself, he opted for spaghetti. Hah. Really the first option for noobs right. Heh. 

We went Tesco in the afternoon and came back home with all the ingredients, according to his own recipe. Apparently, I'm not allowed to give ideas or comment. My role is just as an assistant chef. 

"I ask you do what, you just do only, cannot say no."

The man is on fire I tell you. 

But I just do whatever he asked me to do lah (in the beginning only tho). At the end, he asked me to wash all the dishes and I have already washed so many, so I decided that he shall do the rest since he didn't do anything other than putting the ingredient into the pan and cooking them. Haha. Rebellious assistant chef is rebellious. 

So, let's see how he did with his first attempt on cooking spaghetti.

Ingredients needed according to Masterchef Koay:

Ready-made Tesco's tomato paste

Sausages

Diced tomatoes/carrots

Chopped onions/garlic

Spaghetti

Minced chicken meat

Once carrots are quite soft already, gently add the minced chicken meat in. You can use beef or pork or rabbit or horse or goat or any meat you would like to serve your guest :)) 

Then, add the Tesco ready-made tomato puree and the raw tomatoes and let it cook okay. Just remember to stire once in a while. We added fried sausages as well because suka hati Masterchef Koay jugak.

In the meantime, this is cooking on the next stove. We forgot to put salt into the water, and forgot to coat the spaghetti with olive oil after. 

 At the end of the whole cooking drama, (yes I gave my opinions in the end because it seems like I'm a bit more experienced than him here heh) he decided to mix the spaghetti and sauce together and he did it like a lasagna layer form. 

I would say that IT WAS REALLY YUMMY! For a first timer in attempting to cook spaghetti, it's 100% pass okay. To be honest, I expected it to be just okay-okay but turns out, it was really delicious. Must be his random thrown ins of herbs here and there. 

I think this cooking session kinda sparked that cooking interest in him because now whenever we can have the chance to use the kitchen, he would jump at it. I think next one we want to try carbonara or something. 

Looks like I've got myself my very own Masterchef :)

I was told that his spaghetti was the first dish to finish that night. Hmm. Must be because he only cook a small portion lah. HAHA.

:)

Banana & Egg Pancake.

It was one of those days when I was at home with no one else and decided to cook something for supper. Not because I was hungry, but because I just needed to do something other than watching Devious Maids on Star World. 

So, I walked to the kitchen and saw bananas and wanted to bake banana cake. How ambitious right. I love eating banana cake but never made the effort to try baking one. Heh. I brainstormed some more and thought of this article that I read on Facebook about a 10-minutes pancake. All I need is one banana and two eggs. Both also I have. Banana & egg pancake it shall be :)

The recipe is super simple. I wasn't too sure so I googled some more. Apparently, if you like your pancakes to have certain flavors, you can add them into the mixture. Flavors like coconut or cinnamon.

Step 1: Gather the main ingredients. Two eggs and one banana is for one person's portion okay.

Step 2: Peel the banana and put it in a bowl for easier mashing and crack two eggs in a smaller bowl for easier pouring later.

Step 3: Mash the banana with a fork or any other fancy equipment that you think could do a better job.

Step 4: Once it looks pretty mashed up, you can either stop or mash some more, depending on how you like your pancake to be. More lumpy or smooth.

Step 5: Then, you pour in the two eggs and mix them together until they look like a pancake batter. Something that looks like the photo.

Step 6: Get your flat (NON-STICK preferable!) pan heated up. If you like, you can pour some olive oil onto it. I did. Heh. Make sure the fire is small okay. You don't want to have burned pancake with the insides still raw.

Step 7: I wanted some flavor so I went and searched in mom's cabinet and found this goodness. No specific measurement for how much cinnamon to put it. It really depends on your instinct (HAH!), and according to mine, I should have poured in more of the powder.

Step 8: Once the pan is hot (put your palm over-on-top (NO DIRECT CONTACT) of the pan and if it's feeling pretty hot, then your batter is ready to be poured in.

Step 9: Wait a while more and do a few peeking underneath to see if its started to brown. If yes, then can turn the pancake to the other side. Since I want it to be perfectly round, I used TWO spatulas and a whole lot of minutes to make sure it doesn't break halfway.

Step 10: Once the pancake has your favorite shade of brown, you may now remove it from the pan and place it on a flat plate.

Additional steps ahead:

Step 11: You actually can already eat the pancake, but I wanted something else to eat it with (just in case if the pancake is horrible!) so I decided to warm up two slices of chicken ham on the same pan.

Step 12: Take the first bite of the pancake with no other food. Well, it tasted blehh. Cannot taste the banana or the egg or the cinnamon.The texture of the 'pancake' is odd.

Step 13: Thank God for the two hams and Nutella spread! 

Step 14: To be honest, even with both of that, I couldn't finish the pancake. 

It was tasteless. It was boring. It was just blehh.

I think there are a few things that could make it better. Here are some of my suggestions (which I'm going to try one day):

• Taste your bananas first. If it's not THAT sweet, then ADD sugar into the mixture. 
• If you want to put in cinnamon or coconut powder for the flavor, PUT MORE THAN WHAT YOUR INSTINCT TELLS YOU.
• Cook the batter in FEW batches. Don't be lazy like me and pour all of it into one big round pancake.
• If you're hungry and feeling really lazy to cook other things, this could be a good pre-sleep meal. Not fattening at all. Just remember to ADD THE SUGAR!

Okay, that's all for today folks.

Go try it tonight! :)

Today.

The moon must be blue last night.

No idea what struck me to wake up at 7:30am to prepare breakfast.

No idea at all.

Mom-Daughter Bonding Over Pineapple Tarts.

I don't know if you all know that I can't bake.

I can cook but I can't bake.

Very beh paiseh right to say I can cook. Haha. Actually I really can cook. It's just sometimes I become so lazy to cook. Also because my mom cooks everyday for dinner.

Anyways, if I have to choose either cooking or baking, it'll be definitely COOKING. No need to think for one second or split second, i sure answer COOKING.

I have so many bad/funny experiences in baking that I no longer want to go near it. 

Once, I tried baking a whole cake. Can't remember what flavour I wanted to do. The dough turned out to be as hard as a rock. NO KIDDING. You see, in the first place, it's not supposed to be like a dough-y kind. Oh wellz. Those were the days. At least I tried a few times.

So this time, I decided to do it once more. Some years my mom made them herself and I remembered loving these tarts to the madness. I would keep popping them into my mouth. This year, my mom got so busy with so many other things and I happily suggested to her to make this but I will do it with her. 

She have to do it with me because if she leaves me to it, I don't know what will happen to the tarts. 

So yeah, apparently I didn't really give up due to bad experiences. I just let myself breathe for a while few years then back to trying. Thank God Koay is not a dessert kind of person. 

Making pineapple tarts is quite easy. Let me show you how.

First, you put some oil (in my case olive oil) on your palms and start rolling the pineapple fillings.

Like this. Yes, I try to be artistic. I try lah. 

Them, you just repeat doing the same thing for the next two hours. Kidding, it doesn't take that long if you're efficient like me *grins*

Tadaaa :)

Cute little things.

Ingredients to make the dough: eggs, flour and butter.

Never too old to bake things with mom :)

Special Edition :D 

And the babies are done. Yumsss :)

Gong Xi Fa Chai, everyone :)