Orange Poppy Seed Cookies

I wanted to make something for colleagues of mine and my husband's. Aidilfitri celebrations were hardly over so ordinary cookies wouldn't do. I wanted to make something slightly unusual (by local standards at least), yet nice and easy.

So here it is, Orange Poppy Seed Cookies. 

I put them in a cookie tin which came from a particular hotel...

I got the recipe from Simply Recipes and a good one it is! Here it is, in my own format. I hope those who had them enjoyed eating them and those who try to bake them enjoy making them. 

My Ice Cream Project

This is a much delayed post. I've been experimenting making different flavours of ice cream since I made the basic, black sesame and mango peach ice creams. 

The method is use is the "no machine" method. You don't need yogurt machine to make yogurt or a a bread machine to make bread and it's possible to make ice cream without an ice cream machine. You do need a handheld or stand alone mixer, and time at home. And some amount of good memory, since you do need to take out the mixture and whip it every 40 minutes or so.

Here are some of what I've done this year:

Blueberry

I used whipping cream instead of evaporated milk. I expected a creamier texture but it wasn't that much better. And the colour didn't turn out that blue either.

Green Tea

This was definitely a huge success. My daughter loved it and my husband said it was the best ice cream I've ever made. Texture, flavour and colour turned out beautifully.

Chocolate

This was lovely too. Except next time, I would add more cocoa powder. 

Stawberry

For this, I was hoping to get a pink ice cream. Instead it turned out light orangey. I guess it was from the egg yolks. Other than that, the strawberry flavour was noticeable and texture was okay.

Alrighty, here is my err... ice cream project summary poster, if you may call it. If you would like to have the full method, you may refer to the mango peach ice cream post.

Green Pancakes for Breakfast

Pancakes are are one the easiest things to make for breakfast. I have a basic recipe which I can easily modify. I often make pink (beetroot) and also pumpkin pancakes.

This is the first time I made green pancakes, and they turn out quite pleasing to the eye. And they taste nice too.

The green is from fresh spinach. Here's what the batter looks like:

I love the bright colour. We had them with butter and honey. 

Here's the easy peasy recipe. Enjoy!

Meatless Shepherd's Pie

I'm not a vegetarian. But nowadays I try to cut down meat consumption as much as possible. And although there's a Meatless Monday movement going on, "meatless" can be any day, especially when you have a suddenly inspiration to make Shepherd's Pie without beef or any meat product.

This was last night's dinner. I wasn't sure how it would turn out. Well, since I'm posting about it, of course it turned out great! The texture was lovely and the taste was yummylicious. I know I don't have great vocabulary when it comes to describing food. But I do have photos, and a recipe to share. (This time I actually took note of the amount of ingredients I used!)

I'm not happy with the shot below. Indoor, night time photography is such a pain! Ah well! At least the pie was all eaten up by the hubby and myself.

So, here's the recipe for those who would like to try:

Pink Pasta

Sometimes, you just have turn ordinary cooking into something a little extra-ordinary. (This reminds me of a quote I recently came across, which I will share at the end of this post.)

For me, cooking pasta is something I do when I don't know what else to cook, or when I'm pretty lazy but refuse to eat instant noodles. But then cooking pasta can be jazzed up by making it pink, without food colouring of course!



I would recommend this for those with young kids, especially those with daughters. Mine was absolutely impressed! Another good thing about this dish is that it's not only pretty but also nutritious.

I would love to share the recipe but when I cook, I don't normally follow exact measurements. It's more like "dump it in" method. So no conventional recipe, but here's a visual of how to make it. I hope you like it.

And here's the quote I mentioned:

A Smoothie Morning

Sometimes when I don't know what to make for breakfast, I blend. I usually make green smoothie for the hubby and I to take to work. But for weekends and public holidays like yesterday, I tend to try something different.

I've been trying thinking of an unusual recipe for a smoothie. And then it hit me: black sesame! I then googled it and found that it has been done by others but it's not that popular.

Anyway, here are two types of breakfast smoothies from yesterday. One fruity and bright coloured for Emma, and a black one for the adults.

The ingredients for the Mango, Banana Smoothie are:

1 mango
1 banana
some yogurt
a bit of honey
a splash of soy milk

Then you just whizzz.. everything in the blender.

Teddy likes it. It was Emma's idea to use him as a prop!

For the black sesame smoothie, the ingredients are:

2-3 tbsp of roasted and ground black sesame seeds
1 banana
soy milk

I roasted the seeds the night before and ground them in the morning. I didn't add any honey because the soy milk was the sweetened type.

If you notice the coloured paper in the photo above, it's actually done using ice-painting. Here's the artist for the paper, and the assistant art director for the photo-shots!

A Different Kind of Easter Egg

I was trying to think of a way of making Easter eggs that's doesn't include painting boiled eggs. Someone blogged about baking cakes in eggshells. That sounded great but could be a bit messy. Then there was another one where you put candies in eggshells and seal them up. Hmm... sugar high....

Then the idea of making jelly in eggshells came to my mind. So I started saving the shells whenever I cooked eggs or bake cakes and cookies.

I wasn't sure if it was going to work. I thought if it didn't, I'd just take photos of them and post them on Pinterestfails. Ha ha.Thankfully, they turn out great. 

My little one enjoyed cracking the eggs and removing the shells.

As for the pretty colours, I did not use any artificial food colouring at all. Here's what I used instead:

RED - Ribena concentrate
BLUE - Blue peaflowers (bunga telang, juice only)
Orange - Fresh mango (chopped super fine)

So I made clear jelly from agar powder, separated the liquid to three parts and added the above ingredients, and poured them into the empty eggshells. Then refrigerate.

I hope you like this idea.