Hoshino Coffee

The new extension of Plaza Sing seems to be enjoying brisk business especially for Tim Ho Wan which enjoys long snaking queues outside the mall. Queue for an hour with a queue number? Maybe- I can complete grocery shopping or whatever during this time. But stand in the queue for an hour w/o aircon?? No thanks…

J and I immediately made a U-turn for my back-up plan- Hoshino Coffee. There was a queue but our table for two came within 5 minutes. The menu has a pretty sizable selection of savouries and sweets. Picking the pancake souffle and Parfait were no-brainers given that the display of these desserts up front looked so enticing. Fuwawa souffles kept coming out from the kitchen in quick succession so we decided not to miss out on that either. 

The savoury souffle was cheesy, creamy- lets sum it up in one word, rich-and texture-wise, foamy. J who had never eaten a souffle before this was pretty fascinated so I brought her through the ingredients and process of making. She hates egg whites but noted there was no “protein taste” to this. There was also baked rice underneath cooked in some tomato base. Honestly I won’t be able to finish this on my own due to the huge portion and one-dimensional taste but sharing works! We loved it and scrapped every last grain out of the ramekin.

The pancake souffle is like a mega thick version of hotcakes (this is not a criticism) with the addition of a crusty exterior. The soft serve was a good choice because the pancake basically soaked up all the melted ice cream making it all the more delicious. Mangoes were surprisingly yellow yet very firm and tart (please don’t tell me they are canned…)- didn’t like it but finished it anyway.

My favourite though, was definitely our green tea parfait. A work of art this was. Haven’t tried the tsujiri one though I think i’ve heard and read enough to know how it tastes already haha.

Here the green tea soft serve was creamy, and bitter. They were really generous with the red bean too (always a plus point for me) with red bean paste inside the glass as well. I would loved to have more of that sesame tuile though which was aromatic and crunchy. I’m definitely replicating this at home soon.

What we didn’t like were the chunks of banana inside that seemed odd and out-of-place. Please don’t throw leftovers from your banana parfait into our green tea parfait tyvm.

Happy Mother’s Day!

I was inspired by the bouquets-in-the-making at my workplace so I decided to attempt one on my own. Went for bright, summery colors- yellow, pink and green. I wanted to keep it a secret so I sneaked into the yard to place the long uncut flowers into a pail of water with the helper. Unfortunately the attempt backfired with my mum thinking there was an intruder haha.

Anyway happy mother’s day to all mums out there! We appreciate you ladies everyday but I guess today is the day to make it a public declaration.

And mum if you are reading this, continue being the workaholic, shopaholic, and sleepaholic mum you are. When I grow up I want to be just like you

Chye Seng Huat Hardware

CSHH is close to lavender food centre and gosh that area was a hive of activity at noon. CSHH itself was packed to the brim with white-collared workers and young teenagers.

Espresso + Milk

Don’t take the window seat if you can help it. I’m ticklish so I jerked quite a number of times when people brushed against me haha. I liked my cup but I’m still loving my cappuccino @ Strangers’ Reunion/ Jimmy Monkey a little more. It was not bitter enough for me, with the milk overpowering the coffee. Maybe it’s because the latter two cafes use double shots for their cappuccino? I don’t know.

Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to finish the Rape of Nanking at a cafe o.o My fav paragraph:

There are several important lessons to be learned from Nanking, and one is that civilisation itself is tissue-thin. There are those who believe that the Japanese are uniquely sinister- a dangerous race of people who will never change. But after reading several file cabinets’ worth of documents on Japanese war crimes as well as accounts of ancient atrocities from the pantheon of world history, I would have to conclude that Japan’s behaviour during the WWII was less a product of dangerous people than of a dangerous govt, in a vulnerable culture, in dangerous times, able to sell dangerous rationalizations to those whose human instincts told them otherwise.

 

 

Recipe: Heston Blumenthal’s lemon Tart, Pizza dough made from scratch

The hols started off wonderful with a much needed climb with the bbf who just returned from the States! We haven’t seen each other for a year but since we talk to each other daily on whatsapp (time differences aren’t an issue when you are a student…) there wasn’t much to update each other on haha. This time we visited a rock climbing gym called climber’s laboratory @ Toh Guan and we had the whole place to ourselves! It’s within an industrial estate with two separate ramps that were each two lanes wide. If you ever need to practice going up and down ramps this is the place to go. We realised that we were a mere 5 min drive from the other bff’s house so off we went after our climb. Played with her two dogs while the poor girl was still stuck with work hehe.

Today was slightly different. The friends from school popped over for some baking. We haven’t done this in awhile and it was great to see and catch-up with everyone! Anyway, we baked quite a number of things, one of them being Heston’s Lemon Tart.

Before the exams I was hooked on every show by Heston Blumenthal, owner of the Fat Duck. I watched every episode of Heston’s Fantastical Food, Heston’s Fantastical Feasts, and How to Cook Like Heston. Please go watch it’s mad, crazy, and inspirational!

How to Cook like Heston is a great show where Heston introduces basic ingredients like Chocolate or Potatoes and teaches you a couple of recipes along the way. In his episode on Eggs, Heston baked a lemon tart and the custard looked so wobbly and delicious that we had to try it!!

The tart turned out to be… awesome. For the recipe click here. The custard was so soft, silky, and smooth. Loved the bright flavour from the lemons. I think the most important part of this recipe is the step that requires you to cook the mixture of eggs, cream, sugar and zest in a bain-maire to the temperature of 60 degrees Celsius. The custard thickens and the oils from the zest infuse into the custard. Oh and don’t forget to sieve out the zest, it’ll interfere with the silky smooth filling.

I’m not so much a fan of the tart crust. Well if you look at the picture in the link you’ll see that it’s soggy- ours turned out that way too. The sides which weren’t soggy actually tasted very good so I guess the next thing to do is to find some techniques that will prevent the shell from getting soggy.

By the way the recipe by Channel 4 makes a huge portion. We made two tarts of the size in the photo below and still had lots of custard ( but no dough) left over.

Fresh out of the oven. The custard flattens beautifully once you let it cool (:

Another huge success today was our pizza made from scratch. IeatIshootIpost has a good post on pizza dough making complete with instructions and videos to teach you how to shape the dough. I make it a point to search for recipes that are replete with photos and written by Singaporean bloggers. The former ensures that it’s a result that I’ll be pleased with and the latter because Singaporean bloggers tend to give tips on how to deal with our humidity (if it does affect the recipe).

I was a little nervous at first because my dough seemed a little tough. But after the second proofing it turned out fine, just like how a normal pizza would be. His recipe yields the italian thin crust kind of pizza. Really easy to eat and you can go all creative with the toppings. We were making chicken pie too so we decided to layer our second pizza with a tomato base (I bought Hunt’s tomato paste), mozzarella (ESSENTIAL), chicken pie filling, and parmigiano reggiano. It was delicious! The dough didn’t get soggy either.

I have two tips to add to his post.

1. if you have difficulties stretching out your dough, just leave it to proof awhile longer. Leave it in the warmest part of your kitchen. Your dough should not spring back while you are shaping it into a pizza.

2. I don’t have a pizza stone so I left my metal baking tray in the oven and when the oven was hot enough, we dropped the parchment paper with the pizza onto the metal baking tray. Pre-heat the oven at least half-an -hour before baking the pizza. It should take about 10-12 mins.

Both recipes are kind of tedious but it’s so fun to make things from scratch. Try them!

Ember’s Set Lunch

Ember has been blogged to death so I won’t go into the details. Lunch is probably better termed at quasi- fine dining haha. It’s clearly catered for the working community. Starters and Mains came by in a flash with only a loong wait for dessert (partly because I think, we chose the less popular items. Warm chocolate fondant and apple tart seemed to be the dessert-of-choice).

As with any other “fine-dining” kind of place don’t come expecting anything more than tasting portions. They are perhaps, big enough for a lady but definitely not enough for men. I suspect it’s because carbs were seriously lacking- kind of unfortunate cuz I love my carbs! But you can always ask for more bread which the friendly staff are more than willing to provide

We loved: the (tiny ) crab cakes, chilean sea bass with mushroom and smoked bacon ragout, and their nutella toast which was the dessert of the day.

I need more carbs !!

 

Cedele: Apple Caramello, Sesame Tahini, Raspberry Almond scone

Just finished 1 paper and gosh was it depressing. I’m usually affected but not to the extent of being demoralised. It was really disappointing and horrible to hand over mediocre work that makes up for 70% of my grade.

Oh well. 

So what better way to drown those sorrows than to binge on some cake and write about it? Haha.

Cedele seems to have fallen off the blogsphere possibly because of all the excitement over new independent bakeries/ cafes (myself included). Then again everyone seems to have blogged about them before in the past so maybe that’s why. Despite having a chain of stores around the island, I haven’t been disappointed by their quality except maybe in the store at Utown. I usually pop by the one closest to home which is at jelita in Cold storage for my fix and when I was there all the cases were stocked to the brim! Even the whole cakes were all there unsliced (psychological or not, I prefer asking for a slice from whole cakes because I feel they are less dried out) and I spotted a couple I had never encountered before.

The sesame tahini was a very beautiful charcoal black cake. I love it. No it’s not coloring or anything (please refer to cedele’s ten commandments), it’s because of the black sesame paste that went into it.  Taste-wise the chiffon does get a bit dry but I hesitate to say this because it’s really just toeing the line- my line more like it. The white sesame tahini tasted like a less heaty version of peanut butter. Heavy so i’m glad they didn’t give us such a thick frosting (I would hate to let anything go to waste) but bursting with nutty flavour. I wouldn’t mind if they actually encrusted the whole cake with black sesame haha- it’ll look pretty cool no? The seeds were lovely, accented the nutty flavour and provided a slight textural contrast to everything else. This cake is hardly sweet by the way so it’ll suit those with a very low sugar tolerance. The frosting isn’t very sweet either.

While I was actually more excited about trying the sesame tahini, this apple caramello turned out to be my favourite of the two. If only they had more of that caramelised granola! Overall this is sweeter than the sesame tahini but if my memory does not serve me wrong, still less sweet than their carrot cake. Perhaps it’s because of the salty caramel cream cheese frosting. The salt and caramel are more of supporting ingredients for the cream cheese but I’m not complaining (not a fan of salty caramel). Cedele shines in the cream cheese department (think carrot cake) so obviously their cream cheese frosting here was everything it should be- thick, smooth, slightly tart. The cake itself was moist and crumbly. Almost like their carrot cake sans the carrots, less spices and loads of shredded green apples.

Cedele’s sliced cakes are heavy (the lightest I can think of would be their blueberry maple). Best for an empty stomach and it should be accompanied with some good tea.

A lighter tea time snack would be their raspberry almond scone. Their other scones look puny and pretty dry so I guess dad decided to pick this more substantial looking one which I decided to help myself to (thanks dad! If you are reading this ).

Eating scones is a messy affair with all the slicing and spreading but they have kept it neat by rolling everything into one package. Nothing too spectacular but enough to curb the craving.

Writing can be so therapeutic at times. I’ve never said this before but (assuming you didn’t skip the above paragraphs)thanks for reading

Tom’s Palette- Ice cream Cake

Got a double layer alcoholic ice cream cake from TP for dad’s birthday. Reasonably priced at $35 and of course the ice cream was perfectly done as usual.

Paired Rum Raisin with chocolate stout and gosh the latter was really delicious. The crisp, malty notes from the Guinness Stout paired wonderfully with the richness of the dark chocolate. Stout is definitely one of my favourite flavours for the year (the other being lavender) and I’m really going out of my way to find desserts featuring these ingredients haha. If you know of any please let me know!