Happy Holidays Y'all!

3.14 / Pie Romania

TIHWE are back! And this time, our theme was Pies! And because we do not understand the concept of moderation, we ended up with 11 pies for 10 people. Guess who won't be eating pies for the next 27 years or so? (Ok we lie, we'll do it all over again I'm sure!)

Here are some of our pies. The rest can be seen on facebook! Enjoy!

On the menu:

• Tandoori Pie

• Assam Fish Pie

• Pear & Almond Pie

by ABA

• Hong Shao Rou Pie

by KC

• Babi Not Around Pie

• Pear Crumble

by SL + C

• Key Lime Pie

• Pecan Pie

• French Silk Pie

by KK

• Chicken Pie + Pielets

• Cheese Pie

by FG

Next, TIHWE heads to China!

TSK ♡s Rubylux

Rubylux - voted Band of the Year at the recent Brighton Music Awards 2010, were in town over the weekend for a concert at the Indochine Green Festival.

Rob (lead singer + guitarist) had requested cupcakes a couple weeks before and as you know, at TSK, we hardly turn down requests. We also baked them cookies but I don't think we have any photos of that!

Here's a little video the band posted on their youtube channel, and our cupcakes get some airtime! (such fangirls, I know...)

Once again, congratulations boys, on winning the award! x

(Here's a slightly clearer visual of the personalised stout cupcakes)

Baketastic!

How funny is it that although none of us said anything to each other, all of TIHWE baked over the weekend!

Baketastic indeed!

See you all in a couple weeks! =D

These are a few of my favourite things!

Nothing makes me happier than making my loved ones happy with my bakes!

♡,

Phillie

colorful things must eat!

so i promised phillie like 2 months ago i will make this beautiful cake for her for her an toety for their birthday party, this saturday pass. theme, rainbow, and the recipe for this cake magically appeared on the martha stewart website around the same time. looked somewhat difficult to make in the video, but hey! i'm up for challenges.

the word "challenge" is an understatement. the easy part was the baking part. like always, i nearly pulled out my hair doing the frosting. thank god for sandra. decided it will be less stressful for me to bake this cake with a industrial kitchenaid. i have to give myself a pat on the back for that. think if i used my hand held mixer, i will still be making the cake now.

6 colors later, while waiting for the cake to cool, i started on the filling and crumb coat. singapore is so humid the frosting sank after the butter went in. so we starred at the kitchenaid beat the frosting for like 30 minutes before it reached a okay consistency. we braved it and threw it into the fridge for like an hour.

while waiting for the cake to hold together, i started on the frosting, again it started to sink after the butter was added, then the clever me had an idea. i took ice, threw them into a ziplock, held it til my hands under the metal mixing bowl, lost feeling for awhile and viola!!!! the frosting not only rose but to an amazing consistency! yay! you would think.... errr.... no! we took the crumb coated cake out and it started to reject the frosting!

but with sandra and my perseverance, with her knowledge of frosting and my "sure can" attitude we finally finished making the cake at 1130 midnight with phillie waiting downstairs for like an hour. moral of the story, we still got the cake made! yay!!!!

phillie added some pretty colorful stars on them and we have a rainbow birthday cake, inside and out!

Fourty three years and counting...

Inspired by KK's Nutella Cake, I decided to bake Nutella Cupcakes for Mom & Dad's wedding anniversary. They didn't rise as much as I would have liked, but still a pretty yummy cake!

Happy Anniversary to the 2 most important people in my life!

Pretty New Things!

Had a shoot at "Bake It Yourself" yesterday and I went slightly mad with some purchases. Sprinkles, colored cupcake paper, vanilla extract... I had to hold back and put some of the stuff back on the shelves.

After all that, you don't expect me to come home and NOT make some cupcakes to decorate right? So here they are! Pretty & happy colors on simple vanilla cupcakes.

Hi!

If you were sent here by thisishowweeat (thank you SL), Hi! Welcome to TSK!

Do have a look around, and if there is anything we can help you with, feel free to holler! Thank you for visiting!

Much love,

KK + FG

Our second big order...with our branding!

This order was fun, extremely tiring but totally fulfilling. This was a Teachers' Day order of 120 cupcakes, individually packed, all piped with 10 different colors to match the 10 different coloured ribbons. I basically started tying the ribbons into pretty "dragonfly" bows 2 days before (thank you mummy for helping me with most of the ribbon tying), and printed the gift tags 3 days before.The most exciting part, however, was the printing of "The Strange Kitchen" stickers and we were ready to rock!

After tossing and turning in bed from "cupcake" nightmares, I got out of bed at 630am for some yoga to relax my mind and start on the baking. Vanilla Vanilla from Billy's Cupcakes was first on the list, my favourite! Next was my other favourite, Devil's Food cupcake. The cakes took 4 hours, which is pretty good cause I was actually quite relaxed mixing whilst watching The Emmy's. When it comes to frosting, you guys have to realize that I am still very ole skool and I do all my mixing by hand. So by the time I got to my fourth batch of frosting and piping, I really couldn't feel my hands. My fingers started to cramp and they started to look a little like claws.

That was minor compared to the packing though. Note to self, get help next time.... It was not untill the 30th cupcake that my mum came home to help. It was quite fun after awhile, she placed the cupcake onto the base after the doily, and I covered them with the appropriate color and packed them nicely into the cardboard boxes. It was a great system!

So, 12 hours and 120 cupcakes later, I sat down and smiled to myself with joy, and delivered them to IJ Toa Payoh. Another happy customer! With each order, I learn a little more; like, ask for help when needed, and invest in a proper mixer.

Phillie is on a baking hiatus. Bad Phillie.

Italian Yumminess!

My 'mission' for the weekend past was to find a carbonara recipe that used a more traditional approach, which is prepared using eggs and cheese, instead of cream only. So i thought to myself, why not do a whole Italian themed dinner?

It started out with a salad of spinach, sliced tomatoes and sliced buffalo mozzarella, topped with a sprinkle of chopped basil, balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. All done in like 8 minutes. Easy to prepare and delicious!!!

The carbonara was next; I couldn't find pancetta as recommended by the recipe, so with my friend Selina's advice, I bought streaky bacon which I cut to squares, as a substitute. While waiting for the spaghetti to cook, I fried the bacon in some olive oil, and I went on to prepare the sauce. All it took was an egg, quarter a cup of percorino and parmesan cheese mixed together with a generous amount of freshly ground pepper and voilà – the sauce was ready! I drained the cooked pasta, threw it into the pan with the fried bacon, and then stirred the sauce into the pasta - I had to do it quickly so that the egg didn't scramble. I then finished it off with some more pepper and a sprinkle of cheese, and it was finally done!! Super yummy!!!! I should have thrown some of the water used to boil the pasta into it as it was a little dry, but no regrets about that- it was still very good!

For dessert, we had Tiramisu that we bought from Spinelli's (it didn't have any taste of coffee. Yucks! I really need to learn how to make tiramisu on my own) and a super yummy chocolate truffle cake from Cedele...mmmmm:)

Was that the end? Nope – it went on to breakfast the next day and i went english! A proper english breakfast consisting of 3 different types of sausages, the leftover bacon from yesterday, tomatoes and scrambled eggs, finished off with a cup of coffee. Mmmm...another great meal to end a great weekend!

What I had in Penang...

We decided on a trip to Penang in August with the aim of 'buddy bonding' with our dear friend, Sharon before she leaves for Harvard on a year long scholarship. As everyone had tight schedules, we only had 2 full days to find out if the mythical rumors of amazing food in Penang were true. An hour's plane ride later, five hungry girls, without Sharon got to Penang.

(No we didn't have a "Sharon-not-around-party” - that's perhaps for later? She had a school celebration that day and would only join us the next day)

Instead of renting a MPV first, we made a bee line to the waffle stand in an attempt to satiate our hunger. I had one with kaya filling, Sandra and Charissa both had the chocolate waffle with peanut butter and Endora had one with jam. Mmm, waffles never tasted so good! And that marked a positive start to our eating spree!

We finally found our way to the our hotel after 2 hours of figuring out the roads, and immediately after checking in, we went in search for food (yes the waffles were just a snack!). We circled our hotel area several times in our attempt to 'food hunt' without success, so we decided to explore a little further, and we discovered this quaint "hawker center". Helllooo, variety!!! We ordered so much food that we must have given people the impression that we were only recently released from prison as we were drawing curious stares. Well let them judge as they want - we just want to eat!

We had grilled stingray (YUMS!), belachan fried chicken (a little dry but still yummy), popiah and kueh paiti (so-so), fried oyster omelet (the oysters were seeming larger than our heads; a pity that I don't eat them), 20 sticks of satay (which was not bad), Mae and Sandra each had "ban mian" (Soup was good but the MSG was a little overpowering), Charissa and Endora each had wanton mee and i had Claypot chicken rice. Yes, all in one meal; I'll say we did pretty well for ourselves!

The next morning, we went to the airport to pick Sharon up. While waiting for her to arrive, Sandra and I decided sneak in a bowl of asam laksa. Yes I am aware of the 'fine' reputation of food available in airports, but we were hungry!!! My god, it was soooo bad, possibly the WORST asam laksa I have ever eaten. I practically took only one bite and threw the rest away; the wait time for Sharon was made longer having to cringe over in my head just thinking about how bad the laksa was.

Sharon finally arrived to our A4 sized welcome banner and loud cheers. We made a trip down to Tesco. Yes you read it right - TESCO. My friends wanted to do their 'auntie' thing. Since no other food places were open, we smartly decided that Sharon should also share our bad airport food experience, so we bought ourselves more nasty breakfast in a food court at Tesco. Hehe.

By this time, we were doubting if good food in Penang was merely just a myth, so to straighten things out we headed downtown to a mall on Penang road, for the Asam laksa that Mae's mum swears by (we believe her because she's peranakan:P). But alas!!!!! After go round the mall a few times, we found out that the shop was closed for the day - because the stall owner's maid went home and decided not to open as she couldn't work alone. We decided to settle for something else, and after major pestering from another store owner, who claimed that “we would regret it if we didn't eat his food”, we ordered a plate of cha kuay tiao from him to share. Liar he was! The rest of us went the 'safe way' and had chicken rice and wanton mee, but unfortunately both were disappointments too.

At this point we decided to halt the 'bad food spree', so we went off for a foot massage, However Endora and i felt inspired again, so we left the rest behind and embarked on a 'dao sah pia' hunt. We took a walk to the famous "Him Hiang" and bought 6 boxes of 'dao sah pia', 5 boxes of 'beh teh sor' and a few boxes of kueh lapis. The girls were finally done after an hour or so, and came to pick us up, but they couldn't resist the lure of the snacks and they ended up buying more than several boxes of kueh lapis for themselves too. If I remember correctly - Charissa alone snapped up 8 boxes!

Oh, excuse me! I left out the part where Endora and I chanced upon the famous Penang road Asam Laksa en route to "him hiang", and we persuaded the by now hunger stricken girls back to Penang road to try it out with us. They agreed! The laska was not great but still good! We finally found decent Penang food! Feeling inspired, we topped it up with Rojak, Chendol and a combination of Chendol with Durian. Yay! Assam laksa craving satisfied! Fortunately it didn't end there; we drove to this place called Sunflower Bakery, located near our hotel and bought more cakes and kueh lapis. Absolute madness!!!!

We decided to take a break for a couple of hours, relaxing and testing out 'the spoils' in our hotel room. Hunger stuck again and we soon headed headed out for dinner. Yes, more food! We drove out to look for Teik Seng restaurant, which came highly recommended by my friend KP but it was unfortunately closed – dumb us forgot the time, which was already close to 10pm. Duh! So reluctantly we drove around to search for something else, and found a Bak Kut Teh place, which was nothing to rave about. Endora had western food and ordered a Cha Kuay Tiao to share; both were pretty ok too.

Departure day came and I refused to give up; I insisted we headed back to Teik Seng to try out luck before going home. Not only was it open, we were treated to amazing food!!!! The assam fish was mind blowing!!!! The salted vegetable with duck soup was superb!!! Not too salty and super tasty! We also had their famous kang kong, two types of sotong, their famous pork dish (which unfortunately i didn't really like) and the har chong chicken which was damn good!!! Finally after days of 'misses' WE FOUND A WINNER!!!!!!! In Charissa's words, "Well done Chern Yee!" And thank you KP!!!!

(It was so good i asked the chef if i could pack some assam fish home, totally forgetting about my 100ml liquid limit on the plane, but fortunately I dropped the idea when the chef told us that the fish may not keep well by the time we got back home.)

What an amazing end our Penang food chomping madness. I would willingly march back to Penang just for the zhi char. Ooo.....i am salivating thinking about it now! Anyone wants to join me? Anyone?

Nutella rocks our world!!!!

I admit, I am not a huge fan of Nutella, perhaps only when I was a child (which explains why I was a fat kid). But i do know everyone else in the world is, which was and reaffirmed by my friend and colleague, Aundrea, from Two Oceans, the company that I do freelance for work. She requested that I baked something for everyone when I swung by the office the next time, and she wanted it to contain 3 key ingredients: Chocolate, Hazelnuts and, no surprises - Nutella!

So i set forth to make the most glorious Nutella Cake, going by the recipe from Miss Nigella Lawson, and succeeded in making the cake as pretty as she did for hers! I'm blowing my own horn again as usual, hahaha, and yes, I made a full cake and not cupcakes as I usually do – though that will be done on the next attempt! Hopefully it will work out as beautifully as it did this time, but for now, I'll just sit back and savour this rich yet delightful cake. I offered some to my mum too before passing out the rest to Aundrea and the rest of my colleagues, and it has instantly become one of my mum's firm favourites - that says a lot about the quality of the cake as she generally doesn't fancy anything sweet or with chocolate. Yes tooting my own horn again, but it was really that wonderful!

The nutella cake with chocolate ganache and hazelnut. yummmmmmssssss......

We have to stop meating like this

Another epic makan session brought to you by The Supper Club.

Sun, Sand, Sea

So it was my fellow beachwhore's birthday - no better prezzie than to bake her beach-themed cupcakes! What's more, we just returned from a beach holiday, so......

Yes, I know, the bears look a wee bit out of place, but I didn't have time to make 'em so this was a good (and fast) alternative! Oh and there were brollies too. They are not in the pictures because they wouldn't fit in the box (for transportation). So use your imagination! heheh

Happy Birthday Vannie!

Cranberry scones anyone?

I whipped up these cranberry scones on the spur of the moment because I had leftover cream and milk. This recipe called for half-and-half, which we all know is half milk and half cream. I only found out a couple of years ago because the actual half-and-half is super expensive. It’s $8.50 or so for a small 250ml pack. Madness!!!

My mum loves these scones and my friend, Sharon, asks for them ALL THE TIME. I remembered making a batch for her. She loved them so much that she refused to share them with anyone, even with her family members!

“I imagine myself in Europe, having tea and your cranberry scones with butter and jam. I am a very happy person now.”

If my scones could make a person feel that way, I would make them 200 times over!

If I had the chance, I’d make these scones for everyone reading this post. Maybe I should start a shop and bring happiness to all. Hmm… that’s something to think about.

Yes, I made my own birthday cake!

This is a brownie chocolate ganache ice cream cake. It was soooo delicious, my nephew and niece both had two slices each during my birthday celebration, one more slice when they woke up after their nap and finally one more slice before heading home. In my nephew's words, "we must eat as much as possible as we won't be able to eat this at home!" What can i say? Kids certainly don't lie when they know its something they like!

I also made this once while I was in Shanghai for a job stint during the summer; everyone there liked it then, and it was no different this time! My mother is my personal 'litmus test' for my creations; when a some one who doesn't like desserts tell you “Mmm.... this is good, the cake has a little salty twist that I like. Nice!” - its definitely an affirmation that its good! Hehe... blowing my own horn as usual.:)

Carrots are good for the eyes!

Wow, the last entry was almost a month ago, sorry for taking so long to blog again. I have been busy baking!

Don's birthday (he's a good friend of mine) was coming up, and i wanted to attempt something new and special just for him – carrot cupcakes! The first trial turned out terrible; I suspect that I either put too much orange juice during the preparation, or that it was the recipe I was referring to was one of the 'healthy ones' that skimped on the fat but usually would turn out short on taste. I told Philie about it, and she remarked that it was really pointless to make that way – cake isn't 'health' food to start with, so what's wrong with putting a little fat into it to make it better?

So on that lead, I looked for and found another carrot cake recipe that had a more reasonable balance of ingredients, and the resulting cupcakes turned out yummy! And, yes - i piped! I needed to boost my courage for this so I hoped over to Sandra's home (she's another good friend of mine), and with her encouragement, I piped cream cheese frosting on the carrort cupcakes Woo hoo!! The cream cheese frosting was super sonic! Tasty, tangy, not too sweet and combined well with cake, totally brining out the flavour of the carrots.

Feeling inspired I went on a spree, and eventually made, devil's food, dark chocolate ganache cupcakes, burnt butter cupcakes, on top of the carrot cupcakes. Yums right? I know!

The Rainbow Connection

Who doesn't love a pretty rainbow eh?

So when Toots 'challenged' me to bake a rainbow cake for her birthday, I did some research and found some rainbow cupcakes instead. Now how could I resist a challenge like that!

I had an hour or so to kill before a lunch appointment on Friday, and I decided to bake half a batch as an experiment.

The result?

The layers could be more even I guess, although I have seen worse. Heheheh I shall keep practising till I get it right! Toots, there is hope yet for that cake you want!

Phillie

An Epic Adventure

So the lot of us decided to get together and have a wee 'experimental' BBQ last weekend. Why experimental you ask? Cos we each made a dish that we had never tried before. Turns out, being experimental is fun! The food was amazing, and the company was great! What more could you ask for?

Presenting our experiments...

Left: Charsiew by KP

Right: B☆stard Lamb also by KP (Don't ask)

Left: Rosemary Chicken by Karen

Right: Good Ol' American Burgers by Matt

Left: Herb Buttered Cod Pieces by Stephen (Hee!)

Right: Chilli Lime Prawns by Phillie

Left: Gazpacho by Stephen

Right: Assorted Desserts* by Karen & Phillie

(*Red Velvet Cupcakes, Chocolate Stout Cake and Margarita Ice-Cream)

Again, thank you everyone for a great night!

(I do apologise for the shabby pix, we were too busy eating to get better shots!)

One for the big kids

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes - made for our little experimental BBQ over the weekend.

Even the non-dessert people approved of this yummy cake!

Chocolate Stout Cake + 16 year old Whisky = Very happy campers

Once again, thank you all for a great BBQ! (Food pix will be up soon)

Mae's kitchen's virgin cook out

My friend, Mae, just bought a new apartment. Well, not "just", it’s been a few months since she moved in. I’ve been told nonstop about her amazing show-kitchen-standard kitchen and how she refuses to use it. Sandra and I forced ourselves on her and had a virgin-cook-out at her place.

Earlier in the day, Sandra and Mae had prepared a beef dish. Sandra also made a yummy pork dish that tasted like what you’d get at Yoshinoya and I made Mapo Tofu. Now Mae had limited pots and pans, so by the time Sandra and I had our dishes going, we had to cook the broccoli in the microwave AND we did it all in half an hour!

All things considered, everything still turned out great. Even though the broccoli was slightly undercooked and Mae found a worm in it (and immediately stopped eating), we still wiped everything else out.

A few days after the cookout, Mae told me her kitchen was still oily! What an exaggeration, but the mapo tofu did create quite a splash!

Nigella's Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake

A big thank you goes out to Phillie for bringing some Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake for my mum when she was in the hospital. Mum was very touched!

Inspired by the what Phillie made, and my mum’s reminder of how much she adored it, I went about baking one too. It’s such an easy recipe to follow; within 20 minutes, the batter is in the baking tin and the whole lot was popped into the oven.

The reason the cake looks like it’s falling apart is because, in order to let the syrup soak into the cake mix, instead of using a toothpick or a skewer to poke holes in the batter, I used a knife! In the end, the effect was similar AND it was still yummy!

I didn’t have enough to give my dear friend, Phillie, so I will be making more SOON!

Lemon Drizzle Slice

So my sister found this recipe somewhere and thought it sounded good. So guess who gets to bake for my sister dearest? (Not that I'm complaining!) The cake turned out pretty good. Very refreshing on a bloody hot day that's for sure!

Definitely will repeat telecast!

Love,

Phillie

Personalised Birthday Cupcakes

I know, I know...it's been a while since either of us have posted anything! Apologies!

Anyways, here's what we were up to in our absence! An old friend of mine wanted something different for her daughter's class birthday party, so she asked if we could personalise some cupcakes for her classmates. But of course we can!

Her other request was to have apples on the cupcakes as that was the name of Gwen's (birthday girl) school. So we embossed the names onto the apples, and hand-molded some teddy bears! Alot of work, but totally worth it!

Happy Birthday Gwen! Glad you enjoyed the cupcakes!

Love,

Phillie