Monday, January 25, 2010

Why buy them when you can make them?

So I set off to experiment on making my favourite pie on Christmas. It was a great success!! The pecan pie! Oh how I love thee! Yes, I realized I have very American taste for dessert, you can’t blame me, we were exposed to these damn American shows since young! One day I shall attempt to make something out of the great old United Kingdom! Land of bread and butter pudding and a great stiff upper lip. LOVE!


But for now, let me go into the excitement of making the pecan pie, it is troublesome like all pies I guess. I had to make the dough first, put it in the fridge, then bake it while cooking the maple syrup and pecan, pour the mixture in the pie crust and bake it again! The outcome was amazing and definitely worth it!! The maple syrup melting together with the pecan combined with the crusty dough...Heaven! Yes, I’m blowing my own toot again. Hehe…


Like always, my mum thinks it’s too sweet but she picked at it everyday after that for about a week. There was quite a bit of left over since it was just me and my mum, so everytime we take it out from the fridge, we heat it up and have it with vanilla ice cream. Even better! I will bake it again when I'm back in Singapore. For now, enjoy looking at my favourite pie of all time…



Photobucket

Photobucket

Karen

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Good things happen in big huge sizes!

Hehe…

In my last entry I wrote about the unsuccessful checkered board cookies. Now I’m gonna write about two super successful cookie. Yes TWO! These were yums! One of them is the white chocolate, cranberry cookies and the other is the super duper chunky chocolate chip cookie.

i have to say, my mum is not a huge fan of any of my cakes cause she thinks they are too sweet but she loves these two cookies I make. The cranberry recipe actually calls for dried cranberries but I have soooo many packs of frozen cranberry I decided to use them. The results…AMAZING!!! The cranberries burst as they bake! Soft cookies with melty white chocolate and BURST of the color red. Need I say more? They are my dear friend, Don’s favourite. So easy to make but like all cookie recipes, the dough needs to be chilled. Yes, phillie, no lazy things. They have to be chilled.

Photobucket

The next one is SUPER yums! They are huge, maybe a little too big for some people but they r liked by many, many, many people so far. I had a friend who said, wah, like eating cake. Hahaha… but for me, good things come in HUGE packages. Hehe… so these ones have to be chilled too! I had to bring some back to shanghai for some friends so I did what the recipe lady taught and that was to put them in dough form, put them in the plastic egg crates and throw them in the freezer! They can last for 3 months in there. So before I left, I heated up the oven, took the cookies out, arranged them and threw them in. and in 25 minutes, VoilĂ !!!!! Yumsters! Enjoy looking at them, hope some you will be lucky enough to try them!

Photobucket

Karen

China Bound

My shoot just ended and I already have the urge to bake and cook! Alas! This apartment only has a microwave that says it can grill but the sausages I tried to “grill” all just look microwaved! What do I expect right? So now I’ve taken to making slits and cooking them on stove top. Not the same though… not the same….

Since I can’t show any recent cookin/ baking sprees I shall post the most recent adventures! I got home from the last trip and immediately had the urge to bake. So I whipped up some checkered board cookies… super troublesome and REALLY hard to control in Singapore weather. The recipe says throw them in the fridge for half an hour, so I left them there for one and the half. Still the moment I bring them out to shape it melts! Frustrating! And it didn’t taste as great as I wanted it to be so I’m back on the drawing board with these troublesome cookies. But as Phillie knows, I LOVE troublesome. Hehe…

Here they are:

Photobucket

Next blog will be about the success story of white chocolate and cranberry cookies that my friend, Don LOVES and many people’s favourite, super duper chunky chocolate chips cookies!

Love,
Karen

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Gong Xi Fa Cai

It's our favourite time of the year again!

Photobucket

I'm sure both our kitchens will be seeing mighty busy days ahead! We will be sure to update you with all our bakes in the coming month! Thank you for looking and be sure to keep checking back!

In the meantime, Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Huat ah!

Love,
Karen & Phillie

Monday, January 4, 2010

Brownies

I've always wanted to try to bake brownies, but for some strange reason, never got down to it. But a couple months back, I got my hands on a recipe that seemed simple enough (I'm lazy like that!) So...my 1st ever brownie was baked! It was good, but I wasn't too happy with it cos I thought it was a wee bit dry. So I tried it again, adjusted the recipe to my liking, and Voila!

Photobucket

My humble brownies.

Love,
Phillie

Chicken Pie

I've made this chicken pie a few times before, but my dough has always failed on me. Like I said, dough and I are not friends! Anyways, perhaps it's the cooler weather in December, or God being nice to me on his birthday, this time, my dough was actually kneadable!

There was some leftover dough, so I saved some filling and made wee pies!

So...please allow me to present to you, my Christmas Chicken Pie, from the pantry, to the table!

Photobucket

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and may 2010 be a fabulous year for you!

Love,
Phillie

Sunday, January 3, 2010

my first entry! woo hoo to food!!!

ok, i'm leaving for shanghai tomorrow so i'm gonna drop some entries before i have to ask phillie to post the rest! hahahaha...

this is what i made this past 3 weeks that i have been back. i shall start with what everyone asked from me the moment i got back. NONE STOP! this is my favourite recipe for the red velvet cupcake. i usually use the cream cheese frosting that has nuts in it BUT the normal cream cheese ones taste just as good if you have any allergy.

this is what the yummy insides look like. the taste... spongy, fluffy, slightly chocolatey taste combine with the incredible tangy, sweet nutty cream cheese frosting... it's heaven in the mouth. i have to say, i am going to start finding a way to not use coloring though.
just in case some of you don't know the origins of the red velvet cake. it is actually a cake that was commonly made in the southern part of america. it got so popular that everyone starting using them for celebratory purposes, like birthdays, christmas, tahnksgiving and all that. i just make it cause it makes people happy!!!! i'm singaporean! and proud of it... i just steal their recipe! hahahha... so enjoy looking at the exquisite red velvet cupcakes!

Hello!

Welcome to The Strange Kitchen!

Here at TSK (hee!), we post anything and everything to do with the food we eat / love / cook / bake. Please be patient while we slowly build this site.

In the meantime, Happy New Year one and all! And have a great year ahead!

Cheerios,
Karen & Phillie (aka Felicia)