Little Joy Factory

This chocolate cake is baked to award my two daughters. They helped in cleaning the house by tidying up their study room.  It feels good to spruce up and clean up the house to welcome New Year. 2013 has come to an end.   On one hand,  I am  full of anticipation for what New Year has to offer.  On the other hand,  I feel nostalgic as I reflect the past year.  I guess it's common for adults to have mixed feelings about New Year. As for kids, they are always so happy. A piece of simple homemade chocolate cake can put big smiles on their faces. I am not a big fan of chocolate cake. That's why I have never blogged about a chocolate cake before.   I chose this cake to get started as it's so easy.  Just like baking a butter cake, all the ingredients can be processed in a electric mixing bowl.  No extra step such as melt...

Merry Christmas and Seasons Greetings to all my lovely readers!  Hope you are enjoying the holiday season! Today is Boxing Day, a day for us to spend with family and friends and eating up the leftovers :).  I have 200g mixed fruits, left from baking two Christmas fruit cakes last week (one for my family, one for my colleagues. It was a hit in the office, everyone loved it). Have you tried flavorful Korean rice cake bars?  Korean rice cake bars have wonderful coconut milk and fruity flavour. They are crispy on the outside, and chewy  gooey inside. Trust me, they are perfect party starters! I love this recipe, it's so simple and the filling can be adapted to any choice of nuts and dried fruits. You can adjust the amount of sugar depends on the sweetness you desire. For me, I did not add sugar at all. The flavor came from the moist and juicy fruits!  KOREAN MIXED FRUITS RICE CAKE BARS Ingredients ...

Cheesecake is the most popular dessert in my family.  When we have cravings,  these individual mini cheesecakes are all we need to feel satisfied. Topped with fruit jam, they look elegant, and taste fabulous. I always use my 6 cup muffin pan to prepare these mini cheesecakes.  With one pack of 250g cream cheese, they are just the right portion sizes for my family.  Use crushed Oreo biscuits and butter as the base.  Top with cream cheese mixture.  Bake for 25-30 minutes at 160°C .  Cool and refrigerate for a few hours.  When ready to serve, top with fruit jam.  It's quick and easy. B on appétit ! MINI BLUEBERRY CHEESECAKE (Adapted from Christine's recipe ) Ingredients For crust 120g Oreo biscuits, crushed into fine crumbs 2 tablespoons melted butter (30g) For filling 250g cream cheese, softened 50g granulated sugar ½ teaspoon pure vanilla ...

One more week to Christmas. Can't believe it's end of the year again. Driving on the road, saw some cars decorated with reindeer antlers. They certainly make everyone smile while zooming around the city.  The famous reindeer decoration is invented by Sue Valeri shortly after 9/11 happened. She envisioned the car flags , which were used on car windows to show patriotism, could be antlers at Christmas time, bat wings for Halloween and bunny ears for Easter.  These delightful decorations have since then gained popularity during holiday seasons all over the world. The reindeer antlers are sold out in many supermarkets here. It's a bit too late to transform my car into a reindeer sleigh this year, but it's never too late to bake my favourite Christmas Cake. Indeed, I always bake this cake a few weeks before Christmas.  Soak the mixed fruit in rum for a week before baking, and sprinkle a tablesp...

Do you know the coldest temperature ever recorded in Singapore? It's 20.6 deg C on 2 Dec 1964. That's amazing for a place situated near equator!   Though it happened almost 50 years ago, it's generally cooler in December with average highest temperature of 29.9 deg C.   On a cold rainy day like today, enjoy a steaming bowl of homemade soup, it not only warms the body, but also the soul.   After almost 3 months since I noted down creamy pumpkin soup recipe, I finally made it last Saturday.  I was surprised and delighted how inexpensive and savoury this creamy soup was. The wonderful thing is , it did not take too much time as I thought. I used microwave to cook the pumpkin. Chop it roughly, put into a container with some water. Heat up for 10 minutes. The pumpkin chunks are cooked through and can be peeled easily. In a saucepan, fry onion and garlic with olive oil until fragrant. Add store-bought chicken broth ...

My cookies tin is empty now. The classic chocolate cookies I baked a few days ago went really fast.  Need to fill the cookies tin again.  Otherwise, Santa would  have nothing to snack on when he drops by my house on Christmas Eve :).  These blueberry jam sandwich cookes are so adorable. Dust with icing sugar,  they remind me of  beautiful, glimmering snowflakes swaying to the ground on an icy day.  I start missing winter already... Even though Santa loves chocolate cookies more, I am sure he would be delighted with these crumbly cookies as well. With a glass of warm milk, it would be a delectable treat on a moonlit night! BLUEBERRY JAM SANDWICH COOKIES (Recipe adapted from William-Sonoma ) Ingredients: 2 1/4 cups (360 g) all-purpose flour 1/4 cup (30 g) cornstarch 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 sticks (227 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 1/2 teaspoon grated ...

It's said that on Christmas eve, children in the United States and Canada leave cookies and milk by the chimney for Santa Claus as he may get hungry while delivering all those presents. How sweet!  Wondering what is Santa's favorite cookies? Has his taste changed over the years? During this jolly festival season,  no matter what our religious beliefs, we enjoy meeting friends with delicious food and gift-giving.  Cookies are perfect as a gift or as a snack to serve at gatherings.  To fill my cookies tins, I baked Shortbread cookies last week. This week,  I chose classic chocolate chip cookies made with butter and brown sugar.  Simple and flavorful. Could these cookies be Santa's favorite?  I am not sure, but my daughters, who are huge fans of  homemade Famous Amos Cookies , finished one batch of  them, hot freshly from the oven ! If you find it hard to get into the joy of the holiday,  ma...

Try this oven-baked matchstick potatoes. It's fast and fabulous!  I baked them this morning before preparing our Sunday brunch.  It's a great snack and a much healthier choice as compared to traditional french fries. With olive oil, you don't have to worry about the calories. Healthy and delicious! I used 800g Holland potatoes bought from supermarket, peeled and sliced.  Tossed with olive oil and salt.  Baked for 30 minutes, added 2 sprigs fresh rosemary. Continued for another 5-10 minutes. Rosemary gives off herbal and subtly menthol fragrance, smells so fresh! Research said the smell could boost your memory and enhance the ability to remember events and to complete tasks at particular times. No wonder I texted a group of friends for the upcoming Christmas gathering, in the midst of baking these lovely matchstick potatoes! The memories of those days working in the training field kept flashing in my mind this morn...

If you like shortbread, this recipe is the one!  Compared to  Scottish shortbread I made last year for Christmas, I had doubts these would be any good with only four ingredients. However, these cookies are just incredible. They taste like Chessmen cookies from Pepperidge Farm. You've got to use really good quality ingredients, like SCS unsalted butter and real vanilla extract. Otherwise, the flavor maybe ruined.  I’d say these shortbread cookies are fantastic, but I have a confession to make. I inadvertently made a major change to the recipe. The recipe calls for 1 cup of butter. That means two sticks  (227g) of butter. For some reason, though, I was thinking it was one stick of butter. So I only used ~120g of butter. The cookies were still very, very good and were well received.  If you want a reduced fat version, try making it with just one stick of butter.  The dough is dry and crumbly, which made it easy to cut out with...

Pâte à Choux (Cream Puff) is a luxury dessert that can be easily made at home.  Since I have seven egg yolks left after making "beauty" dessert , I decided to use them to make custard filling for Pâte à Choux (cream puff).   There is nothing like homemade creamy, milky and buttery custard to go with choux puff - it's so nice!      I like to use microwave to make custard, very convenient and can save a lot of time.  Within 10 minutes, smooth and creamy custard is ready (see recipe below).  As for Pâte à Choux,  you will never go wrong with  Michael Rulman 's recipe. He blogged about Pâte à Choux twice in 2009, and the entries were posted in his cooking books, one of which is  Elements of Cooking .  He applies his famous ratio into this recipe: equal parts water and egg, half as much flour and butter. That's it.  For those who are not...

Yesterday, we watched two movies in a roll. One is The Hunger Game: Catching Fire , chosen by my elder daughter. Another one is Frozen , chosen by my younger one. Initially, I tried to convince them to watch only one of the movies. However, they both preferred the one they chose, and did not want to give in. Since it's school holiday now, I decided to watch both movies, and really glad we did that. "Fire" and "Frozen" are equally fantastic and entertaining! No wonder they set worldwide box office record.   Speaking of entertaining,    I Heart Cooking Clubs also set Easy Entertaining as the theme of the week.  It's to cook a dish that is perfect for serving to guests but, easy to prepare.   Coconut and Prawn Soup recipe from Donna Hay's website caught my attention as it calls for red curry paste. I bought a jar of red curry paste and cooked Thai Red Curry Fish not long ago.  Thought of cooking the same dish again ...

Steamed milk pudding is a popular Chinese dessert , which is famous for its silky smooth texture and nutritional effect for complexion. Serve warm or cold, it's a sweet treat to impress your family and friends!  I used to drive all the way to a famous dessert house at Temple Street,  just to have a bowl of this "beauty" dessert.  Until one day, I decided to make my own milk pudding at home, which is much more economical. The recipe is very simple (see my earlier post ). It only consists of 3 ingredients: milk, egg and sugar. However, getting it done to perfection is not as easy as it seems. I know everyone is busy, and we all like to follow recipes and succeed at our first attempts.  So, let me share with you some tips on how to make a perfect milk pudding at your first attempt.  It's Thanksgiving week now, there are so much to be thankful for.  As a food blogger, this is my way of saying thank y...

During weekend,  I have been busy cooking, baking and pinning. It's so pinteresting! My initial plan was to pin the most popular posts from blogs onto my  Popular Foodie Posts board. After I started pinning, I realized it's not as easy as I thought. Firstly, not all the bloggers publish the popular list. Secondly, there are overwhelming posts out there. I browsed from one blog to another blog, reading, admiring and pinning. Sometimes, I stayed in one blog too long, and slowly drifted away by pining the popular post of my choice rather than readers' choices :).   It's tiring but rewarding. I've got to know many talented bloggers and their amazing posts. If you own a blog and have a Pinterest account , please drop me a note ( mylittlejoyfactory@gmail.com ) . I would be more than happy to invite you as one of the contributors to Popular Foodie Posts . Feta, Roasted Tomato and Chicken Sausage Pasta was inspired b...

The weekend is finally here,  and it looks like it will be a beautiful one as I am "going" to a potluck party at I Heart Cooking Clubs !  This passionfruit syrup Bundt cake is the one I will "bring" to the party.   I started to appreciate passionfruit recently after I learned how to select ripe passionfruit. A friend told me that ripe passionfruit is the one with wrinkled, dimpled and dented skin, not smooth skin. What?! This is the first time I heard people perfer wrinkles :). Seems passionfruit is an ugly duckling. It tastes intensely aromatic, richly fragrant. No wonder it has an alluring Chinese name “百香果”, which means "fruit with hundreds of fragrances". Furthermore, passionfruit is rich source of antioxidants, vitamin C and fiber. I eat it every other day now. Can't wait for them to ripen. For those who still don't know how to appreciate passionfruit, here is the secret : Choose passionfruit that looks plump despite any wrinkles. If...

Inspired by tasty soups from Souper Sundays , a weekly blogging event hosted by Deb in Hawaii ,  I bought a piece of butternut last week and intended to prepare a bowl of creamy pumpkin soup for my family.  One week has passed, the butternut still quietly lying in my fridge. Maybe we are really not a  "soup" family?  Nobody seems bothered to check with me about the soup.     Before the butternut started to rot, I decided to make my favorite Chinese pumpkin cake instead. I tasted pan-fried pumpkin cake for the first time during a trip to Shanghai few years ago. These small cakes were served as a dessert in a Chinese restaurant. They were orange in color, soft, chewy on the inside, and crispy on the outside. So delicious!    I searched for the recipe immediately after the trip,  and found a good simple one. Made a few times at home, they are as ni...

November is known as one of the Monsoon months here in Singapore. It rains almost everyday, sometimes with thunderstorms. I hope it won't rain today as we have Family Day at Sentosa later in the afternoon,  an event organized by my company to promote family bonding. This is the 2nd time we participated Family Day after I joined this company. The last time was in 2009, when we just returned from U.S after one year assignment in Utah.  Kids have grown up from preschoolers then to preteens now.  The years are flying by!  Whenever I look back, I do share the feeling that the days are long, but the years are short.  So, let's get the most of life and enjoy every moment with our family. Right now, I enjoy myself very much in cooking and baking for my family, especially with friends from  I Heart Cooking Clubs . This week, we are baking tarts and pies, which are a fantastic way to celebrate any occasi...

Singapore is situated near Equator ,  no distinctive seasons. So, what's in season now?     When I Heart Cooking Clubs put In Season as the cooking theme for this week, I am rejoiced at the abundant choices I have.  With only raining season and dry season , everything seems fit for this theme.  However,  I chose to settle with Beetroot, which is a vegetable available all year round, but is totally unfamiliar to me. Hope I can learn a new dish and bring to my family.

I am not used to spicy food even though I have been living in Singapore for a decade. Whenever I order food at hawker center,  I always tell the server to put less chili for me. That's the reason I seldom cook red curry dish at home. Its color gives me an impression that red curry should be very hot!  Well, since everyone in my family love the taste of curry, we choose Japanese curry roux (mild) instead. We often cook it with vegetables without any meat,  and everyone just can't get enough of it, especially eat with a plate of steamed rice.        Last Saturday,  I chanced upon a Thai Red Curry Fish recipe from  Women's Weekly magazine.

Egg fried bread is served in my family whenever we have leftover bread. Simple yet comforting,  it's a good way to start the day. This morning, I decided to spoil my family by doing a little bit more to the usual egg fried bread, with an indulgent recipe from Donna Hay . First,  spread the bread with delicious olive tapenade and top with a slice of Cheddar cheese. Sandwich with another bread. Dip the whole sandwich into the egg and milk mixture, then press into Parmesan. To make a perfect fried bread, you've got to use butter instead of oil. Place the sandwiches on a thin pan over medium heat. Keep turning while frying, until they turn out golden with a crusty outside, and cheese is melting inside. Yummilicous! I should thank Donna Hay for this recipe, which elevates our favourite egg fried bread to a whole new level. My family enjoyed olive tapenade for the first time, and it really enhanced the taste of sandwiches. I would explore healthy olive tapenade, a...

Sandwiches are one of the simplest stables we have at home during morning rush hours. Grab two slices of bread, sandwich with one fried egg, one lettuce leave, and a slice of cheddar cheese. Heat up in microwave for 15 seconds, pack and go! When I Heart Cooking Clubs announced Sandwich Sensations  as the theme of the week, it offered a good opportunity for me to prepare a "deluxe" sandwiches for my family. The first step is to choose the bread. Since we always use store-bought bread for convenience, it's time to put in some effort and bake my own soft and rich bread.

Peach Brioche Bun is one of the creations I made when exploring the classic Brioche. As you might know, Brioche is an enriched French bread that comes up often in bread pudding and french toast. It has high egg and butter content, which gives it very soft, golden crumb and rich, tender texture. The method used to make Brioche is quite new to me. It starts with a yeast mixture by adding yeast into half cup of water and half cup of flour. Wait until this loose paste has risen, then add all the rest of the ingredients and knead into a dough. This is equivalent to three times proofing, whereas other bread I made normally requires only two times. Since it took time for the dough to proof,  I had plenty of time to think how to "design" a  lovely Brioche bun.

Lately, Singapore has seen an explosion of new French/Italian restaurants.  I am lucky to have French and Italian colleagues around when looking for restaurants that serve good and authentic French/Italian food. These restaurants are tested and tasted by native people like my colleagues, offer really good deals.

My family have always been a big fan of eggs in all their forms, steamed, boiled and fried. We consume almost 3 dozens of eggs evey week. The most common home-style dish is stir-fried eggs with vegetables such as spring onion, garlic chive, capsicum, tomato. We don't usually add cheese to the eggs except for omelette. Frittata is an Italian omelette with cheese and vegetables with or without meat. It's partially cooked on the stove top then grilled in the oven. The idea of making a frittata at home came from Donna Hay's Roast Vegetable Frittata recipe . Since I don't have a pan that can be used on both stove top and in the oven, I decided to bake it in the oven.

When I first came across this zucchini tomato casserole recipe a few days ago , I realised that zucchini has not reached my plates for sometime. Maybe because it's a seasonal vegetable, not commonly sold in the local market,  I simply forgot the existence of zucchini.

Today, it's the last day of final semester exams for my daughters. Though there are 3 days till weekend,  and one month till year end school holiday, we are already in the holiday mood. So, what's for dinner tonight?  

1-2 dishes and soup is the common way to serve our dinner.  Sometimes we get a bit bored , that's when my weekend cooking kicks in.  On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, I would try to cook something different from the daily meal, such as dumplings , baozi (steamed buns) , pizza , pasta , steamboat etc. In a more relaxed mood, we often have brunch and high tea instead of the normal 3 meals during weekends. I made this delicious breakfast bread as our brunch last Sunday.  To me, it's similar to pizza,  but tastes more flavourful.

Today is Hari Raya Haji , a festival celebrated by Muslims.  It's also a public holiday in Singapore. I love holiday in the middle of the week, it makes me feel more relaxed than Saturdays cos there is no enrichment class for my daughters.  With alarm clock turned off, everyone just sleeps until awake naturally. Slowly get up, and then starts to think what's for breakfast. On this lazy morning, I chose Chicken, Tomato and Mozzarella Pasta Salad from Donna Hay 's breakfast menu. My family don't have the habit of taking salad in the morning. It simply gives me a "cold" feeling.

I was searching for herbed bread recipe, and discovered Sally Lunn rolls from Williams-Sonoma's website .  Intereting to know that, Sally Lunn buns are made from rich yeast dough,  and have a strong association with the city of Bath in the West Country of England.       The origin of Sally Lunn buns remains a mistery.