Live With A Passion

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2012-01-05T08:35:00.003+08:00

My kids love chocolate cookies and this is a useful recipe to have around.Chocolate Chip CookiesIngredients1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature¾ cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar¾ cup (160 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar2 large eggs1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract2¼ cups (295 grams) all-purpose flour1 teaspoon baking soda½ teaspoon salt1½ cups (270 grams) semisweet

Muah Chee

2012-01-02T19:11:00.004+08:00

Muah Chee is a popular snack amongst the old and young and it is so simple to make at home. It takes just a few minutes and we usually make it at home at the spur of the moment, when the fancy for a sweet snack arises.Muah CheeIngredients250 gm glutinuous rice flour300 ml waterSome oil for greasingGround peanut and sugar powderMethod1) Mix flour and water. Stir until there are no lumps.2)

Ultimate Chocolate Cake

2011-12-28T15:28:00.006+08:00

Every year, we buy a log cake as part of our family’s Christmas dinner spread. I personally do not enjoy most commercially prepared log cakes because I find it too creamy for my palate and sometimes, it even borders towards an oily feel to the cake.This year, since we were going to have a non-Western dinner theme, I decided to throw tradition to the winds and just went ahead with a non

Crispy Pork Belly

2010-12-25T22:38:00.003+08:00

One of the most common dish at Christmas is the turkey but being in a Chinese family, it was never our tradition to celebrate Christmas with a turkey. And so tasked with a Christmas dinner to be prepared with the elder generation as guests, I decided to skip that celebrated bird altogether and go for a roast dish that is more Asian in nature and hopefully more palatable for my guests.And was I

Lemon Drizzle Cake

2010-06-01T19:10:00.008+08:00

I love the tangy perk-me-up smell and taste of lemony cakes. I still remember the very first time I tried a lemon cake with poppy seeds at a local bakery. I loved it so much that I was devastated when they retired the recipe. Try I did, to find another bakery offering that same kind of delicious, tastebud tingling orange/lemon cakes, but I was sorely disappointed.So imagine my excitement when

Chinese Glutinous Rice

2010-05-30T18:55:00.007+08:00

This is my second time cooking this dish. My family loved it so much the first time (yes, even those fussy tastebuds gave their approval ☺), they gave me the confidence to whip it up again.This recipe calls for white rice to be mixed with glutinous rice, resulting in a concoction with a softer bite that also does not give rise to a ‘bloated feeling’ after consumption – most welcomed by older

Pineapple Tarts

2010-01-10T21:05:00.003+08:00

Two of my must-have Chinese New Year goodies are open-faced pineapple tarts and love letters. For as far back as I can remember, I have been getting my fix from the same stalls because so many have failed the test of my taste buds :)This year, I decided to be a little more ambitious and make my own pineapple tarts. I have been told that the reason for their high price is its associated difficulty

Book Review : Dead Heat

2010-01-08T10:19:00.004+08:00

My delight was doubled when I picked up Dead Heat by Joel Rosenberg at the library. On first sight, I thought it would be another thriller action novel, along the likes of Dan Brown and James Rollins. The book is a page-turner with its suspense and playout of end-time prophecies.From the time I had a taste of James Rollins and his mastery in incubating fact with fiction to hatch a fascinating

A New Year Dawns

2010-01-01T11:32:00.002+08:00

Time flies, the past year’s events seemed to have sped by and we have stepped into another brand new year.As I read my thoughts at the start of 2009, I reflected on the experiences my family has had in the past year and all I can say is that God was with us through it all. Several major events still linger vividly in my mind and together with many other small seemingly insignificant incidents,

Christmas is a time for family and friends

2009-12-22T13:08:00.002+08:00

Christmas features largely in our annual calendar of celebrations. For our family, it is a busy of the year as we gather at various weekend parties before Christmas.This year, we decided to organize just one large combined Christmas party for our family and friends instead of segregating the group and having different parties over several days. Also, I felt motivated to add some personal touches

Fruitcake

2009-12-21T14:37:00.004+08:00

The really good chock-full-of-fruits-and-nuts kind of fruitcakes cost a fortune in shops. I love those with minimal flour but simply bursting with aged sultanas. My main gripe is that most fruitcakes sold out there are so much more flour than fruit that naming them fruitcakes is in itself a misnomer.This year, I was determined to make some at home for Christmas this year. I tried and varied this

Sugar Cookies

2009-12-20T13:42:00.002+08:00

We will be celebrating Christmas with a party this year. I had a very ambitious plan of preparing some homemade door gifts and googled for some interesting Christmas bakes.As I tried out some of the recipes, I realized that time is not on my side and the thought of baking a few different offerings as door gifts for a hundred guests proved too daunting. So as a compromise, I decided to make just

Restore Soft Biscuits to Crispy Ones

2009-12-17T12:45:00.003+08:00

Alas! The batch of cookies I made for a Christmas party this weekend had gone soft. I have been wondering how to restore their crispiness as a layer of royal icing on them complicates matters. Previous times, I just popped them into the oven for a couple of minutes and then let them cool on a wire rack. However, the royal icing on this batch of cookies makes this method unusable. It just will not

Fruit and Yoghurt Parfait

2009-11-30T15:20:00.001+08:00

Recently, my brother and sister-in-law have both gone healthy and all in their eating habits. An answered prayer of my mother’s I must say. So in honour of their renewed decision for healthy living, this concoction is dedicated to them.I have used kiwis, strawberries and mangoes for their mutually contrasting colours but the choice of fruits is of naturally not limited to these. However, in order

Sweet and Sour Pork

2009-11-28T10:58:00.003+08:00

The past few weeks have been spent busy perfecting some Christmas recipes for cakes and cookies and other preparations for our Christmas parties. I had hardly any time left to spend experimenting new dishes for dinner.My father loves sweet and sour pork and sometime ago, I had promised to cook that for him. So I guess, this long weekend was as good a time as any to make good on that promise.I had

Book Review : Fame

2009-11-07T15:44:00.000+08:00

Most people tend to view Christian literature as well…boring, dry and functions best as a sleep-inducing tool. Reading has always a favourite hobby of mine, as far back as I can remember, and I enjoy books of various genres. The one thing that I had always wondered is why there is an absence of books written for a widely secular audience but yet loaded with Christian values and presented in a

Curry Puff

2009-10-31T12:39:00.003+08:00

One lazy afternoon, Hubby made a request for some homemade curry puffs and that started the hunt for a recipe easy enough for me to follow.We preferred our curry puffs with a thin crust and so I used dough rolled out to about a 0.3cm thickness. Instead of the measly filling most commercially-available curry puffs offer, I determined that each bite of my curry puff be bursting with flavourful

Nonya Kaya

2009-10-11T12:01:00.004+08:00

One day, out of the blue, my mother and I talked about how people make kaya. It seemed simple enough with only a few types of ingredients needed. I felt it would be an exciting and useful new recipe to try since our families enjoy kaya as a breakfast spread.The amount of sugar that I have used is reduced as we prefer it to be less sweet but if you prefer yours a little sweeter, do add another ¼ -

Lemon Cheesecake

2009-10-08T13:39:00.007+08:00

It has been a long while since I last made a cheesecake and to coincide with Hubby’s home-coming from a business trip, I tried out this recipe. I had previously made a non-bake version so this time, I wanted to try one that requires some baking time in the oven.That first time, I made the cheesecake by hand-mixing as I had not gotten an electric mixer at that time. Perhaps I did not mix it

Toot toot time

2009-09-23T13:03:00.002+08:00

Many mothers confess that after the huge investment of time and effort on their firstborn, the same cannot be said of the attention given to their subsequent offspring. I admit that I am guilty of it too.On the other hand, because of the experience gained in teaching Big Buddy, I have also discovered that I am more effective in guiding my younger one and bolder in leading him to explore areas and

Floating Lotus

2009-09-19T21:33:00.004+08:00

Over the past two months, I had been in the kitchen occasionally, baking brownies as gifts for friends and cooking some simple dishes. However, it has been quite a long while since I last whipped up something new and my fingers are starting to itch again.The thought of making something Thai is tempting but nothing too exotic as I am but an amateur in the kitchen still. This recipe seems simple

Up up and away

2009-08-05T14:34:00.006+08:00

Last Sunday was Hubby’s Company Family Day and they organized a private viewing of UP at the cinema. There were lots of other kids and it was great fun meeting other families. We were given vouchers redeemable for snacks at the snack bar and we came away with bag loads of hotdog buns, popcorn, nachos and drinks. To top it all, there was a mini lucky draw just before the movie screening and we

Mango with Sticky Rice

2009-07-22T19:09:00.008+08:00

Every time we visit Thailand, we will definitely seek out this popular Thai dessert. It is so much cheaper and tastier than the versions found back here in Singapore. The sweetness of the mango goes so well with the fragrance of the coconut milk in the warm and slightly-salted sticky rice.Sweet ripe mangoes are a key ingredient for this dessert and I had a hard time finding them. They were

Silky Girl Funky Eyelights Pencil

2009-07-21T11:10:00.002+08:00

The last time I tried a pencil eyeliner was almost a decade ago. The experience put me off pencil liners for good as it was messy with powder fallout. To seal it off, within a couple of hours, the smudge was so bad that I looked like a panda with punched eyes.Only in recent months after seeing smudge-proof versions in candy colours, did I contemplate revisiting pencil eyeliners. So on a whim, I

Skin79 Prestige Diamond BB Cream

2009-07-20T10:08:00.000+08:00

A slew of Blemish Base (or BB in short) creams has hit the market since a few years ago with many touting it as a wonder must-have beauty product. It was originally developed for post-laser/surgery skin and so it supposedly has inherent gentle healing properties while providing light-medium skin coverage. Most BB creams also contain a sunscreen (both UVA and UVB) and some other properties like