Christmas Party - 22nd December 2007

I know this update is rather late.. but better late than never?? :P

Well, this is the first year celebrating Christmas in Sydney for me and therefore with my hobby of loving to bake and cook.. i decided to organise a Christmas Party the weekend before Christmas with everything prepared by ME from scratch!! It took me 3 days to prepare everything and i must say after the night, I turned to have OCD-ness and extra muscle added to my right hand.

The Menu was:

1. Cheese Fondue - Crackers and Sausages as dippers
2. Mayo-Peach Chicken Dip
3. Tandoori Pappadams - tandoori chicken on pappadams
4. Coleslaw
5. Mashed Potato
6. Sticked Nuggets
7. Pasta - Red sauce Chicken Spiral Pasta
8. Turkey Ham - with black pepper and mushroom sauces
9. Seafood Fried Rice
10. Beef Lasagna
11. Chocolate Marshmallow & Vanilla Raisin Cupcakes
12. Christmas Brownies
13. Cheesecakes - New Yorker Style
14. Drink- Lychee, Longan & Pineapple Mocktails

Adding into the Christmas feel, I had a slightly-taller-than-me Christmas tree which amazingly I bid it from ebay for AUD$1!! At the same time with a little other feel of Snow Spray on the window and red and green deco. I guess I would say it's a good and successful event that I did.

-limited photos taken.. so whoever have more, send to me?? -

I would definitely need to thank Pek Lynn for helping with all the food on the day itself as with her extra hand, things go on according to time well. Thanks to Angeline for the deco she helped me to add the last hour before the party start. Thanks to Joy for helping me entertaining the guests. And not to forget, thanks to Dominic for sending me get Halal meat the day before. LASTLY, thanks to everyone - about 30 of you-who came to the party.. without you all the party won't be a blast. Thanks to some who brought drinks and chocolates and alcohols.. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

If you ask me when is next round? ahha.. maybe CHINESE NEW YEAR?? CHAP GOH MEH?? See whether I really have another round of partying :P

Updates.. after a long while...

It's been a while since I last blogged. Funny to say, many things happen and I managed to achieve many things. I made a couple of great creation in terms of food, cakes and desserts.

1) First attempt of fondant icing
Angeline and I tried making a mini cake of fondant as we planned to make one for Ru Jih's 18th Birthday. This was done a week before her party.

2) After that, we have some balance cakes crumbs and Angeline did tiramisu in cups.

3) A few days later, Yien Von and I thought of making 'Loh Mee' and I attempted doing 'Tang Yuen'.



So far, every attempt have been quite successful and I had Lynn tried it and was glad that she loved it. The noodle is not the best. Could be better I guess.

4) Ru Jih's Birthday Party



We did some cupcakes of vanilla raisins and chocolate-white choc chips. Angeline did the batter, I did the icing design. The icing would be good if it's thicker.



This is the 2 tier chocolate cake that is coated with pink fondant, her favorite colour. We also did about 2 portion of curry puffs.

At the party, the birthday girl is so happy. We decorate the Coogee BBQ hunt area with pink stuff and the birthday girl was in her lovely pink dress too. Funny about her, she keep wanting to give us something in return for helping her with her party but we just enjoyed doing it. At the end she gave us something we didn't want to accept. So, Ru Jih, don't need to pay us the cost of the stuff we did la. DEAL k? :P


Anyway, I have my Nintendo DS Lite already. Yay!! And this few days, I went shopping with Yien Von and did buy some baking utensils too. I might be doing more in the future.

I hope Shaheera, Sunny and Zek and whoever who tried the vanilla cupcakes I did, enjoy the cupcakes? I will make more? ahha..

That's all for now, I'll be back!! :P

Mini Seafood Pizza

Yesterday, I did some mini seafood pizzas. I got the the dough recipe from Angeline's Mini Pizza.

MINI SEAFOOD PIZZA
Recipe
Dough

3 cups of flour

2 tbsp of olive oil

2 teaspoons of salt

1 tbsp of baking powder

1 cup of warm water

Toppings
2 tbsp of mayonnaise + 3 tbsp of tomato sauce mixed together
2 small onions, sliced
2 crab sticks, chopped into pieces
estimated 150g of prawns
cheddar cheese
pinch of garlic

Method:
1) Pre-heat oven for 10 min at 180°c.
2) Mix flour, olive oil, salt, warm water and baking powder together and knead it till smooth-set aside, to let it rise for an hour and a half.

3) Take the dough and roll it into a log and divide it to 6. Roll each of it like a ball and using a roll pin to roll it flat until desire thickness/size.

4) Spread the mayo + tomato mix evenly on the dough and sprinkle garlic onions, crab sticks and 4 prawns on each of the pizza. Bake it for 10-12 min on 180°c.

5) Then sprinkle the cheese on top of each pizza and let it bake for another 3-5 min or until cheese melt.

Presenting....

Kena Tag pulak!! who should I tag??

"list down five things you enjoy in your life right now. when you're done, tag 6 other people."

1. family love. I'm blessed to have my dad and mum in supporting me everything I do. Bro? haha.. thanks for looking for me when you NEED me!! I feel wanted.

2. cooking & baking. having lots of fun doing new food and cakes and all.. just need ppl to eat for me.. :P

3. beach & sun. the sun is so HOT.. but i'm tempted to go beach to play!!

4. planning events. helping ppl around me to plan their events.

5. parties. a lot of parties and all.. coming up!! getting me up!!

dun blame me.. dirah tag me.. so I had to tag people.

angeline, chrys, nik arif, muhammad and sunny

sorry.......

Apple Strudel - I finally did it!!

For my fans out there, ignore my photos date on my previous post.. hehe.. as my camera screwed up the dates.. Anyway, i think Angeline's Curry Puff looks a lot better cause she wrapped it better :P and well look at her recipe will do.. there is a link on my sidebar to it if you want to try!! :P

Back to the main topic, I bet some of you might know, I love anything that got to do with APPLES. That's why my friend got me apple crumble cake for my birthday this year!!! THANKS again! Anyway, the way I bugged Manfred to get me some apple strudel from Perth, I think he knows best that I was always in love with it. So, today I thought maybe I should try making apple strudel with my own hands. The recipe? thanks to Amy Beh again, Kuali of thestar.com is like my bible now..

APPLE STRUDEL
Ingredients
- 8 sheets of filo pastry
- 25 g butter, melted

Fillings
- 6 Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut into decent small pieces (this is a little amendments I made compare to the website.)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- finely grated rind of one lemon
- 125g castor sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 45g raisins
- 45g butter, melted
- 3/4 tbsp corn flour

Method
1) Put the apples, lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, salt, cinnamon powder and raisins in a heatproof dish. Mix well and add the corn flour. Then dot a little butter over the mixture. Bake in preheated oven at 200°C for 10-15 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool.

2) Lightly brush one sheet of filo pastry with melted butter. Layer the sheets of filo pastry one after another with a brush of melted butter.

3) For the final layer, spoon the prepared filling along one side of the pastry. Then from the filling side, roll up Swiss-roll style. Place the roll on a baking tray with the rolled seam side down. Bake in a preheated oven at 190°C for 25–30 minutes or until strudel is lightly golden. Sprinkle a little icing sugar over it and slice into 3cm pieces.

The process of it..




after the sheets are laid layer by layer.. put the fillings in.. then rolled it up like popiah!!

TADDA.... APPLE STRUDEL!!!


what should i try next?? :P

More FOOD.. :P

This week... another week I went and do funny things... Finally tried doing the Oreo cupcakes..still have some in my oven!! But next round of doing that, I make sure I put more oreo pieces inside..

Then.. I tried making malaysian style flour noodle, PAN MEE. Mum thought me how but well I forgotten a bit and so, first time ON MY OWN consider good :P will do more for people to try. Sorry no photos..

Then this week.. Occasionally, I went to Angeline's place, she thought me how to do cucur udang and curry puff and even tried making roti canai from scratch. Just now I tried doing curry puff on my own FROM SCRATCH and with a bit of amendments and some recipe from Amy Beh of Kuali.com, I managed to come out with a nice in taste and look curry puff all by myself!!!!

Anyone one some?? HAHA.. ASK ME!! :P

A long week... filled with FOOD!!!

I never knew I can have so many people reading my blog.. haha.. thanks guys.. It's been a week since I last post and well from the list i said of my changes.. haha.. some starts working!!!!

I started baking and thinking I would try to bake for MASA. Well it didn't work out cause having to cook curry chicken for the Makan Makan Night event is tiring and hectic enough, so at the end no time to make one for MASA. Sorry!! However the week I tried baking a couple of cakes and muffins. First attempt, black forest cake. Well, it didn't taste or look good. FAIL!! haha.. then 2nd attempt chocolate muffin, well when it was baking, it was kinda fun to see it grow up to be big CHOC BALLS!!


3rd attempt, after consulting Angeline, she gave me some nice recipe and I was tempted to try making ONE. When I saw 'Caramel Macchiato Cheesecake', whoopee... and there I go baking it. I think the challenge of making me make me think I should get a blender as I crunching those biscuit crumbs are a hardcore job. Hahaha.. Well I get next investment. It was satisfying to see the cheesecake so nice!! Suggestion of serving it with english toffee ice cream.. thanks for lynn and edison as they ate it when I was out and it basically got Syreen sugar high. :P Junda said he would eat the whole base crumbs!!! hahaha..

Anyway, I might be organising christmas party soon, so maybe then, I will bake more!!!

The other changes that I mentioned was to be a wedding planner which I got a couple of response from and people said will look for me when they really is getting married. hahaa.. No worries i'm doing my homework now. Be it in Malaysia or Sydney!! Anyway, I got a start job before I head that way, Ru Jih asked me to help her plan her birthday party!! Haha, would love to. Just need to talk to you about how you want it to be and we can start!! I guess I shall start as event coordinator/planner.

This week, having to prepare for Makan Makan Night, made the whole new committee LOOKED SO STONE after that. Lynn and I still could go coffee with Aaron and Justin. But it was all good. The old boys were mesmerizing their good old days of being in MSO and MASA. Well, I guess I will be like them. :P Yesterday, I had the longest meeting ever in my LIFE (for now) 5 hours of handover meetings for MASCA NSW and MASCA National. Broke any record. Well, when friends ask why so long.. NATIONAL is crucial and important according to Ve Leong (imagine his serious tone). But it's all good.

After the long meeting, interestingly I wasn't physically tired. Went over to Tricia's place for her mini gathering with her workmates and later on went for coffee with Hanis and Syreen. You all couldn't believe what we experienced. Firstly the rain is pouring like nobody's business. Then we were abit hungry so went to Mc D at Darling Harbour on our way to Starbucks. When we are done with eating and was just chit chatting.. there was a guy that had blood on his hands. I ONLY saw the blood. Then Syreen saw when the medics came he got stabbed or something at his stomach or something. I DIDN'T want to see. Then we said let's go. We went out and the polices and rangers needed to close that place up for forensic checks. While we were walking out from that area, Hanis and Syreen saw one piece of HUMAN MEAT!!! EWWW... Luckily I didn't see it. If not NIGHTMARE or either vomit whatever I ate. SICK!!

Anyway, a great night talking to Hanis and Syreen. After all those conversations, I came to see that I am actually good at observing people and understanding character of people. Whoever is fake or whoever is true, so far thank god I was not wrong about certain people. Some people impress you day by day, some people disappoint you. Why can't people just be nice??? Haizz..

That's all people and if anyone got events and need people to help organise it, contact me here at comment session. SEE YA and GOOD LUCK PEOPLE for your exams!!