When I was browsing Lilian’s old posts in her food blog some time ago, I was attracted by her Lemon Poppy Seeds Cake. She baked it more than 2 years ago.

I am a poppy seed lover, coz I really like to see those tiny little black dots. That’s why I also like Kiwi! Some more, sourly lemon is also what we (kids and I) like.

I finally had the chance to bake this cake… But I made a mistake. The cake mixture is so little, I should have used a smaller cake tin, but before the mixture done I already lined my 9″ cake tin, so I lazy to change. It resulted a very thin cake.

At first, I thought it was a failure. I took a very small slice to try. WOW! Surprisingly, it was just so, so, so, so good! I love the sourly taste of lemon, and the texture of poppy seeds, plus the aroma of the ground almond!

Unlike other children, my kids like sourly stuff. After tasting it and finished within seconds, I added more lemon syrup. Hahaha! True enough, man don’t really like sourly things. Those tasted this cake were: Ian, Isabel, Hubby, Myself, MIL, FIL, SIL, my female colleagues.

All said very nice, except HUBBY and FIL! They said it was too sour. Apart from Ian, the rest are all females. Hahahahaha! Anyhow, Ian loved it so much. He alone ate 3 pieces! He loves the poppy seeds and he also like the sour lemon syrup.

If you want to bake it, hop over to Lilian’s page for the recipe. Cheers!

I baked some kiwi muffin using premix some times ago, since the kids love kiwi and I love the look of the seeds. It is a very easy to bake cake, needs very little ingredients. My first muffin attempt using premix…

Ingredient
* A pack of kiwi muffin premix
* 3 eggs
* 110ml water
* 140g melted butter
(Thought not specified, I used unsalted butter.)

Method
* Mix premix, eggs and water until well mixed.
* Add in butter and mix at low speed for another min.
* Bake in 180 deg C for 30-40 min or until tester comes out clean.

This makes 6 to 9 muffins, depends on cup size. Here is the delicious muffin cake!

Woo hoo! This is the most delicious muffin I’ve tasted. I will buy the pre-mix and bake again with smaller cups, to be shared with more people.

So, that afternoon, when the kids was having nap, I enjoyed my afternoon tea with this muffin, a cup of Earl Grey, and a nice book…

This is another recipe taken from Weaning Solid — Cheese French Toast.

Made this for my children’s 1st day to school this year. I added a lil’ sugar or it would be quite tasteless. The result was… yummy! No leftover.

Here is the recipe. Increase the amount according to the number of people you prepare this for. I triple this, coz I made this for DH, myself and 2 kids. Both of us usually eat 2 slices, and the kids 1 slice each. As usual, I have modified the ingredient a lil’ to suit my diet (no milk, butter).

Ingredients
2 slices of bread (cut out the sides)
1 egg
1 tablespoon of soymilk
1 tablespoon of grated Cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon of sugar (add more if you like it sweeter)
A sprinkle of pepper

Method
(1) Cut the bread into smaller pieces.
(2) Mix egg, soymilk and grated cheese in a bowl until well mixed.
(3) Soak bread in the egg mixture.
(4) Heat up oil in pan and fry the soaked bread till slightly brown.

The cheese cake I introduced earlier was a super heavy and rich cheesecake, which used 1 kilo of cream cheese for a 9″ cake.

This version of cheesecake is a lot ‘lighter’. Though the cookbook labeled this cake as ‘Rich Cheesecake’, compared to what I made last month, I think this is very light. LOL!

This cake only uses 250g cream cheese for 7″ cake – a quarter of the previous one, and a lot cheaper.

My son’s reaction was: “WOW! Mama! I want to eat more, because this one is SUPER NICE!”

My boy really knows how to make me happy. LOL!

Well, actually my cake is still not perfect yet. Somehow I just cannot get the browning effect on top of the cake as per the book:

I baked even longer than instructed. But then I also realized that my oven tend to take longer to bake, than my old one. The previous cheesecake should take only 2 hours to bake, but it took me almost 3 hours coz the center still very wet after 2 hours!

Here is the recipe for this lighter version of cheesecake: “Vanilla Cheesecake”

Ingredients
(A)
150ml fresh milk (I used soy milk)
1 tsp vanilla essence
250g cream cheese
3 egg yolks

(B)
3 egg whites
80g caster sugar (I reduced to 70g and still too sweet for me)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 200C. Line a 7″ round cake tin with grease proof paper.
2. Cream the cream cheese and egg yolks together till mooth. Add in milk and vanilla essence.
3. In another clean mixing bowl, whisk egg whites and sugar at high speed till peaked.
4. Mix (3) into (2) in 3 batches – do not over mix.
5. Pour mixture into lined cake tin and level the surface.
6. Steam-bake in preheated oven at 200C for 15 min or until surface is slightly brown (I couldn’t get this effect even baked for 35 min! so gave up and moved to next step).
7. Reduce heat to 150C and bake for another 50 min or until cooked. Turn off oven, let cake cool in oven with door ajar for 1 hour.
8. Chill for 4 hours before removing from cake tin and serve.

Here is a simple and delicious banana chocolate chips pancake:

I picked the recipe from here. A reader of Suzette’s Parenting & Breastfeeding Blog wrote to me and we chatted for a while, then she recommended this site for baby weaning food. Though my children are way passed the stages in this blog, I think it is still a great site for food idea.

This pancake is actually not sweet, so my children don’t like it very well. But I quite like the ‘natural’ sweetness – coming from soy milk, banana and choc chips only. I modified the recipe a bit, replaced milk with soy milk to make it healthier; and also replaced butter with olive oil.

Here is the Banana Chocolate Chips Pancake recipe:
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 cup soy milk
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 egg
1 large banana, mashed
1 handful of chocolate chips

Method:
(1) Mix soy milk, oil and egg.
(2) Add in flour and mix well.
(3) Stir in mashed banana and chocolate chips.
(4) Heat up non-stick pan and scoop about 2 spoons of the mixture to make one pancake.
(5) When bubbles appears, flip over but do not press the pancakes.
(6) After about one minute, remove pancakes from pan and serve.

This was my first baking in 2009… a bit too sweet to my liking, but still edible. I think the amount of sugar should be reduced by half.

It is very simple with recipe below, but I would suggest to reduce sugar by half or it would be too sweet…

4 ripe bananas
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup sugar (reduce if you don’t like it too sweet)
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1 cup choc chips (or chopped walnuts, or both!)

1. Mash bananas. Add oil and sugar. Mix well.
2. Add flour, salt, and baking powder together and add to the banana mixture. Mix until the flour is blended (do not beat).
3. Pour into muffin pans and bake at 180C for 20-25 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Makes 1 Dozen Muffins
[Source: Veg Cooking]

This is the most successful attempt I have on this Cheese Cake recipe…

It is so rich because it uses 1 kilo cream cheese (2 or 4 times other recipes). 1 piece should be shared instead of eaten by 1 person!!

Here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS
(A)
1 kilo cream cheese
300 grams castor sugar (I reduced to 250g)
4 small eggs
100g double cream
1 lemon rind (grated)
1 tablespoon lemon juice

(B)
120 grams crushed biscuits
120 grams melted butter
(mixed together)

METHOD
1. Cream the cheese and sugar together and slowly add in the eggs. Then add in the grated lemon rind and juice. Finally add in the double cream.
2. Pour the mixture into a lined and floured 9″ round tin with (B) at the bottom.
3. Bake at 150C for 2 hours over a tray of water.
4. When cooked, chill and demould, then glaze the top with apricot glaze.

I found this very healthy vegan moist chocolate cake from chowtimes. It is an extremely easy to bake cake, with very little ingredients. I baked one on Sunday, brought a piece to the office for my colleague, she loved it! She is very picky in desserts, and she liked it, so I think I passed the test.

Here is the very easy recipe.

(A)
3 cups of flour
2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoon cocoa powder

(B)
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla (I used only 1/2 spoon, coz I don’t like vanilla)
2 tablespoon vinegar (I substituted with lemon juice – required for its acidity to react with baking soda)
8 tablespoon oil (I used olive oil)

Method
Mixed (B) until sugar melted.
Pour mixture (B) into (A), mix well.
Optional: you may add chopped nuts into the mixture, and then topped with choc chips. I love this combination.
Pout into baking pan, baked 35-40 min at 180c

This is a variation of the previous baked macaroni. This time, I didn’t have any tomato paste, but I had a can of Cambell soup, some sausages and crab filaments. So, I made a slight variation.

Instead of red tomato sauce, I made my own white sauce using the Cambell mushroom soup. Instead of adding 1 can of water like making the soup, I reduced the water when I boiled it. Scooped half of the paste into the bowl of cooked macaroni, I added more water to the left over and made it soup.

The rest was the same as how I baked my macaroni cheese previously – simple. The result was: 2 dishes – a baked macaroni with cheese, and a bowl of mushroom soup.

The ‘white source’ was delicious too, and my son ate the whole bowl by himself. Burp! A good lunch. I am a bad mama, using all unfresh ingredients (can, sausage, cheese, crab filaments).

This is a dish I made early last year – my second attempt after a failed pizza.

This is something extremely simple - macaroni cheese. I didn’t take any photo of the process, coz it was something really simple…

First, boil the macaroni in a pot of water until tender, add salt in the water to taste. After it is cooked, drain the water, added some olive oil to avoid them being sticky. Then, place the cooked macaroni, cooked+sliced saussages and crab filaments into a bowl that is oven safe, mix in the pasta sauce. Then, covered all the stuff with shredded mozarella cheese and baked in a pre-heated oven for 25 min.

I baked 2 bowls, forgot about taking photo until we finished the 1st bowl! Luckily I still had a second untouched bowl to take photo.

This is a very simple cooking – my mom would sure laugh at me. If a dumb cook like me can make it delicious, I’m sure it is fool-proof. LOL!

It actually tasted very yummy! (Of course, Prego sauce is good, not my cooking. Hahaha!) Especially the cheese at the side of the bowl – a little crispy and chewy. Slurp!