Satisfying My Buttery Cake Craze。

I have started to download those long overdue pictures from my camera and saw this.  It makes me salivating again.  It was my first attempt in baking the marble cake to satisfy my buttery cake craving.  I have tried many cakes in South Africa.  As much as they look appealing to me, they never taste as good as they look.  Particularly those cakes selling at the supermarket or groceries shops; they are generally packed with sugar, flour and artificial flavorings.

Since after baking the raisin butter cake, I immediately fell in love with this simple yet tasty type of butter cake.  This time, the end result was not perfect.  The chocolate portion raised more compare to the butter portion.  Chen has also commented that the cake is somehow drier compare to the raisin butter cake.  While they are only for my own consumption, I am happy with the outcome.  However, I am so going to do this again and looking for room of improvement – an excuse for another round of cake craze!

Baking the Raisin Cinnamon Bread Rolls。

It was last month that I baked this Raisin Cinnamon Bread.  But due to lots of travelling; and OK, I don’t want to lie – a little bit of lazy bugs kicking in that I have a long list of backlogs for the blog posts.  Besides, I am always wondering how the other bloggers manage to upload their beautiful and perfect posts so efficiently in such a short time.  Not to mentioned that they have a family, children and career to manage.  It usually takes me a long time to go through the photos, filtering them for selection, minor editing if required, drafting my posts, proof reading the texts, and finally start to sketch and input into the blog, they probably already at least two weeks passed the actual date of occurrence.  And nowadays, the baby delivery due date of end of next week and winter is approaching give me even more reasons, or rather excuses, to rest and sleep in.  *Excited :-)*.

Last month when I checked through the food rack, I realised that I have a lot of leftover flour, half big packet of raisin and some cinnamon powder left by my friend when she was here making dessert.  So, baking the Raisin Cinnamon Bread is the perfect recipe to clear the stock.  I am not a good cook.  Admittedly, the Internet and Google search have helped me a lot on cooking.  These days, just by a simple search on the web, there is easily a long list of steps-by-steps recipes to guide you through the cooking – Thanks to all the bloggers.  Hence, of course, the Raisin Cinnamon Bread recipe that I baked is the one that I searched from the web.  Many of the recipes are not much different among them; I normally choose them based on the pictures they post.

My carbohydrates intake has increased as a result of pregnancy but Chen on the other hand, on his strict diet to reduce and control his weight in preparation for the Comrades run.  Consequently, he does not fancy breads, cakes or any heavy Carbohydrates food.  Never mind of that, our maid who is coming every week will help me to finish them.

The bread tastes crunchy and soft when served piping hot.  When aired dry, the bread is a little hard.  However, they are really not bad. 🙂 .

In the end, these are how much the bread turned out to be – almost equivalent to four standard packets sold in the market.  Chen and I definitely can’t finish all of them, so they were given to the guards and maids.

Fried Hokkien Udon Noodles

We probably don’t realise how lucky we are with food until we leave the country.  We, the Malaysian, are blessed with a great variety of delicious and cheap food.  The many races in Malaysia, the Malays, the Chinese, the Indian and the Locals, all have their own culinary specialties.  Food is always one of the highlights in our daily life.  Probably only the Malaysians are the people willing to drive long distance and long hour for food.  So, that is how crazy we are in search for the best food.

When living back in Malaysian, never had I thought that cooking is an essential skills or necessities.  It is only a pastime when I am in a good mood for cooking.  Chicken rice costs only RM4.50 each.  Noodles normally range from as low as RM2.50 (Kolok Mee) to some fancier noodles at RM10.00 (at hawker stalls or coffee shops price).  Food is available 24-7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week, whole year round).  In short, you just can’t possibly starve to death even if you don’t know how to cook.

Since moving to South Africa, my cooking skills have undoubtedly improved tremendously.  I could still recall frying my 1^st sunny side egg during my university time.  Even that turned out to be a not so successful one.  Now, there is no way not to improve or I will be dead from cravings.  Of course, not every time the food will turn out to be perfect as I wish.  I am happy if the food tastes 80% to my expectations.  There are still so much rooms for improvement.

Chen has been complaining that I am very picky on food, which I agree.   Chen is a non-fussy eater.  He likes good food but is not attached to them.  He can easily settle with anything as long as they are healthy and proper.  On the contrary, I would refuse to put anything I feel unpleasant into my mouth.  I would rather snack on bread or biscuits to last me the whole day – such a bad habit!

While Chen is still away for his business trip in Gabon, I cook this simple “Fried Hokkien Udon Noodle”.  They are simple because as long as you have the noodles (either Udon or yellow noodle), the rest of the ingredients are generally what you can pull off from the fridge.

 

[ January 31, 2013 ]

每一次當你不在的時候，我總是很遲睡。 弄東弄西就是不想躺下睡。 往往都是折騰到半夜或淩晨、直到自己很累才睡。 因爲燈一滅，有一點怕。 有你在，就很安心。 可是，每當你出差時，我總會當不一回事。 嘴裏說你不在，我可以睡得更好一點。 因爲不想讓你擔心，讓你安心出差、開心的回來。

Note: I still cooked myself a good dinner when you are away to London this week. Hope you had a good rest there. ^_^