Black Is In

Recently went back to bread making, after stopping for so many years. Realized it's still a lot of fun making my own bread, because I get to control what goes into each loaf/bun, without the nasty preservatives/additives that manufacturers add to commercial loaves. 

Straits Times Life published an article about black food items a few weeks(or months?) back. I must say I agree that black gives a great contrast and makes the eyes pop. So I decided to venture into the world of black as well.

Squid Ink Mini Burger Buns

Ingredients (A) – mix well

185g bread flour
20g TopFlour/Cake flour
10g milk powder
20g sugar
2.5g salt

Ingredients (B)

3.5g dry yeast plus 15g water

15g squid ink, dissolve well in 120g water
18g egg (beat whole egg, then measure)

White sesame seeds

1)Dissolve yeast in 15g water and wait for 5 mins to become frothy. Stir well
2) Mix the yeast with the remaining ingredients in A and B together to form a dough. *Knead into a smooth and elastic dough until it passes the 'window-pane test'.
3) Round the dough, placed into an oiled bowl, cover and ferment until double in size, about 45 mins to 1 hour.
    Pic shows rounded dough before fermentation:

4) Punch down the dough to release some air. Rest dough for 5mins. Divide into 5 equal portions. Form each into a tight ball and set onto lined baking sheet.

5) Cover with oiled plastic wrap and let rise for 30-35mins
6) Brush top with beaten egg(additional), sprinkle sesame seeds and bake in preheated 190C oven for 15 to 18 mins until golden brown and cooked through.

* I used my Kitchenaid and kneaded for a total of 24 mins on Speed 2. It will be sticky at first. Be patient, the dough will leave the bottom of the bowl around 10-15mins. Resist the temptation to add more flour before this as it will toughen the bread.

I used them for 2 different kinds of burgers, the first being salmon burger with curry aioli:

The other is Korean-inspired taste - Korean sweet & spicy chicken burger

Final variation is a beef and guacamole burger.

Shall share the Korean chicken and salmon burger patty recipes next time!

Yo What's Up?

It has been 8 years since I blogged so what have I been up to? Well, making a living to survive. Haha!

I made a career switch last year! From my job(different companies but similar job scope) of almost 12 years, I switched to something that I'm never trained in. So the first thing I had to do was to undergo a year of training, after which I took the certification exam and passed!

The one year of Polestar training was a grueling one, but I'm fortunate enough to land a job in a Pilates studio where I could use the facilities to practice. Many of my course mates had to juggle full time work with training and it's really hard for them.

Well, after one year, all that hard work paid off and now I'm a fully certified Pilates instructor :D. I sacrificed a high pay and fixed working hours for a lower pay and irregular working time now. Is it worth it? Totally! Now I'm able to help others achieve what I have been able to achieve with Pilates. It gives me an immense sense of achievement, which is not something I can get with monetary returns.

What is Pilates you may ask? If you already know what Pilates is about, or wish to find out more, feel free to contact me. I will also be sharing with you in future posts all about Pilates!

Image from the world wide web

Hello Blog World!

Hello there! I've been toying with the idea of re-activating this blog for the past 1-2 months. It all started when I was searching this blog for my bread recipes. Went through the posts and found a lot of memories here. Coincidentally my sister brought up this topic and gave me some great ideas. So after much consideration I decided to start blogging again!

Trying to make blogging a stress-free hobby, I have decided that I will not only be sharing cooking-related posts, but can be food reviews, random musings or others, at my own time and leisure. The photos may not be blog-perfect but who cares! 

Now onto my first come-back post. A buckwheat pancake recipe which I attempted today. I adapted it to what I have in my own pantry. They turned out light and fluffy despite the use of all buckwheat flour(which tends to make baked goods dense). 

Makes 3 big and 1 small pancake(depends on how big you like your pancakes).

63g buckwheat flour(I used the brand Origins)

1/2 tsp baking powder 

1/4 tsp baking soda

Pinch of salt

100g buttermilk*

3/4 tbsp maple syrup 

15g butter, meltedWhisk together dry ingredients

Add in liquid ingredients

Whisk gently to mix(some small flour clumps is ok)

Cook pancakes until golden brown on both sides. 

Keep cooked pancakes warm during the cooking process. I cover them with a piece of foil. Cold pancakes are so not nice. 


* Can be store bought. Or make your own by adding 1/2 tbsp fresh lemon juice into 100g milk. Set aside for 5 mins for it to thicken. 

Serve with fresh fruits, maple syrup, bacon, eggs or whatever you desire.

With sunny side up, avocado and red pepper flakes

A video of egg porn :p

It's Final

Some of you might have noticed that this blog of mine had been locked for the past few weeks. Thanks to all of you who have sent me comments and emails to check if I’m alright. The truth is, I put my blog on hold to stop and think about the fate of this blog.

Since a few months back, my work has been zapping my energy throughout each working week. The current projects are underway, but my boss keeps having new ideas. So the workload piles up, but the manpower remains the same, and I end up working for 10 hours on some days. As a result, I hardly have time to even visit some of my favourite blogs, not to bake mention bake during the weekdays. When the weekends come around, all I want to do is to catch up on some rest. Even when I do bake, I have absolutely no mood to fuss around with what ‘setting', ‘backgound’, ‘lighting’, ‘utensils’ etc etc to use to take pictures. All I want to do is to cut and eat whatever came out of the oven.

What has happened? To be honest, I guess I have lost my enthusiasm for blogging. I don’t know about others, but taking and then editing pictures, followed by research on the post, and finally till the actual write-up, takes up a substantial amount of my time, something which I don’t have a lot of nowadays. I am rather particular about my pictures, but my photographs still turn out lousy each time. Even after two years, I still suck at them. That’s another disappointment for me.

After writing so much, it's time for the conclusion - I am putting this blog on hiatus indefinitely. I don’t think I will return to blogging anytime soon. But there’s no saying that I won’t, maybe when the blogging ‘bug’ bites again, you’ll see me around again. Before I say goodbye, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you – my readers, who has been visiting this blog for the past two years. I truly appreciate your constant encouragement and support. I will leave the blog open, in case anyone is interested in any of the recipes I have posted. Once again, thank you and take care!

It's Nice to Bake Again

Since it has been some time since I last baked, I thought I might just start with something simple, but my favourite - bread.


This time I made some buns - some filled with tuna and some with kaya(coconut jam). I used this recipe - halved the recipe and got nine buns.

The tuna ones - made with my own 'concoction' of tuna plus cottage cheese plus lots of freshly cracked black pepper :p


The kaya ones were simple, just pop open a bottle of kaya and fill the bun
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This Hokkaido Milk bread recipe is very very good, the buns taste as soft as those store-bought ones, but without the bread improvers and preservatives. It's also suitable for both sweet and savoury fillings. This time I used light cream by the brand President. The end result is exactly the same as single cream, but much cheaper.

P.S. Pardon the lousy pictures - it was pretty late by the time these buns were ready for photo-taking, after a busy Sunday....

Rock and Roll!

A big thanks to Ida of Baking Fiends, I found that I have bagged an award! The Rockin' Girl Blogger award originated from here, to give us girl bloggers a pat on the back. On my part, I'm going to pass on this award to two of my best blogger pals:

Anh from Food Lover's Journey - for her source of inspiration with wonderful sweets and desserts, and dishes that reflect her heritage

Gattina from Kitchen Unplugged - for her constant encouragement and support throughout my blogging 'life'

Besides this, I've also joined The Foodie Blogroll. There are many wonderful food blogs in this blogroll, shared by foodies who have a passion for food. So, please, visit these sites, I'm sure you'll enjoy them. Better still, join us in this blogroll by simply clicking on The Foodie Blogroll icon on the left of the page. Happy browsing!

I've been busy as hell over the past month or so. Made an overseas work trip to Taipei, followed by a company retreat, and more work back in the office. Did some simple baking over the weekends just to get myself back into the baking mood. Hopefully I'll be able to blog about food soon!