Baking Cake With Shannon

Making Mooncake

is TOUGH!

We happily bought the lotus paste and mooncake mould from Singapore in May and realised that we didn't get all other ingredients like fried glutinious rice flour, alkaline water, shortening flour, golden/mooncake syrup, Hong Kong flour etc etc!! I simply thought it was easy.. silly me!!

When I was going to turn the mooncake into Lotus Pau, J and some friends helped to get some alkaline water, shortening flour and Hong Kong Flour from some Singaporeans who were selling Mooncake here.

Last Thursday, I got some of my friends to my house to make some Traditional mooncake. We got ambitious and tried to do the Snowskin Mooncake even without the correct flour..


The biggest problem we had was wrapping the BIG portion of lotus paste into a very small dough. In the end, we just ignore what the recipe instructed and tried our best to squeeze the lotus paste into a bigger portion of dough.

To cut the story short, I will just show how our mooncakes looked like.

Verdict is - ...Traditional Mooncake is Edible... Snowskin Mooncake was kind of failed project cos we still can taste the flour in the snowskin.

Hmm.. I think I will just go and buy from those Singaporean who are selling one for $5-7 euros/mooncake.

Over Baked Butter Cake

It had been years since I last bake a butter cake. I decided to bake it on Saturday night since I have left over butter which was going to expire.

I thought it was really easy thus I anyhow creamed the butter and sugar.. lolz.. and of cos, it was unsuccessful and I have to throw away the butter and redo it again. This time, I put the butter in the microwave for 20 second and successfully creamed it with sugar. Then, I "itchy-backside", put the batter into the Mickey Mouse Mould instead of the normal rectangle mould. In the end, it was over baked... ;p Luckily it was still edible.. ^_^

Love Letters

I know Valentine Day is approaching but I am refering to Kuih Kapit aka love letters. LOL... We brought over the Kueh Kapit Maker (given by my 3rd sis)from Singapore and J was dying to try it few weeks ago.

Thus, when J was on leave on Monday after my Egg Retrieval, he started to make Kuih Kapit himself while I was resting and Shannon was taking her nap.

Well, I must say it tastes good!

More Pineapple Tarts

Last week, we decided to make more pineapple tarts! Thus I "jio" 3 of my friends to make them together as most of our kids were all in Creche till 430pm. Luckily, we cooked the pineapple jam a day before. We only managed to finish everything at about 8pm and ended up with about 500pcs of pineapple tarts to distribute.

This time, the cookies were soft and buttery and the pineapple jam is not sticky at all. Delicious! :D

Kueh Bangkit & Pineapple Tarts

Chinese New Year is coming. Over here in France, we will be celebrating our CNY with the J's company on the First Day of CNY. There will be no CNY lighting unless we are in Paris Chinatown. As for our home, we will do some spring cleaning and decorate it to enhance the CNY atmosphere. There are no CNY cookies selling years, thus we have to make it ourselves.

These are the Kueh Bangkit and Pineapple Tarts I made it with Mai last weekend.








Kueh Bangkit was very successful with Sago Powder J had bought over from Singapore. As for the pineapple tarts, we find the the pineapple filling was a bit sticky and the pastry was not buttery enough. We will be trying again soon. ;p

Pandan Chiffon Cake - Failed

I had tried baking Pandan Cake 5 years ago for a few times but never really succeed before. The first time was a disaster, I was teased by neighbour for making a Pandan Quay instead of Pandan Cake. *_* Last Sunday, I decided to try it out again!



Well, the Pandan Cake looked damn nice in the oven. But when I took it out to cool down, it sank badly in the middle! When Shannon saw the cake on the table, she started to sing the "Birthday Song"



After I sliced it, I realised that the lower part of the cake was still slightly damp. I should have left it to bake for another 10 more minutes.

Well, taste was good according to J. My sis told me that our aunts in Bekok ,Malaysia bake yummy Pandan Cake. They just mixed everything together, beat it and bake it! 100% of the cakes came out tall and nice?? I think I need to give them a call one day to find out how they do it! :P

Shannon Tracing Skills

Her tracing skills is getting better each day. So is her coloring skills! She is trying her best to color within the lines too.

Frankly speaking, I am not sure whether she is ready for all this. I did not follow the guidelines given, eg, the correct way of doing the strokes. I will just tell her what she is supposed to do and I will just let her continue. For example, when she is tracing a square, she used one stroke to finish it like how she traced a circle. Sometimes, I will just remind her and I can see that she will try to stop at the corner of the square and continue tracing. I do not want to give her too much rules as I am afraid that she will lose her interest. Afterall, she is still young and shouldn't be bounded by too many rules! In this way, she can let her creativity juices flow freely. ^_^

For those who are interested, I printed out all the above worksheets on the following websites.

Handwriting for Kids

Printable Worksheets for Kids

Enjoy with your kids!