BREAD AND MORE BREAD

Remember how our parents got the bread for our breakfast table?

  

Thanks to these "Roti" men! They are always rounding the neighbourhood with "pei put-pei put" sound regardless of rain or shine!

My favourite then was the Brown bread wrapped in waxed paper from Federal Bakery as well as the round loaf bread. Nowadays these are not available any more.   

Sarah is very busy with her assignment throughout this month.  So I am again stuck in the house during the weekend.  Well, never mind there are plenty of things to do around the house - which I am too lazy to start doing.  There  is gardening(weeding) to do- but it is too hot to stay outdoors. Lame excuses all. And there are plenty of recipes to try -yes this one I will do.

Well at least, I have cleaned out the old shoe cupboard to make way for Phow-Phow's new home (cage).   Finally Esther has bought the cage back. The dog  has been lying on the floor outside the house and of course she loved being inside the house - lying on the cool marble floor especially in the hot afternoon while we are at home, otherwise, I think it is on the hot floor  outside while we were at work.  During rain or thunderstorm, she would rushed into the house and really "stick" very closely  by us.  Now she is happy to have her  own space!

She is always "camera-shy"!

I am still in the "bread-making craze" mode.   So it is another day of preparing the starter dough for a Raisin Bread (Flavours Magazine) and Honey Wholemeal Loaf (recipe from HoneyBeeSweet's blog).

The Raisin bread was not that successful.  Though the texture was soft and fluffy and flavour was good, but the bread tends to stick in-between the teeth! Definitely a no-no for me. Besides it just took too long! And I was starting to feel a bit feed up with the whole process!

Whereas the Honey wholemeal loaf was very good. I managed to get 8 Tuna Buns (from one can of tuna chucks) and one mini loaf from the recipe.

I also tried the recipe of Char Siew Soh (recipe from Through The Kitchen Door Blog) and the pastry was very good - can see the layers and the filling - well I cheated a bit and used the char siew sauce that came with the char siew but it was very tasty.

While waiting for the dough to proof, I decided to try out a Steamed Chocolate Cake as I had some leftover evaporated milk from making the Tomato Rice. (Recipe from Cookingcrave.blog)

Put together the evaporated milk (200gm), butter (180gm) and sugar (i reduced to 180gm) and mix till they are melted.
Add in 2 lightly beaten eggs when mixture has cooled.

Stir in the sifted dry ingredients - flour (100gm), cocoa powder (50gm), baking powder and banking soda (1/2 tsp each) and 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Pour batter into cake pan and cover with foil.
Steam over medium/high heat for 45 minutes. (remember to have a kettle of hot water standing by to refill if necessary).

At first I was rather sceptical about this cake but I was totally won over with the texture and the flavour.

This picture does not do justice to the texture of the cake (it was taken with my mobile phone).  The cake is soft and moist and very chocolatey (?) even without a hint of chocolate used!

So in the end I am happy with my weekend  - did someone say that chocolate is a "happy" food.