Cream Cheese Frosting

3 oz cream cheese
1/2 stick butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Cream together cream cheese and butter.
Beat in powdered sugar in small batches until smooth.

Thanksgiving 2011

What a deal - a 14 lb turkey for US$5! 

For something different, we had tri-color baked potatoes (recipe here) instead of mashed potatoes this year. Also made the pumkin pie with condensed milk instead of evaporated milk, but don't like it as much - find it too "thick".

Apple Picking

Apple picking in fall.

 Notice something funny about this photo? (Apple boobs!)

In-a-hurry Peanut Sauce

Bought some peanut chicken skewers from a warehouse store, cooked them, and found them to be quite tasteless.  I had to make a peanut sauce in a hurry to salvage the food.  Following is simple recipe I put together, that can also serve as a salad dressing, gado-gado salad sauce, satay sauce, noodle sauce, etc.

2 rounded tablespoons peanut butter
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic chilli sauce

Put in bowl and microwave 1 min.  Stir till smooth.
Adjust to taste.

Prima Taste Laksa & Meesiam

The Prima Taste Laksa is my favorite - makes really authentic Singapore laksa!  Their meesiam, satay, sayor lodeh, chicken rice sauce are all good too.  You can order online from a store in California, but shipping charges add quite a bit to the cost.

Smurf Egg??

Sorry, I can't tell you how to create this Smurf looking egg, because it just turned out like that!  All I did was crack an egg and fried it and then realized that it looked like a Smurf.  Strange....but cute.  Do you see the two eyes, and mouth, and the tuft of hair on top?

Ideas for leftover turkey

Boil turkey carcass and left over wings, legs etc with onions, ginger and bay leaf to make turkey macaroni soup.  Add in shredded leftover turkey meat.

Dice leftover turkey meat, add frozen veggies that have been heated thru, and stir in leftover turkey gravy.  Place in pie dish or individual bowls, top with puff pastry or ready-made pie crust, and bake till pastry is browned.

Chocolate Lollipops

Ages ago, when I was a stay-home mom, I had time and patience to make these cute candies as gifts for teachers, Sunday school kids, etc. I made even fancier ones with Mickey and Minnie on pretzel sticks, but didn't take photos of them back then.

Whipped Cream Recipe

3 cups heavy cream
Half of a 3-oz package of vanilla or white chocolate instant pudding mix
1/3 cup icing sugar, also called confectioners sugar, or powdered sugar

Alternately:
4 cups heavy cream
One 3-oz box instant pudding mix

Whip ingredients together until stiff peaks form.

(The instant pudding mix is to make the cream more firm so piped decorations do not wilt and will hold their shapes.)

Tips:  If using food coloring, use White Chocolate Instant Pudding Mix as it's whiter than the Vanilla flavor and better for adding coloring.
If not adding food coloring, can substitute other flavored pudding mix thus making Chocolate Whippted Cream, or Pistachio Whipped Cream, etc

Baking Tips

Pandan essence

An angled spatula is great for smoothing the frosting on the cake.

Recommend buying this pack of 8 small jars of gel food coloring.  It will last you a long time as the colorings are very concentrated.

The 8-pack has jars half the size of regular bottles.

Reusable piping bag with star tip - a must for cake decorating.

A super-sized pancake flipper (from dollar store) is very useful...

....for picking up halved cakes and prevent breakage.

Cake flipped over safely with help of spatula!

Strange Dried Shrimp