Busy start of 2015

It's a super busy start for 2015 for me - Eunice started primary school and with me getting stressed out with all the lunch boxes idea, as well as the "processes" in the school - which are all new to me, and a few information nights/meetings/assessments, and we decided to sign Eunice up for swimming lesson after all the read up & surveying around, later came February for Eunice's birthday, Chinese New Year, etc.

I thank God for His strength for me to have all these finally settled and over, especially for Eunice's school stuff - it's more into the routine now. Even she knows when is the PE class to wear the right shoes, and when is the library day to bring her library bag and library book.

So I've been pretty busy cooking especially for all these events.

For Eunice's birthday, I steamed a chocolate cake for her when we had a dinner in my aunt's house. So it was a early celebration for her with my cousins (her beloved playmates). It was really yummy. I got the recipe from: http://cakeonthebrain.blogspot.com, it's really easy and you don't even need a blender. The weather was rather warm on that day and we ate with vanilla ice cream, oh it was really very yummy!

Steam chocolate cake

And on Eunice's actual day of her birthday, I got a few of her little girl friends over just for a small party with the children. It's harder than I thought. Anyway I think they still had a good time (I hope!). I made an ice cream cake for the kids. And they loved it! A kid told me it's the best cake she's ever eaten - Wow! I believe kids don't lie. :)

For this cake, I got the recipe from: http://www.taste.com.au. But I didn't follow exactly. I only mixed a tub of vanilla ice cream with frozen raspberries and chocolate chips, and topped with Eunice's choice of favorite berries. I think it looked fabulous!

A week before Chinese New Year, I got some time off from office and I decided to try the bak kwa recipe that I saw from http://nasilemaklover.blogspot.com. It was so easy to make and it finished all in a day. However, I didn't make it again because cleaning up (the tray) is too much work. So, I only make it once. :D

Grilling in the oven

Looks pretty good after cutting up!

Chinese New Year is one culture that I'll surely want to keep and instill into my children. I made them say Gong Xi Fa Cai (ended up pretty hilarious with their aussie slang now), and cooked up a storm for our reunion dinner (or a storm was cooking instead). Nah, just being exaggerate. :P. I did cook up quite a bit for our reunion dinner, and we had it with two of our good friends from my hometown as this is their first CNY away from home. It was a good dinner. All the things that I cook are pretty easy - no, I didn't stay in the kitchen for 2 hours to cook all these. In fact, most of them are done quickly, and I still could run around for my errands and take a short power nap!

Roasted chicken. Recipe from: http://www.buzzfeed.com.
4 steps:
1) Thaw and dry the chicken
2) Season with salt & pepper (inside the cavity as well)
3) Truss the chicken
4) Into the oven for 200C for 1 hour 15 minutes.
Done!

My mum does this for every festive season or celebration.
Just lightly fry the hard boiled egg with oil.
We call them 炸蛋 (sounds like bombs in mandarin).

I got the very fresh banana prawns from the supermaket here. Cleaning them up was most probably the task that took up most of my time. And I used the recipe from my favorite cooking website: http://rasamalaysia.com/. Easy peasy and yummy yummy!

This was the first time I bought a whole fish ever since I came Aus. But I was very impressed that the fish from the fish pier outside my house is very very fresh, and it's not expensive too. Well, I just got a barramundi. The girls have not had steamed fish for a looooong time and surely ate a lot of them. Guess this dish will be a frequent dish on my dining table from now on.
5 easy steps:
1) Clean & dry the fish. Julienned the ginger and put on the fish & in the cavity.
2) Steam for 10 minutes (I poured away the water from the fish after steaming to avoid soil smell)
3) Put on fried garlic & garlic oil (pre-made)
4) Mix 1 tbsp soy sauce,  1 tbsp oyster sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and hot water. Pour over the fish.
5) Garnish with chopped spring onions and chili.

Spring rolls! My friend made this so I have no recipe for this.

Lotus root soup with pork ribs by me. Just boil pork ribs (cleaned), lotus root (I bought frozen ones from Asian grocery) and red dates (seeds removed) for 1 hour. Yummy-licious!

Standard stir fried vegetables with scallops by friend.

Our Reunion Dinner

Dishes on our reunion dinner - I was pretty proud of myself!

EG was a happy happy man on the CNY eve. Food was very good and he was full until the next day (yeap, no kidding!). But I didn't put up any decoration or made any CNY cookies this year. I'll surely improve myself next year though he told me it's already very good this year. :). And of course we gave red packets to the children. And I am also impressed with Eunice's school - they have a 1 hour mandarin class on Monday and she told me, "Mummy, it's the year of Goat this year!". :)

So now my major cooking for this year is done - for now! Until the next event comes up. In the meantime, introducing my new member on my kitchen counter!

Introducing - PHILIP AIR FYER!

I am so excited! My friend's mum decided to let go of hers as she hardly used it, so I got it at a big discount. And now, I am looking for recipes to see how this beautiful baby can help me with my cooking, to serve more delicious food for my precious family. :)

Till then,

Mango Smoothies

I love mangoes.

It's now mango season in Australia. Yum yum! The price is getting cheaper and cheaper since it's at the peak of the season now - we can get $2 for 1 mango, or sometimes less if buying in bulk! So, I've been cutting mangoes for our fruits pretty often for the past week. Last week, my friend from church gave me another 3 mangoes! *Drool big time*!

I try not to give the girls mangoes too often - Chinese believes that mangoes are heaty and might cause cough (especially since Nat has been coughing occasionally), but I can't keep them for too long as they might get overripe. As I was wondering what else I can do with them, I then came across this super simple smoothies recipe in a magazine.

We're having simple pizza for lunch today and I decided to make this drink to make the lunch more complete (lazy mum - I know!). I didn't follow the original recipe 100% but tweaked by using whatever I have in my pantry. Result? Oh, it's very very yummy! And it's very refreshing. Eunice had 2 cups. I didn't have almond meals so I didn't put into my drink. Now I know what to do if I have more mangoes. :D

Mango Smoothies

Mango & Honey Smoothies
Ingredients:
1 mango
400ml of fresh milk
1/2 cup of Greek Yogurt
1 tbsp of honey

Method:
1. Peel and chop mango into small pieces and place into a blender with milk, yogurt and honey.
2. Blend until smooth.

As simple as that. Yum! I must go buy almond meal one day and try with it. It should add extra flavor to the drink. :)

Baked Chicken Nuggets

One of the biggest challenges after moving to Melbourne is the need to cook every meal everyday. Well, my family, especially the father, he doesn't really like to eat out. I have been cooking almost 3 meals a day, 7 days a week since I came. I could count with my fingers on how many times I've eaten out so far. But I am not complaining. My family is not complaining. In fact, EG is such a happy man that he could eat at home for most of the meals. Simple logic - he happy, I happy, kids happy, everyone happy. :D

Cooking here is simpler - ingredients are easily available, weather is good - I cook with my sweater on most of the time, like cooking in aircond room haha! (I'll soon share when I have to cook during summer). Because of the different culture here, I can find many different types of food - greek. asian, japanese, korean, etc. Some of the cooking websites, like www.taste.com.au or Jamie Oliver's website, have all their ingredients available in the major grocery shops here.

So I decided to document down some of my recipes in my cooking journey. I am a full time working mum, with two clingy children, so my recipe is not going to be the super canggih one - but mainly the simple, quick, and easy recipe that can whip up a meal in 30 minutes or less. Maybe slightly more complicated ones during weekends or holidays.

To start of, during the weekend, I found chicken breast in my freezer and decided to make baked chicken nuggets for my girls as a treat. I surfed around for the internet to find the easiest recipe and I found one in kidspot.com.au, with most of the ingredients available in my kitchen. I tweaked it a bit to suit the ingredients I have.

Ingredients:
1 pc of chicken breast (about 250g-300g)
1/3 cup of plain flour
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup of breadcrumbs
1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese

Method:
1. Whisk egg in a small bowl
2. Mix breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese in another small bowl
3. Put the plain flour in a 3rd bowl.
4. Cut chicken breast into bite size pieces (not too thick).
5. Dip chicken breast pieces into the flour, dust off the excess, dip into the egg wash, and finally coat with the breadcrumbs and cheese mix. Press the crumb mix onto the chicken pieces. Place the chicken on the baking tray with aluminum foil (*Note 1).
6. Refrigerate the chicken pieces for 30 minutes.
7. Pre-heat oven to 180C. Put in the chicken pieces in for 20 minutes (*Note 2) until cook through.
8. Serve with ketchup.

*Note 1: The original recipe uses baking paper but I used aluminum foil. It still works, but the chicken pieces stick to the foil. I probably should have sprayed some oil on top to prevent them from sticking.
*Note 2: The original recipe only asked to bake for 10 minutes but I baked for 20 minutes as I worried the chicken pieces are not cooked through.

I am pretty happy with the final result. The Parmesan cheese makes the chicken pieces really flavorful. Girls love them so much that I have to keep it aside so they will eat the rice instead of keep biting on the nuggets.

Chicken pieces, flour, eggs and crumb mix

Ready to go into the oven.

Yum yum healthy nuggets!

Bread Baking

I have been wanting to try bread baking for very long. But I don't have a bread maker (don't plan to get one at the moment), and I cannot imagine how hard it is to knead with hands. And then, I saw Christine's blog posting a no knead crusty bread recipe, it looks so easy and I quickly saved it into my google drive. Still, I wasn't very sure to bake it, until last week.

I tried baking it with wholemeal flour, and I mixed in some cut apricot. And sad to say I am still not very good in my oven setting hence I used fan bake (which I read is 30C hotter than normal bake). And my bread got overbaked. However, it's still tasty. All of us (Yes, including Natalie) finished half of the bread for breakfast and it was so filling that we didn't feel hungry until lunch.

Wholemeal bread with apricot - overbaked.
Very hard but taste is good.

EG said the bread is good. Asked me to do it again. So, this round I followed the recipe carefully and precisely. I went to buy bread flour, and still I added in cut apricot. And this time, I used Bake function in my oven. I remember I put my bread dough into the oven and I went to bath with my girls upstair. When all of us are ready, when I opened my room door, Eunice said, "Wow mummy, the bread smells so nice...!" I was sooooo happy - that was one of the greatest motivation.

And when I went to the oven and see my bread - the satisfaction cannot be described. I just looked and looked at it and felt so happy about it. It was big and nice, but I had to cut them up so that I can keep them in some container. I had to admire it for a while before cutting them up. Silly me! :D

Tadaa! A successful attempt!

Fluffy bread inside.. Yummy!

Some asked me if the bread is very hard. No! The skin is crispy and the inside is soft. Well it's not so nice to eat just plain like this but if you put on butter and cheese, Wow, it's so good! :)

After that EG got really addicted to the bread. He told me he doesn't want to buy the normal bread out there anymore. So this round I tried the no knead herb wheat bread that Christine posted up after a few days. Again, it's NICE! But I forgot the step to shape it nicely, so the shape looks funny. However, it still tastes very good.

3rd attempt with Italian herb. Smell very very good :)

While I cut the bread into 3 portions to store in container, both my girls couldn't wait to taste the bread. And guess what, the two small girls (~14kg + ~9kg) finished 1/2 of my 1/3 bread, that means it's 1/6 of the bread. I really think it's quite a lot for 2 small girls - but they like it. As long as they like it, mummy is happy. It's homemade and I am pretty sure it's healthy. :)

So now, I am so addicted to bread making. I am still not getting a breadmaker. I think I'll stick to this recipe until everyone gets bored, and I think, it'll last for a while before they get bored. :)

Rice Cooker Recipes

Yea I've been cooking quite a bit for many months. So I really appreciate some quick and easy recipes especially when it's a busy weekend.

My friend shared this extremely simple chicken rice recipe with me and I found the original recipes here. I tried cooking it the first time and EG loves it so much! It's very nice, and it is also very very simple. It doesn't dirty the kitchen and the only oily thing is probably just the rice cooker! :) He loves it so much as it's so nice to eat, and yet it doesn't take up a lot of his time to do the clean up. :). So far, I've been making it for 3-4 times in the past 1.5 months and EG still loves it a lot. :)

Chicken Rice

Simplified Hainan Chicken Rice


Ingredients:
Boneless drumstick (approx 350g), garlic 2 cloves, ginger 3-4 pcs
White rice 2.5 cups, water 2.8 cups (Note: I just cook the normal amount that we take)

Chicken Marinade:
Salt 1/3 teaspoon, Rice wine 1 teaspoon


Seasoning:
Rice wine 1 big tablespoon, Salt 1/2 teaspoon

Steps:
1. Marinade the boneless chicken drumstick with salt and rice wine for 30 minutes.
2. Mince garlic & ginger.
3. Put rice & water into rice cooker.
4. Add minced garlic, ginger and other seasonings. Mix well.
5. Put the marinaded chicken on the rice, skin side faces down.
6. Cook as usual
7. Once cooked, do not open the cover and leave the rice & chicken inside the rice cooker for another 30 minutes.
8. Take out the drumsticks, mix well the rice.
9. Cut the drumstick into desired size.
10. Put some soy sauce on the chicken & rice before serve.

Later I found another recipe online for claypot chicken rice by using rice cooker here. Since I have all the ingredients at home so I decided to give it a try. It involves more steps than the chicken rice but still it's simple. Btw, I added the fried egg myself. :)

Claypot Chicken Rice

EG said it's also nice. But for this recipe, I need to clean up the wok since I need to stir fry the ingredients first but it's still consider a very simple and easy dish to do esp. when we need a quick meal. :)... So there two are for sure the must-keep recipes.

I love these recipes because I can pre-prepare them before I go out, and knowing that I have delicious meals awaiting for me when I come back. :)

New Kitchen Gadget

I have been cooking dinner after work since few months back. And I need to work very fast in order to clean up everything by 8pm so that I won't be too tired. I have been telling EG about getting a steamer so that I can steam and cook at the same time.

Though we have a normal pot that can do steaming, but somehow, the water always get collected on the dish and it became not so nice. If I use my wok to do the steaming, it'll be nicer but that means I need to wait for the steaming to be done before I can cook other stuff.

I wanted to get an electric steamer, but my husband is really an old fashion guy though he might not look like one. He prefers the conventional steamer. So, on Friday, we went to this shop that sells kitchen stuff at Bayan Lepas, and got our steamer.

My new steamer - It can go up to 3 tiers. :)

I tried using it today to do the steam pumpkin muffins. The steamer works fine and I really like it (so as EG though he's not the one using it... :P). And look at my muffins. :). They don't look as nice as the recipe links and they tasted a bit hard. However, my cutie pie Eunice loves it very much. She ate 2 straight after the muffins are cooled down.

Steam pumpkin muffins

I purposely did these muffins for Eunice's snack over the weekend. So, it's done by using some organic unbleached flour, organic molasses & organic pumpkin. No I didn't do it purposely, just so happen that I bought them few months back so I need to use them before they are expired. Not sure if it's because of the flour that the muffins didn't crack as nice as it's shown in the recipe. :P

Anyway, I'm still not good in baking. My muffins always turn out hard, or the cake turn out a bit wet. Though it's still edible, and sometimes EG said it's nice and I can see Eunice enjoy eating it a lot, but I still think there's a lot of rooms for improvement - though I seriously think I have no talent in baking. :P

Easiyo Yogurt Maker

I'm not exactly a yogurt lover, but while reading up on what food to give to a baby / toddler, yogurt always is mentioned as one of the good snack for small children.

I tried buying the yogurt from the supermarket and gave to Eunice. She eats them. But I don't really fancy them - 1) it's sweet for me 2) they are all low fat! They said babies need all the fats to grow. I never notice that most yogurt from supermarket on the shelves are either low fat or zero fat, until now. :P

I saw this Easiyo yogurt maker in an organic shop. I read up about it, asked around friends who used it, and all of them are giving very positive feedback on the yogurt maker. So I finally decided to get it. :)

Easiyo also has their own yogurt powder, which came with different delicious flavor. I just need to mix the powder with room temperature water in the Easiyo container, pour the hot boiling water into the maker and put the Easiyo container in, close the lid of the maker and leave it for 8-12 hours (I normally do it before bed time, and leave it overnight.). The next morning, I'll take it out and put it into the fridge. When I'm back from work, I have 1KG of fresh yogurt waiting for me! So easy!! :)

So far I have tried Apricot and Forest Fruits flavor, and they are just very nice! Eunice loves it very much. I have been giving it to her as snack after she's back from babysitter, or during weekend for breakfast. It's very filling and she can finish a bowl of it all by herself.

Both EG and I bought this for our mothers as Mother's Day present. My mum has used it to make 3 times already since there're more people in my house in hometown and they can finish it faster. And they love it so much. :)

This is definitely a highly recommended products for a family. :)

The yogurt powder mix

The yogurt mixture

Closed up - Benefits of Easiyo yogurt

The maker sitting on my kitchen counter overnight

The end product out from fridge (pic taken late, already eaten few times by Eunice :D)

The fresh home made yogurt! Yums!!

Baking & Cooking weekends

After Eunice comes into my life, cooking daily dinner is kinda impossible as it'll be too rush. So, EG and I have decided that we'll eat out on weekdays, and I'll cook on weekend so that he can enjoy some not so nice homecook food. :P


Recently I joined a Chinese parenting forum and there are mothers sharing their recipes. And their recipes are easy and simple. I tried making curry chicken. It looks so nice in the picture right? It tasted OK but can be improved further coz 1) I didn't have curry leaves 2) I didn't use santan, I used full cream milk (which is supposed to be used for muffins baking :P).. I'm definitely going to try this again...

Next, a mum share this recipe called 京都排骨(Kyoto ribs?). Anyway, the recipe is so simple. I just marinade the ribs with oyster sauce + soy sauce + sugar + five spice powder + corn flour before I went church on Sunday morning. And in the evening, I took them out, wrapped with aluminium foil, and bake at 200 degrees for 40 minutes. Actually it already tasted very nice from oven.

Then, just fry some garlic and mix tomato sauce, black vinegar, sugar, water together, add in the baked ribs and done! Again, it wasn't perfect because 1) too much gravy 2) too much sugar so too sweet 3)am going to add some dried chili next time to add some kick.

But all in all, I think it's not bad laa... at least EG finished everything though he also agrees that both the dishes could be better. :)

And I also baked muffins! I got the recipe from JoyOfBaking.com. It's carrot muffins with no milk / butter - the recipe only calls for corn oil (I used my Natural cooking oil). They are not bad, but taste a bit "raw" so EG didn't really like it. And I brought to office for colleagues to get them finish for me. :P

Sometimes, it's the cooking/baking process that I enjoy the most. It helps me to release my stress after taking care of a super active baby. Sometimes I hope I can take a few days off just to cook / bake at home but that will only happen in my dream... bah.....

HOG in Penang!

Recently, EG is kinda falling in love with cooking. But he only likes to cook Italian food which is his favorite. He has been searching online recipes up and down to make his bolognese spaghetti better. He also tried to make Aglio Olio - which is a quick and easy meal.

He was looking at some sausages @ Jusco the other day and told me seriously that he really needed some sausages from HOG (which i blogged previously) as we know those selling @ departmental stall are processed one, unlike HOG's which uses fresh & non artificial ingredients.

After checking with YY (the HOG's boss :P), finally we had a friend came up Penang from KL and she is kind enough to bring up nearly 5 dozens of sausages for us (not all for EG and me la... ours is only 2 dozens, the rest are friends' orders). And we have been cooking them quite often esp. when I have no time to cook. It's very easy & quick to prepare a meal with HOG's sausages. :D

So, now, pictures of some of our dinners.

Pan Fried HOG sausages with homemade salad & mashed potatoes

Pasta with HOG sausages and fresh herb

Well, HOG's sausages are full of meat! EG and I can take 2 sausages each and it's really very very filling. To be healthier, EG cut up some of the food / fruits that he can find in the fridge and make some salad as our vegetables. I'm amazed that he's seriously very creative. And the salad tasted very good as both of us prefer the cruncy type of salad. :D

Homemade salad with apples & celeries & tomatoes & olive oil & herbs

In our most recent "shipment" to Penang (yeah, 2nd shipment :P), we got some burger patties from HOG. And EG and I decided to make a quick dinner on last Friday before we left to Taiping for the weekend.

When EG is pan frying the burget patties in the kitchen while me settling down Eunice, I can already smell the great aroma from the patties. Yuummsss... And we fried extra eggs to go with our burger - with bread. :P... Oh it's so good as the burger is full of flavor.

Our burger with HOG's burger patty

A closer look - looko at the juicy meeeeaaatttt... yumm...

Now, we're going to wait and see who else is coming to Penang from KL. And HOG will get them to bring more sausages / burger patties up for us...! Yeahh...! I wonder if we could actually transport the roasted pork as well. Hmm... I shall leave it to the guys to think how to do that. :D

Btw, if anyone from Penang is interested with HOG sausages / burger / meatballs, do drop me a note so that i'll let u know when we're collecting orders for the next shipment to Penang. :)

Milo Agar Agar

Made this last 2 weekends. Not bad but I think I put too much milo powder (I love drinking milo with a lot of the Milo powder), so there's a layer of powder accumulated at the bottom of the jelly, and it caused the jelly to be a little bit bitter - just a little bit.

But it's still quite nice to eat. And very esy to make. Can be done in 20 minutes and I can do while Eunice is napping. :)... Will definitely do it again esp. on hot weather like these days.

Muffins Making

I have always wanted to try to make muffins. The steps look easy but I normally only like to try something that's already being tested - to make sure it's not too sweet and to prevent wastage in case it doesn't work. :D

Yvonne came to our place last weekend and showed me how to make her secret recipe for Banana Choc Muffins. Oh it tasted so good and the steps are so easy. :D... So, since it's a long weekend, I decided to try out the normal Vanilla Choc Chips muffins from some other ppl's blog since I'm lazy to go get the ripe bananas.

I just tried 1 recipe that yields 12 muffins - my muffin cups are tall (actually, i don't even know if they are the real muffin cups :P), else it should yield more than 12.

Baking in process

My cute cute muffins

Close up of the muffin with lots of choc chips :P

EG loves it! =) But he didn't know that the muffin cups can be reused and he spoilt one of them...! =.=

Wasted one muffin cup

I'll definitely try this recipe again next time..!

New Year Dinner

I told EG that I want to do something special for our new year dinner - not going out but trying to do bake salmon at home - since we know everywhere might be just jammed and crowded during this long holiday weekend.


We had simple breakfast & lunch at home while cleaning up our place. New Year should start with a clean house i think. :)... Cleaning up house is sometimes fun and have great satisfaction when the house is finally clean and dustless. But of course, it's tiring.

I found the simple recipe for baked salmon online with common ingredients. It only needs minced garlic, lemon, olive oil, parsley (I used dried parsley), dried basil, salt & black pepper.

We got our salmon from Jusco last week. I prepared the marinade, mix everything together, put the salmon in and left it in the fridge for 1 hour. In the meantime, I continued to help EG with the house cleaning task. :P

Marinade the salmon

Then, preheat the oven to 190 degrees and put the salmon + the marinade into aluminium foil. Seal them up and bake for 35-45 minutes. That's all. How easy right? :)... While waiting for the salmon to cook, I continue with the other side dishes - boiled brocolli with garlic powder & oregano, EG's favorite fried potatoes, and some coleslaw since I had some leftover cabbages in the fridge.

And Tada! Here's our new year dinner!

My dinner

EG's dinner with more potatoes

Oh the dinner was so filling. We were overly stuffed. But it tasted good! Yummy! :).. After dinner, we continued with the cleaning upstair and we completed everything around 10pm+. It felt so good with great satisfaction when we see the house is now clean and dustless! And by 11.20pm, both of us were soundly asleep after a whole day of exercising & cleaning. :)

What a good start of the first day of the year! :)

And today, my dear hubby is going to grant me a holiday by no cooking and bringing me out for meals. Yay! =)

Healthy Carrot Cake

My interest for baking suddenly increased during the last few months when I found that baking is actually not hard - provided you get the amount of the ingredients right! All you need to do is mainly mixing everything and bake them. The only hard thing is the washing part... argghh....

I tried to do this cake last month using the baking instead of the steam method, and it turned out not bad! I didn't blog about it as the steps are very simple and you can just follow the steps in the website. Anyway, the successful attempt definitely gave me a strong motivation to try baking again using my oh-so-lovely oven!

My mum taught me a healthy carrot cake recipe when I went back to Miri during CNY early this year. I thought since my sister who NEVER cooks can also make it successfully by her own, it shouldn't be too hard for me.. :P

Below is my mum's recipe (don't know where she got it from):

Ingredients:

Wholemeal mix flour - 200gm

Baking powder - 2 teaspoon

Bicarbonate of soda - 2 teaspoon

Brown sugar - 120gm (we reduced to 80gm as we don't like it to be too sweet)

Eggs - 2 nos

Natural Oil - 10 tablespoon

Carrot - 250gm - 300gm

Orange - 1/2 no

Raisins - 80g (optional)

Steps:
1. Beat brown sugar, oil, eggs together with a wooden spoon.

2. Add wholemeal flour + baking powder + bicarbonate soda (sieved), carrot (grated - this is the hard one), raisin. Stir evenly.

3. Bake at 170 degrees for 50 minutes. If the top of the cake is too wet after 50 minutes, bake at 120 degrees / 130 degrees using top fire.

4. After baking, poke the cake with "satay stick" and pour 1/2 no of orange (extract its juice) mix with 1 teaspoon of brown sugar.

Done! Easy right? And it's healthy too!

I tried it tonight. And I made it really healthy by using organic wholemeal flour (actually it's because I can't find the normal wholemeal mix flour :P), and organic raisins (which my mum bought for me but I didn't really like to eat). It didn't turn out as nice as my mum's. I used organic wholemeal flour and I think that's why it's more dry than my mum's. Hers is more moist. But anyway, it's edible. I shall try it again next time to improve it! =)

Note that I doubled the portion to yield the cake of the below size.

My first attempt of healthy carrot cake

A Good Sunday

A good day always starts with good breakfast...

It's a Good Sunday! =)