Fluffy, very banana-y banana bread.

Banana bread.

Aileen: You know there's this banana diet in Japan?

Me: Huh? How? Eat banana all day?

Aileen: You go google it. It's damn popular everywhere now.

Which explains why I have 16 bananas sitting on top of my fridge.

Then my mum called and told me about the recent article in the paper about the banana diet craze. It explains that only certain variety is suitable for this diet. The long, green (even when ripe) bananas from Philippines is the worst type of banana to eat on an empty stomach, as the diet suggested. Coincidentally, the 16 bananas I bought happened to be of that variety. Sigh, what to do. Bake banana bread.

Even though it is called banana bread, the taste and the texture is more of a cake. But unlike the normal banana cake, this recipe has got alot of banana in it, thus it has got an awesome banana flavour. A very banana-y fluffy cake. I got the recipe from Professional Baking, and modified it to my logic. haha, I didnt follow their instructions to make. Therefore: use this recipe at your own peril.

Banana bread- makes 1 20cm round tin, and 2 ramekins.

250g plain flour
150g cornflour
10g baking powder
2g baking soda (i don't think it makes much of a difference)
pinch of salt
150g brown sugar
100g butter (melted)
3 yolks
3 whites
350g (4) ripe bananas (the more ripe it is the better)
50g sugar (what colour, brown, white)

1: Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius. Grease and line tin.

2: Mash the bananas into puree with 50g sugar. You can do a rough mash or a ultra fine mash, depending on your preference. Rough will give you banana bits in the cake. I did mine medium. Set aside.

3: Whisk yolks to pale and light. Add sugar and whisk to thick and creamy.

4: Sieve flours, baking powder and soda, and salt together. Fold 1/3 into yolk mixture.

5: Add 1/2 melted butter and fold.

6: Add rest of the flour mixture, fold and add the rest of the butter. Fold until all the flour is incorporated. The batter should be quite thick, almost like a very wet dough.

7: Stir in the banana mixture. Mix till homogeneous.

8: Whisk whites to stiff, fold it through the batter. Take care not to overmix, we don't want to
loose any of the aeration. It is crucial for the fluffiness of the cake.

9: Pour into tins, bake at 190 degrees celcius for 50minutes or till the cake springs back when pressed.

Tadah!

I used the sponging method for this recipe, whereby you whisk whole eggs to ribbon stage, and I thought myself very stupid. Whisking whole eggs to ribbon stage by hand is very hard work. Though I have never tried the above method, but I suppose it works as well and it is easier to execute. haha, you guys can try then you tell me. I had a shock while folding in the flours with the whole egg mixture. I didn't realise there was so much flour to fold! When the batter became so heavy, all I could think was shit.... So after I added the banana, I whisked two whites to stiff peaks and folded them through. Therefore, I thought it would be better if the eggs were whisked separately. Anyway, if it doesn't work, you can always come back to do the sponging method and break your arm at the same time. haha. just kidding.. :D

Bon appetite!

End.

Tonton by Azuma

I found another good ramen stall! Tonton by Azuma. Stella and I found it by chance while walking home from mamak. So we decided to lunch here after French class. J'ai tres faim!

Our appetiser, haha. Roast pork inside-out sushi. $4. It's good! I like the generous spicey powder on the top and pork filling, well seasoned! They also have that Japanese soda where you have to push the marble down into the bottle to drink it. Reminds me of my kuku veggies days where we'd definitely go crazy over this stuff.

Tonton ramem, Tonton's special, $9.90. It has got a thick broth with sesame overtones and a small gathering of chilli oil. Generous givings of wakame and spring onion as well. :D This reminds me of the pork ramen I had in Hokkaido. ahhh... the char siew is not as good though, far from it. Still, I will come back for the soup.

Stella ordered sukiyaki udon, $8.80. Similar to Makoto, though Stella prefers Makoto's sukiyaki udon. I had a taste of it. I do think it is quite good.

End.

Mamak

This is my second time to mamak now. Together with Sam and Stella, we ate $75 worth of prata food. Hias... it's sooo expensive compared to Singapore but we still go because it is sooo good.

I have never tried the satay, so we ordered half dozen of chicken satay. It is good as usual, not dry, nicely seasoned. The best part of it is the peanut sauce. Generous roughly chopped peanut in a nicely balanced curry sauce (not too sweet, not too spicy). Though it is painful to admit, Mamak does it even better than most of the satay hawker in Singapore.

We also ordered Maggi Goreng, something you will only find in Malaysia. This is also really good. The maggi is cooked to al dente, then I guess it is stir-fried in belaccan chilli. Even after stir-frying, the noodle still has got a bit of crunch, I was really impressed.

Kari kambing, lamb curry, Sam's choice. Though I have eaten better (in Malacca), mamak's version is not bad at all. I like.

As for prata, we had 2 plain prata and 1 egg and onion prata. I don't know why Singapore and Malaysia have different names for prata. In Malaysia, they call it cenai, therefore it is also called cenai here, since Mamak is a Malaysian restaurant. Prata is here is a little disappointing. It is not crispy, and I do think they could have cooked it abit more. I want Singpore, Jalan Kayu prata!

Heh heh, we are super full. But, ofcourse, we can't leave without having...

Desserts!

Prata kaya with ice-cream. Normal tasting, though I wonder where they got their kaya.

This one's special and quite popular, thats why we ordered it. This prata had margarine and sugar enveloped in within, then it is cooked for 20mintues. The end result is a super caramelised prata. The entire prata is crisp with caramel sugar. By the time the prata came, I was too bloated to fully appreciate it. I shall have it the next time. :D

End.

Another failed blood donation

Morning 11:30am, I spent half an hour tying my hair into 2 french plaits but I was fifteen minutes early since Kimmy came 1/2 an hour late. We, more accurately I, are going to do a super good deed. We are going to give our precious blood to someone in need.

We arrived at the blood donation venue after lunch (according to 3 times donor Kimmy, we have to go on a full stomach, and we got to have lots of sugar flowing in our blood, so she bought the super sweet bubbletea for the extra boost. But according to the failed Biology student, me, a full stomach is more than sufficient, I don't want to be mistaken to be diabetic) to a full house event. The wait was 1 and 1/2 hours. No thank you, I will come the next day. So off we went to the city~

Christmas is coming! We found a 3 storey high Christmas tree inside of QVB. Nowhere as extravagant as Singapore but very christmassy all the same. We've only manages to fit the tree trunk with our faces.

So Kimmy and I met up with Stella in the city and went for another round of eating in Chat Thai, this popular Thai restaurant in the city. Banana fritters and cendol! If I swap the current banana diet rage for banana fritters and cendol every morning, I bet I will go in the other direction with a very possible diabetic condition.

After the erm.. tea break, we went for a fruit gathering at paddy's market where $2 pineapples and hoards of bananas are. Stella and I swept 10 bananas, 6 golden kiwis, a bunch of grapes and a $2 pineapple with us. Hooray.

In the space of time we had before dinner:

We competed for the lamest facial expression.

And guys, I hate to break this to you, I grew fatttttttt. haha! I have no idea why I feel so happy about it but the thought of being able to tell people that I have grown in mass makes me very happy. :D Time to loose some weight girl.

Dinner. Gule rice at Joy cafe (Indonesian cafe) is super yummy! Fatty mutton is stewed in a curry like soup until soft and is served with a dash of lime on the top. The thing with the weight can wait.

End.

Feuille D'automne, Buche de Noel, L'exotic Charlotte

CONGRATULATIONS BARRACK OBAMA FOR WINNING THE ELECTION!

Yeah, I am super happy for America, and the world now. It is funny, and equally as scary, how one man can affect so much. Well, Mr. Obama, thank you.

Okay, this week is happiest week in Superior Patisserie. We got to make gateaux! hahaha! Sustainable, edible stuff at last.

So this is the Buche de Noel (Christmas Log Cake) demonstrated by Chef Herve. It tastes quite nice though it is different from the Singporean version. Here, a cointreau mousse, chocolate mousse and the almond dacquoise are used in the log cake instead of the swiss roll. Therefore, it gives a lighter texture and is much sweeter. Though I like both versions, I do prefer the swiss roll version because it gives more substance. Airy stuff, blahhh.

This beautiful cake is feuille d'automne, which translates to autumn leaves in French. It is made with 3 discs of almond meringue, sandwiched with chocolate mousse. The outer decorations are constructed entirely with chocolate, tempered and untempered, to give the different effects. It is so chocolatey that my mind went blank, all I could think of is to sink my teeth into that velvety chocolate mass. -But Chef Keith wants to keep it for the afternoon tea session. No tasting...

L'Exotic Charlotte. It is a complicated cake with many conponents to prepare. First, Chef Herve made the stenciled joconde, which is the green wave pattern you see. Then he made 2 discs of hazelnut and almond meringue. Next, a ring of mango jelly, followed by coconut mousse and the chocolate shavings. Oh ya, and a chocolate ganache. A container of poached pineapple and mango was made the day before. Below, a plated dessert version of the charlotte with Chef Herve's signature chocolate shavings.

L'Exotic Charlotte. Doesn't taste like much though. Mango jelly hasn't got enough mango, coconut mousse is drowning in whipped cream. But at least I got to try it. :D

Presenting my cute Buche de Noel! Mushroom and snowman complete! This is quite easy to make, though time-consuming.

My feuille d'automne. My chocolate "leaves" are so ugly!!! Now I know why we have to temper chocolate. Untempered chocolate is so hard to work with! But I will conquer them all, haha!

End.

Kam Fook

Stella, me, Ja and Kimmy ate dim sum at Kam Fook. And watched the ridiculously abrupt Burn After Reading afterward. We did lots of window shopping too. heehee, a girls' date.

Dim sum, the first round. Followed by many seconds which I failed to capture in my camera due to overzealous eating. The only dish that we all disagreed on was the Xiao long bao. It was dry and mush. Other than that, the rest of the dim sum were good!

Desserts. Egg tarts! Mango pudding! Bean curd! Oh, how I miss you so!
Immediately after lunch, we caught Burn After Reading and left the cinema with a big HUH? on our faces. All that trouble for a stupid plastic surgery. Ofcourse there are the underlying social issues that I think the directors want to highlight how stupid they were, but they are lost on me. I just kept thinking why did Brad Pitt have to die so early?

Anyway, we walked alot after the movie to window shop while Kimmy does the actual shopping work, until dinnertime. We dined at Pattison's which Chef Karen aparently is crazy about. Pattison's is a cafe cum patisserie which has a few branches in Sydney.

Date scone (Ja), Cheesetart (Stella), Palmier (Kimmy) and Salmon quiche (me).

Bloated till the point of puking, we went home.

End.

Chocolate Showpiece

2 weeks of intensive chocolate sessions have changed my feelings for chocolates. Previously, chocolate was difficult to deal with, tempering is hell and the uniform is always covered with chocolate after each class. After I got past the tempering hurdle, chocolate is just plain tedious, the constant re-heating and a super messy bench. Plus it is a non-eating project which leaves me very hungry during each demo class. I still prefer eating to making. ._.

This week, we were supposed to make a chocolate showpiece, a cumulative project which takes three days to complete. But Chef Herve was so fast and efficient with chocolate, he made 2 showpieces and a few extra decorative pieces in the time we made 1 showpiece.

His fishy showpiece. The giant fish is made with with several egg shell in varying sizes. I call the prehistoric-looking fish Nemo's great grand-dad. And it looks as though it is trapped in Medusa's hair while trying to get to the flower. haha.
The second chocolate showpiece is a bird perched on a tree. For some peculiar reason, I didn't document my showpiece, again. I thought I did take at least one picture of my showpiece but I just can't find it in the photo library. My computer seems to reject stuff that it thinks are not aesthetically pleasing. Bahh.

Strangely, my friends' showpieces survived. (Hey, mine is not that bad okayy.)

Hong's doggy in a shrine piece.
Stella's (if I remember correctly) ribbon forest piece.

This is my favorite. Cynthia's flying turtle piece.

End.