dccokinn

Oh wow, Year 2015 is almost coming to an end soon! And Meg's Pastry Studio is officially closed for the holidays :) No Christmas bakes at all this year as I'm setting off for a vacation, yippeeeeeeee! For the last quarter of the year, once again I'm blessed with a comfortable number of cake orders. Most of the orders were from referrals and existing customers who have ordered my cakes before, as well as a couple of new customers. And once again, they are all rainbow and ombre cakes, considered my niche now? LOL! Really appreciate their trust in me, an amateur homebaker :) Apologies to a number of customers whom I had to turn away because of my travels :p While I enjoy baking cakes, making sure each and every order turns out nicely, there are times when I doubt myself whether I should continue doing it, especially when the cakes didn't turn out well, accidents occurred or I'm dissatisfied in general and I simply had to re-work the cake or part of the cake. Then again...

Few days ago, I had this huge craving for egg tarts. While it's easy to just hit the stores and buy them off the shelf, I know I should make them on my own so as to customise to my taste and size. Since I'm feeling lazy busy, I wanted something quick and easy, so decided to stick to my tried and tasted recipes ( tart pastry from Hokkaido Bake Cheese Tart and fresh milk egg filling from Hong Kong Flaky Egg Tart ) which I'm very familiar by now. Using the exact recipes, managed to yield 13 mini egg tarts, with a little bit of egg filling left. Probably coz my tart pastry was a little thicker, could probably make 14 or even 15 tarts. Borrowed the below pictures of making tart pastry from my Hokkaido Bake Cheese Tart page coz I was rushing and didn't have time to take photos.   (A) Tart Pastry 100g plain/cake flour 20g icing sugar 50g salted butter, cut into cubes, cold 1 egg yolk 1/2 tsp fresh milk 1. Sift flour and icing sugar into a large bowl. Add cold salted butter...

The weather is certainly turning chilly as we approached the end of the year with frequent thunder storms. At times like this, I would crave for a hot bowl of hearty soup that's creamy yet not too heavy. I'm a big fan of Soup Stock Tokyo and it's a must to dine at least one meal there when in I'm in Tokyo. This time, I even bought the soup bowl and spoon :p Unfortunately there are only 2 shops in SG and both are far from where I stay and frequent :( Anyways, this particular soup is inspired by the one I had in Tokyo last year, the Scallop and Napa Cabbage Yuzu Kosho Chowder. It was creamy and sweetness came from the napa cabbage and scallop, yet light and refreshing because of the cabbage and Yuzu Kosho flavouring. Key ingredients are napa cabbage, scallop and Yuzu Kosho. I didn't have Yuzu Kosho and had to omit that. Came up with my own version with clam, dried scallop, streaky bacon, baby cabbage, carrot, onion, chicken stock and clam stock. To replace the Yuzu Ko...

Continuing with my sandwich/panini craze, this time a different version, open-faced sandwich! I had some baby portobello mushroom and cherry tomatoes leftover in the fridge and this idea of making open-faced sandwich just came up. Thought it would be virtually appealing, although quite cumbersome to eat (bits and pieces dropping all over). Mushroom, tomato and bread on their own would be a bit too dry, so I got some avocado to add a creamy texture to the sandwich. The avocado cream could also help hold the toppings together. Actually making the mushroom and tomato toppings as well as the avocado cream is really simple. For the bread, too lazy to make so I bought some wholemeal walnut bread. Actually any bread is fine, whether rustic country loaf or sourdough. The baby portobello mushroom is sliced and mixed with minced garlic, olive oil, sea salt, balsamic vinegar and some fresh thyme. Then I simply used the air-fryer to cook them for about 6-7 mins. Same goes for the cherry tomato top...