Little Madeleine Cakes

My Mum bought this electric 'Dough Cake Toaster' from Indonesia. If you live on this side of the world, you might be familiar with these little cakes that they sell at the bakeries. But I think they use a different type of cake batter than I do. I got this recipe for Madeleine cakes from my sister in law Margaret and they taste divine, especially when they're hot and crisp on the edges!

Ingredients:
2 eggs
3 tbsp caster sugar
2 tbsp icing sugar
1/4 cup self-raising flour
1/4 cup plain flour
75g butter, melted
dash of vanilla essence/extract

1. Combine the eggs, caster sugar and sifted icing sugar in a bowl and with a mixer, beat the mixture until thick.
2. Sift the flour over the egg mixture and add the melted butter on the side of the bowl with the vanilla and fold everything in gently.
3. Use a madeleine pan or an electric cake toaster like mine and bake till cooked (cooks very fast).

I should call these 'Little Caelyn Cakes'....hehehe. PS. This is how she poses everytime i point the camera at her. Total fake smile.

Vietnamese Fish Dipping Sauce

This is the quintessential Dipping Sauce that is practically the national Dipping Sauce of Vietnam (or so me thinks). It goes on their Bun (Grilled meat on vermicelli), or dipping sauce for the rice paper rolls and even salads. It really tickles your taste buds.

Recipe amounts are to your liking:
Garlic
Red Chilli
Fish Sauce
Sugar
Lime Juice

Best way is to use a pestle and mortar. Pound the garlic and chilli and add the rest of the ingredients. It's supposed to be sweet, sour, salty. The garlic makes such a difference, previously i never knew we were supposed to add garlic to it, till I watched a show where this vietnamese girl was teaching the audience how to make the sauce. See, who says tv is bad for you.....hehehe.

A Fun Day at Wild Wild Wet at Downtown East

On Sunday we took Caelyn to Wild Wild Wet to have a bit of a swim. We've always wanted to check out Wild Wild Wet, but for some reason never got around to it. HSBC credit card has a promo going on which gives you 20% off the entrance fees and if you're an NTUC member, tickets are even cheaper for you.

We were surprised that the park wasn't that crowded, i told Edmund that maybe cos Singaporeans don't like staying out in the sun so much. We had bought along Caelyn's swimming vest, but were told that we couldn't use it and had to use their life vests. And surprisingly this was provided for free! Even Wet n Wild at the Gold Coast doesn't provide any life vests for free to the guests. Great value added service. They have different size life vests for the little ones all the way to adult sized ones. i later found out that these vests are quite fun to use for floating alon on the lazy river (or what they call Shiok River)...hehehe.

There are also lockers for hire for $2 per use. note that i say per use because each time u decide to open ur locker u'll have to pay another $2 to lock it, which really sucks. So what we did was just use the lockers to store our clothes, shoes and valuables.Other things like drinks, towel and sunscreen we took out and put aside on a bench or deckchair. It seems relatively safe, a lot of ppl also did that with their stuff. It would be great if they installed some water fountains in the park tho. I guess they'd prefer if u just go buy drinks from the pizza hut, kfc or food stalls they have in the park. They say you're not allowed to bring in outside foods into the park, but there is no bag checking at entry, unlike at Sunway Lagoon, where even water bottles had to be thrown away before entry.

We spent most of our time at the Shiok River and the Children's pool which is called Yakult Professor's Playground. The Shiok River is excellent, tubes are free (again, unlike at Sunway Lagoon) and they have big tubes as well as a smaller tube which I found more comfortable for floating on the river while having most of your body submerged in the water. Or you could just grab a life vest and use that. Caelyn really enjoyed being able to float around without us holding onto her hands (tho little did she know we were still holding on to the back of her vest). These vests have a tendency to make u float either straight face down or on ur back. So for the little ones you need to hold on to them so they remain upright. The difference with this river compared to those at other waterparks is that this one actually has waves turned on every so often which makes it so much more fun. And in some of the areas they make it into a river rapid where the water jets underneath propel your tube. I could've probably stayed there all day.

The Yakult Professor's Playground was also very good. There were several fun and winding slides that we could go down on with our child sitting on our lap. At least if we couldn't go on the big slides, we still had fun going on the small ones :p And the smile on Caelyn's face when she was going down the slide was just priceless.

Too bad I wasn't able to take more photos cos of the locker situation, I didn't want to leave my camera lying around unattended. So was only able to take a couple of snaps just before we got changed as we were too keen on getting into the fun. Maybe next time. We'll definitely go back.

Vietnamese Honey Chicken Wings

Recipe adapted from: Authentic Recipes from Vietnam book by Thi Choi and Marcel Isaak.

This is realllly goood. You can also use this recipe to roast a whole chicken.

Recipe:

2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground white pepper
1 fresh chicken (1 1/4kg)

Honey Glaze
3 tbsp honey
2 tbsp sweet black soy sauce
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tsp sesame oil

Method:
1. Combine the sugar, sesame oil, salt and pepper in a bowl, and mix well. Rub the mixture onto the outside and inside of the chicken. Seal the cavity with a skewer and set aside for at least 1 hour.
2. Preheat the oven to 190C.
3. Combine the Honey Glaze ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
4. Place the chicken on a roasting pan and spread 1/2 of the Honey Glaze over the chicken. Roast the chicken in the oven for about 40 minutes, basting with the remaining Honey Glaze every 10-15 minutes, until golden brown and well cooked.
5. Cut the chicken into pieces and serve hot.

Tip: If using a roasting rack that fits over a roasting tin, pour some water inside the roasting tin to catch the drippings so they don't burn in the pan. It also makes it easier for cleaning up later.

How to stretch your dollar at the Supermarket.

Now we all know that times are hard and recession is upon us, so it's important to be able to stretch our dollar to get the most of out it. I'm sure everyone's got their little tips, but here is our tips for next time you go to the supermarket.

Do go thru the supermarket with your eyes WIDE open, not for gorgeous guys or girls, but for items that have a red mark down sticker on them. I generally do this anyway, but it wasn't until one day I realised how much I was saving by buying stuff that were marked down or on sale ( i saved $26 on one bill!) that I would now scour the supermarkets just to find items that have been reduced. Remember to check the expiry dates of course, but you'd be surprised that most often than not these items aren't going to expire until next year or even a year after that! Eg. I bought a box of Newman's microwave popcorn that was reduced from $8 to $4 and wasn't going to expire till 2010. I believe that the supermarkets are marking them down because they've overstocked the items and need to make more shelf space. And of course the other thing to check, if you're buying canned stuff, check that they're not dented.

Sometimes our shopping cart is completely filled with all marked downs stuff, and I told hubby that there's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's not like we're buying food that have expired. We're just being smart. And remember, that when you do buy marked down stuff you are in fact helping the environment. Because those that remain unsold will eventually end up in the dumpster and onto the land fills. My eyes were opened to this fact after watching an episode on Oprah that talked about Freeganism. People who've adopted a freegan lifestyle are against consumerism and go around commercial dumpsters looking for food that are still perfectly edible that have been thrown away by supermarkets. So I may not be going around dumpsters anytime soon, this is the least I can do to help reduce wastage.

And if you're into foreign brands or products, Cold Storage supermarkets usually have a lot of them on mark down. Especially those that are in the prime suburbs where the foreigners or angmohs usually frequent.