Some like it big, but I certainly like mine petit. ;)

There's some satisfaction to be gotten from slicing whole cakes into perfectly neat eighths, distributing them into individual plates with a generous scoop of ice cream. But for dinner parties, I find individual mini-cakes like those pictured above superbly cute and elegant at the same time. Also if you're a crumb person, that is if you order apple crumble for the crumble and groan audibly when it is not done right, then you'd appreciate the greater abundance of toasty edges in miniature versions of cakes/tarts. And, there's no need to fight the others for it!


These miniature versions of Joyce's Lemon Cake from Damien Pignolet's "French" were put in the oven just before dinner started and left to cool while the mains were prepared, and finally brushed with a sour-er than sweet lemon syrup mid-way through chomping on a piece of lamb shank. I just turned down the heat and shaved the recommended timing a little since his recipe was for a cake 24-cm in diameter.

When it was finally time for dessert, the ice cream tub was brought out a little too late, and pummelled to death with the ice cream scoop to produce 4 tiny scoops placed gingerly beside one cake fingerling before being capped by another.


These were baked in silicon moulds, making it incredibly easy to plop out into the bowls although I do have some reservations about these flexible, heat-resistant thingamajigs. They seem to result in cakes, muffins and caneles a little denser than they should be. Anyhow, other than the fact that I might have overdosed the cakes with lemon syrup (thankfully the ice cream saved it), I thought these were such irresistably munchable beings. They puffed up and browned beautifully in the oven, had almost crusty corners with a lighter, spongier heart.
I really regretted making only enough batter to make 8 fingerlings. I would have loved to slap on some cream cheese frosting making some super-mini frosted pound cakes. Or to just have a couple of them bundled together with some white satin ribbon, and given as post-dinner take-home gifts. I certainly wouldn't mind having them for some indulgent brekkie the next morning either. For your own minature dessert, just remember to reduce the heat by a small margin and err on the side of caution when deciding when to take it out.

To each her own

Some people are anal about having their steak bloody, some are particular about having soup before anything else while some, for some incomprehensible reason, love their broccoli raw. I guess we all have our little quirks and preferences, and I have my own fair share of them.



For example, I don't like skinny fries. I love my chips fat and potato-ey, chock full of potatoes like MOS burger's fries or KFC's wedges (do they still have these?). On the topic of fries, I also love dipping fries in ice-cream.


I like Weetabix. But get this, I love them dry. I know it sounds gross, and some people even think its is like cardboard - hard, dry and tasteless. But I can finish an entire box on my own sometimes. No milk, no yogurt, nothing at all to soften it.



Finally, I love my fruits soft and absolutely mushy. To the point where the slightest touch can leave an indentation in the fruit. This means I love to age my pears, waiting for the pears to turn from a healthy green to almost pale yellow. I love to watch my bananas turn from a firm, bright yellow fruit to something tender and entirely black. My persimmons also have to be incredibly soft and slushy inside before I'm willing to eat it.



At that point, I can simply slice open the top and scoop the fleshy innards out with a spoon. It becomes gooey and almost like a thick persimmon shake. It's heaven, and a great perk for me is that those expensive persimmons from Japan, which cost about SGD$15 per fruit, will get pushed down to a third of the price when it becomes overripe - that is just about right for me.

Nothing like Granny's food

I just came back from Muar, having met up with a couple of old University friends from Malaysia. One of them, a Kuala Lumpur-ian, made a comment that stuck with me - that home-cooked food tastes the best.

Okay it was something to a similar extent. I think. Or maybe it was something I conjured up in my memory because I too, crave for home-cooked food when I've been deprived of it for too long.

Thankfully while studying overseas, I had one of the best room-buddies one could ever wish for. She was a neat freak, and most importantly as insane about eating, cooking and baking as I was. But while we cooked almost every meal we had there, we both still missed home-cooking because it cannot be defined by anything other than from the only home we know - hers in Mauritius and mine in Singapore.

Every summer vacation back home would be jam-packed with plenty of home-cooked food. I always looked forward to being stuffed to the tip of my head with food lovingly cooked by my mum and my grandma, the two pinnacles of home-cooking in my books. However, and perhaps rather oddly, there is another home whose cooking also makes my mouth water, with a fair amount of envy as well.

Back at the age when I just started picking up tennis, and of course also started taking on darker shades of chocolate, when I never had to worry about my waistline, a girlfriend welcomed me into her home for some exam revision (ah those were the days) and some simple grub.

It was really simple grub. A big pot of thick chicken curry and another even bigger pot of ultra-fine fried beehoon. It was really gorgeous watching the beehoon simply collapse under the delicious weight of the curry, and finally slurping down the tender, moistened noodles. The initially dry and stringy noodles was evidently never meant for any other purpose than to soak up the curry.

The liquid gold was thick, aromatic and truly yummy with just the right balance of curry spices with fresh coconut. I am somewhat averse to coconut milk, especially that which comes out of the packet. The flavour is too overwhelming for me. The curry however was thickened only slightly, and only at the end of the entire cooking process, by the first press of fresh coconut. That, the grandma said, was the secret to thickening the curry without overpowering the dish with coconut.

Her grandma is very old school and, like many other grannies, could not give me an precise recipe for the chicken curry. But something along the lines of 2 whole chickens, 2 bags of fresh coconut flesh, 1 small packet of marigold milk, some chicken curry spice bought from the wet market, a couple of potatoes, and some homemade chilli paste made from fresh chillies, dried chillies, shallots and garlic.

Not surprisingly, my attempt at it was not up to par. Thankfully, I have an open invitation to her place as long as I give some prior warning. Her granny often asks, "When is your 'dark friend' coming over for curry chicken and beehoon?" I don't think any amount of Olay will save me.

Soft and tough...

I find Japanese food incredibly beautiful. Slices of sashimi snugly displayed between some freshly grated wasabi and pink pickled ginger can look deliciously handsome. Their simple flavours also amaze me to no end, and are slowly creeping into the list of food I frequently crave for.

In my previous post on Japanese food, I mentioned how easy to prepare the dishes were. Of course, I've never tried preparing sushi though. I hear it takes decades to even master that. Ever since that fateful Japanese-themed dinner I hosted, I'd been hooked and kept thinking of other Japanese dishes to try.

I thought I'd try some Japanese desserts as well, starting with one of the most common - Daifuku. A round ball of glutinous rice cake stuffed with sweet filling, they are often beautifully packaged in the tiniest of wrappers and sold in boxes of a variety of flavours.

How difficult could it be?

They look friendly enough. Just some glutinous rice flour and water perhaps. Red beans boiled with plenty of water and sugar to a nice smooth paste. Easy peasy.

NOT.

I followed Kimiko Barber's cookbook again, and was a little disturbed by the microwaving of the final product and therefore did a trial with just one, which promptly turned rock hard to my utter distress!

The dough was difficult to manage and it didn't help that the recipe did not include any tips on handling dough that seemed to disintegrate the longer I held it in my hands. I finally succeeded by speeding up my handiwork and plonking it in the bowl of cornstarch as quickly as possible.

The recipe also called for canned red bean paste, which I went around by just making my own. Of course, I didn't know the red beans would take a full hour to even soften in boiling water.

Boiling the little white balls (as opposed to microwaving) seemed to work alot better, though some recipes called for steaming (I didn't want to fiddle around with a steamer). In the end, it was soft and pliable. But taking a bite from a piece I bought from Takashimaya earlier in the day, and then taking a bite from the one I made brought such massive disappointment.

The real McCoy was much more delicate, slightly chewy, and extremely soft. When I laid it in my hand it yielded to its own weight, flattened out and gently took the shape of my palm. My version stubbornly retained its irregularly odd shape and refused to budge. It was then that I really appreciated the skill involved in making these balls of 'great luck' (literally translated).

I'll attempt this again, most probably with better and more extensive research. But I'll never look at daifuku the same way again.

Chocolate Partay

In the office, there are many levels of hierarchy.

Those like me, would be the minions, which (for some reason) when used as an adjective means 'dainty, elegant, pretty and trim'. We're right at the bottom of the pecking order, and have to do all the tedious leg and arm work.

A paper has to be written? Guess who has to create the first draft out of air.
Are there amendments? Guess who works on the million-th draft.
Presentation slides need to be numbered? Guess who spends an entire hour sorting out the slide numbering, AND ensuring the slide background used for the presentation has the organisation's logo on it.

Beyond the minions, we have the supervisors, managers, assistant directors, deputy directors and wachamacallits. They are the ones delegating papers to be written, making amendments to documents and requesting for slide numbers.

Directors do all of the above and then some. They go to huge, high level meetings to discuss excruciatingly cerebral issues. They try to manage expectations of their bosses, to protect the welfare and work-life-balance of the minions in their office, and decide which email to read first [Urgent: For your approval pls] or [URGENT NEED D'S APPROVAL].


I know how irrelevant all this seems to chocolate, parties and food. Except for the lucky bunch whose work is centred around food, the rest of us usually have just colleagues (good or bad) and your work tools (laptop, desktop, drawing board and pencil, scalpel, dustpan) for company.



Or so I thought.



I've always raved about how fortunate I am to be a part of the division I'm in, because the people 'above' are super fun. And by fun I don't just mean that they laugh alot and crack lame jokes. They are fun in the Chocolate-Day-Sounds-Great-I'll-Bring-A-Fondue-Set! kind of fun.

Responses to Salad Day? 'Cool, we really need that! I'll bring Thai Salad!'



Responses to Waffle Day? 'Is anyone bringing the ice-cream? If not, I'll bring that!'



Responses to Sandwich Day? 'Sure! We could even have an exchange-your-lunchbox-day!'



So you see, while the work is not always wonderful and meaningful, I've never regretted being a part of the organisation. There's always something to look forward to or something in the pipeline. And I know that most of what us minions suggest, will be received with much gusto Okay, I guess the Bring-Your-Spouse-Day would be a little tough.

Of course, having enthusiastic colleagues is just as important as having super fun bosses. They often nod eagerly at my suggestions, and offer ideas almost immediately. And so Chocolate Day happened with a big, big bang. It was organised to coincide with the last day of one of our colleagues, who lives and breathes chocolate.

Naturally, our gift for her was the fondue set she never had, and some personalised chocolate goodies for her to bring home and overdose on. The chocolate cupcakes I baked till the wee hours of the morning was precisely for that. Baked, cooled and frosted, I left them in that semi-naked state for individual quirks to be expressed on the shiny smooth surface using pastel pink, green and yellow icing.

Contorted faces, deep-in-thought, contemplating between the pink or the green, the red heart or the white heart, the m&m or the chocolate drop. All very amusing and fun to watch.

In addition to my plain chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting, one of my bosses also baked chocolate cakes but with a 'yumptious' cream cheese and vanilla bean frosting. Though it was not possible to write on with icing, everyone had fun squiggling the frosting on and decorating with chocolate rice, red/pink/white hearts, m&ms, chocolate drops and weird looking white chocolate covered chocolate balls.

These cupcakes were really moist, with an equally delicious frosting. It was a recipe my boss got from J at Kuidaore, when she attended a class conducted by J at Shermay's Cooking School. Coincidentally, J just blogged about a Cookie Decorating Class that both my boss and I have signed up for! It's never too early to learn how to decorate christmas cookies.

At the end of the day, our dear chocoholic colleague, Belle, brought all these goodies home in a big basket to share with her family. I sure hope she invited friends to share these with, because it was helluva lot to bring home.

I took the recipe for the chocolate cupcakes off Cupcake Bakeshop, one of the most reliable and addictive blogs I know for cupcakes. She's the reason I don't get tempted by cupcake bakebooks, and am therefore able to save some money, to indulge in other types of bake/cookbooks of course. The frosting, also from her blog, was a virtually foolproof recipe and was slathered on the naked cupcake easily.

Unfortunately, as I used a slightly taller cupcake mould, I made only 13 cupcakes and wanted to leave one for my mum for breakfast the following morning. That left me with 12 cupcakes to bring to office, the exact number I promised to bring.

So I had no chance to try them, which I know is a cardinal sin among all real chefs, to serve food that has not been put through the taste test. In my haste to put bring the food out, I almost always forget this bit. Well, my mum did tell me the cupcake was very good, though it could just be her ploy to ensure I keep feeding her.

And so to all bosses out there, live and let loose a little, and your minions will strive to serve you well. :)