Melbourne Cake Lollies

I made these batch a while back. Got bored on a cold Melbourne afternoon and was suddenly struck by the sudden urge to bake - maybe it was just an excuse to stand in front of the hot oven to keep myself warm? Hahahaha... Nonetheless, it was good. By the end of it, I had discovered one of the few pleasant delights in my life: Cake Lollies. Nice warm home-baked cake lollies.

The idea dawned on me when I came across my mother's foodblog, or as I like to call it: flog hahaha - now that I've said it out loud.. it sounds ugly. Hahaha.. anyhow back to my mother. My mom is so cute!! I just adore her. Over the summer, I taught my mother this new idea of making cake lollies, or as she likes to call them cake balls and ever since I left for Melbourne, I had completely forgotten about them up until I came across my mom's.... flog. hahaha

So yeah, there I was walking about in the kitchen, pondering on what I could make when I saw... the pack of lolly sticks in the inventory drawer and the mountains upon mountains of chocolate in the cupboard....

Ten minutes later, voila!

.Regreso.

Yup folks, I'm back - for how long? I can't really say. lol. You may have notice some subtle changes I've made towards the layout of my blog. Well actually no, I've made a dramatic change... hahaha... I've changed EVERYTHING on it. Solely based on reasons of boredom and plus, previously I was simply following crappy advices and feedbacks from only one person. I never realised how crappy and confusing the previous layout was. So now, i'm opting for simple. He he. Will it be better this time? I don't know, time can only tell.

So what have I been up to as of late?

Tons and tons of things. I think it's a pity though, that in the past two months, I've only blogged twice when so much has happened. Hopefully within these next few days/weeks/months, I may be able to show off what I've missed blogging. Hehehe... So start off...

Perhaps I'll just start with the first day of Fasting month: more specifically the opening of fast. For those not familiar with this fasting season. Every year in the Muslim calender, there is a holy month whereby muslims will not eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. It is also important during this holy month for muslims to practice good behaviour or at least attempt to be morally good. I suppose you can see it as a character-building experience: you reflect upon yourself and discover a few things about yourself that you never really knew until then.



This was taken on the first night of ramadan. A few close friends had planned this dinner weeks ahead to celebrate the start of ramadan with good friend and good company. We had steamboat that night, or in some places, they call it hot pot. With a huge array of seafoods (shellfish, shrimps/prawn, fish cakes, veggies, mushrooms, etc) cooked in one of two soup broths: spicy tom yum or chicken. Dinner was finished off with another huge selection of desserts: banana-toffee crumble thingy (lol sorry i forgot the name), chocolate rice crispies, hot molten brownies and lots more... lol

We were spoilt for choices. Dinner didn't end until 2 in the morning as we each took our time to eat and enjoy the food. Dear god, that being said... it was safe to say none of us felt the hunger pangs the next day during our fast!!

Cultural Dinner 101: Teppanyaki

Mom and I decided to organise a little dinner at home to celebrate the Gameboy's birthday, but sadly it turned out that majority of the family members were out and about. Dad was still working, attempting damage control by floods, Ms DT was out with her friends and Kim had a badminton game. We had wanted to invite my grandmother to the house for dinner but unfortunately she too couldn't make it. So yeah... it turned out to be one quiet evening. Until we decided to organise a teppanyaki dinner. oh yeah, everyone came home!

.Teppanyaki at home.

For those of you unfamiliar with teppanyaki: it's a japanese form of cooking where food of various sorts are cooked, usually self-cooked, upon a hot iron plate. The word itself is japanese, derived from two concepts: teppan (鉄板), which means iron plate, and yaki (焼き), which means fried or broiled. Teppanyaki - definition according to wikipedia.

.Before: marinating whilst cooking.

.After the lid was lifted.

Normally you'd see teppanyaki restaurants, particularly in Japan and Asian corners in some western countries. There in these restaurants, people would seat themselves along a table facing a huge flat iron surface where a chef would cook customer's dinner to order and occasionally play some fancy tricks, such as juggling their knife-like scrappers or create a fire performance.


.Preparing my dipping sauce.

.Other food awaiting to be cooked.
Unfortunately at home, we don't have that huge iron surface to play with.. Good call mom and dad, wouldn't want your kids to play with fire and sharp objects, now do we? And besides, where on earth would you place a huge iron plate in your house, right? Instead, we have a large teppanyaki plate which mom and dad had bought from Japan way back.

.Mom lifting the lid: ready to eat?.

Occasionally at home as family we organise a little teppanyaki session for dinner, usually accompanied with steamboat, however in this occasion we opted for the first. You can pretty much cook anything and almost everything in teppanyaki. In our case, we have an assortment of vegetables, meat, seafood and whatnots... complimented by an array of condiments. I usually just have a dipping sauce: a mixture of soya sauce, lemon juice and a dash of chilli sauce or nando's peri-peri. To check out what other things you can cook on with a teppanyaki grill plate, click here.

.Some of the food for teppanyaki.
I always look forward to our family steamboats and teppanyaki nights: each person gets to call dibs on their own pieces of food, and cook it themselves. And besides, it's also an opportunity for me to show my family some of my mad chopstick skills... oh yeah baby!