JMM Muar CNY Cookies

I ordered JMM Muar pineapple tarts, medium size bottle, through my group buy host. Now they said they could not fulfil the medium size bottle, can only do small size bottle. My host shared that since December, when orders were placed, she's been waiting for slot for this item. Initially supplier say they still can take, but host updated just now that she received update that they can't produce anymore for this, citing partly due to MCO staff issue.

Ok, I can understand the MCO that probably affects their production but a company with good customer service would offer some form of compensation or thank you in kind like thank you for your support & sorry to disappoint you, we would like to offer you something in return should you decide to remain your order & change to the small size, instead of just plainly put it small or refund no choice. Attitude matters too! It's like they 吊起来卖！

Hopefully next year can go back JB to shop for cny goodies again! People who want to order their cookies in future, just take note that they can reject your order after taking in and return to say later change to a smaller size or refund, no choice...

FOC Programmes Organised by NLB

I told my son that since we already paid a sum of money for his June immersion trip that he's going with his school, I would not be signing him up for any other paid holiday programmes. Does this mean that he would just sit and rot at home? Nope! There are a lot of FOC programmes organised by several organisations and NLB is one of them!!! Gone are the boring days when people just go to the library to borrow books... Do you know that NLB also organises a lot of programmes for the youngs and olds? Libraries are one of the places that I like to bring my son, not just to borrow books, but to attend the various fun and mostly free activities. During June when it's generally hotter weather, we also go to the libraries for free air-con, haha...

My son loves programming or robotics type of programmes, so I'll usually look out for such programmes and mind you... many of these programmes are "sold out" pretty fast!!! Mostly are free to attend but you need to register for your child to secure a seat as they have a maximum limit. Some of the upcoming FOC programmes...

• Programme Your Own Computer Ball with Hackaball
• Introduction to Programming with Swift Playground
• Introduction to Sphero
• Fun with Jimu Robot
• 3D Modelling with Tinkercad
• Programming a Robot with Ozobot
• 3D Pen Workshop

The following two programmes used micro:bit and require you to pay some money for the cost of materials/kit. You need to bring along your micro:bit if you have previously received a set from IMDA Digital Maker programme. If you don't already have one, they'll give you a set that you can bring it home. My son, hubby and I had previously attended one of such micro:bit programmes, and each of us received a set, so we have 3 sets at home now to play with, haha...

• Digital Maker: Mini Finger Soccer 
• Digital Maker: Spin Art

Want to know more about micro:bit? Read this.

If you think these programmes are only for boys, well think again... More and more schools are introducing programming such as Scratch, micro:bit, Moway, etc to their students, regardless of gender, so why not just sign up one of these programmes for your child to try it out? It's always good to introduce and equip our children with new knowledge.

Click here to go to NLB website, programmes category. They also have arts and crafts activities too! You just have to explore the website if you don't already know about it...


P/S: I'm not engaged by NLB or IMDA to publicise their programmes. I have brought my son, even my girl, to a number of activities organised by NLB or IMDA, and they enjoyed many of these programmes, especially those on programming and robotics, so just sharing with people if they don't already know... By sharing, I'm actually getting myself more competitors when signing up programmes for my children and even myself, haha...

Cigu Chips (Super behind time posting...)

Super behind time posting... busy with baking and spring cleaning before CNY, followed by V-day, CNY, my birthday and pak tor anniversary celebrations, all in the month of Feb! After that, I was busy preparing for our holiday trip in March... now back to catching up with my posting. 

This year CNY, I decided to try making the cigu aka arrowhead chips. It's not difficult to make these chips, just that it takes time and effort to do so. There's posting on other blogs that shared on making these chips, so I'm not going to do that. I just want to share that I tried to slice the chips using an electric food processor and the manual slicer. Both will do the job but you can't control how the food processor sliced it, so I did get some little bits and pieces. Hence, using the manual one may be easier since one can control the speed of slicing.

I spent more time frying these chips as I didn't pour the oil until the wok (mine was those traditional metal wok that you see in a zi char stall) was half filled, slightly lesser than that, as I didn't want to waste too much oil since I didn't intend to reuse the oil. Hence, I could only put about 10 over slices for each round of frying, and oh mine, 1 kg of cigu can produce 1 big milo tin (mine was 1.8kg) of chips, so it took a while to finish frying the chips.

Would I make them again in future? I probably would consider doing so for various reasons as follows:

• It's really cheap to make the chips yourself! It costs $4 - $4.20 per kg and 1kg can fill up a milo tin.
• You can choose to use fresh oil for every batch of frying, so you don't have to worry that the chips are fried with reused oil.
• You can control the amount of salt that you put so that the family can eat healthier, especially during CNY feasting. I mean we all feast during CNY, so why not eat healthier when possible... so that you can continue to feast, haha...

Upcoming next, my journey on learning how to make kueh bangkit! Bye for now...

Pineapple Jam Done!

I mentioned in my previous posting that the pineapple jam I bought from Baking's Corner is a bit too sour... My friends who ordered pineapple tarts from me are mainly guys or lady ordering it for the hubby, and knowing that most guys prefer the jam to be on the sweeter side instead of more sour taste, so I decided to buy some pineapples and cook with some of the jam that I bought. 

I went to the market and bought 3 pineapples, which I had asked the fruit seller to reserve for me the day earlier. The price given to me was $1.50 each and extra 50 cts each if need them to peel the pineapples for me. When I was at the market, I didn't see the guy who I spoke to, so I asked a younger chap. He told me it's $2 each without peeling service and $2.50 each with peeling service, hmm... more expensive! I decided to wait for that particular guy to turn up at the market and went to do some marketing while waiting. After I bought fish and vegetables, and went back to the fruit stall, that guy had turned up, so sealed the deal at $2 each as I opted for peeling service. It's a great decision as it saves me the trouble and time spent for peeling the pineapples. Only downside is that the way they peeled the pineapples is a bit wasteful... hint - just see the above picture of the pineapples after peeling. 

I choose to grate the pineapples instead of blending as I find that the pulp from blending lack of fibre. The only thing that I blended was the core... I used to discard the core, as taught by my mother. After reading some blogs that we could also blend and add the core, I decided to try this time round. 

There's several blogs sharing how to cook pineapple jam, so won't go into the details of cooking it. However, just to note that if you want to recook the jam, after adding the cooked jam to the uncooked jam, remember to stir the cooked jam and ensure that it doesn't stick to the pot/wok until is is blended with the uncooked jam. I'm suggesting this because cooked jam is already drier version, just like the jam towards the end of cooking process when it thickens, so it may burn if you don't blend it with the uncooked jam that's pretty much still rather watery.

The final stage of the jam that was cooked with natural preservatives - lemon juice, cinnamon stick, cloves and star anise. The 3 pineapples were approximately 2.1kg after peeling and before grating. I used 1.2kg of the bought jam to cook. The final weight was close to 2.2kg. Hence, 3 pineapples yield about 1kg of pineapple jam, shall record this down for future reference.

Upcoming after cooking the jam is trying out to make arrowhead (ci gu) chips, hopefully I'll succeed! 

Sidenote: The jam that I bought from Baking's Corner wasn't exactly 1kg as the weight includes the weight of the plastic container (~27g). This translates to making 2 to 3 lesser pineapple tarts, hahahaha...

Baking Pineapple Tarts Starts With Cooking The Pineapple Jam

A few friends were looking to buy some homemade pineapple tarts, so I decided to bake and sell some while keeping some for own consumption. The pineapple jam and dough are critical in making yummy pineapple tarts.

During my mum's time, she would cook the jam herself to make the tarts to sell to relatives and friends. This is what I really call, HOMEMADE!!! Over the years, more and more people started to sell pineapple tarts and claimed that they were homemade but to unsuspecting people, they might not realise that not all of these tarts were truly 100% homemade! Would you consider pineapple tarts homemade if only the dough part was homemade? Some home bakers probably don't even know how to make pineapple jam or have ever attempted to make it. I have tried making my own jam, starting with peeling the pineapples, removing the eyes, grating it the traditional way (not using a blender) and cooking it. It takes a few hours to complete the whole process.

For me, in order to sell, the quality of ingredients used has to be of certain standard. Butter has to use premium brands like SCS or President; there could be more brands but I have only tried these 2 brands, so citing these 2 brands as examples. SCS has been a well known brand since my mum's time, she only uses SCS for her baking. As for the pineapple jam, I would not use ready made jam selling in Phoon Huat and NTUC. Do you know what goes in to the jam to preserve it so that it can last? I don't know and don't wish to know, but highly unlikely that natural preservatives would be used. Also, sometimes I don't find that the jam has fibres or a natural pineapple aroma in it. Hence, I didn't sell any pineapple tarts for past years as I'm lazy to cook the jam, haha... I did bake some tarts using a more premium pineapple jam but even then, I'm also not so sure about the preservatives, so the tarts were for own consumption and also as treats for friends. This year, I saw Baking's Corner selling the jam. I trust Fiona, founder of Baking's Corner, that the jam would be cooked by herself or her team, and that no artificial preservatives would be used. It would still be homemade per se, just that it's not homemade by me, haha... I texted the person in-charge of selling the jam to confirm that the jam would be cooked by themselves and artificial preservatives were not used. Hence, I gotten hubby to make a trip down to buy 2 tubs of the jam.

I tasted the jam when hubby came back. It's towards a more sour taste. While I'm fine with it and my girl likes it (she ate it as jam with bread, that explained the missing 1/5 from 1kg of the jam), my friends who ordered the tarts from me would prefer a sweeter taste. I'm not at all surprised, guys tend to prefer sweeter taste for the jam whereas ladies generally can take more sour taste. Does that mean this jam would go to waste? Nope! It's sold at $9/kg, definitely not cheap if you compared to those that one could buy from Phoon Huat or NTUC, how can waste it sia... Well, the jam can be salvaged! I'll just need to buy a few pineapples, add to the jam and cook again to make it sweeter and slightly more moist since I plan to do open face type for this sweeter version. Fortunately, I know how to cook the jam myself. I'll just make a tub sweeter to tailor to my customers' taste. As for the other tub, I'll leave it slightly more sour and do the close type; I find the jam on the drier side, which is better for making the close type. Making the tarts open face and close type also help to differentiate the sour and sweeter version, which I could pass some of the sour ones to my friends aka customers to sample to compare the 2 versions.

Now, I need to look for pineapples to buy, haha...

My Kraus Sink After 1.5 Years

So... I was reading through the comments that people left on my blog back in 2016/2017 after my last posting on my reno journey in 2016, really sorry that I didn't reply as I don't really have the habit of reading through the comments. Moreover I had been busy with other things, so had stopped blogging for quite a while.

I had previously bought a Kraus sink, all the way from Amazon US, check out my previous posting. I really love how big the sink is, can really dump all my baking/cooking stuff in after using and wash them altogether after I'm done with my baking/cooking stuff.

So how is the sink after 1.5 years of usage? Well, of course, it no longer shines as it used to be when it was first installed, only makes sense, right, after a period of usage. There are some scratches, not sure how they got there, haha... It didn't rust except for an area... but I think I have to blame my hubby for that... When I cook, he washes... so there was once he left a pot soaking with water for quite a while, really for quite some time, then when I spotted it and by the time I removed it from the sink, I saw some sort of stain (not sure if it's rust) on the sink. I tried to use baking soda with vinegar but didn't manage to remove the entire stain. We were at fault to leave the pot there, so wouldn't be fair to blame it on the quality... we may be able to remove the remaining stain if we were to scrub it but decided to just leave it so as not to create more scratches and yet unable to remove the stain, didn't want to make it looks worse! 

You probably be wondering why the pot would be sitting directly on the sink, where's the metal piece that sits on top of the sink which we were supposed to place the pots... We stopped using that metal piece after a while... when we were using it, we found several spots that seemed kind of "rusty", which we were able to remove those spots using baking soda and vinegar. We were not sure if this piece of metal would also really be made of stainless steel. Although the parts of the metal piece that touched the sink were protected with rubber coverings, the rubber thingy would slowly wear off and start to expose the metal part. Also, it's kind of troublesome to wash down any food particle with that piece of metal blocking in the way. What's more, we also need to wash this metal piece... lei chey!

Anyway the sink served the purposes that I were looking at when I bought it. I love to bake/cook, so able to just dump all utensils/cutleries so that they don't clutter the kitchen top space that I need for baking/cooking, and only wash after baking/cooking done so that I could get my baking/cooking done first. I could wash my wok and flip it during washing within the sink so that I don't splash water out of the sink. I could also wash the bigger pots without the tap in the way. The sink in my kitchen is never meant to be for show only, haha... my kitchen is not part of a showroom where things need to look shiny, nice, etc. If for show, I would just buy a small sink so that we don't need to wash such a big sink, haha... makes sense, right?

About ABC Cooking Studio

Before I start to blog about ABC Cooking Studio on the areas that I like such that I keep going back to them and even signed up my children as members, I have to emphasise that whatever I have written here is my personal views, meaning this is not a paid review. Who will pay me? After all, I'm not a famous blogger with a blog site that has high visitors volume, haha... As these are my personal views, so nobody has to agree with me on what I've written here, yah!

What I like...

• The lessons are hands-on and individual basis, meaning you have to bake your own final product by yourself, not in pair or group, to bring home. You have your own set of equipment, including mixer, induction cooker, etc. Cooking lessons are somewhat slightly different as students cook a few dishes during a lesson, so the group will work together but everyone will contribute, like 1 person will cut carrot, another person marinates the meat. At the end of the cooking lesson, everyone gets a portion of each dish, trust me, the dishes are usually enough to be eaten as lunch or dinner, so you do get to eat a hearty meal.

• Students to instructor ratio is low; it's a maximum of 4 students to 1 instructor. If you're the only one who books a particular lesson, you have the instructor to yourself, meaning you have undivided attention from the instructor. Yes, they still proceed to teach you even if you're the only student for that lesson. The studio will not cancel your lesson. If your instructor is sick or unable to turn up for lesson for whatever reason, another instructor will be assigned for the lesson.

• When you book a lesson, you can see who is the assigned instructor for that particular recipe/lesson before you book it, so you can keep going back to your favourite instructor(s). They don't usually change the instructor unless due to unforeseen circumstance, such as he/she is sick. You would also prefer a healthy instructor to be teaching you, right?

• No washing needed, except to wash your hands, haha... You do not need to wash any of the mixing bowls, pots, cutleries, scrapers, spatulas, etc that you use during all lessons and when you having your meal there after the cooking lessons. They employed staff to do all the washing. You paid to learn how to bake or cook, isn't it? Who doesn't know how to wash the stuff, if you don't know, then perhaps you should learn to wash your own plate after a meal before you even start to learn baking or cooking. Hence, the money that you paid for attending lessons is really spent on learning instead of wasting part of the time to do washing, don't you think so?

• No need to weigh most of the ingredients, so you save some time too, which you can spend your time to really do the baking or cooking.

• If you're new, as in it's your first few lessons, the instructor will teach you the basic things, like even how to crack an egg correctly!!! This is where I really learn all my basic techniques, like J-fold, not to overmix cake mixtures, beating up the meringue successfully without using tartar or even lemon juice, etc, which were my major takeaways from all the baking sessions. With the knowledge that I've learnt at ABC, I was able to bake a chocolate flavour castella cake successfully at my first attempt just by watching youtube video, which a friend told me that the cake was really nice. You may laugh but we don't always succeed at our first attempt based on recipe from youtube video, right?

• The recipes given are printed in colours with illustrations showing the steps, which the illustrations help me to recall the steps or things to be done when I was back home after the lesson, looking through the recipe.

• You get to bring back a whole cake or x pieces of bread/wagashi depending on recipe for that bread/wagashi. The cake is comparable to a small whole cake that you buy from Prima Deli, not slices or mini ones. Ice packs are also provided for cakes that are temperature sensitive.   

• You would complete all baking or cooking during the lesson, so you don't have to bring any remaining ingredients home to finish the baking or cooking. Hence, for some reasons, if say the cake didn't turn out as it should be, you probably can get to attend a make-up lesson for the same recipe. When I made mille crepe back then, I asked the instructor for ice packs but was told me ice packs not needed. By the time I reached home and opened the box, the crepe had collapsed and flowed to one side as the fresh cream melted while I made my way home. I called up the studio and told them about it, asked how to cut and eat it when the cream had melted, so they helped me to book another lesson to make up for it, which the crepe made during the next lesson, arrived home "safe and sound", ice packs were given, haha... 

• Before you decide if you want to spend that money, you can attend a trial to try out if you like the environment, how lesson is being conducted, etc. The trial is relatively priced much cheaper than a regular lesson, so the recipe is usually simpler. The trial I did... I had done that recipe at home several times and friends who had tried it all gave good reviews! My hubby and children simply love that chocolate cake; it's so simple to reproduce at home. 

• What makes it more exciting now is that they have introduced their very own ABC International Passport, just last year! This passport is given to new members and existing members who top up their lessons, except for kids course. With this passport, you can go to the studio in other countries to attend a regular lesson for FREE! The passport is valid for 2 years. I would not go into the details such as the rules, it's not my "job" to explain, you can just google and find out more information. Do I have one? The one in the photo shown here is mine and my son also has one. During our trip to Kuala Lumpur last December, my son and I attended a regular basic cake lesson each. My relatives who got to try the end products all said nice!

Do I sound like I'm working for them? Seriously I'm not... I just like to bake and by far, this is one studio that I like! The above points are what I've personally gone through that I can share with you and you would probably hear most of them from the instructor if you ever go for a trial, but a customer or a staff sounds more convincing? Hahaha...

If anyone is ever interested to attend a trial after reading this long posting, feel free to drop me an email at bunnybluey@yahoo(dot)com(dot)sg. You get to attend the trial at cheaper rate and I get to attend for free when I go with you, hahaha... but but this is not the intention of this post, I just want to focus on baking related stuff this year, at least for first half of 2018. I wrote about my renovation journey in 2016, mia for 2017, so now back in 2018 with a new focus. Perhaps later half of the year, I'll focus on the stress of a SAHM who teaches my own children as my son is P5 this year, eeeeeeeee.................. English, Maths, Science, Chinese, Higher Chinese... I think talk about my passion in baking is more fun, lol!

What's next? Think think think... don't know... see you soon... if I'm not bogged down by CNY baking, hee... bye for now!