Making Your Own Pineapple Paste

This post is to share my mum's advice when making your own pineapple paste to make pineapple tarts. 

Choosing pineapples 
Choose slightly green (not too ripe) - it's easier to grind (磨) as too ripe pineapple is too soft to grind. 

Cutting pineapples
When cutting the pineapple, cut into slightly bigger pieces so that it's easier to grind and remember to remove the eyes before starting to grind them.

Cooking pineapples
To have pineapple taste, it's important to cook the paste with the pineapple juice. Mum said those pineapple paste sold outside, the pineapple juice was drained off before cooking the paste so that the paste dries up faster, and hence, shorten the cooking time. Put sugar into the pineapple paste before cooking it. When the paste starts to dry up (juice getting lesser & lesser), add rock sugar (冰糖) so that the paste would look shiny.

Make Learning Han Yu Pin Yin Fun!

My son (DS) is in Primary 1 this year. One of the most "terrifying" things for parents to teach the child is Spelling and 听写. My husband (DH) and I have been speaking to DS in Mandarin since young, and my mum was a retired teacher who is well versed in Chinese, so we should not have any problem teaching him 听写. Nonetheless, I want him to learn Chinese in a fun way that he would really remember, and not just merely memorise the Han Yu Pin Yin or Chinese words by heart.

I started searching for pictures, and inserted them into boxes in MS Word. After I printed it out, I put the paper in a clear pocket so that my son can write on it using a whiteboard marker, and this can be re-used many times to teach and revise with my son.

Verdict? He enjoys learning in this manner. I'm glad that my efforts and time spent on doing this paid off. :)

Tips: You can use this to teach the child the English words of these pictures too! :)

Kueh Lapis Recipe

Please note that this recipe is from my mum's recipe book, which she learnt at a Community Centre many years ago, and we have fine tuned it along the way to suit our taste. If you find the recipe similar to yours, it is just pure coincidence, afterall everyone of us learnt from somewhere and it could probably be from the same source.

Ingredients:

20 egg yolks

5 egg whites

550g salted butter (I used SCS butter, ~2 ¼ of 250g block)

300g castor sugar

170g flour

8 tbsp condensed milk

3 tbsp brandy or rum

1 tsp vanilla extract (I used Nielsen Massey pure vanilla extract)

1½ tsp ground mixed spices (I used ½ tsp McCormick Ground Cinnamon, ½ tsp McCormick Ground Nutmeg, ½ tsp vanilla extract)

Steps:
1) Beat egg yolks with sugar until thick creamy. Set it aside for use later.

2) Beat butter for a while, add in the condensed milk and continue to beat till creamy. 

3) Add (2) to (1). Fold in flour and vanilla extract.

4) Add the egg whites in, and mix slowly until all the egg whites are dissolved.

5) Add brandy or rum, and mix well.

6) Divide the mixture into 2 equal portions. Add the mixed spices to one portion and mix well. The other portion is plain.

7) Line a 9" square baking tin with baking paper and grease it. You can use the butter wrapper to grease it. Heat the tin.

8) Scoop ~3-4 tbsp (I used Chinese soup spoon) of the plain or spiced mixture, and use the back of the spoon to smooth out the mixture, reaching all corners of the tin. 

9) Bake the first layer using bottom and top fire. Other layers only top fire or grill.

10) After each layer is baked, remove from oven, 
- use a satay stick or toothpick to remove the air bubbles, 
- use lapis press to press the layer, 
- apply brandy or rum with a cooking brush on the layer (most recipes out there do not have this step, so you may omit this step but it would greatly enhance the fragrance & taste), 
- scoop ~3 tbsp of the mixture (alternating between the plan and spiced mixture) and smooth it out reaching all corners of the tin. 

If you want each layer to look even and nicer, you may wish to weigh each layer, ~125g for first layer and ~100g for subsequent layers, instead of using my estimation method.

Notes:
I'm using a Panasonic Microwave Oven, so these are the baking modes and temperature that I use:
- Preheat oven in conventional bake mode,
- use conventional bake 170 deg cel, ~5 mins for first layer,
- use grill low fire ~3½ mins+- for subsequent layers,
- use grill low fire ~2½ mins for last layer followed by conventional bake 150 deg cel for 1-2mins.
*As the oven gets heated up, the time taken to bake each layer may get shorter. Hence, you may wish to bake with shorter timing and check if the layer is brown enough. If the layer is not brown enough, continue to bake for a while more until you're satisfied with the brownness.

Kueh Lapis on 11 Jan 2014

I had not bake Kueh Lapis for a long long time since my last oven spoilt and I had my first child. Recently, I'm into a baking mood, so I gotten a new toy - a Kitchen Aid! A hot pink one that was selling at a promo price of $648 at Best Denki, so I must do more baking now to make my investment worthwhile!

Overall, it's a success, albeit too oily despite that I already cut down on the butter, and maybe can also cut a bit more sugar or condensed milk. 

I would share the recipe in another post. :)

Selling Things via Online Methods

Things cluttering up the space at home? Children outgrown the items? Somehow, you just have to get rid of them to make room for new things to come in, especially it's spring cleaning time now!!!

These past 2-3 weeks have been a good one for me when it comes to selling or even blessing out things. I have managed to sell away few slightly larger or bulky items, such as children playyard and bumbo chair, and quite a number of smaller items that I could mail out.

Friends have been asking me how I managed to sell away those things as they have been having difficulty trying to get rid of their stuff. Well, I have to say, I really took a lot of efforts and quite a bit of time as I posted my stuff for sale at 3 different Facebook groups, Gumtree and even Singapore Motherhood Forum! For items that are not deemed good enough to be sold, I would bless them out via a blessing Facebook group.

Here's some tips when trying to sell your stuff:

1. When choosing which Facebook group to post, you must know what you can sell and the maximum sale price for each of the groups. For examples:-

Xchange Corner group for parents by Buzzy Tots allows you to sell children and maternity stuff, and there is no cap on the selling price. This is good to post all the things that you're allowed to sell with no restriction on selling price.

Low Cost Spree Clearing allows you to sell things with a cap of $4 and the price must include postage cost. This is good to post the things that you're trying to clear at relatively cheap price.

Budget Corner for babies , mummies , ladies @ $10 n below ! allows you to sell baby, mummy & lady stuff at no more than $10.

Choose Facebook groups with different budget as there are people who look into the lower cost groups. Afterall, who don't like things that are relatively a lot more affordable?

2. When posting in Facebook groups, it's good to read the terms and conditions of each group frequently as each of them has different rules and they are updated as and when. Read carefully and understand the difference between the different groups, and see how you can take "advantage" of the rules to promote your items so that it would attract people's attention. 

If the group said that you can only bump the album every 24hrs, do remember to bump it frequently and try bumping it at different timing, sometimes in the day, sometimes at night, sometimes at wee hours, hopefully it would attract people who is awake or accessing Facebook at different timing. If the group said not to bump more than 3 posts, choose 3 items that you think might stand a higher chance of selling, and bump those posts instead of bumping the entire album.

3. Reach out to people who might not have a Facebook account, and you can do so via Gumtree and Singapore Motherhood (SMH) Forum.

When posting on Gumtree, you can't bump the posts like you can in Facebook groups, but what you can do is to remove those that you had already posted for some time, and post them again so that they appear on the front pages.

4. Capture picture of the items that you're trying to sell, and post it on your sale thread. A picture speaks a thousand words! Hence, do make an effort to take a presentable looking picture.

5. Set notification for Facebook postings and email notification for Gumtree and SMH so that you are prompted when someone posted on your post.

6. Check and monitor responses frequently!!! It is pretty pointless if you just keep posting what you have to sell but you don't check and monitor the responses on a frequent basis. With smartphone technology, you can access Facebook and your emails almost anywhere, so it isn't too difficult to check and monitor responses.

7. Most importantly, don't be lazy or procrastinate, do spend some efforts and time to set up the things for sale, else don't complain that you have difficulty trying to sell your stuff. Not forget to mention, make sure you can wait it out for some time, don't be in a hurry to get rid of the items like in weeks' time as you probably end up selling much cheaper than you expected or giving it to people instead. Also, don't give up when a trade fails, just persist on, and the item would be sold in time to come. If it doesn't get sold for a long long time, like a year... see if you have been working hard enough trying to sell your stuff or it's relatively a difficult item to get rid of. If it's the former, move your butt, remember that the longer you wait, the lesser the value of the item as it gets depreciated over the time and might become more & more worthless. If it's the latter, probably consider to donate to a charity organisation that probably has means to refurbish and sell the item, or sometimes, people may just buy to support a charity effort. 

I hope the above tips can help you to sell away your things faster, have fun selling! :)