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!

What I like about ABC Cooking Studio?

Many of my friends know that I like to bake/cook and I have been attending quite a number of baking/cooking lessons, particularly at ABC Cooking Studio. It originated from Japan and the Singapore Studio opened in 2015. I don't know the exact date that the Singapore Studio opened but one thing for sure is that I'm one of the pioneer batch of members. I signed up as a member on 25 May 2015 after attending a trial with a friend to learn to bake Gateau au Chocolat. I took up the basic and master cakes package. 

Back then, it was really frustrating to try to book lessons... I basically had to get ready to logon to the booking system at 12 midnight every day as lessons would get fully booked within minutes!!! I'm not exaggerating... it's really that hard to book lessons especially if the instructors were popular! At times, even when you were okay to go with any instructor, you would still not be able to book a lesson if your hands were not fast enough to click or your Internet connection screwed you up at the critical booking moment, haha... I often complained to the managers about the lack of lessons for members to book. Things improved over the time and the booking system got slightly better. Although booking of lessons wasn't easy, I managed to complete all my 18 basic cake lessons by 29 September 2015, amazingly in just slightly more than 4 months, average about 5 to 6 lessons every month! For basic cakes course, they offered 6 recipes every month for 3 months before the recipes were repeated.

While I was still attending my basic cakes course, I also topped up and signed up a 8 breads course and a wagashi course. It was a lot easier to book bread lessons as members within same table, same timing, could sign up for different breads, meaning all 4 members could be doing 4 different breads depending on individual preference. I didn't sign up cooking lessons but I attended a few cooking lessons using free tickets that I have gotten for introducing friends to sign up or when I topped up certain amount. 

I started my master cakes course on 25 October 2015 and completed on 11 July 2016. The journey to complete this course took longer as they only offered 2 recipes every month for 6 months before the recipes were repeated.

By then, I had completed 18 basic cakes course, 12 master cakes course, a 8 bread course, and a wagashi course. What's next??? I started to sign up for my children, lol! My then 9 years old son was enrolled for a 6 basic cakes course and my then 4 years old girl was enrolled for a kids course. Am I a loyal supporter of ABC Cooking Studio? The only person spared for now, from even attending trial with me, is my husband but I'll pull him along if I ever really want to attend a seasonal trial so badly, hahahaha...

What do I like about ABC Cooking Studio so much despite the initial unhappiness when they were still establishing the business here? Trust me, I did try other baking lessons conducted by different somewhat established bakeries/instructors but at the end of the day, I still like ABC Cooking Studio... (to be continued)

Post Reno Comments

It's been 1.5 years since my renovation in Jun 2016. Well, any major disaster with any of the service providers or products? I'm glad to say that we have not encountered any major disaster. In fact, I can't really recall there were any minor hiccup.

To sum up,

• Our aircon system, Mitsubishi Starmex System 4 (MXY-4A28VA, MSY-GE24VA & MSY-GE10VA), is working pretty well since installation. I don't find the compressor to be noisy. In fact, I find it rather quiet when it's compared to my 10+ years old aircon system, haha... but seriously, I don't find it noisy as what some people had commented on forums. We felt rather cold in our bedroom even after we had set the air-con setting to Econo Cool, which was set at 26 degree celsius. The bedrooms were cooled down rather fast as we usually switched on the air-con for only 1 bedroom, at most 2 bedrooms concurrently. It didn't take very long to cool down the living room too and it can even get a bit cold with a crowd of more than 10 persons. Any problem with the workmanship? Well, we have past the 1 year workmanship warranty for half a year now and we have not contacted Harvest Aire during this 1.5 year, so what do you think?

• How's our electrical wiring so far? We had a minor incident whereby I had to climb up to reach the new circuit breaker to get back my electricity... I forgot what triggered it but it goes to show that the circuit breaker works, haha...

• What about carpentry works done by our ID? The platform, cupboards, display cabinets, doors, hinges, etc are still intact and working, phew... lol!

If you asked me would I recommend the service providers whom I previously engaged, I would honestly tell you yes for air-con and electrical, as for ID, err... (go figure out what this means, lol!) To be fair though, the ID was at least responsible enough to complete the renovation works that we engaged him to do so and within a challenging period of 4 weeks for most of the works to be done, except that he didn't make good the bedroom doors that his contractors had spoiled (still a bit sore on this, haha...). Well, still considered ourselves lucky to be able to move back to our nest that we can still live comfortably in.

Gone MIA for 2017!

Oh mine, I just realised that I have gone mia from my blog site for whole of 2017!!! Hahaha... Well, what I had been busy with for whole of last year? Hmm... seriously, I was crazy playing Pokemon Go!!! Yes, I had been so busy playing the game that I had neglected quite a bit of other parts of my life. I think it's time I moved away from the game and moved on to other things. Yes, I had decided to quit the game. I may logon occasionally to play a bit since I can't find someone trustworthy enough to take over my account. I enjoyed the game and had fun. I made some new friends and would continue to keep in touch with some of them. 

I had come a long way and proud to say that I levelled up to 40 before raids were introduced into the game. Would it be a pity to end the game just like that since I had spent money, time and efforts on it? It wasn't an easy decision... Oh well, nothing is forever. For now, my children need me to spend more time with them and more efforts on them. My older child is P5 this year and he's aiming to go for his choice of school via DSA route next year, so he's preparing to take a test for the instrument that he's been playing for his CCA this year. This means I should stay at home to ensure that he practises every day instead of going out to play, haha... I quit my full time job back then to take care of my children and coach in their studies, not to be a full time Pokemen trainer. My younger child is K2 this year and she's starting to have spelling and ting xie assigned by her childcare teachers. I have to teach her to learn all the chim chim words. Seriously, there's not much time for me to play like I'm still single or like a retiree.

I'm going to start blogging again, so stay tuned...