Oreo Cupcake 奥利奥小蛋糕

I did this quite sometime back. Just shortly after I did this. One of my son's favourite cookies is Oreo. One day, I saw him munching on them non stop and I told him he will have to stop eating them otherwise I wouldn't be able to make cupcakes with them. :P The next thing that happened was he kept pestering me to do it. :P Next time must be careful about wanting to tell white lies. At least I finished the using all the cookies. So, I didn't really tell a lie lah. For this Oreo Cupcake, I didn't use the cream sandwiched in the cookies as I found them too sweet. I scraped them off and only used some as the 'cream' for the deco on a couple of cupcakes. But go ahead to use the cookies as it is if you like. No problem! Ingredients:

• 220g Butter, soften
• 200g Caster Sugar
• 4 Eggs
• 220g Self Rasing Flour
• 40 'single' Oreo Cookies, ie, 20 sandwiched Oreo, cream removed and crushed.

How to do it:

1. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
2. Add one egg at a time and continue beating.
3. Add in flour and beat well till mixture is smooth and pale.
4. Fold in the crushed oreo till combined.
5. Spoon batter into muffin cup.
6. Bake for 20 minutes in preheat oven at 170C.
7. Cool on rack.

Lunch Box #3

Opps. It's another Lunch Box post. :P I'm cooking fried rice today and thought it will be a good lunch box idea. This is a rather common lunch box, omu-rice . It's basically egg over rice. I believe the authenic way is to have the rice wrapped in the egg. I wouldn't want to go through the haste of doing that for 2 reasons. It needs more eggs and the kids won't appreciate the effort of doing it. They will just cut the egg and eat it whichever way I do it. :P So, here's my simple version of omu-rice . I'm not using over-night rice hence the rice is a bit more moist but we prefer it that way. It's softer. All the ingredients are my son's favourite except for the hon-shimeiji. ;) You decide what you want in your rice To have the egg cover the rice, you first cook the egg. Have slight over half an egg hanging out the lunch box. Adjust the remaining to fitting nicely in the box. Spoon the fried rice into the box sitting on the egg. Flip the rest of the egg over then use a spoon to gently push the edge of the egg to the sides to tuck them in. And there you have it. :)

Lunch Box #2

Every Wednesday my son's kindergarten give them biscuits as snack. I thought since they are having biscuits, I might as well let him bring his own. So I have been preparing little snacks on most Wednesdays for him unless he requested I do it on other days too. The school requested that parents not to prepare greasy or messy food. So the ones I prepared are mostly sandwiches and cakes. Since I'm including Lunch Box ideas here, I'm adding this too. Perhaps when he goes to Primary 1 next year, I'll add more stuff in it. What you see here is bread with Luncheon Meat (Spam for some of you) and apples.

Ikan Bilis Powder 江鱼仔粉

The most useful cooking tip I learn when I first became a mother was how to prepare Ikan Bilis (Anchovies) Powder. It was from a leaflet from a Infant Formula Company. I'm still using the same method to do it after 6 years except now it's easier for me with the use of oven. The kids still loves porridge sprinkled with Ikan Bilis Powder. No other seasonings is required and it's amazing how fast they can finish their bowl of porridge and ask for seconds. :) Hmmm ... maybe I shouldn't crack my head so much thinking of what to cook for them. ;)


Previously, without an oven, I would dry fry (no oil) the Ikan Bilis in small amount using low fire after draining them as dry as I could. Don't even try skipping the washing part. It will be very salty especially for babies. After they turned light brown (see picture above) and are completely dried, they will be crunchy. You can try one after they are cooled. If they are not crunchy, you have to returned them to the pan and continue frying. Now, with an oven, things are so much easier. Drain the Ikan Bilis and spread them evenly on a flat pan and bake them at 180C for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring and spreading them evenly again half way through baking and they are ready for the next step.


After the Ikan Bilis are fried or baked dried, you can pound them into powder. Okay, I cheated. I first used a blender to blend as powdery as possible. Next, I sift them and you will see bigger bits left on the sieve (see the edge of dish of above picture) . Pound those bits using the mortar and pestle into powder. Of course, now that the kids are older I no longer have to pound them. I just blend them as powdery as possible (as shown above). Now you can keep the Ikan Bilis Powder in an air tight container and use it as an seasoning for your porridge or other dishes.

Lunch Box #1

Okay, call me a Kiasu (fear or losing) Mum. I'm learning how to prepare lunch box for my son who's going to Primary 1 next year. I'm trying out the ways of packing the lunch box, what I can pack and how much to pack in it. So I'm starting a new label, Happy Box, here.

It will be pretty much the same as those labelled Happy Meal except these will be packed in a box (obviously), which I think is a lot harder to do. I'll still make Kid's dinner for my daughter who is 'smart' enough not to be taken in by all the cute looking food. I think she find them weird and non-food like to be eaten. Yes, I'm still trying very hard to make her eat food other than her few favourite food. I have been recycling food ideas I did for my son for my daughter and so far I haven't been successful.

I'll think of new food ideas when I have finished trying out the old ones. Back to my lunch box ideas. My son requested to have Japanese Curry today and so I thought why not try to let him have it in a lunch box instead?

So this is my first simple and straight forward lunch box. It has meat balls and Japanese Curry. The results ... this lunch box is too small for him - he needs an extra serving of it. I use Glad Press 'n' Seal's multipurpose sealing wrap to cover the curry and it works well; no leaks. But I guess I can't use this lunch box. I must keep in mind to use 2 separate lunch box instead when I do make this for his lunch.

Cheesy Surf and Turf

Lately, there's a change in taste of fried food for my kids. They don't want me using breadcrumbs; not even Panko. So what do I use here you ask? (Powdered) Parmesan Cheese. They sure got expensive taste buds. It was all my fault actually. There other day, I ran out of Panko so I experiment using Parmesan Cheese on my Chicken and they loved it. I didn't really like it though. I find it a little bit too bland. The seasoning wasn't done very well. You will hear from me about that when I improve on it. ;) Anyway, after that, they have been asking for anything to be fried using Cheese and not Panko or breadcrumbs.

Cheese Crust Chicken

I had intended to use the fish and prawns for something else and my son said he wanted to eat at Long John Silver's. I told him I will that do for him :P and we can save the money. But of course, my meal doesn't comes with Coke ;) which is what he wanted most. Hahaha ... So to make things difficult for me, he wanted me to use Cheese for the crust. Rrright. So I'm spending more money now? Lucky for me, I bought the Parmesan Cheese during a sale and it was one for one. :) I didn't give the seafood much seasonings. Too much might mask the taste of light cheesy crust. Just some light soy sauce and pepper 15 minutes before I'm ready to cook. Then dip them in the following order ... Cornflour (dusting), beaten egg, (Powdered) Parmesan Cheese and straight into the hot oil for frying till golden brown. Drain them on paper towel for the excess oil and you can have them straight. We like it without any sauce. So, if you ran out of breadcrumbs and have Parmesan Cheese to spare, try this out for a change.

Cheese Crust Fish Fillet and Prawns