After 3 days...

After 3 days, this is what left. My son loves this cookies so much. When I showed him this empty jar and said I will do more next time, he jumped and said: "Yeah, yeah, yeah!".

Oatmeal coconut pecan cookies

I usually prepared some healthy snacks at home for my son and hubby. Both of them sometimes will need to snack before bedtime. Instead of eating crackers, I thought homemade snack probably more healthy. So far I did granola and biscotti. I usually kept them in a jar which only lasted for 3-5 days before my hubby and son finished them. 

Another snack idea I have in mind is oatmeal cookies. I have not bake this for a while. I think the last time I baked it was when my son was few months old. The reason is I was the only one like this oatmeal cookies. Chun thought that this cookies is too dry.

I decided to try again today but add a different ingredient such as coconut in it. I toasted the shredded coconut so it will be more aromatic. Chun came back for lunch and tried this fresh from oven cookies and he loves it! Let see how long this snack gonna last.

Ingredients:

1 cup or 2 sticks of butter, melted.

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1/4 cup of granulated sugar

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cup of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

 2 cups of old fashioned oats

1 cup of toasted shredded coconut

1/2 cup of pecan nuts

Methods:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degress.

2. Melt the butter and place it in large mixing bowl. Stir in brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla extract and eggs. Mix till well combined.

3. Add in flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and shredded coconut. Stir until blended. Stir in oat and pecan nuts.

4. Use a spoon to drop the cookies onto the prepared baking sheet.

5. Bake till golden brown. It takes about 15-20 minutes. 

Potato rice ball

We visited Hillsboro main library every weekend. The library has a kid section and it has a couple of wooden toys for toddler to learn about color, shapes and alphabet. My son loves that and this is the main reason he wants to go library every weekend. So usually after doing our grocery, we will stop by library. Daddy will accompany my son to play the toys while enjoying a cup of coffee with doughnut holes. I will go to world language section and started looking for recipe books. 

I recently borrowed a 15 minutes easy snack recipe book and one of the recipe which seemed easy enough is this potato rice ball.  This is a Japanese style snack. I myself never try a Japanese rice ball before, not really sure how it tastes. They always have rice ball in bento and shape it into cute cartoon features like bears, bird etc. I am not that artistic yet, so this recipe should be a good try for beginner like me. 

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup of white rice

2 medium size potatoes

salt to taste

2 tablespoon sesame oil

3 tablespoon corn flour

Methods:

1. Boil the potato and mash it. set aside.

2. Put the white rice into a plastic bag. Use hand to press the rice to break it till the rice becomes sticky.

3. Mix the rice with the mashed potato, salt and corn flour. 

4. Shape the mixture into a triangular or round shape. 

5. heat the frying pan with some sesame oil and pan fried the rice ball using low heat.

6. Wrap the rice ball with seaweed while it is still hot.

Steamed moist banana cake

We had been eating bread for breakfast for the past few weeks and I can see my son started to get bored. Although I was making different type pf bread such as cinnamon, chocolate swirl, whole wheat, ham and cheese, but they still bread. So I decided to do something different. I immediate thought of banana cake. I love the banana cake in Malaysia. The one that sells in a loaf and can easily get in any market. I especially like the cake texture which is fluffy and moist.

I had not bake banana cake for a while. The reason was I haven't find a recipe that produce a really moist cake. I tried using bake method to do this cake but the the cake always turn out to be dry. I was searching for banana cake recipe and happens to find that there is a steamed version of this cake. It is so simple and you can even do it without using mixer (I had a KitchenAids mixer but it is super heavy and I am lazy to bring it down from my kitchen cabinet to use it.). The cake is really moist and I think another important key is the banana need to be overripe so it will taste sweet and flagrant. 

The cake was ready by the time my son reached home. He insisted want to help mum to decorate the cake with his toy pick. By the time he was done playing with his toy pick and allowed me to cut it, I can see so many holes on the cake. (*_*) Anyway, both my hubby and son love it. They even had it as after dinner dessert!

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

4 eggs

140g sugar

170g melted butter or oil or a mixture of these two (I used olive oil)

300g mashed overripe banana (about 3 bananas)

250 all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

Method:

1. Mash bananas with a fork in a bowl and set aside. Sift the flour, baking power, baking soda and salt in  another bowl.

2. Use mixer or egg beater to beat the eggs and sugar until thick and pale yellow.

3. Add in melted butter/oil, mix well using spatula.

4. Add in mashed bananas.

5. Fold in sifted flour mixture. 

6. Prepare steamer in advance. Let the water boil before putting in the cake. I used a 8x8 square glass pan for the cake. Steam it at high heat for 45 to 50 minutes.

  

Steamed banana cake

My son was playing with his toy pick.

My son was decorating the cake with his toy pick. 

He showed me this and said :"Mummy, I made a train!". 

UBAH UBAH UBAH 5/5/13

Recently there is a very hot topic in Facebook - Malaysia general election (GE) 13. This topic is so hot because this was the dirtiest election ever and both parties had a very close race. 5th May was also the darkest day in Malaysia history.

Let me confessed something first before I continue, I didn't register as voter and hence I had never vote before. I missed the vote registration period for GE 12 because I was in US for relocation and by the time I back to Malaysia, the registration was closed. Since I am married to Chun and will stay in US, I don't register after that as I was thinking it probably hard for me to go back since I am so far away. So I am not voting this time too. Trust me, I felt guilty and bad. 

Malaysia local media (newspaper and TV) are controlled by government. So it doesn't show us the truth news. News are getting "manipulated" before published on paper and TV.  Photo and video were getting edited to FOOL people and information published were always pro government. The funniest thing is some real news can only be found through media oversea and not in Malaysia local media. Here is a great example from a recent black Wednesday rally and what media said about this news:

TV3 news : only 1000 people attended

Utusan : 2000 people attended and the rally FAILED! haha

Sin Chiew : 50,000 attended. china press: 200,000 attended.

Singapore news: 100,000 attended

The truth! Do you agree that this crowd is 1k or 2k as claimed by TV3 and Utusan?

Since existing medias are not reporting the real news, new newspaper website such as Malaysia Kini, Merdeka review started to show up. They offer quality reporting and reveal the truth of Malaysia politic. People especially the younger generation who use internet are exposed to the truth of Malaysia politic. News about corruption no longer hiding under the carpet. Social network like Facebook also play a very important role of spread the news especially to Malaysian in oversea. So even though we are in US, we are quite up-to-date with what is happening in Malaysia especially Chun. He will read MalaysiaKini everyday and watched youtube video on politic talks during election campaign. 

In GE 13 election, there were a lot of dirty tricks done by government in order to remain in power to govern Malaysia. Among the tricks they had: imported foreigner workers and give them IC to allow them to vote, openly bribe people to vote for them by give them money, free meals etc, created a lot of phantom voter in state that won by opposition, had addition ballot box coming in from no where when they were losing and the most ridiculous was have black out in the middle of counting vote and suddenly the vote count number became different. All kind of dirty tricks you can or cannot think of appeared in this election which made people really angry, sad and disappointment with the result and democratic. 

There were something different in this election. I started seeing people talk about a clean and fair government. They no longer playing racial card and spoke as Malaysian instead of Malay, Chinese and Indian. I was so touched when seeing Malaysians are so united this time to perform their duty as voters (higher voting rate this time), involved in politic talks to know about what government had done to us and helped to catch "ghost" (foreigner voter). They will fighting to save our country and future for children . People started to speak up and wanted their voice to be heard. Even my mum who is not high educated person and didn't expose to internet started to tell me that BN is so dirty and there were a lot of corruption happening. I was really surprised. She usually didn't care about politic but this time she said we should vote them out. My friend's Yen Ping's mum even took effort to educated the foreign workers who are guards in their housing area to not vote for BN even though they have received money from BN. But I knew that there still people who vote for BN for their own advantages. For example, a boss in local car company asking their employee to vote for BN because if PK win, the car price is gonna dropped and people will start buying import car and they will lose their job. Teachers are threaten to vote for BN because they work for government. Rich people with luxury life style and high education urge to vote for BN because they already have the "network" set up for their kang tao and if PK wins, they have to rebuild a new "network". Shame on these selfish people whose betray their heart for money and also so short sighted. 

Me and Chun were in US during the election day. Both of us stayed up late to get latest update from news website and facebook on the election. We were really anxious and hope that even though there were so many dirty tricks played by BN, somehow PK will still win. Unfortunately this was not what happening. After the blackout that happened in the middle of counting vote, BN suddenly won by a lot. In a few places where PK was initially leading by a lot in vote compare to BN suddenly lost after the blackout. Blackout trick when vote counting is in progress was no new to Malaysia politic. Someone started using this since last election and more people continue to use the same trick this time. So BN still won majority seats in parliment. But based on the total vote, PK won ~51% and BN won ~46%. And interesting is the total vote and total voter are different. The number of voter was less than the vote their received. There were addition of 250 thousand phantom vote. That's a lot! Without these phantom votes, UBAH operation may have succeed! This is really frustrating when  we knew that there were so many fraud in this election and yet we can't do anything about it. The government and SPR just don't care the noise people made. 

This unfair election made me think about my uni life. Whoever went to local university will know what I am talking about. We were living under the same threaten from lecturers and workers there. We didn't dare to fight or voice out because afraid that lecturers will mark us and failed us. Lecturers wrote something wrong on board, no one will point out. Lecturer scolded us for no reason with harsh words, we had to keep quiet. I remembered one of my friend had a very bad grade for one of the subject and she happened to find her exam paper outside of lecturer room and her paper showed she should get A instead. She brought the paper to see the lecturer. Guess what the lecturer said? He said if she complaint again, he will make her fail and retake the subject. My friend can't do anything, she walked out with tears in her eyes and can only blame for being bad luck. On my graduation day, I was so happy mainly because I was so done with this kind of life for 5 years and I am free now. This is exactly the same thing our government is doing to Malaysian now. The only difference is in uni, we knew we can get out of this life in 5 years time when we graduated. But with this government, we can't unless we overthrow them. 

It had been 3 days since the election, the voice from people never stop. I wish the voice continue so something can be done for a clean re-election. Really thankful and salute those PK leaders. They fought for whole life and yet they never give up. So we shouldn't give up as well so easily!

My heart is always with all Malaysian who willing to fight for a better future. I promise to do my part as well. I will make sure I register as voter the next time I am going back to Malaysia!

UBAH UBAH UBAH! FIGHTING FIGHTING FIGHTING!

65 degree Tang Zhong Bread

Even though I am working in technology company, I had to admit that I am very outdated with phone apps. I heard about WhatsApp app from my siblings and friends for a long time, but never use it before since I don't have an iphone or Android phone. I usually don't use laptop at night especially when my son is still awake. Hence I had been "disconnected" with my friends for a while. They usually dropped me a message in facebook but we can't do live chat like we used to be. My friends kept asking me if I have WhatsApp and we can message each other using that.

Last two months, I happened to know that there is a way of using WhatsApp for Ipad 2. I am so happy about that and started to surf online on step by step to download WhatsApp for my Ipad. Thanks for those who share the tips online, I managed to have this app installed. I am back "online" and continue to stay connected with my sibling and friends. 

We created two main chat groups: forever hot chick which consists of my middle school friends and forever hot mama for those friends that have upgraded to mummy. There is always a little delay in my response due to time zone difference. Is day time in Malaysia when I am at sleep via versus. People said three lady will create a pasar. Since we have ~12 people in the chat group, you can imagine how many pasar there. Sometimes I woke up in the morning and found that I have few hundreds of new messages. I have to scroll back to read the long message thread. :) We talked about a lot of things in the chat room including sharing of news happening among our friends, recipes, asking questions or opinions about something, politics talk etc. WhatsApp makes me feel that I am so closed to my friends and family even though physically we are thousand miles apart.

Yen Ping is one of my very closed buddy that used to sit besides me in classroom during F4 and F5. She is one of the friend that is very active in our chat room. Hence, she earned a new name: our mamapedia since she knows so many parenting tips, baking and cooking tips. She is also my personal search engine for recipes that she had tested and guarantee to work. All I have to do is tell her what I want to make and she will find the right recipes for me. Much efficient that Google search. :p 

I always wanted to make bread/bun that is soft, moist and will continue to stay soft for a few days. I had tried so many recipe online for soft bread but none of them satisfied me. They usually soft for 1-2 hours after bake and will get harden after that. I had to microwave it to make it soft again. But this made the bread dry. So I asked Yen Ping for help and she immediately shared two recipes that she tested before. Yen Ping's recipe uses a starter dough which is a dough that need to prepare up front by cooking the bread flour with some water/milk and add this starter dough when making the bread dough. This is the main difference in Yen Ping's recipe compare to online recipe I tried before and is called 65C tang zhong method.  I tried this 65C tang zhong method and it indeed produce a bread that is soft for 2-3 days. I am so happy and satisfied.

I started using the same dough recipe to do more different style of bread such as cinnamon bun, chocolate bun, wheat bun etc. My hubby started complaint that he is gaining weight as he can't resist the yummy bread and kept sneaking into kitchen to eat the bread after dinner. :) 

Here is the recipe I used:

Tang Zhong starter:

Ingredient:

50g bread flour

250ml water or milk

Method:

1. Mix flour and water/milk till it is smooth in a small saucepan.

2. Cook over medium heat and stir with hand whisk. Keep stirring till you see streaks in the mixture for every stir you make. this will produce a 65C tang zhong.

3. Set aside to let it cool to room temperature before using it.

Bread dough:

200g white bread flour *

170g wheat bread flour *

30g gluten flour *

Tang Zhong starter 

160ml milk

1/4 tsp salt

50g sugar

2 tsp yeast

40g butter

* you can use 400g white bread flour if you don't want to use wheat flour.

Method:

1. Place all ingredients in bread machine or knead it if you don't use a bread machine.

2. After the dough proof, shape the dough in any shape you like. you can add filing like cinnamon or chocolate and shape them.

3. let it proof for another 20 minutes. 

4. Bake at 350F for about 25 mins.

After shaping it

Proof it before bake

More bread styles that I made:

Cinnamon pecan bun before bake

After bake

Chocolate swirl bun