Santa's Fruitcake

A Christmas fruitcake

I have a 20 year-old recipe shared by an elderly aunt. I've been making this fruitcake for the last 6 years for Christmas and Chinese New Year too.

It's not complicated, not too sweet or oily but flavourful and colourful. Don't worry if you don't have rum, I used brandy here. 

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Hello December 2011

Should be "Hello Christmas"… which is more like it! 

I’ve just got back my laptop after having it being classified “Requires Hospitalisation” for some major repairs. I wish I'm smarter then all I needed to do would be to hook it to a life-support machine, cut it open, change some organs, prescribed some antidote...run some tests and voila! 2 follow-up checks and everything will be fine...no more amnesia!

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Coffee Cake

I enjoyed this Christmas very much probably because I baked more than I did the previous year. I injured my arm in late 2008 but have since recovered, somewhat. Hehehe...I enjoyed probably because I ate a lot too the past few weeks. Oh my, it's going to be tough with Chinese New Year barely 5 weeks away... how can I resist the festive food?

Here's some of the Xmas stuff... mouth-watering stuff! I made 2 small 6” cakes and presented 1 to my friend for Christmas this year. A white cream cake with chocolate & strawberries are normally kids favourite. I think I didn’t do too good a job on the decoration but we love the chunky & tart strawberries and chocolate combined with coffee sponge cake.

(This Coffee Cake decorated with chocolate shavings was given to a friend)

Sponge Cake

1 packet sponge-cake mix 250g

Eggs, water and melted butter, please follow instruction per packet

1 tsp of mocha or coffee paste

Topping & Cream filling

350g Rich’s Gold Label Whip Topping

2-3 tbsp of ice-cold water

100g strawberries, hulled and cut into small chunks

75g dark chocolate

2 tbsp double cream

2 tsp of butter

1-2 tsp fresh milk

1.      Prepare sponge cake as per instruction. Beat all ingredients in a mixing bowl till soft and fluffy. Add in mocha paste and continue beating till well combined.

2.      Pour in (2 x 6” round pans) or 1 pan of 9”. Lined bottom with baking paper and lightly grease the sides.

3.      Bake at 180C for 35-40 minutes till golden brown and when the cake has pulled slightly away from the sides of pan.

4.      Remove from oven, gently remove from pan and set to cool on wire tray.

5.       Once cooled, chill in the fridge while we set to prepare the whipped topping and chocolate fillings

6.      In a double boiler method, melt chocolate, cream and butter, stir till combined, add milk little by little. Let cool, thicken slightly but enough for spreading & piping but not harden at all.

7.      Whip Topping : Beat whip topping and iced water, in a chilled mixing bowl and beater, till lines start appearing. (Do not overbeat)

8.      Remove the cake from the fridge and slice across into 2 layers.

9.      Decorate with cream, add strawberry chunks and melted chocolate, as desired. Or, you can add chocolate shavings too.

I hope you have enjoyed eating as much as I did during the holidays. :-D

By the way, this is my present from my Hubby... nope, not the Estee Lauder... but I was also eyeing this CUPCAKE by Joanna Farrow when we visited the bookstore the last 2 times. :-)

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A Christmas card

Last week I received a Christmas card from my good friend in Australia. It was such a pleasant surprise J. In this age of e-Card, SMS text, Online chat, Facebook… snail mail is only for mailing your cheque payments for credit card, mortgage, insurance payments…

I haven’t received any such cards in many years. It’s an almost long forgotten thing. We normally get junk flyers, promotional mailers, receipts, statements, bills but to see a pale green handwritten envelope… wow, it’s so personal and so touching to see this tradition back in practice. There’s nothing like receiving one.

I just may do this come Chinese New Year… J

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Christmas recipe

Here's wishing you a very Merry Christmas, a lovely family reunion and a joy rediscovered with your loved ones.

A teaspoon of smile

A tablespoon of joy

A piece of love

A pinch of peace

A cup of cheers, and

A dash of laughter

Now, that's a recipe for a wonderful Christmas holidays. May the magic of Christmas brings to you and your family good health, joy, peace, love and laughters always.

Have a blessed Christmas!

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Christmas-christmas

I’ve been busy these couple of weeks, preparing my little prince for his formal schooling next year. As part of the effort by the school to make the huge milestone in a child’s life, they have made it less daunting, with orientation program at the school this week, something like a trial run. I’ll tell you all about it in the next posting.

While browsing the net (I’m always browsing the net, my biggest library in my home)… I saw some interesting stuff you might like for this festive week. I’m not sure if you have checked up Land O’Lakes (Butter) site, they have some holiday recipes brochure, menu suggestion and free printing stuff.

From one of my favourite sites, the Allrecipe.com, has some great suggestion on recipes starting from Christmas eve including some yummy cookies recipes.

I love making cookies and I regret not being able to do so this year. I only managed to try out some Christmas desserts. Next year, I’m going to make a better plan! J. This year’s strategic plan not so workable… hahahah! May be I needed another pair of hands and more free time. But at least my Christmas tree was up 3 weeks ago J and I’ve got some presents under the tree.

There are some ideas that you can get from Martha Stewart’s home decorating ideas for the holiday season, holiday crafts and recipes of course.

Some good hostessing tips from Rachel Ray, Gift Guides and Holiday Desserts that got me drooling.

I didn’t have much time but I managed to briefly glanced at another of my favourite site, Nestle’s Very Best Baking and Chocolate-chocolate Hershey’s.

Next year, I’m going to make some nice Chocolate Chip Cookies and perhaps some spiced cookies too.

It’s the 23rd.............then 24th...........but-but-but there’s still no sign of my present under the tree.

Hurry Santa...hurry!

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All I want for Christmas...

Mmmm…

”All I want for Christmas is …

something nice,

something sweet (not sugary sweet)

something personal,

something romantic,

something feminine,

something ME…something SPECIAL!

I left my latest issue of Marie Claire on my coffee-table opened on THE page with book-marker (do you need a book-marker for your woman’s magazine? … (eye-rolling!)… And, I left the browsers of my note-book opened on these pages for a couple of days now...

Not very subtle am I? But…the hints are so obvious… hehehe…let’s see if this works.

Chinese have a saying ‘ngau-pei tang-lung’ (roughly translated, leather lampshade)…sigh! I can count the number of presents under the tree…mine is still not there yet. But it’s already the 22^th!

Every year, I’ve got something practical… I’ve always been practical…yeah, (sigh!) that’s why I get ‘practical gifts’… so can I change that?

 

In the past, I’ve got cookbook…alright, cookbookS… (maybe, my cooking needs improvement?). I’ve got a dress (OK, dresses), a John Grisham’s book (not a cookbook!), a beautiful set of pyrex dish (was it for Mother’s Day?....can’t remember!), a camera-phone (my old mobile-phone died on me 10 days before Christmas – how convenient!)…

Are these nice, sweet…

Estee Lauder

Elizabeth Arden

Sigh!...

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Christmas gift ideas

I have always shopped personally, ie see, check, touch, feel, try and pay customer. Not very keen to try online purchase, for there is the fear of credit card fraud, I don’t get my goods after payment, I'm not getting my quality stuff… but there are a good many trusted sites recommended by purchasers as we can follow in forums and reviews. Perhaps I'll try some day.

For children, you may want to consider some of the followings:-

Fisher-Price’s Geo-trax is excellent for motor-skills training. I got this set for Max when he was just 1. He was able to learn to maneuver the joystick forward and back and hold it to get the “choo-choo”. It’s a bit pricey though.

Lego Duplo Explore  – Max’s 2^nd Big-set toy. The big blocks are just right for their tiny fingers to learn to put together. It’s excellent to teach them colours with these. But being tough and durable, you might want to be careful if other younger children around to prevent any sibling fights with these! It sure is gonna hurt.

Lego – Bionicles with Toa Matoro, Toa Kongu, Bogarak .... these are suitable for Age group 7 and above, but I got these for Max when he was 4. We taught him to refer to the instruction manual to put the pieces together section by section…and within an hour he has them diassembled!  They’ll need help to insert some of these small pieces which has tight fit. Please remember it’s only play with strict adult supervisions only for smaller kids. He has also taken some pieces here and there and made up another awesome-looking robotic creature.

Lego Technic - now, this is very exciting as it features various technical moves, with gears, hinges and pulley...Max is very fascinated with this set.

The return of the Rubik Cube. This coloured cube made a comeback recently and is also available in 4x4, not just 3x3. It comes in pyramid shape too. How on earth is this going to be solved!

Books, sounds boring but it’s not. It’a perfect gift. A gift of knowledge and good to inculcate a good reading habit when they are still young.

Board games, the popular ones like Scrabble, Monoploy, Snake-n-Ladder, are good for family fun.

Boggle, Boggle, a very interesting classic word games, very useful for vocabulary building for age 8-up, price @RM49.90

Mattel UNO Stacko @RM54.90 for age 7 – up

Eduscience Starter Microscope, @RM89.95.

You might want to check out some of these sites, some of which offers online purchases


TOYS”R”US, Check this out, based on gender and age, the suggested toys. 


Educational Insights offers some interesting puzzles that develop children in areas of problem-solving, logical and stimulate thinking skills. I've purchased a number of sets like the 

  

and the lastest is the River Crossing

One of the most trusted site, the Amazon has a wide collection of toys and puzzle for kids.

and I found a good choice here, Kids Online Store.

Books from MPH Online, but they were having upgrading works on their website but it’s up already. Their customer service is very good. Last year, I called up to enquire on availability of a particular book. Very kindly they let me know the price of paperback & hardcover too and availability at which outlet.

Popular Bookstore is having some kind of In-store activity with the beginning of year-end school break on Nov 20 at Ikano Power Centre and Sunway Pyramid. You may want to check out the stuff there and note the interest of your kids.

FOR HIM, 

You can get a good book or CDs or DVDs at Amazon . I was thinking of getting a "Beautiful World" by Jim Brickman...I like Jim Brickman, so we'll enjoy the CD together. :-)

Speedy Video seems they have free delivery for purchases above RM100 (valid for Msia only) but available to for sale in other currencies too.

FOR HER 

Again, I'm thinking for myself, besides getting the fragrances from the local Departmental Store and you go dizzzzzzzzzy, inhaling those fragrances...& deciding on one might be hard. Maybe you can check out her sets on her dressing table.

Amazon, availability of wide range of cookbooks, cookware & even kitchen gadgets, you can check it out, as it may make good gift your loved ones or mother or MIL (mother-in-law :-P) or even sister or aunt.

Cooking.com not only has recipes online but some pretty good deals on kitchen stuff, might be a good idea to check it out.

Emmagem’s 100 onlineshop in Malaysia. Please read and check out the boutiques carefully before making the online purchases...some are pretty reliable and have build a very good reputation. I bought a couple of outfit from Layla Walk-in-closet (in USJ Taipan), very nice and very good price too.

Have fun shopping....I'm off to do my rounds shortly, looking for nice stuff and enjoying the festive cheers.

Have a great weekend.

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