My First No Bake Cheesecake

2 weeks ago I made a chilled cheesecake for hubby’s birthday. It was also my first time baking him a birthday cake. Without much thought, Oreo chilled cheesecake came to my mind....I started to search for recipes online and also flipped through my collection of cookbooks. As I was searching online one day, I stumbled upon Doreen’s blog. Her Irresistible Oreo Cheese Cake caught my attention and I decided to use the recipe posted by her.

I bought all the necessary ingredients including a 20cm springform cake pan and started my project on Thursday night after Sharlene has gone to bed at around 9.45pm. The steps are really simple and I only modified slightly by reducing sugar to 70gm and adding 10ml of lemon juice. The whole thing was done in less than an hour. After that, I just left the cake in the fridge to chill overnight. The next day, we were all ready to celebrate hubby’s birthday. Initially, I wanted to give him a surprise but naughty Sharlene spoiled my plan….haha. She opened the fridge, saw the cake and announced to everyone that there is a cake in the fridge! Hubby was standing nearby so he heard what the little girl said.

~ My 1st cheesecake ~

I’m glad that my 1st attempt was a success. The cake turned out really good and tasted very nice. Everyone liked it and gave a thumbs-up for this cheesecake :) However, the appearance wasn’t up to the standard. It would look nicer if I had used an 18cm cake pan. I’m planning to make another type of cheesecake soon and hope it will turn out well.

Father's Day Card And Chocolate Marble Cupcakes

Quite a number of photos were uploaded last night by hubby including the ones taken on Father’s Day. As mentioned in my earlier post that was exactly one month ago, Sharlene did a card for her dearest daddy and in place of a cake from the bakery, I baked some cupcakes on the eve of Father’s Day.

Here's pix of the Father’s Day card by Sharlene...
She loves to draw stars….lots of them! That’s the first thing she thought of when I told her to decorate her card :-)

I wrote down the message on a piece of paper for her to copy it on the card.

And last but not least, the simple yet delicious chocolate marble cupcakes.

Some Of My CNY Cookies

I've finished baking my CNY cookies a week ago. I am glad that this year Sharlene’s nanny was around to help me out. With her assistance I managed to make 4 types of cookies in 2 days. Apart from that I also have 2 little helpers in the kitchen and they were none other than Sharlene and her piao cheh.


I gave them the easiest task i.e. to sift the flour. They did pretty well with one holding the sieve and the other one scooping and scraping the flour into the sieve. But obviously crumbs of flour were scattered everywhere by them. I think my flour weighs a little lesser at the end of the sifting process. *frown* My 2 keen helpers weren’t so eager after all. They didn’t stay in the kitchen for long.


Here are the first 2 types of cookies which I baked on a Saturday –

My all-time favorite, Choc-chips Hazelnut cookies. This cookies are very crunchy, nutty and full of hazelnut flavor. Simply yummy!!

My very first attempt in baking traditional peanut cookies. For this, all you need to have are peanut, sugar, salt, flour and peanut oil. It’s simple and the ingredients were cheap too. I was satisfied with the outcome but maybe lack of appearance, as I was too lazy to decorate it with half a peanut on top of each cookie.

Cornflakes and Mixed Fruits cookies which were baked on the next day. For this, I reduced the sugar too much and hence, the cookies taste a bit plain. Sigh! my oversight. :(

Nevertheless, I was very contented with the overall result. I actually produced quite a few containers of cookies this year – the above 3 varieties plus ‘kok chai’, ngaku and seaweed crisps. I’ve since kept my baking utensils in the storeroom and will not be baking any more cookies until the next CNY.

Blueberry Muffin

I had baked some blueberry muffins for Sharlene’s class party on the last day of school. As I mentioned earlier, I pondered for days...what to buy? what to buy for her?...before I decided on this. It struck my mind that I still have a packet of muffin mix and thought this would be the easiest thing to do. Furthermore, I have all the other ingredients at home. :) I started baking once I got home on the night before the class party and that was about 6.30pm. Put aside my handbag and rushed to the kitchen to gather the required stuff.

At the same time, Sharlene came over, greeted me with her sweetest smile and happily said, mummy, let’s go out for a walk. Oh, how I wished to bring her out. She was rather disappointed when I told her that we couldn’t go out on that day but soon after I told her that we are going to bake muffins for her to bring to school, she forgot about the going out issue and couldn't be more happy to follow me around the kitchen. Kids just love to have fun!!

Well, here are the ingredients needed for the muffins:


1 packet of blueberry muffin mix, 3 large eggs, melted butter (I only used half of the butter) and some full cream milk.

First of all, I melt the butter and let it cool. To hasten the process, I put the pot of melted butter over a basin of cold water. Next, throw in the muffin mix, eggs and milk into a mixing bowl. Mix them well. Later add in the cool melted butter and combine them into a smooth mixture. That’s about all, so simple and fast!

The almost ready mixture. Sharlene helped to stir the mixture before I transfer them into individual muffin cups for baking.

Even though it's simple, the beginning part wasn’t quite easy with my girl’s constant requests to help. Here I’m rushing to complete the baking before everyone comes home and there she messed around with all the ingredients by cutting the butter, cracking the eggs, pouring the milk..etc, etc. The whole procedure got delayed because of this.

My little helper in action. She had pushed a pouffe into the kitchen and stood on it.

I took my dinner while waiting for the muffins to be ready. The muffins elevated so high for the first time. I was so worried that it would sink once it’s cool down.

The muffins were ready after 25 minutes later. And this is how it looks like. Please excuse me for the humble looking muffins, as I’m certainly not a pro in baking. Just loves to try out new recipes and bake some simple stuff for my family during my leisure time. The muffins did taste good nonetheless. :)

Lastly, I packed them individually and thereafter neatly stuffed them into a paper bag for her to bring to school the next day.

Simple Food For Lunch

We always have a problem of what to cook for lunch during weekends. It is rather difficult to come up with something that everyone loves to eat, especially the kids. Most of the time we ended up with noodles - a dish that is simple to prepare and easy to cook!

At times, we will just cook a BIG pot of porridge when we are bored with noodles or simply when we can’t think of what sort of noodles to dish up. Sharlene’s nanny is also our cook. She handles all the cooking for us and if she’s not on leave during the weekends, she does that for us too. That's the reason why I'm so lazy to cook now...heheh :)

Normally we let her know what we would like for the day, purchase the ingredients required and she will do the cooking for us. Here are the noodles we ‘ordered’ from her a few Saturdays ago...


Fried Tomyam Meehoon – with lots of beansprouts, prawns, squids, fishcakes, fried beancurd and shredded ‘daun limau purut’. She cooks this dish very well and everyone doesn't seem to get tired of eating even though we have it quite often for lunch.


Another variety of noodles for the kids. She has to fry this non-spicy meehoon along with the tomyam meehoon just for the kids.


On that day I also baked a tray of chocolate chips muffins for teatime. My nephew loved this and chomped down 3 at one go. Actually, my main purpose of baking this was to finish off the remnants of chocolate chips, which I used to bake cookies for CNY this year. So long ago right...but when I checked the expiry date; it’s still within the expiration. So no worries :) I put in abundance of chocolate chips but there were still some leftovers. Looks like I need to bake another round of....errm, perhaps chocolate chips cookies this time to clear my stock.

Have you noticed the uneven color tone of the muffins? Some are darker and some are lighter in color. It could be the heating element of my oven that is positioned at one side of the oven. So, the muffins that were placed near the heating element obviously get darker and those placed further were lighter. Arggggh, can’t wait to buy a better oven BUT the current one is still in working condition…so got to put off this idea for the time being.