Best Moist Chocolate Cake

 Last weekend, I baked chocolate again with different recipe. My uncle invited the monks to his place and I volunteered to bring the cakes. I just baked double chocolate cake 2 days ago so I wanted to try the different recipe. I have found "best most moist chocolate cake" recipe a year ago and have not tried yet because it uses the store bought cake mix. I remembered I bought Betty Crocker devil food chocolate cake mix during Christmas holidays and wanted to make use of it. Coincidentally, I also bought jello chocolate pudding mix a week ago at Walmart.  Now is time to utilize all these ready mixes.

Banana Cake

After seeing the banana cake in My Favorite Place in Little Pigeonhole blog, I want to bake banana cake for Sayadaw as I am going to his place today. That banana cake looks delicious and the appearance is similar to popular cake we had in Burma. Although I want to try that recipe, Sayadaw likes the texture of chiffon cake. I should have asked her how was the texture of the cake. It was too late and I used the old recipe I have. I just ask her about texture and I will bake it for Sayadaw next time if  the texture is delicate and soft.

Double Chocolate Cake

Until now I could not make good chocolate cake. I feel something is missing in the cake like not very chocolaty or not sweet or etc. Today, I am looking for delicious chocolaty cake online. I found "Finding the best Chocolate Cake recipe" thread in eGullet Forum and read it through 3 hours, including taking notes down. I have finally listed all tested recipes by professional or non professional bakers in that thread. I am going to try Double Chocolate Cake tomorrow. Stay tune.

Japanese Vegetable Curry

I used to have the curry when I was in Singapore. Here, I did not have a chance to try the decent curry dish. I tried to make myself the curry like fish head curry , vegetable curry and Japanese curry poured on the rice. To tell the truth, none of them succeeded. Therefore, I gave up until now. Recently, I was looking for the perfect chocolate cake recipe and accidentally found this Japanese beef curry recipe on JustHungry website. I did visited this website before but I always have hard time finding the recipes I want. So, I only go to the site when search links bring me there. 

Buttermilk Cupcakes, Chocolate Cupcakes and Mocha Cupcakes for My Niece, Sofie's Birthday

My niece, sofie celebrated her birthday party at school last Friday. I volunteered to do the cupcakes for her school birthday party. This was my second assignment and wanted to try the new cupcake recipes instead. So I looked  through Mathasteward website and decided to do yellow buttermilk cupcake. I could not make a good chocolate cake so far, hence, I wanted to do chocolate cupcake too. I think the chocolate bar/chips I used is not good enough to give best flavor. I wanted to add another flavor so include the mocha cupcake.

Soft Bun

 Last Saturday, I baked soft bread buns, some are with hotdog, some are with custard and some are plain. I usually bake bread in summer as the temperature is high and good for proofing dough. When I baked my bread first time here in winter, it was a total failure. The temperature was low, below 60 degree F and the proofing failed. My hubby told me not to bake bread anymore as the breads are readily available at any stores. But I did not give up and baked again in summer. Oh, it was a great success. My relatives like them a lot and told me that it is same as buns sold in Chinese bakery.

My First Public Website for Non-Profit Organization

I finished my exams one week ago and I would be free for a week holiday. We often invite the monk, who live near my place, to our place and treat lunch or dinner. Recently, we asked the monk whether there was any website for monastry. He told us that he bought the domain name 5 years ago and one guy helped built website. But the guy was busy and stopped working on website. So, there has been only one home page for 5 years until now.

So, last Friday, I offered him to build monastery's website as I had a week holiday. I was busy working on website for this whole week. We worked until 11pm plus every night and spent most of my time on it. I did not even have time to post any of this week baking. Today, 90% of website is completed and only left with photos, videos and audio uploading and documentation. http://www.paramiusa.org/ is my first website running on public domain to be viewed by many users.  I feel good to have that opportunity to build website.

Burmese Banana Cake (Nget Pyaw Thii Shwe Gye)

 I like burmese banana cake, called Nget Pyaw Thii Shwe Gye. I miss this banana cake very much. I have not eaten it for very very long ago. I have tried it once by modifing Shwe Gye recipe I had. But I could not get the same texture and taste that I had in Burma. Recently, I joined  "Housewife" in facebook and I was browsing  photos - dishes submitted by fans of Housewife. Then, I found a number of burmese banana cake photos submitted by fans and they mentioned that they used one of fan' recipe, Ma Chit Ei Maung. The recipe in Burmese version is also available. ငွက္ေပ်ာသီးမုန္႕လုပ္နည္းကို ျမန္မာလို ဒီမွာဖတ္ရႈႏိုင္ပါသည္။ If you dont have burmese fonts or problem reading burmese fonts in your browser, click here.

Princess Cake for my niece Sofie's Birthday

I had not have time to update the blog recently as I just finished my exam on Tuesday. I made the Princess Cake for my niece Sofie's Birthday on last Sunday. I promised Sofie that I would make the princess birthday cake for her and this was my first time doing princess cake. I already found the stable birthday cake ingredient ratio and method. The cake texture is close to the cake shop here based on feedback from people who had them. My sister-in-law likes yam so I decided to make the yam cake based.

Tasmanian Lavender Muffin

 As usual, I went to Sayadaw's place to treat chicken broth, steamed fish and tasmanian lavender muffin. Sayadaw will stay here for 6 months and I plan to bring chicken broth, one dish and some desserts every Wednesday.

Last night, I was thinking what cupcake or muffin to bake for lunch treat. I suddenly remembered that I have some commercial style Australian muffin recipes. You must be curious how I got those recipes?

Burmese Tofu

March 2, 2010, I am going to sayadaw's place and thinking of what to bring for lunch, in addition of steamed chicken broth. I bought salmons this evening and will bake them tomorrow. I also wanted to try burmese tofu salad but I have to do the tofu myself. This tofu is different from chinese tofu and I like both. I think burmese tofu is originally from Shan state. If you have problem in reading zawgyi font in Internet Explorer, click here. The recipe in Burmese version is also available. တို႕ဖူးက်ိဳနည္းကို ျမန္မာလို ဒီမွာဖတ္ရႈႏိုင္ပါသည္။

Steamed Chicken Broth

 Last Sunday, I went to my aunt place as she invited a Sayadaw from yangon who is now in LA. I heard the conversation between people and monk and learned that he is weak and need some nourishing stuff to replenish body. Then I immediately know what to give him. You guess! steamed chicken broth.

Young Coconut Juice Jelly

 I was busy last week and also had a mid-term  exam on Monday. So, I did not have time to post the young coconut jelly and cupcake I did for last Sunday occasion at my aunt place. My aunt invited a Sayadaw from yangon, who is now in LA, to her place for lunch. I agreed to do young coconut jelly for people coming to her place and puff and cake for Sayadaw.

Pau

I have invited the monk for breakfast on this coming sat morning and want to treat him Dim Sum.  Therefore, I am testing the different kinds of  Dim Sum this week. I have tried Har Gow (Crystal Prawn Dumpling), Pan fried dumpling, pan fried shrimp, pork/shrimp paste  bean curd roll and Pau. Har Gow skin was unsuccessful and need to retry. The pan fried dumpling, pan fried shrimp was okay. The shrimp paste in bean curd  sheet is better to pan fry than steam. Pau was not really successfully.

Naing Ka Htine Cookie - Butter Cookie

We are going to my hubby's friend house tomorrow. So, I baked cookies tonight to bring along. I don't really like cookies and seldom baked last two years. Recently, I suddenly started to bake Naing Ka Htine Cookie which is popular in my hometown, Yangon. After trial and error, it was still not successful. One day, I brought some cookies to my sis-in-law's place and her brother-in-law told me that butter is main ingredient in the Naing Ka Htine. Then I realized that Naing Ka Htine is same as butter cookies or melt in the mouth cookies, but no vanilla flavor.

Huat Kueh/ Fatt koh

Chinese new year is over. I have been trying to do huat kueh since last year and still not successful. I did not know where to get ENO salt and sweet yeast biscuit. This year, I managed to buy sweet rice in yeast wine that can be replaced the sweet yeast biscuit and cooked rice fermentation. I finally knew where to buy ENO salt that sold in local indian grocery stores. So far, I did not manage to get ENO salt from local stores as ENO salt is out of stock from both indian grocery stores near my place.  I will try to get ENO salt this week.

Red Velvet Cake on Valentine's Day

Today is valentine's day and also sunday. I am now busy making the red velvet cake for my darling. I wanted to make red velvet cake last year and did not have a chance to do. I searched a few recipes online last time. I chose the recipe from The Way The Cookie Crumble blog, who adapted it from Apple a Day. She did the comparison among the different red velvet recipes and that was great. I use the half recipe and heart shape baking tin to bake as there are only two of us.

Tee Kueh / Nian Gao

Chinese new year is only a few days away. I am thinking of doing Tee Kueh, which also called Nian Gao, for the landlord as new year gift. When I was child, my grandmother used to make Tee Kueh every chinese new year. After she passed away, I don't have a chance to eat her Tee Kueh anymore. In fact, I don't really like Tee Kueh that much. However, I made my first Tee Kueh last year after I had got Tee Kueh's receipe from my sister in law's sister, who taught me many cooking methods. Surprisingly,  I began to like Tee Kueh.

Chocolate Chip Cupcake and Orange Cupcake for Cousin Lillian's Birthday

Last week, I was excited about baking cake for my cousin, Lillian's birthday on February 9 as this was my first baking assignment for party since my baking hobby started two years ago. I was thinking what kind of cakes or cupcakes to bake for her birthday party at Day care. Finally, my aunt told me to bake cupcakes. I  started to do some research online and figured out cupcake recipes and decoration ideas that kid will love. Finally, I decided to go with lemon meringue cupcake and chocolate chip cupcake recipes from marthastewart website as recently I wanted to buy cupcake recipes book written by Marthsteward. No harm trying now.