A hands-on project

This weekend I was wondering whether to make ham and cheese bread or cranberry bread. After some thought, I decided to make both, so that I wouldn't have too many ham and cheese buns (it would get boring to eat that repeatedly).

I let my bread machine do all the kneading like the bread I usually make, and then took the dough out to form the buns. The dough came out of the pan in a big cohesive blob, but it was stickier than I expected once I started splitting it into buns. It stuck all over my fingers and I had difficulty wrapping the dough around the ham and cheese.

The result was very ugly, after a tedious process. Because I had so much difficulty pulling the dough around the filling, I even added more dough for each bun than I had intended to.

I was going to use only half of the dough for the ham and cheese buns, and the other half for the cranberry buns. But since I had used more dough above, that left me smaller cranberry buns.

This was a bit easier to make than the ham and cheese buns, but by that time dough was all over my fingers already, so it also hard to manipulate.

After the dough had risen (I left it for about 45 mins to an hour), I scattered ("sprinkle" should be a better word here, but I didn't sprinkle, I scattered :P ) some almond bits on top and put it into the oven to bake (180 degC, 14-15 mins).

The buns rose a whole lot more while baking.

I was going to put almond on the cranberry buns too, but seeing as the almond bits didn't brown, I decided not to. But maybe I should have... since the cranberry buns browned a lot more than the ham and cheese ones.

The cranberry buns probably didn't need that long in the oven (I put them in as long as the ham and cheese buns), because they were smaller. But I didn't think of that before baking them. :P

I broke off a bit of a cranberry bun to try...it tasted more or less like the bread I usually get from the bread machine. Now I hope the buns won't go stale too quickly... I've already put the ones that are not meant for tomorrow into the freezer, to be safe.

The second platter

Some time ago, I posted about going to Manhattan Fish Market for a platter promotion. Well, we just went to redeem our free platter.

From top left, we have deep-fried squid (the body, not the head/crown) on fries, a bowl of curry fish (the fish was just a bit of the belly portion, it seemed), mussels (six of them) on herb rice, and squid heads (maybe three of them?) with pasta. The pasta seemed to have a tiny bit of chilli or paprika sprinkled on it (you can see small red bits), but it wasn't spicy.

To me, this was even more of a letdown than the previous platter, because there was hardly any seafood. However, while the previous platter was too oily (everything was deep-fried), this one was a better mix. The curry was actually really nice, and we used it on the rice. Paying full price for this (RM67+, I think) would have been a total rip-off. Seeing as we got two platters for that price, it was still acceptable.

The sky

Two weeks ago, I had chosen to snap a photo of a bright sky for the theme bright. As luck would have it, last Friday's theme was sky. So I decided that I had to get a photo of a sky that wasn't bright!

In the course of the week, I managed to get not one, but two passable photos of the sky.

The first one was during sunset, when the sky glowed slightly pink. This one is my "official" submission for this Photo Friday.

The second one was on a gloomy morning. The sky was slightly dark, and above the roofs of the row of houses opposite ours, we could see a gradual lightening of the sky. It is not so noticeable though, but I find that the colours came out nice in the photo (though maybe not exactly the same as the hue seen with the naked eye).

That's why I decided to keep this photo too. Would you have chosen this photo over the first one?

The buddy bears

When I was in Berlin, I saw some bear statues scattered around the city. It turns out that they were the Buddy Bears, and last year they came to Penang. (Now that I'm done with my delayed posts for 2017, here we go back in time to 2016!)

It's been so long, I don't even know whether I initially had something in particular to say about the bears. So I guess this post will be mainly filled with photos.

The bears were arranged in a huge circle. I was standing here:

And there is the far end.

There were so many bears, one for each country.

We took photos with a special bear standing on its own. There were actually a few standing on their own, outside the main circle.

the Malaysian bear

two special Malaysian bears

We missed the French bear during out first round, so we turned back to look for it. Luckily we noticed that the bears were standing in alphabetical order. When we found the bear, it was no wonder that we missed it:

Pretty ugly, actually. The bear's tummy is supposed to represent things that France is famous for.

(P.S. I'm too lazy to zoom in and check where each bear is from, but you can take a look at the plaque in front of the bear if you're interested. Good luck! :P )

Duffy - the unboxing

Duffy arrived almost two months ago. Unfortunately, I've been putting off writing this post, maybe because I wanted to do it the justice that it deserved.

Duffy first came around when I wasn't home, so the postman left me a card to go and fetch it from the post office myself.

It already made my day when I saw "plush toy" written on the box.

The package was extremely battered:

They even marked it as "received in broken condition". I guess they wanted to say, "Not my fault!" lol

Opening the box from a torn area. Fluffiness!

There was a postcard included.

Duffy has travelled over the world more than I have! So here is Duffy, out of its box!

The reason why it sits a bit crookedly is because it is actually a pouch, with a zipper in the back. The pouch was empty, so its body was sagging. I haven't taken any photos with its body filled up yet.

For size comparisons, here it is next to my Pikachu! 

If you want to know the story behind Duffy, I've posted about Duffy before, here.

And last but not least, thank you so much, Catherine and Albin! :)

Trying out Western-style eateries

After the local food previously, here are some Western dishes instead!

We went to Arang Coffee for dinner one day, and ordered chicken and fish parmigiana.

chicken parmigiana

fish parmigiana

We felt that the chicken was better. Maybe because it was the chicken thigh, and the fish was a bit dry.

Then we ordered an affogato to try.

Unfortunately there was too little ice-cream and it was already melting, so we felt a bit cheated. This cost RM9 or RM10 I think. The parmigiana dishes cost around RM20 each.

We also tried out Uncle Albert's fish and chips at Straits Quay. A lunch set cost RM25 each (we had to add on service charge and government tax too), and it comprises of a plate of fish and chips, together with their soup of the day and iced lemon tea.

The soup actually came first, and they brought the fish and chips after clearing away our soup plates.

The fish and chips were pretty good, and the batter was very crispy, but to go all the way to Straits Quay and pay RM25 for it is still a bit pricey.

Glutinous rice flour adventures (Episode 2)

So maybe you don't remember episode 1...but here I am attempting the mochi cake again. After the first failed attempt, I tried checking how many grams two cups of glutinous flour was supposed to weigh. There were varying measurements, from 260g to 300g. The first time, I had only used around 150g!

This time I used 300g of glutinous rice flour, with 400ml of milk (the same as the first time). And I think it turned out like it was supposed to!

While baking, there seemed to be air pockets under the cake, and it rose and fell like waves. As you can see in the picture above (if you look closely), when first taken out of the oven, the cake isn't completely flat; the upper right corner for example has risen a bit!

But after cooling, the cake fell back down (you can compare the upper right corner).

The edges were slightly crispy, and the interior was soft and chewy, pretty much like the first attempt, but maybe not as soft (there was more flour this time, after all).

I definitely prefer this version! Now I know why the recipe was actually for "mini" mochi cakes, because the edges taste better! Unfortunately I don't have a non-stick muffin/cupcake pan... and I don't think using paper cup liners will yield the same results. (I'm also too lazy to make more than one batch in the oven when I can just do this :P )