How to make Orange Sponge Cake?

Love is in the air... (but not me)

Hopeless romantic… Not me, but my brother A. I suspect and according to spy agent R (my 2nd brother), he reported that brother A seem to have fall for one of his female colleagues. Guess how he had planned to win that lady’s heart? He is going to bake her a birthday cake!

*Angry… He has never bake any cake for us… That girl is lucky. She better appreciate it, I hope. He made her a Chocolate Fondant Cake (Gordon Ramsley’s recipe). See below. Agent R and I gave him some tips on the decoration. It is funny to see him so anxious and nervous that we might wreck his cake. Hee Hee.



Anyway all the cake making at home had made my mum craved for homemade cake as well, thus asked to me to bake her one. I did. I made an Orange flavoured Sponge Cake.

Basic Genoese Sponge

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs (medium)
• 125 g of plain flour (sifted)
• 125 g of sugar (fine)
• 30 g of butter (melted)

20 cm round cake tin with bottom grease with butter
Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius

Flavour:

• Zest of 1 orange (can replace with lemon, but omit the juice as it will soured the cake)
• 1 tablespoon of orange juice

Method:

1. Whisk the eggs, zest of orange and sugar together till mixture becomes thick and pale in colour. The process will take about 10 -12 minutes.

I used an electrical whisk, thus it is more convenient. If you wish to strengthen your arms, you can try to whisk by hand, but prepare salonpas to stick on sore muscles after that. Hee Hee.

2. While the electronic whisk is mixing, measure the flour and sifted it, so that more air can be incorporated into the mixture later making the cake lighter and fluffier.

3. How to see if the egg mixture consistency is right? The mixture will become thicker after whisking. When lifted the mixture, it should leave a trail of “ribbon”. In layman terms, when you scope the mixture and let it drip, the dripped mixture will not disappear immediately. In fact, it should float on top of the surface for a while.

4. When the mixture is ready, pour in melted butter and orange juice. Mix a little while and stop. Do not over-mix as air will escape.

5. Then comes the hardest part, when the egg mixture is ready, “fold” in the flour. As there are air bubbles in mixture, it will be destroy if you stir. Instead, when we say fold, we scope the mixture over the flour to mix them thoroughly.

6. Pour the cake batter into the tin. Bake 30 for minutes. To test if it is cook, skew a wooden stick into the cake. The skewer should come out clean when the cake is cooked.

Malaysia Taxi - Alagappan A/L Rajamanikam Eksekutif

Beware, tourists in KL. Remember the name, the taxi and beware. For those who know, Malaysia taxi fare is relatively cheap compared to Singapore, but we paid $15 sing dollars from Mid-Valley to KLCC (No traffic jam, not because of long distance). This asshole simply took us for a tour literally by taking the longer route.

Not that we recognise the roads, but we can read the road sign. We were travelling at the express way and there was an exit named Bukit Bintang KLCC. He ignored it and kept travelling towards the airport direction. I felt uneasy and asked if he was going to bring us to airport. He smiled and replied no and exit immediately at the next exit which is don’t know where.

The taxi he is driving already charges more than normal ones because of the size. He should be making a lot more money compared to the others, but he chose to scoop to such lowly method. Not that we don't understand their plight and bother over this little money. In fact I always gave in one or two dollars extra to normal taxi when haggling the price as I understand they are making a living too and already had a harder time making money. However, I don't think it is ok for people to cheat others purposely.

I hope someone report him to tourist police soon!

KL Trip - Swiss Garden Hotel

When travelling, hotel is the most important thing to me. I cannot imagine after one day of shopping and walking, coming back to dirty hotel room. I need to feel safe and sleep well to get myself refresh for the next day.

I had travelled to KL 3 times thus far, but I had a very bad experience the first time I went. We stayed at the Federal Hotel then. Not only the room had shabby décor, wore carpet, dirty bathtub, it had cockroaches as well! My roommates and I were so shocked that we had to plug our ears to prevent cockroaches from crawling in at night. Because of it, I did not manage to get a wink throughout the night.

The second time we stayed at Mediya. It was clean, but the room rates were quite expensive. This recent time that I went, we stayed at Swiss Garden. It was the best hotel I ever experienced in KL thus far! I actually had some reservation about the hotel at first because of the review online. One of the guests reported that there were cockroaches in his room and many reported of their unfriendly staff.

Don’t believe them. I had a good time staying there. Look at the room. They were so spacious, chic and clean in my opinion. Maybe there are cockroaches in every room, but as long as they did not appear in my sight, I am ok. About their staff, I thought they were pretty ok in fact they left a very good impression on me.

We stayed at level 13. Clean bed sheets and fluffy pillow. Felt sleepy just by looking at it.

This is not a show room and yes we had a flat screen TV in our room. There are a lot of channel too. I remembered watch "Alantis" on Disney Channel. :) Great bedtime story.

The first day we had our breakfast, I noticed they placed beef next to non-beef product. When people take both food with the thongs, they contaminated the non-beef food. I cannot take beef by religion and was quite particular about it. I saw their chef/manager and suggested to him nicely that perhaps, they should put all the beef together so that it would not contaminated other food stuff and people like me with diet restriction would have a better experience. He smiled and thanked me for the suggestion. I had thought that is it.

Guess what happen the next day? They implemented it. The chef/manager even purposely greeted me and asked me how is it. While I know that he had taken note of my feedback, but I did not expect them to implement it immediately. I felt so appreciated.

Then there was their lounge - The Blue Chip.

We ordered a few drinks at their lounge and yes it was also cheaper than Singapore’s, but the drink taste wasn’t so good.

There was a live band. One of my poly-classmate’s birthday was coming soon and they suggested that I sing him a song. So I asked their lounge singer whether we can do so, she agreed and I took a long time selecting a song because they don’t know how to play the song I requested. In the end, I selected “Hero” which I am not very familiar with. Worse, their sound system almost never exist, the keyboard drowned my voice. Despite that, we had a good time.


Then close to mid-night, the lounge singer approached me and suggested that they will play my friend a birthday song and asked me to sing along with her to surprise my friend. I was so touched. I meant they did not have to do so, but what they did was an extra mile.

I had a very good memory of this KL trip because of them. I will definitely be back at the hotel again. Thank you very much Swiss Garden KL !!!

梦境 - 倒影

翠绿的湖边长满了水仙

阵阵的花香飘逸在岸边

凉风习习花摇曳

水面渐渐掀起了涟漪

水仙不经意 湖却有了影

KL Trip Day One - Petaling Street 茨厂街

We set off to KL early in the morning and had reached there in the afternoon. After check-in and briefly freshen up, we headed out for our first destination - Petaling Street or 茨厂街 (cantonese pronounciation as Qi Chiong Gai), KL's Chinatown.

The place is somewhat similar to 牛车水 in Singapore except there are a lot of "fake" branded goods for sales (Saw LV, GUCCI and even Tiffany) and there are 'real' street hawkers. I said they are real street hawkers' because their carts and stalls have been there since long long time ago. Some of them still sell "cheap food" unlike Singapore where street hawkers are heavily commercialised.


As you walked past the street you can hear people talking and haggling in Cantonese. In fact, that is a interesting thing in KL. The Chinese there communicated in Cantonese instead of Mandarin. Shopping centres' sales personnels (even the atas one) will communicate with customers in Cantonese first. They will know that you are not a local if you can't speak. I encountered some of them who actually snobbed at people who cannot speak Cantonese during my previous trip. Luckily for me, I can speak some broken Cantonese (though a bit slow)and they actually came in useful.

We did not manage to buy anything there, but did try some of the local fares. We noticed a long queue at a food cart. Out of curiousity, we walk closer to see what people were queuing for and discovered there was an old lady selling traditional mochi (pieces of rice cake rolled in sweet peanut powder). However, there was something different about it, hers' mochi came in different colours!

I thought she was quite an interesting person, thus asked if I can take her photo. She was very friendly and agreed. However not sure if the old lady was shy or was very immersed in making mochi that she did not look up while I was taking her pictures.

We then realised that she actually appeared in the papers before from the newspaper article pinned in front of her cart. A famous hawker in Petaling Street, the old lady was hailed as the Queen of Mochi. Her name was Chen Yu Huan. It was reported that she never intended to impart anyone her secret recipe and skills. I guess you can never find this anywhere else.

The coloured mochi dough are actually flavoured. There were Pandan one in green, Ribena in red, Lychee in white, Mango in yellow and even black sesame flavour in black. No prize to guess what is my favourite though... (Yes, it is lychee)

The mochi were good. Very Q, but still tender enough to chew them apart. You can taste that the peanuts were roasted before they were grinded up to become the powder. It was very fragnant and mildly sweeten which goes very well with the flavoured dough. Unlike some of the hawkers who scrimped on the powder, she is very generous with her peanut powder. Just one point though, it was rather expensive for the locals - $5 RM a pack for the mixed flavoured one.

Just as we walked down the street, I noticed this noodles stall selling my favourite Penang Laksa!

And the stall next to it was selling Kang Kong and Cuttlefish salad! They were located just at the entrance of a wet market. There was a strong smell in the market but I still went ahead to order the food. I guess my friends weren't too happy about it. Opps.

To make things worse, one of the aunties was cutting cuttlefish in front of us, while we eating the food.
However, the portion was huge and very worth it! I mean it cost us RM$8 dollars for both dishes which is about $4 Singapore dollars. The food was really really nice if not for the smell and the dirty environment.

There was so much cuttlefish in the salad that we cannot even finished it. If we were to order this in Singapore, it would have cost us much more. Perhaps most of the Chinese there were Cantonese, the food was not as spicy as Singapore's. The salad was heavily drenched with sweet sauce instead of Chili sauce. I would have preferred it to be more spicy. It is a tad too sweet for my liking.

A simple noodle fare, but it taste so much better. For those who never had Penang Laksa, it is a sweet, sour and spicy fish broth noodles. Unlike Tom Yam, where the sour taste actually comes from the lime juice, the sour taste comes from assam. I especially love their thick bee hoon. Don't think they are available in Singapore. Those thick bee hoon were so much springy compare to the thick bee hoon in Singapore! I craved for it so much when I came back...

I want Penang Laksa! Where can I get authentic Penang Laksa?

Please also see: http://photosophize.blogspot.com/2008/11/sights-and-taste-of-kl-petaling-street.html

The Great KL Trip - Overall feel

Been very busy, thus have not been able to update all about my KL trip. My goodness, Malaysia is having Sale now and the Sale "Boleh" !!! There are a lot of things to buy!!! I came back with all my bags full - one backpack, one luggage bag, two big shopping bags and one medium sized with slogan printed "I am not a shopaholic" bag full of foodstuff. I exchanged for that bag free from Mid-Valley with shopping receipt.

Seriously, I think products they carry are more cosmopolitan and larger range compared to Singapore. There are more varieties even for the same brand. Taking into consideration that the exchanging rate is to our favour, it makes the Great Malaysia Sales more worth it than Singapore one. This season, poka dots are in - for me at least. I managed to get several top with dots. The shopping trip for clothes is a bit disappointing. Not much variety compared to when I last went. I might have to consider online shopping soon.

For people who are worry about safety and situation in KL, I think it is still relatively safe. We heard that there were some protests/rally going on at their stadium, but did not see any strange movements at the shopping areas. I did however managed to see a quiet protest at the KLCC building. Not sure what they are protesting about, cannot read their banner, but I regretted that I did not take any photo... Oh another regret is that we did not manage to eat their roadside stall zi cha (again). Everytime I go, I always did not manage to do that. Hmm...

It was an exhausting trip. I came back so tired and pockets empty. I practically spend all the money that I brought over.

Enough of all the talk, I will try to upload photos of my trip soon, if you all want, I can also upload my iternary here. Do come back and read about it.

:)

飞龙在天！Flying Dragon!

Read this off Xin Min Ri Bao. A Malaysian fisherman capture this video of a flying dragon in the sky. It looked like a Chinese Dragon to me. Video was shot using his handphone camera. It looked quite real.

Amazing, but I suggest he get N73 for a better shot. Haha.

It's raining... Diamonds?!!!

Nope, it is not raining cats or dogs, neither is it raining fishes or frogs. It is also not raining Men, but long long time ago during the ice age era, the sky actually rained diamonds!

Yes, girls best friend! Read full story here.

* Look out the window, holding hands out, hoping to catch a pink diamond....