Macaroni Au Gratin

What an unproductive day! Well, not really. I went out with mom earlier today to buy some materials for my dress and to a tailor to get my measurements done. Yes, I'm tailoring a dress for my dearest friend, Ocha's birthday! Then my day became unproductive. 

Suddenly, my mom asked me to try cooking macaroni and cheese for buka puasa. For your information, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE macaroni and cheese. Kraft's dinner mac n cheese has been a bestie of mine since childhood! But now, it's time for me to cook a homemade one from scratch. Challenge accepted! 

The main ingredients for today: elbow macaroni, flour, cooking cream, grated cheddar cheese (the stronger the better!), butter, salt and pepper

This is how I did it: 

1) Melt the butter in a saucepan

2) Whisk in flour

3) Gradually add the milk and stir continuously until it thickens

4) Add grated cheese, salt and pepper

5) Add boiled elbow macaroni

6) Mix thoroughly

Then what I did next was to pour the creamy macaroni and cheese into a casserole dish! 

Add generous amount of mozzarella cheese between each layer and top it with more mozzarella cheese and cheddar. I like 'em really cheesy. Then, bake in a preheated oven just until the cheese on the top layer is all runny and gooey.

Ta-daa! My homemade macaroni au gratin/macaroni and cheese is ready to be served!

Bon appetit!

Chocolate Cupcakes!

Mom said she's craving for some cupcakes and told me to bake some yesterday for buka puasa. Initially, she wanted peanut butter-chocolate cupcakes but we ran out of peanut butter! Therefore, I decided to change the frosting into chocolate frosting. To be honest, I have never tried to make chocolate frosted cupcakes so it was really like a gamble for me. On top of that, I was fasting yesterday so I couldn't taste the frosting's sweetness, consistency and adjust it to my liking!

My all-time favorite baking website is Joy Of Baking. They have dozens of simple dessert recipes worth trying!

So here's how I baked the chocolate cupcakes yesterday:

The basic cake ingredients: butter/margarine, white sugar, eggs and flour (sifted with salt and baking powder). If you mix these ingredients together, you'll be able to make a basic butter cake!

Another key ingredient for a chocolate cake is of course cocoa powder. Normally, I'd use the pure 100% cocoa powder

When you have all of the ingredients ready, you can start mixing them all together. But remember to preheat the oven first and there's an order/sequence that must be followed when mixing these ingredients:

1st. Butter and sugar together

2nd. Eggs 

3rd. Flour and liquid 

(in this case it's the dissolved cocoa powder) in turn, ending with the flour

After the batter has been mixed thoroughly, pour them into paper lined muffin tins and bake them in the pre-heated oven for approximately 15-20 minutes. When you're cake is ready, cool them down before frosting them! If your cake is still hot, the frosting will melt into butter!

And for the frosting, I followed Joy of Baking's recipe, which is basically just a mixture of butter, icing sugar and molten chocolate.

Chop the chocolate compound into small pieces and melt them. Be extra careful if you're melting them in a microwave instead of a saucepan because your chocolate might get a disturbing burnt taste! Furthermore, make sure that you're using a heat-proof bowl!

Grate some chocolate using a cheese grater above your frosted cake as a finishing touch and for an extra chocolatey goodness!

:)

Boarding School Memories

I spent 2 years living in a boarding school and several terms living in the same room. When I first came to KTJ, I was flabbergasted. The room didn't live up to my expectations. To be honest, it looked so horrible to me  at first and I couldn't imagine living in that room 24/7! but as I gradually added more things into it, the room then became okay. 

I spent my last term in the same room as when I first arrived in KTJ but with different roommates. I shared the room with 3 other amazing girls. Here's a quick tour around my room:

The LR 10 used to be Lee Liwoon's, Aileen Loo's, Jesvin Kaur Cheema's and Siti Soraya's castle :D

Guess which one is my bed? It's the one with a brown pillow on top!

Every morning, the house tutor would ring the bell to wake us up. Then we would walk to the dining hall to have breakfast in our uniforms before going to class. 

I have bad memories with this staircase that'd lead us to the school's old block. Well, I fell on it once and twisted my ankle when I was running in attempt to avoid a monitor lizard (an iguana, perhaps?) that was passing through it. Ouch. I couldn't walk the next day and slept through the night in agony. Damn you, monitor lizard.

The school's old block! KTJ was waaay bigger than this picture. This picture just represent a tiny bit of KTJ.

I would be missing the times I've spent in this school, the people I've met there and the wonderful teachers :)