On Saturday I ate this awesome Super Mario themed cake to celebrate a friend turning years. It was a really gorgeous cake but even though I am now a real-time blogger I still have to practice to take photos before the cake is already in pieces. Here is anyway a piece and Luigi as a proof that the cake existed.

The cake was really cool but it had a cakewreck-hint on it: the birthday boy’s name was spelled wrong. So for a birthday present he has now a new nickname.

On Sunday (today it is!) me and Cakester visited AGAIN the restaurant day (we do other stuff in our lives than visit restaurant day, I promise!). This time we had cakes in a stranger’s flat one street from me. A neighbour I could say. Carrot cake and mango cheese cake, both delicious. Thank you, Leivos Laguuni!

And to celebrate the lazy weekend, here is a holiday message from the janitor of that building: “You can regret everyhing but not idleness”. Spot on.

will try to get this perfection again sometime later..:D

made the plain cheese cake and topped it with strawberry and mango puree.

I spent the rest of the day relaxing, packing, reading my book and saving up my energy for the glorious dinner that I would be having with my parents. We ventured to the Jamaican restaurant, Negril Village to test the Caribbean cuisine and see if it was up to par.

The ambiance was great. It was a stylish restaurant just below Washington Square Park with a friendly staff of both native Jamaicans and other imports. The menu read like Sunday night dinner at my parents house so I was excited to dig in. So excited that I forgot to take pictures before we did!

We started with the appetizer platter of cod fish fritters, jerk chicken wings, collard greens spring rolls, jerk shrimp and plantains. It was served with three dipping sauces – spicy jerk sauce, guacamole (for the fritters) and tamarind sauce. We had a good time trying the different items and they were all delicious. My favorites were the cod fish fritters, they were not as salty as I expected.

Mom and I tried the specialty cocktail – Coconut Rum Punch and it was strong, but not too strong, but quite delicious and large enough to last through our whole meals.

For my meal, I went with the one Trinidadian item on the menu – Roti with Curried Bonless Chicken. It was made with what we call paratha roti and ensconced the chicken. Normally, these things are separated. I was afraid it would be soggy, but to the contrary it stayed crunchy and hit the spot! The only problem I had was that it was a bit too spicy for my liking. I know I’m a child of Caribbean parents, but I just never got used to eating extremely spicy food. It was so good that I didn’t want to strop eating it.

So I just made sure the waiter brought around more and more water so I could keep going to my breaking point and when I reached that I took the leftovers home. I’m not sure how well they are going to heat up. But we’ll find out later today!

Mom and dad both had the same meal, Jerk Steak with Veggies and Mashed Plantains. I tried a bit and it was quite good and I must say, much less spicy than my dish. I think they both enjoyed it greatly because they cleared their plates.

While I was on the phone with my uncle and aunt my mom managed to alert the waiter to the fact that is was my birthday and they surprised me with a some Mango Cheesecake when we finished our meal. It was so good, I could have had another. I highly recommend trying this. It also helped to cool down my ailing tongue.

What a great birthday dinner. If you’re ever in New York City, definitely look up Negril Village for an authentic island meal.

With summer around and loads of mangoes available, I thought it was a good idea to bring the vacations to a sweet end by giving into the sweet tooth of my little Angels.

 Here’s an easy recipe to a great mango dessert. It’s indeed an awesome feeling to just sit back and see the little ones enjoying and pampering their little “sweet taste buds”!

Chilled Mango Cheese Cake

Ingredients:

• 400 grams sweetened condensed milk
• 400 grams mango (chopped)
• 200 grams grated cottage cheese (paneer)
• 3 table spoons gelatine
• 200 ml cream
• 4-5 drops of mango essence
• ½ cup water

For Decoration:

• Chopped mangoes (keep some aside from above)
• 2 tablespoons cream (keep some aside from above)
• Decorative yoghurt gums (optional)

Method:

1. Dissolve the gelatine in water over a double boiler (a pan of hot water) by stirring continuously.
2. In a blender; blend together the condensed milk, grated cottage cheese, dissolved gelatin and mango essence.
3. Add the chopped mangoes to this and blend again for just a minute. (Do save some pieces for decoration).
4. Whip the cream well and gently fold into the above mixture.
5. Pour into mould rinsed with water (still wet – this would make unmoulding easy).
6. Leave to set and chill in the refrigerator for about 1hr and 15 minutes (approx.) When set unmould onto a serving plate.

Decoration:

1. Apply an even layer of cream and sprinkle some chopped mango.
2. Decorate with yoghurt gums as shown in picture and serve.

Kiddie Tip: you may also freeze the cheese cake and serve as a frozen dessert.

So there was a need to make something amazing…to celebrate the new dining table and to make Abhi’s mood better…what he likes the best is a cheese cake!!!I had this recipe which I wanted to try since looong!!This cheese cake uses yoghurt and paneer or cottage cheese for filing instead of cream cheese which gives it a much lighter texture. Next I had to decide the flavor of the cheese cake…i decided to visit the local super market and wait for some inspiration to hit me! But as soon as I entered the fruit aisle I was hit by the sweet mango smell. There in front of me where approximately 15 kinds of mangoes ranging from golf ball sized to some as big as a watermelon!!Ok no musk melon..: D…I picked up 3 of normal looking mangoes…I didn’t want to experiment too much!

All was going well till then…everything was ready…all I had to do was follow the recipe and make a cheesecake…but as usual I didn’t follow the recipe fully..Instead of using Marie digestive biscuits which I normally do for the base I used diet crackers…sugar less…and instead of using unsalted butter I used amul salted butter…hence my base was totally salty!!!

Next place I screwed up was when I put the gelatin…I would put the blame of this failure on my friend Bala who obviously didn’t know what 5 gms is! And cos of that I ended up putting lesser gelatin than required and my cheesecake didn’t set even after 8 hours of chilling!!I was like a pudding which tasted weird!which my friends still ate..:D

I obviously didn’t know that my cheesecake will not set when I used up rest of my amazing mango puree as the glaze…if I had known I would have made a mango shake and drank it all!!!

But anyways so here is another cheese cake failure!!

Why couldn’t my hubby just like good old chocolate cake…or cookies!!

To be honest I have baked probably only once since then. I think it was a mango cheesecake for Hari Raya which was quite a success but as I had just begun a new job fresh after graduating as a headhunter I had barely enough time to sleep let alone update my blog!

These nine months has been a rough roller coaster ride and I hope 2012 would bring me and my loved ones a lot of much-needed love and peace!

With that being said, I’m really wondering how I can add pictures to my blog from my iPhone which I’m using to type. (Did I mention? In this nine months my camera and laptop died on me.)

Once I have figured that out I would update my blog with my post on mango cheese cake which I will be baking again tomorrow for someone who misses my cheesecakes and has been asking for the longest time.

I also realized it’s my dad’s birthday on Wednesday so maybe I can turn it into a pretty little birthday cake!

Tomorrow I’ll be hitting Cold Storage as Singapore is currently a dead town as it is Chinese New Year!

Once I get all my ingredients I’ll get the cheesecake done and update after the birthday!

Love,
The Starting Chef

Seriously, I could live without electricity of the night – but Pandabear was whinging saying how could I brush my teeth, boil water or do anything in the dark!!! In the end we forked out the $215 and viola our electricity/power was connected, we then went through and did our condition report and thankfully, our pack and send company called to advised our other luggage has arrived! Yay, my cook books are in there.

Anyways, this particular restaurant is situated in Northbridge – it hasn’t been opened for a long time and since the owner is Taiwanese, I’m always supporting a Taiwanese brethren – so we decided to try it out for our family farewell dinner. There were 8 of us plus two of my nieces. The place is quite dark and got that rusty look with the brick walls. We went there on a sunday night and it seemed rather busy. The menu consisted quite alot of small dishes to share kinda like tapas-style dishes. We thought, well we’ll just have a few different dishes to share that way we get to try different things.

Salmon Sushi

The food took a little while to come, and by the time the salmon sushi arrived – we were all like eagles digging in, but since there were only 6, two people were left out.

Asparagus wrapped by beef

The asparagus wrapped by beef is quite tasty and unusual with the crunchy texture of the asparagus and the tender beef. However, it wasn’t enough to feed all of us…

teriyaki chicken sushi

pork belly with salsa

The pork and salsa was just alittle weird for our liking, I reckon the salsa didn’t go quite well with the bland taste pork belly.

prawn sushi

takoyaki

The takoyaki were delicious! Out of all the dishes, this one is the best.

duck breast

The duck breast was another disappointment for me, it’s well cooked however it didn’t have much flavour in them. Overall, the sushis were really well-done and I love the presentation of all the tapas dishes, however we were still all very hungry so decided it’s time to order ourselves the main course. We waited for our main course to come, and finally my main course of pork chop and rice came – my goodness only mine came and the kids were really hungry so I gave some of my pork chops to my nieces.

pork chop & rice

I was already half way through my mains, and none of the other mains have arrived. This is not acceptable as by the time people receive their mains I would have finished mine!!!

tooth fish

The tooth fish were quite nicely done, tender and tasty.

Steak

Overall, the mains were really nicely presented and they tasted quite nice – but the food waiting time was a little too long – the kids were getting restless and keeps saying I’m hungry!! All the mains didn’t come one after another there was a gap and our friend Katherine’s main came last poor here staring at everyone eating their mains.

Now, amazingly after all those food we still had room for dessert and the desserts were displayed inside a glass case and you also had a LCD monitor displaying other desserts. So we asked whether we could order one from the TV display and were told that they only have limited desserts ones that are displayed inside the glass case – that was a little disappointing.

Mango Cheese cake

Green Tea Mouse Cake

Chocolate Mouse Cake

The desserts are to die for, the presentation were gorgeous and worth the wait. Not too sweet just nicely balanced, moist cake It made up for the slow mains.

Overall, the staff seemed pretty friendly but lack in attention – to see whether everyone have received their mains yet. The presentation of all food were great but the food waiting time was just too long.

Anyways, here’s my rating:

Dining Experience: 3.5 star
Food Experience: 4 star
Would I recommend it? YES