My Homemade Thai Rice Noodle Salad with Coconut Lime Dressing

It’s been long time since my last post I haven’t yet updated this blog of mine.

Today I wanted to start with my homemade Thai salad that I just made. I’ve been longing for making this salad but never got a chance just until now. I got a recipe from here: Thai Rice Noodle Salad with Coconut Lime Dressing.

In this recipe I added some of my own fruits such as figs and olives. I also added a few of cayenne pepper powder into the dressing as well as crispy onions for garnish. I substituted safflower oil with olive oil as I’ve got none.

Here you go!

This is good for vegetarian I think. Would you like to try it? 🙂

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Cranberries and Almond Crunchies

I got this recipe from Delia Online called Cherry and Almond Crunchies. Since I don’t have dried cherries so I substituted it with dried cranberries and any other dried fruits. I’ve been making these cookies many times and have altered with my own ingredients as suggested in the recipe.

I’ve substituted the dried cherry with the cranberries and also with sultanas, raisins, apricots, and crystallized gingers. I added 60gr mixed of ground chestnuts and seeds (pumpkin seeds, linseed, hemp seeds, sesame seeds, and melon seeds) to every recipe that I made.

Also I’ve used half-half white self-raising flour and wholemeal self-raising flour.

Cranberries and Almond Crunchies

Raisins, Sultanas, Apricots, Ginger, and Almond Crunchies

  This is a healthy recipe so enjoy it!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Love

I love baking and I love photography as well.

Ice Lemon Curd Layer Cake, anyone? 😀

This is my entry for Weekly Photo Challenge: LOVE

Have a great weekend!

From Sweden to France: Laxpudding and Rhubarb Compôte

This Wednesday I went to my friend’s place for a dinner as usual once in a week and she gave me a recipe that she got from a cafe in IKEA when she went there before. The recipe is a traditional Swedish dish called Laxpudding or Salmon Pudding. I used smoked haddock fish instead since smoked salmon is too expensive for me. 😀

The recipe that my friend got it from is slightly different with the recipe that you can read it here as well, Laxpudding.

Here the recipe that I got:

Ingredients

400 gr Lax Kallrökt (smoked salmon, frozen. I used smoked haddock instead0

10 medium size potatoes (I used 4 big size Cyprus potatoes)

1/2 tsp salt

3 eggs

4 dl single cream

50 gr butter

Green salad

Horseradish sauce

Method

Peel the potatoes and cut in slices. Butter an oven/serving dish and add alternate layers of salmon and potatoes (top and bottom layers should be potatoes). Sprinkle each potato layer with salt.

Whisk cream and eggs in a bowl and add to the oven/serving dish together with a couple of dollops of butter.

Heat in the oven for 50-60 minutes, 175 degree Celsius (350 degree Fahrenheit).

Serve with horseradish sauce and a mixed green salad of choice.

And here you go! I made it yesterday. 😀

My Laxpudding used smoked haddock

It tastes so delicious! I added one (1) fresh bird chilli because I like hot food. Still yummy!

And what is for a dessert? This time I made Rhubarb Compôte from DeliaOnline‘s recipe. First time I tried this recipe I added some strawberries and last night I made it for the second time without strawberries but added 1 tsp of ground cinnamon instead. I served it with vanilla ice cream. Delicious!

My Rhubarb Compôte with Vanilla Ice Cream

From Sweden to France, it ends in my stomach, LOL.

Have a great weekend, everyone! 🙂

My Homemade Flapjack: Apricot and Honey Flapjack, and Cereal Bars

Few months ago I’ve posted a recipe of Oat Crunchy Biscuits – Flapjack likely. I always wanted to make a proper flapjack recipe and finally I found it last night on internet! The good news with the recipes that I got is I could make different variations with all ingredients that I had but couldn’t finish it.

So tonight I made two different recipes of the flapjack: Apricot and Honey Flapjack by Elaine Lemm from British and Irish Food website and Cereal bars by Norma McMillan from All recipes UK website. Apricot and Honey Flapjack is an alternative for traditional flapjack recipe.

The reason why I like this snack bar because it is a healthy snack as stated in the recipe. I eat this one sometimes to substitute my breakfast if I missed it for some reasons and buy it from supermarket. But the ones from supermarket are just too sweet for me. So I am so happy when I found the recipe and after made it tonight I found their taste are perfect! Not too sweet at all!

The method and the ingredients of those recipe are very simple. We even can make our own variations as long as we have the main ingredients: butter, honey or golden syrup, oats, and banana. This snack is not always using brown sugar especially if we used some natural sweets from the fruits.

This recipe is a worth try and homemade is always better!

Here what I’ve made tonight:

Cereal Bars

Apricot and Honey Flapjack

The Versatile Blogger Award

Few days ago my new online friend, pinay e-motion, has left me a comment on my post here says:

Hi Inge,

Hi, I nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award. I think your post is great. You have impressed me not only in your ability to discuss different interesting topics in your blogs, but have also captivated me in your ability to capture different great images through your genius manipulation of the lens. I hope you’ll consider accepting it and the acceptance rule: Versatile Blogger Award.

Have a nice day!

Oh wow! She’s really surprising me since we’ve just met online less than a month until now. We had a little chat when we met first time and apparently she could speak Indonesian, my mother language, though she’s from Philippine! How nice is that?! So we ended up ‘speaking’ (or I should say writing) in Indonesian and her writing is very good!

Now she’s nominated me for The Versatile Blogger Award (VBA) with other 14 bloggers here. What an honour! Thank you very much for the nomination, pinay e-motion!

Now it is my turn to nominate 15 bloggers as a part of the rule. I would like to nominate those who have given me lots of inspiration for what they have been doing in their works and for having shared their great experience in their life. Also this nomination would go to those who have supported and encouraged me so I’ve been enjoying so much blogging here.

Here they are:

1. Marks Armstrong Illustration
2. Katie’s camera blog
3. Bucket List Publications | Indulge – Travel, Adventure, & New Experiences
4. Life Just Is
5. Münchow’s Creative Photo Blog
6. Broken Light: A Photography Collective
7. Suzi Smart Photography
8. life as i see it
9. ASWAD ALWEE
10. Cardinal Guzman
11. Campanulla Della Anna
12. mywordwall
13. Flickr Comments by FrizzText
14. Katiepede’s Blog
15. FrugalFeeding

I would like to thank you in advance for giving time to visit and have a look their blogs.

Finally here seven things about myself:

1. I love simplicity
2. I have an interest in learning philosophy
3. I have passions in photography, baking and cooking, and like to listen to the music
4. I love nature and doing outdoor activities
5. I like to meet new people
6. I am an outgoing person
7. I like people who have sense of humour since I am quite a humorous person as well

I dedicated this post for all my followers as well as I’ve reached a hundred followers until now. Many thanks to all of you!

I hope that my nominee-bloggers would like to pass this award to other bloggers and follow the VBA rules as follows:

1. You must give credit to the person that has nominated you and create a link to their blog in your post.

2. You must create a list of 15 blogs that you enjoy most and link to those as well. Then you must go and tell them you have nominated them. That means if you do not have 15, you cannot do this step. If you do not complete this step, then you cannot claim this award.

3. Finally, you must create a list of seven things about yourself.

My Banana Cake: A Combination Recipe

Few months ago I read on Twitter of somebody whom I’ve followed about the story behind his wife successful business of selling banana cake. He said that one day they had overripe bananas at home and were planning to throw them away. But before they did it the wife decided to search on internet if there was any recipe using overripe banana. Fortunately she found it and started to make it. After tried few times then the wife started to share it with their friends especially when they had party. Apparently they got good responds. Since then their friends always order their banana cake and then how the wife has started her business in selling banana cake.

Few weeks later after reading that tweets I bought some banana fruits that been reduced due to their condition that nearly overripe. I bought them for making smoothie. Some of them nearly went off before I used them all. Luckily I remembered the story of the wife and did the same thing by searching on internet for the banana cake recipe. Apparently there are lots of banana cake’s recipe on internet and I decided to combine two recipes that I got. One from BBC Good Food: Banana Cake by Ghis, and one from DeliaOnline: Banana and Walnut Loaf. I’ve been making this cake twice or three times in a week ever since, but only in past few days I’ve used walnut as stated in Delia’s recipe and it tastes better.

Here my combination recipe:

 

Ingredients:

4 overripe bananas (medium or large)

150 gr walnuts pieces

170 gr soft brown sugar (or demerara sugar)

170 gr self-raising flour

170 gr butter at room temperature

1 rounded teaspoon baking powder

1 level teaspoon ground cinnamon

grated zest 1 orange

grated zest 1 lemon

3 large eggs

Few drops vanilla essence

 

Method:

I follow exactly the method from Delia’s.

And here you go:

This cake is very easy to make and can kept for few days, unless you finished it in one go!

Excuse me to finish mine, LOL.

My Homemade Baked Pears with Chocolate Sauce

Once in a week I go to my friend’s place for a dinner and yesterday she made a dessert of baked pears with chocolate sauce. It was delicious. She got the recipe from Aldi Supermarket’s newsletter. So tonight I made it by myself and added some ice cream as the recipe suggested it.

Here I rewrite the recipe.

Ingredients:

4 x Conference Pears

100ml Double Cream

1 x 70g Pack Dairy Milk Chocolate

24g Unsalted Butter

4 x Squares Tin Foil

Method:

Cut the pears in half lengthways, take out the core/seeds and remove the woody stem. Put each prepared pear on a square of foil, divide the butter between them and fold up into a parcel. Put onto the BBQ and cook, turning occasionally for about 15 minutes or bake in a hot oven. Meanwhile, put the cream and the chocolate buttons in a small saucepan, heat through gently until the chocolate has melted and the sauce is smooth and hot. Serve on the baked pears, great with a scoop of ice cream.

And here mine:

It’s easy, isn’t it?

My Homemade Classic Caraway Seed Cake

It’s been such a long time I haven’t yet posted anything about baking and cooking, one of my favorite things to do. My last post, Chocolate Mousse Cake, was on 24^th February 2012.

This time I wanted to share a cake recipe from FrugalFeeding‘s blog called Classic Caraway Seed Cake. The cake is just simply making and simply delicious! FrugalFeeding has said it all on his blog. I was quite curious with this recipe since it uses cumin seeds (jintan putih in Indonesian) which I never had it before except for cooking.

I made this yesterday and it is a good company for a cup of tea or coffee.

Anyone?

Why not try this at weekends? 🙂

Chocolate Mousse Cake, My Guilty Pleasure

Chocolate mousse cake. I don’t know why I was so tempted to make this cake after a friend of mine, Yunika, showed it to me on her Facebook. I couldn’t wait for her recipe so I started to look for it on internet. After searched for some recipes then I finally decided to give a try a recipe from BBC Good Food as you can read it here: Chocolate Mousse Cake.

On this recipe that I just made it few hours ago before writing this post, I added one (1) teaspoon of espresso. The reason why I did that because my mom’s friend who is expert in baking taught me long time ago to put a little bit of coffee or espresso whenever I make chocolate cake or any dessert that requires chocolate. She said that it would make the cake or dessert tastes tastier and not too sweet due to the bitterness of the coffee or espresso.

The cake really is my guilty pleasure!

Chocolate Mousse Cake, My Guilty Pleasure

Hint: I forgot to write it before about the tin that I used to make this cake. I used 26 cm cake tin removable base due to the volume of the mixture that was quite lots. Also I used my home made shortbread cake by Delia Smith in this recipe. I am sorry for people who had already read this one before I edited it.