Sweet Savory Breakfast Sandwich - Croissant with Candied Kumquats and Cream Cheese

I received a jar of candied kumquats from my awesome foodie friend, Mr. W. He told me "Use it as you would marmalade"...and here's how I used it. I love a combo of sweet and salty, thus the buttery croissant and the creamy savory cream cheese with the candied kumquats. I love love loveeee!

It makes an amazing holiday breakfast!

Chocolate Orange Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

I went nuts playing with frosting, and not in a good way. It's not as easy as I thought it'd be. I squirted some frosting out trying to draw a circle...and my circle got disconnected all the time, my frosted cupcakes looked pretty...pathetic! We all had a lot of fun though...SC, myself and my helper each got to frost at least a cake...and here are the horrible ones we did...

I did the horrible circles (they were meant to be "roses", but I failed miserably) and the wobbly heart, my helper did the "flower" with just four petals (she meant to draw five petals but somehow overestimated the space heheheh) SC did the star and...

....the Chinese character which could be interpreted as "yum" (jeng!).
How creative of him!

I also did a little smiley face...which also meant that this cake had too little frosting, too bad!

I used recipes from all recipes, I just reduced the portion to eight cupcakes, added a teaspoon of orange essence in the cake batter (recipe link here), as well as a teaspoon of orange essence and a drop of orange food coloring in the frosting batter (recipe link here). The chocolate orange cupcakes turned out wonderful, chocolatey and moist, the frosting gave a delightful tang to the combo. I'll be making these babies often ;)

Speaking of writing with food...it all started when we went to a Japanese BBQ joint for a lunch and SC wrote the same word using thick, juicy, tasty ox tongue chunks.

He said that this should be every food blogger's favorite word, yum!
I couldn't agree more ;)

Weekend Breakfast - Cream Cheese & Kaya Sandwich with Cinnamon Coffee

Just thought I'd share my weekend breakfast...when it's not instant noodles/dimsums/Hong Kong fast food...it's gotta be an easy sandwich.

This time, it's cream cheese & kaya (weird?) on fluffy and soft honey egg sliced bread. I love the creamy, tangy and slightly savory flavor of cream cheese with anything, including with the sweet and coconutty kaya. Toasting the bread would be nice, but I was just too lazy. Heheh.


I also love the addition of a little cinnamon on my sweet black morning coffee. Love the sweet fragrance. I am so not a coffee purist, obviously ^_^

How was your weekend? Delicious?

Chocolate Cream Cheese Cake from Mrs.Fields

Good stuff are...
a. to be shared?
b. all mine!

Normally, when it comes to food, especially fried chicken, chunky french fries and anything that involves dark chocolate, I am totally a "b" person.

But I have to make an exception for this one, because, if no one knows about this, no one would buy this, and Mrs.Fields will stop making these. Thus, I have to let people know how good these are.

It is...
- Not a cheesecake
- Soft, moist and fluffy
- Very chocolatey
- Not too sweet
- Melt in your mouth fantastic!
- With bits of creamy and savoury cream cheese
- Doesn't break my bank, at just HK$18 per piece!

I bought this for a get together with a girl friend, almost placed the cake on a beautiful ceramic stand and called it my own...then I realised, my friend knows my baking skills (or lack there of ) very well and I won't be able to fool her. Damn.

If this is available near you, and you haven't tried it....
Go.

Mrs.Fields didn't pay me to write this.
Sous chef I totally paid for the cake.
Find Mrs.Fields shop nearest to you here

Ham and Cream Cheese Muffins

You guys know me. The savoury girl who is trapped in a sweet-named food blog.

In case you don't know how the sweet name came about, you can read it here. It's super lame. Don't say I didn't warn you. ;)

I have been going on and on and on about how I prefer savoury over sweet like a broken record (or these days, like a hit party song, remixed by a famous DJ, played in a hot club and everywhere else, over and over again). So don't be surprised to hear this when you go clubbing..."Yo! S-S-S-Savoury is HOT!" (Hmmm. I should pitch/brainwash this idea to a DJ friend).

Because of my love for savoury treats, the phrase "Life is short, eat dessert first" doesn't really work for me. "Life is short, eat lotsa bacon" is probably more appropriate. It doesn't mean that I don't love sweet nothings. I did lotsa lotsa sweet muffins. But every time I had them for breakfast. I secretly wish that I was biting into something savoury, cheesy and creamy instead.

*Ms. No Action Talk Only, please stop complaining and start doing*

Sir. Yes, Sir! Finally, I had enough ingredients in my fridge to bake something savoury for breakfast.

Ham and Cream Cheese Muffins

Recipe
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp chicken stock powder (optional)
- a bit of dried italian herb mix (oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme)
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2/3 cup yoghurt (or 1/2 cup milk)
- 2 slices of ham, cut into small strips/cubes (you can sooo replace this with bacon)
- 1/4 pack cream cheese, cut into approximately 1 x 1 x 1 cm cubes

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. In a mixing bowl, mix all dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix all wet ingredients. Leave the ham and cream cheese for last. Whisk dry and wet ingredients until just combined. Add ham and cheese. Line muffin tray with paper cups, pour batter 3/4 full and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I can't resist to share with you how amazing these babies look, smell and taste, fresh out of the oven.

Rich. Savoury. Creamy. My kind of breakfast.

By the way, guys...I know you love challenges! You got it!
My foodie fellow, Rurie is inviting us to join her event. It's not just foodie event, it is a contest with fantastic prizes too!

Join "know your Indonesian culinary heritage" contest and share your knowledge on Indonesian cuisine as well as fabulous pictures, if not for the prizes. Hehe! The food has to be Indonesian, which is rarely found these days. For Indonesian bloggers out there, the food might be something you noticed and always had when you were a kid, but you hardly see them anymore. Savoury dishes, snack, dessert and drinks. Anything goes! For more information, please click here.

Savoury Pumpkin, Cream Cheese and Bacon Baked Goods - which Pissed Sous Chef Off

Guess what? I am not done with pumpkin yet. Especially since I still have a quarter of mini pumpkin in the fridge which was threatening to go rotten on me.

So I went ahead and pissed sous chef by baking these savoury goodies.

Wait...how did that happen?
It was all because I prioritized baking these goodies in lieu of cooking a pot of rice for dinner.
Oppps, my bad.

Hong Kongers love their bowls of hot and steamy rice...even if they had to eat it with just a few drops of soy sauce, it beats any baked goods I could ever muster. No matter how good and tasty the baked goods were, in sous chef's mind, they will never replace the goodness of that bowl of rice. The absence of rice, made the day so wrong on so many levels for sous chef.

So, imagine hungry sous chef's facial expression of disappointment, frustration and despair upon coming home to face an empty rice cooker. Trust me, it was heart breaking.

I kinda felt bad for the...
Savoury Pumpkin, Cream Cheese and Bacon Baked Goods

...cos they really taste fun-bloody-tastic.
I mean...come on! Look at that pile of rich tasting cream cheese, greasy and crispy bacon, plus fragrant and creamy pumpkin...how could they ever go wrong?

Even the batter looked that good!

Recipe
(yields 8 baked goods)
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup oatmeal
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 1 cup mashed pumpkin (chop pumpkin into small cubes, add 2 tbsp of milk, microwave on high for about 8 minutes and mash with a fork)
- a few strips of bacon (chopped and pan fried until slightly browned, keep the oil)
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup of milk
- 1/2 stick of cream cheese (cut into cubes)
- 1/2 cup of olive oil
- a few sprinkles of mixed italian herbs (rosemary, oregano and thyme)

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, make a well in the middle, add wet ingredients, add pureed pumpkin, add bacon including the oil, set some aside for topping. To ensure even distribution of cream cheese goodness, it is better to add the cream cheese cubes into each cup of batter. Pour a couple tablespoons of batter into muffin tray lined with paper cups or greased ramekins, add cream cheese cubes, top off with more batter, add bacon topping and cream cheese (you could never have enough cream cheese), bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

As expected, sous chef didn't stay pissed for too long...or he might have to live on only bowls of white rice and soy sauce for a longgg longgg time. ^_*

Strawberry Cream Cheese Muffins

I used to have this unexplainable hatred towards strawberry anything.
Strawberry ice cream
Strawberry cheesecake
Strawberry pudding
Strawberry jam
Strawberries.
….
Eugh! Blegh! Welgh!
But I didn’t get it. They are fragrant, nutritious, healthy, refreshing, nice and pretty to look at...but I couldn't bring myself to like them. I guess the chemistry was just not there.
I could eat fresh strawberries...but only and only if they are super sweet, super juicy, super premium quality, which I totally can NOT afford, thus, hardly eat. LOL! (They are normally sold at HKD78/USD10 per itsy bitsy teeny tiny pack). Yes, I am a high maintenance, picky, strawberry non-eater.

So what changed me? Nothing fancy. It’s McDonald’s Strawberry Sundae! LOL. From that cup on, it’s all I want, and I can’t believe I am saying this, but these days, I want it even more than my former favorite, the Chocolate Sundae.

My newfound love for items slathered with strawberry jam opened a whole new window of opportunities, and I went straight back to something I roughly know how to do (i.e. didn’t screw up too often)….muffins ^_^Strawberry Jam & Cream Cheese Muffins

Recipe
Dry Ingredients
- 1 cup plain flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 6 tbsp sugar
- ½ tsp salt
Wet Ingredients
- 3 tbsp strawberry jam
- 1 egg
- ½ cup milk
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
Filling
- 6 pieces of 1x1 cm cream cheese cubes
- 6 x ½ tsp strawberry jam

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl, make a well in the middle. Mix all the wet ingredients, pour into dry ingredients, mix roughly, pour 1-2 tbsp batter into greased muffin tray (or lined with paper cups), add 1 cube of cream cheese and ½ tsp strawberry jam, top off with more batter until almost full. Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

OK, so now I am loving strawberry jam…which is basically sugar ^_^…but who knows…maybe soon I’ll be craving these healthy berries daily? Em…don’t get your hopes up :p