Chinese New Year : Pineapple Cookie / Tart Recipe

Happy Chinese New Year 2104! Time really fly when I recall back how I spent my Chinese New Year first time away from my home country. Me and hubby was at Melbourne during last year CNY. Though we are at a western country, but the CNY atmosphere was not lacking compared back to Malaysia or I should say Melbourne had a merrier CNY celebration =)

Well, for CNY, pineapple tart / cookie it's has been a "must have' for me. Been making these cookies since I was in secondary school and revising the recipe to a perfect one. What is perfect pineapple cookie for me? A 'perfect' pineapple cookie for me is, it shall melt once put our mouth. So below is the recipe which would like to share with you during this festive season. I know it's kinda late to make cookies 2 days before the day, apologize for that. Hope you like this recipe!

Pineapple Tarts / Cookies

Ingredients:
(A)
250g magarine / butter
50g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 egg yolks
2 tbsp Ghee / pure cow butter (This is important)

(B)
400g plain flour
20g cornflour

(C) Pineapple Fillings (Boiled to thick)
500g chopped pineapple, strained
250g castor sugar
1/4 tsp pineapple essence
** Alternatively you can use ready made pineapple paste sell at baking shop.

Method
1. Beat (A) till creamy and slowly stir in (B).
2. Put in the dough in mould and press out pattern
3. Spread the pineapple filling (C) and roll up. Brush top with beaten egg.
Bake the cookie at 160 celcius for about 25 minutes.

Legoland Malaysia

Ooops it's been long long time since I last update my blog. Many things has changed during this period. Back to Malaysia again and start a work life at KL after being a 'temp house wife' at Melbourne. Life still goes on =p

Let's move to something interesting. My hubby was a Lego's fan since young and when we got to know that  Legoland will be setup in Johor Bahru, we were so excited and been waiting for the theme park to be completed.  Legoland Malaysia was completed in September, 2012 but due to huge crowd of visitors and also we are away from home, thus our trip has been delayed till last year Christmas (Dec 2013).

Apart from the theme park, Lego themed Hotel was also built up beside the theme park. Initially we are planning to have a night stay at the Lego hotel as we are way attracted with the room theme, unfortunately the rooms were all fully booked during festive season. Thus we took up the 2days 1night Legoland package from Thistle Hotel Johor Bahru (Thistle Johor) which the price was pretty decent.

We started our journey from KL in the early morning and stop by Malacca for our favourite chicken rice ball before head to Johor Bahru. Before our journey, we did a quick study on the theme park and key attractions we are looking forward is the Brick Shop, hoping that we can find some 'special' or hard to find Lego collections and also there is a part where we could actually buy our Lego bricks that we missed out at home and it is priced by weight. Similar like we are buying candy from the candy bar, we choose the bricks we like, weigh and then pay it. =)

During our visit at the park, we also saw the Legoland employee wear a cute Lego name badge. We thought of getting ourselves a customized name tag for ourselves too which it will make a memorable souvenir from Legoland. We been looking around all the souvenir shops and lastly knew that the name badge is only for employees. We are little disappointed initially but hubby suggested that why not we make one ourselves since we can buy the bricks from the souvenir shop. =P. Below is the outcome:

Overall the theme park was not bad but not too large compare to other international theme park. There are still rooms to improve. Rides are mainly suitable for kids and foods inside the park are also pretty well priced in my humble opinion. Do visit Legoland Malaysia website for more details.

Bangkok - Land of Smiles Part 1

It's been quite a while since my last post. I actually went back to Malaysia for good, yes! =). Went to Bangkok, Thailand last week for a short trip. It was my first trip to Thailand and was excited to see everything in this land of smiles. Basically I just went for a 4 days 3 nights trip and went to couple of main attractions in Bangkok. Shall do some review in the upcoming posts.

First Meal in Bangkok
Cuisine Type: Local Thai Food
Shopname: Thai Food Very Good And Very Cheap by Im-chan
Address: Sukhumvit Road, near Soi 39

EST - Local Cola brand

Thai Noodle in Pink Sauce

Pad Thai with Chicken

Oyster Omelet

One type of taxi in Bangkok

KitchenAid Artisan Mixer - What is Your Colour?

Received a surprise gift from my partner this morning. It was my long dream KitchenAid artisan mixer! I think it must be everyone's dream who loves baking to own this beautiful and colorful mixer. I have been always long for a KitchenAid mixer but due to it's price, I never get one for myself.

He bought this mixer from an Australian online retailer, Peter's of Kensington which their price is much lower than other retailer. Normally KitchenAid's price is pretty standard like Apple whereby their price has been controlled by the company. But to my surprise, after I log in to Peter's website, I found out that they having pretty good deal. What a great online retailer! Peter's is selling the mixer at $689 and shipping only $11 across Australia. Great deal! Normally artisan mixer is selling at about $749 retail price.

p/s: Just a reminder, you may saw some extraordinary cheaper price of this mixer at online. Those mixer might be running on US voltage which might not be same with your country. Always check on the power voltage before you order the mixer. You need a transformer which is not cheap if you buy a US artisan mixer to be used in country like Australia or Singapore or Malaysia.

My partner ordered an Apple Green artisan mixer for me.Initially he planned to order the classic KitchenAid red for me. But thought of too common, so he choose other color instead. The process of choosing which color for the mixer is never not easy as there are plenty nice color to choose from. There are few colors that I really favor such as the Buttercup, Pistachio, Classic Red, Tangerine and also Apple Green.

Kitchen Aid Artisam KSM150 Apple Green

While I was searching for more info on the mixer later today, I discover that KitchenAid Canada provide a simple function Colourology at their website that helps customer to determine which mixer color to choose based on some survey questions. I found out it pretty interesting and useful for people that undecided to choose which color to go for =).

That's all for now. Looking forward to try out new recipe with this beautiful baby. =)

Melbourne Good Food & Wine Festival

Hi everyone, winter is approaching Melbourne very soon =). Weather here has been really chilling and breezing but it does not stop us from our activities. There will be long weekend for everyone us here due to the Queen's birthday that falls on coming Monday and the same time the long waited Good Food & Wine Festival is finally here in Melbourne! Melbourne is the first stop for the festival and next follow by Sydney (June 28-30), Perth (July 19-21) & Brisbane (November 8-10).

If you guys never been attending to this festival before like me and a food and wine lover, do pay a visit as it really worth it. We had a great time at the festival today while sampling lots of nice food and beers and wines too!

Apart from sampling delicious food, we coincidentally went to the Barrilla booth with a initial intention to join the crowd to see the Italian chef, Chef Andrea preparing some delicious pasta. Learnt a few tips on handling pasta but never we know that after the chef finished cooking session, we are given a 20minutes for a hands on class at the kitchen at the booth prepared by Barilla. I was so excited about it and start getting ourselves ready to prepare exactly the same pasta (minus the taste) :p that chef  Andrea showed us earlier.

All the ingredients already prepared by Barilla staff and we are required to prepare a Casaresse with mussels and clams in Barilla's  Arrabbiata sauce. It was so fun cooking in the kitchen with 60 people with everyone has it's on stove, utensils and ingredients. It started with nervous as everyone was clumsy in the kitchen, sounds really like we are in the My Kitchen Rules. Haha! We really have great time cooking and at the end of the class we got to taste the yummy delicious cooked by ourselves and also received a Barilla's show bag with lots of goodies from them. Thank you Barilla! You made my day so special and meaningful =)

Final Output: Casaresse with mussels and clams in Barilla's Arrabbiata sauce

Barilla Show Bag

For the rest who have not been to the festival, do get to the website (http://www.goodfoodshow.com.au)  for more details. You can purchase the tickets online or you can buy at the site.

McDonald's Kitchen Open Door - Registration end 13th May 2013

Just got to know that McDonald Australia is opening their kitchen doors on 25th May 2013, just ONE day for Maccas fans like us to to go behind the scene to experience how your favourite Big Mac or Double Cheese Burger being made!It will be 30minutes guided tour and best of all it is FREE! =) What a good opportunity for us to earn and learn how these amazing guys work to provide the best food for us.

All you need to do is just visit their website at https://opendoors.mcdonalds.com.au/ for registration and choose the nearest participating McD outlet and tour time. For those who are in Australia and interested to participate, be quick as the registration  close at 9am on 13 May, 2013.

One of the rules of this tour is photography is not allowed. Hopefully I could talk to the management to snap few good pictures to share on the blog. That's all for now.

Melbourne Aquarium

Although I have been staying in Melbourne for quite some time, but we never pay a visit to the famous Melbourne Aquarium which are located at the CBD. Perhaps I'm abit skeptical on the number of exhibits in the aquarium considering the size of the building. However I was wrong when me and husband finally pay a visit to the aquarium during the Anzac day off.
 

It was a long queue at the ticket counter on that day, luckily us to skip the queue as we already bought the ticket online in advance. We are greeted with friendly staff upon admission to the aquarium which a staff asking us to pose some funny position for photograph session. Little we know that the gimmick was actually for a souvenir album with our photos in it. But we end up did not buying it although it was a nice shot as the album is a little pricey for us (AUD 35 for 3 piece of photo).

The first exhibit to greet us is the famous 2nd world largest penguin, The King Penguin and the Gentoo penguins. OMG, the King Penguin were really really GIGANTIC! I never see that kind of size of penguin before to be honest.

King Penguin

King Penguin

The penguins that we used to see at Philip Island and St Kilda beach was relatively small, perhaps just one tenth of the King Penguin size. The King penguin height is almost same 4-5years old kid or above adult knee level. These guys are from Antarctica and together with them also is the Gentoo penguin which is a little smaller. Gentoo penguin reminds me about the Happy Feet cartoon with it's feet in orange color.

Happy Feet - Gentoo Penguin

Almost as tall as a Kid!

Melbourne Aquarium has large collection of the King Penguins

Apart from the Penguin explore, there are 3 main sections to explore which are the Seahorse Pier, Coral Atoll and Shark Alive. There is a part in the aquarium where visitors could have a nice view on the daily feed by the divers. Melbourne aquarium has a large collection of sea lives including a gigantic stingray which really amazing. 

Do visit the Melbourne Aquarium where you are at Melbourne. The place really worth a visit especially on the gigantic penguins and stingray. We had a wonderful day that day. For more information on the aquarium, do visit their website at www.melbourneaquarium.com.au