The red has gone wild

Frosting piping isn't as easy as I thought.

Apparently my pipetting skills in chemistry lab doesn't contribute to any of my piping skills.

I love red, and that's why I love red velvet cupcakes/cakes.

I love cheese, especially the cream cheese frosting on top of them.

How's red with polka dots?
wild & playful that is!

Two lectures from 9-11am only for the last day of uni before Easter break.
The Clare now in holiday mood. Shopping, eating, chilling out. 

p/s Recipe adapted from Miss Tam Chiak

My Top 3 Breakfast

Breakfast is the only thing that can drag me out of bed. Apparently for me, food appears to be more important than sleep!!! I must start my day with breakfast, else I will be super grumpy! Who can concentrate on work with an empty stomach, heh definitely not me :p

So here's my top 3 breakfast for my unidays!!! It's really easy and quick to prepare. But most importantly, it is healthy!

1. Oatmeal with fresh blueberries

Want some complex carbs? :)

Prep time: < 3 minutes

Ingredients: 2 tbsp of roll oats, 150-200ml milk, blueberries 

Oats are high in fibre and aids in digestion too! In fact, it is a filling food - never fails to keep me full for more than 4 hours.

If you like it more 'watery', add more milk! I prefer creamy one :D

Microwave it on medium heat for 30 seconds - 1 minutes and there you go! *Always keep an eye on it when it is in the microwave. You will never want to see that steamy milk cascading over your bowl and microwave! Yes, I have my horror story of milk boiling over to share, and I spent more than 15 minutes to clear up the mess :(

Served it with blueberries, sometimes I have nuts - pumpkin seeds/sunflower seeds/walnuts/almonds.

2. Eggs on spinach bed
Proteins on an extra boost of greens. 

Prep time: 5-10 minutes (depends on how you want your eggs to be served)
Ingredients: Handfuls of spinach, 2 eggs




This is awesome and super quick to make. Heat up the oil in a pan, sautee the spinach, crack the eggs into the pan. The cooking time is your own choice, I like my egg yolks to be runny so normally I leave them on the pan for 3-4 minutes on medium heat. The thing I love having this as breakfast is that I can do something else (like refill my water bottle/check student emails etc.) while preparing and I don't need to cut anything up!

Spinach contains approximately 25% of daily iron intake and it is really a gem in the green leafy vegetables kingdom.
Ohh, not to forget the pepper, I'm a pepper lover.
If I have a long morning before I get to eat my lunch, I will toast a mixed grain bread along with the eggs. Love dipping my toast in egg yolks!

3. Smoked salmon, cucumbers and toasted bread
If you see me holding this and running all the way to the bus stop, yes, I am late for class. :P

Prep time: < 2 minutes
Ingredients: Smoked Salmon, cucumber slices, bread

I don't like bread, like seriously, I dislike it because it has no flavour - like how i dislike rice. That is why I feel the need to add some flavour on my toasted bread. This is the easiest breakfast to prepare - toast the bread, cut the cucumbers, add a few slices of smoked salmon. That's it.

So yea, in conjunction with the first day of uni, I'm sharing this with you guys. Never skip breakfast yea, at least get something to eat before your class!

Off to bed, hitting the wall of fatigue today. I got caught in the rain this morning and still suffering from sorethroat (eating too much grapes over the weekend -.-)

Au revoir~

The Perfect Match - Cupcakes and Cream Cheese

2 more weeks to Chinese New Year; 3 weeks to the summer course final exams; 4 weeks till family trip to Sydney; 6 weeks until my mystery trip ( :p ); 7 more weeks until our Year 2 uni! Sounds pretty interesting right? :D

Another post about food for you guys again, I have no shame. 

Red Velvet Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting

After the storm, the weather went better, but this arvo, the sudden heat in the air made me crave for comforting food. uhhh, I guess the 'binge-eating' week is coming soon, lol lol. To control my appetite and to prevent myself from sabotaging my new years resolution (feeling guilty after eating out yesterday and today!), I scanned through my old photos in my camera, got them transferred to my laptop.. muahhaha. It did successfully outsmart my desserts craving. 

And I decided to blog now while waiting for my lecture recording to finish loading. (My house internet has gone insane since yesterday, it took me forever to upload/download everything)

It was about a month ago when I baked this red velvet cupcakes. I was tossing between baking a super rich cheesecake or the super cutey cupcakes. It was a battle I had and finally I had a lightbulb moment - what about cupcakes with cream cheese frosting? 

After discussing with my sister, we decided to go for Red Velvet Cupcakes. Awesome. 

 Just in case you don't know I really dislike dry and crumbly baked cakes, and that is why I heart cheese (They never get dry). I did some research online and found this recipe really nice ---> Recipe

The recipe includes coffee, which makes the cakes more moist.  Since I had no instant coffee at home but this caffe americano capsule, I made a cup of coffee by using the nescafe coffee machine!

 I wanna keep the coffee taste down so I chucked in more cocoa powder. My sister hates coffee, ahh.

 Apart from the coffee, the apple cider vinegar takes its role to moisturise the cakes too!

They are super mini cupcakes lol, I couldn't find any larger cupcakes liners. 

 I played around with cream cheese, sugar, heavy cream and colourings while waiting for the cupcakes to cool down. hah, I'm terrible in piping frosting onto the cupcakes. At the end I left the kitchen in a mess. hehe.

Oh hello!

Decadent-tasting Super moist Red Velvet Cupcakes!

Needless to say, a cup of earl grey tea is surely needed to pair up with this adorable cupcake.

That's all! I might need to get myself a panadol pill to stop this headache that I have since morning. Growing older now I need more sleep - 5 hours ain't enough! and Monday Blue tomorrow awwww. 

Good night! Have a really blessed week ahead, Cheeeeerrrs! 

Nutella Cheesecake + wishes for BFF + lil updates

I think that is the worst title evahh. #facepalm

whatever lahh.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Nutella.  Besides Marshmallows, it is also one of the sweetness overload food.(in my list)  I have no idea how did I make the decision to bake this cake.  Ohh, maybe it was because of nutella's on sale at Coles.  

 My favourite part of this cake is the 80% dark cocoa curls strips that topped the whole cheesecake.  That's the only thing that can lower the level of sweetness.  It was a total disaster grating the dark chocolate, the weather was quite hot yesterday and I was holding this block of chocolate, another hand with the grater. After a while, my palm & fingers were covered by choc. woww fingers lickin' good.

It was the normal recipe that I used to bake a cheesecake. 2x250g Cream Cheese is the base ingredients. 

If you know me well you will know that I love the biscuits crumbs layer to the max, so that layer must not be thin!  I added peanuts to enhance the crunchiness and since it is so called the Nutella Cheesecake, all components must contain Nutella!  Then I decided to add two tablespoon of Nutella into the biscuits crumbs bahahaha. By doing this, the amount of butter added was reduced by HEAPS. Yes, I dislike butter in the biscuits crumbs layer in my cheesecake. Butter is unhealthy. 

-Urghhhh, cheesecake isn't that healthy tho, but... but at least we can try what we can do to make it healthier-


The other two layers are basically cream cheese.  I used light philadelphia Cream Cheese.  I poured the remaining 400g tub of Nutella into the cream cheese for the middle layer.  At the same time, I added chopped peanuts! (According to my friends, the middle layer tastes exactly like Ferrero Rocher.)

The top layer is another layer of cream cheese plus the biscuits crumble. hehehe, tell ya I love biscuits crumbs.  After chilling for 5 hours, apparently the middle layer was softer than the other two cos I didn't add any gelatines for the health's sake.  Therefore, I put it into the freezer for overnight!  The next morning when I took it out, it looked great but a lot more heavier.


Finally the middle layer had set.  hehehe.  Spent more than half an hour on cutting them and wrapping them for all my dear friends!

 Wrapped them in aluminium foil and the cupcakes papers. Friends ended up eating the cakes during lecture and someone eventually consumed the metal Aluminium Al3+!

 Of course, I ate one and only if I can reduce the sweetness of Nutella, this cheesecake would be perfect for me.

Perhaps I should write in to suggest a Sugar Free Nutella ayee.

Ohhh, and this is actually for the bff in Malaysia who is fighting for her final exams.  All the best and good luck! I will eat on behalf of you and you must concentrate on studies yeahh.

This short break on the wonderful Sunday was spent really well on baking.  The break between Week 7 and Week 8, time for us to grasp for air.  This week should not be too busy on studies, but not the cleaning and packing job.  Yes, I'm moving to another house next week! teehehehe. ehh, next week might be extremely busy with all the prac classes cramped in one week, and the bio mid-sem exams. :(

But anyways, I'm still looking forward to week 9.  Not only that it is the week before mid-semester break, it is also the week I gonna move to another house!

Ciao~