Announcement!

Yo people what's up! I would like to make an announcement real quick :) as I now think that I have more to write on reviewing good food and good restaurant, I decide to shift my writing corner from this blog to Instagram acc! 

I will still post on the blog once in a while for recipes or other stuffs but food reviews will be done on my Instagram acc :)

Please please please follow me on Instagram!! My user id is: plem_official , which also stands for "pay less enjoy more". Food reviews will be focused on delicious food with affordable price :)

You can also get updates from my Facebook acc (Plem_official) or twitter acc (@plem_official)! Please please support me and have a great journey discovering new great foodie places with me :)

Pay less and enjoy more!

Brunch At Little Diner

Just a simple review on Little Diner, which is a casual cafe located at bukit timah. It's actually quite difficult to park nearby as the road in front of the shop is not exactly wide enough therefore in the end of the day is about luck haha. We were really lucky as the second we drove in, a car parked right in front of the cafe was leaving. Hooray! Not difficult at all lol.

Anyway the interior of the shop is quite dim which is not really my cup of tea. However, the waitress serving us was really friendly. The time when we reached there isn't any table available for us so they actually set up another table for 4 for us at the back of the shop, which is actually really thoughtful. As we are extremely hungry ( at least I AM extremely hungry), we decided our order real fast. My bf is so hungry that he decided to mimic British slang while speaking English. Ya I know, make no sense at all.

The food was served real fast and because I was too hungry, I forgot to take pic of the very delicious fluffy omelette stuffed with wild mushrooms and truffle oil. I remembered Gordon Ramsay once said that he hates truffle oil but oh well I am not so professional so I'm good haha.   The toasts served at the side is also very good, soft and crunchy, love it!

These were what we ate, including supernova Benedict (New York style egg Benedict with smoked salmon), crab cake Benedict and red velvet pancakes. 

I find the toast under the eggs Benedict is kinda hard as it's a flat toast. However the crispy bacon in the crab cake one is nice. Also the crab cake is very Asian style which makes me feel like having a Vietnamese pho or some noodle soup haha. 

Close up of the red velvet pancakes. Served with honey/maple syrup, cream cheese, whipped cream and strawberry slices. Not exactly a wow but still good. Find the pancakes not fluffy enough. 

Overall is quite good in terms of the food, speed and services. As for the price, I think it's quite average for above average singapore cafe. Each dish costs about 10+ dollars. Hope you all enjoy :)

Japanese milk bread

So I made bread this week and the more challenging part to produce the recipe is that I follow my heart when I add the ingredients lol.

Anyway after watching the baking tv programme, I decide to look for recipe making soft and fluffy bread like the one I can get in bakery shop. So I come across this recipe which use a relatively Asian technique to make bread. The website I used as reference: http://homecookinginmontana.blogspot.com/2013/03/japanese-milk-bread-using-tangzhong.html

So this tangzhong is the secret weapon in this recipe, it's basically a mixture of heated flour+water. What I did is pour some flour maybe around 40-50g and add water to cover the flour. Then I heat it until it achieve a 80% opaque glue-y texture. For the pic details please refer to the website above.

Anyway for my recipe, I basically pour the amount of flour I want to make around 4 regular bread as sold in bakery store. I guess should be around 150g. Then add the amount of sugar I want around 3 tablespoons. And approximately 5g of yeast. Then what I did is I roughly mix the dry components and then add in cold milk and cream and the tangzhong. The amount of the liquid amount is generally depends on the dry mixture. The ratio of the milk: cream: tangzhong is 4:2:4 Tablespoons. Just about enough to produce a dough. So take time to slowly mix it till the right texture. The only thing that I missed out is the egg. But the product shows that it actually doesn't really matter as my dough is relatively more watery than it should be, so it has enough moist. 

Anyway as usual, after kneading (I use olive oil and butter to knead instead of just flour so the dough will be less hard and solid), leave the dough to grow and then shape the dough. Use egg to glaze the top and start baking :) I put the bread in oven under 180 degree Celsius for 25-30 minutes. 

Dang dang!

 Nice golden crust on top, soft and fluffy with hint of sweet and milky taste. This is my version of Japanese milk bread :) very satisfied with the incorporation of tangzhong and I will definitely use this recipe again, although its not accurate at all hahaha! 

For a more accurate recipe please refer to the website I shared above lol. Happy baking!

Cheesecake with caramel sauce

This time, I made something more complex than what I baked previously. It consist of 3 parts :)

Biscuits base:

I estimate the amount of biscuits I need by spreading the un-crushed little biscuits into the mould. Then I liquify the butter and mix together with the crushed biscuits and some sugars. Taste and adjust the flavor and required butter. Make sure the butter is sufficient to hold the biscuits together. After that just use something to compress the base onto the mould or in my case the cupcake paper. Then, just put it in fridge.

The cheesecake:

I used 200g of cream cheese, mix with 1 egg and a tablespoon of milo and sugar for flavoring purpose. And that's all u need to do lol. Scope the mixture onto the cold biscuit base and put it in oven. I still haven't gotten the way to prevent the cheesecake from cracking, but anyway I think the timing is crucial. I suspect 10-15 minutes under 170 degree is sufficient to make it cooked. However, a larger mould will need more time. The timing I provided is based on the size of cupcake mould.

Caramel sauce:

150g of sugar in sauce pan to make it melt and boiled. U can stir a bit to make the sugar evenly heated. But when it start melting, just use the handle of the pan to shake it gently. You will achieve a nice amber colour when the sugar is completely caramelized. Then, add in 50g butter and stir it. Lastly just add in sufficient amount of heavy cream by observing the texture of the mixture. You will want to achieve a slightly sticky and half transparent liquid. Then just pour into the container to cool it down. Heat up the amount you needed for the cake and store the rest in the fridge :)

And this, is my first cheesecake attempt :) not as creamy as I wanted as I slightly overbaked it but still look great :)

Butter scones

Hello ppl! I'm back with a good recipe to make scones :) actually I tried to make it 3 times already and this is the most successful attempt. The previous experience included uneven temperature oven which burned the bottom of the scones and shivery hands that pour way too much milk into the mixture which I tried to fix the problem by adding flour. Well, as expected, the final products look more like a Chinese shao bao than scones @.@

The first batch of scones look like this lol.

And this, my friend, is the successful batch :) it does look like scone right? (Please say yes lol.)

Anyway I adapted a recipe which I found online and I made the self raising flour myself by mixing normal flour and baking powder. As I was using the salted butter, I omitted all the salts required for the recipe. The substitution of self raising flour with normal flour is: 1 cup of self raising flour 130g is equal to 1 cup of normal flour plus 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder plus 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Recipe is as below:

1 cup 130g of self raising flour

30g salted butter

25g caster sugar

Around 65-75mL milk

Little bit of egg liquid

Very easy busy. Rub in the butter into the flour and make it looks like crumbles. Basically u can cut the butter into very small pieces first or for me I just scope in enough butter and cut them in the flour using the wooden spatula. The crucial point here is that u have to keep the butter cold so that it won't melt. Then, just stir in the sugar.

To make the dough, I added the milk very gradually thanks to the precious experience. U just have to add the minimum amount of milk to combine the crumbles to become a dough.

Lastly, cut the dough using the cutter or like me I just used my hand to separate the dough to make the size I want. However make sure u have enough height for each scones around 2.5cm so that the final product is thick enough. Glaze the scones with the egg and start baking it! The oven is set to 220 degree Celsius to bake the scones around 15 minutes. 

I tried to taste the scones when they first come out from the oven and they are soft inside. I thought I did it wrong again. But after they cool down, their texture changed so I know I make it right this time :)