Why I love Penang

Chocolate Orange Guiness Teddy Bear Cake

It's my best friends birthday so decided to bake her something special. It's also a good chance to use my new teddy bear silicone cake pan. I've made beer cake before but it was butter and beer cake. This time I decided to make this Chocolate Orange Guiness Stout cake. Comes with a chocolate orange frosting that's yum~

Ingredients: Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.
Grease the teddy bear pan (you can use a normal cake pan)

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Sift flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa into a bowl.
Add orange rind to the creamed butter.
Beat in eggs one at a time including a spoonful of the measured flour mixture with each one.
Beat well between additions.
Gently mix in Guinness and flour 1 tablespoonful at a time.
Gently fold in any remaining flour then blend thoroughly without over beating.
Pour mixture into your cake pan.

Reduce heat to 350 and bake 40 minutes then turn out and cool on a wire rack.

Frosting

To make icing cream softened butter and confectioner's sugar and mix thoroughly.
Blend in grated orange rind and enough juice to make an icing that is soft enough to spread.

Trip to Phuket

Bear with me my readers cos this is gonna be quite a long post. You will see tons of pics about my food adventures in Phuket, Thailand and I was only there for like 8 hours. Take away 2 hours of Thai massages, 1 hour for some crap visit to a honey farm, 1 hr plus at some factory where we see Stingray wallets (meant to last very long) and lots of jewellery and 1 hr traveling time, you really don't have much time left but there's lots of interesting stuff to see in Phuket.


The first restaurant we decided to try was McDonalds. My friends didn't really have an adventurous appetite and decided to play safe. Thank god it's easy to make out what you want to buy as there's subtitles in English for us to browse.


The menu pretty much looks like your typical McDonalds but what's interesting is this.


Samurai Pork burger! Warau - Never try before and looks tasty. So I decided to order that one. I know I am very 'suaku' or 'sakai' but this is the first time I saw PORK burger in McDonalds ok!




If you can't take spicy food, don't even try their crispy spicy drumsticks. This is Thailand we're talking about here. Simply HOT and spicy~


After McDonalds, I decided to move around on my own and saw this pork sausages and other satay stuff stall. Wooo pork heaven la ... for a guy whose been living in Brunei all his life.







Then they will serve it with Thai salad, which is quite good as well. Forgive me for not taking a photo of my dish, as I instantly dig in and only realized when I was halfway chomping down the tasty pork sausage!




They have many flavours but too bad, chocolate filled ones are out, so I got the maple syrup one. It's quite crispy yet has a soft bready texture in the inside. Later, when I move to another supermarket, they also have one of these stalls as well. They must be quite popular in Thailand.






Ooooh crowns~ with different savoury and sweet fillings. The one on the left is the easiest to figure out: Crab Meat. The other two on the side were Orange Jam and Blueberry Jam.






What's this? Breaded 'Shishamo'? We usually order this in Excapade. It's pregnant fish. When you eat it, there's lots of fish eggs in the tummy. Absolutely delicious. Usually this costs around $3 or $4 for just 3.


The supermarket sells breaded ones for just 35 baht! Only $1.30 nia! WARAU! SOOO CHEAP! I had such a nice time munching on those Shishamos! Yum!


Check out the price of their Oyster meat. So bloody cheap ok! $1.30 for a 200g of Oyster meat. I will fry lots of oyster omelettes with this! Hmmmm!!!


Of course, nothing is complete in a Thai supermarket without an obvious spelling error.


We also bought lots of Thai mangoes. They usually cost like $7+ per kg in Supasave or Hua Ho. But in here, they cost less than $2 per kilo. We were in mango heaven I tell ya! Phew! Now that's one long post. I hope to visit Bangkok in the near future and eat like a king again. I am missing Thailand already.

Singapore Trip: Ding Tai Fung

Ding Tai Fung is famous for their Xiau Long Paus in Taiwan. They opened many branches around the world. I stumbled upon them in Singapore and decided to give their famous Xiau Long Paus a try, along with other delicious dim sums they have available.

The place is very popular and you can't call to reserve de. They are so popular that usually to eat there during lunch or dinner, you have to queue for a while, take number and wait. However, they save time by giving you a mini list for you to select your order while waiting.


















Not to forget the highlight! To eat these tasty xiau long pau, you put one on your soup spoon, bite a ball hole out of the pau, and then suck the soup from inside. Alternatively, if you can withstand hot soup, just pop the whole thing in your mouth(not encouraged!). One of the best tasting xiau long pau! Can rival Dragon-I's one. Definitely a must try.

I also ordered dessert.