Homemade Portuguese Egg Tarts

My first sweet pastry attempt peeps!

Well, undeniably, Portuguese Egg Tart is one of my favourite pastries and I'm not really a fan of sweet pastries! So when I first saw Hayley making her own Portuguese Egg Tart I got excited cos it really doesn't look very difficult to make!
I made my egg tarts following the recipe in her blog and this blog, only difference is I used brown sugar instead of white sugar because that's the only type of sugar I have at home! Anyway, here we go...

What you need: 
120g UHT whipping cream
120g sugar
4 egg yolks
2 tbsp of cornflour
520g full-fat fresh milk
Few drips of vanilla extract
Puff Pastry (I bought these and I used up about four sheets of the pastry)

What to do:
1) In a medium size cooking pot, pour in the cream.

2) Add in the sugar.

3) Now, the egg yolks.

4) Then the cornflour for thickening purpose.

5) Finally, pour in the milk.

6) With a mixer, mix the ingredients up well.

7) Then put the pot over a medium-low fire and cook while stirring.

8) Turn off the fire when the mixture is thick enough to coat the pot thinly. 

9) Remove the pot and put it in water bath. Add in the vanilla extract.

10) Stir well and let it cool.

11) I then moved on to lay the pastry onto my muffin trays.

12) Preheat the oven to 220c (Hayley's recipe said 250c but it really burnt my egg tarts so I guess it depends on your oven too), then pour in the mixture into your pastry shells. 

13) Bake the egg tarts for 30-35 minutes.

14) Lay the egg tarts on wire rack till cool, then you can enjoy your egg tarts right away with some tea or coffee! :)

First batch, fresh from the oven!!!

The mixture really made ngam ngam 18 egg tarts, which was enough to keep for the next few days. Keep in the fridge without a lid on (make sure your fridge doesn't have any weird smell) and heat up with oven or toaster oven again whenever you wanna eat them.
Although my first batch of egg tarts were quite burnt on the pastry (the egg mixture is supposed to be slightly burnt, that is like the uniqueness of Portuguese egg tarts), the second batch turned out to be just fine after I turn the heat lower.

Second batch!

Just like the Portuguese egg tarts you ate before, they were crispy on the pastry and creamy on the inside! Very nice and it feels really warm to be eating egg tarts from your very own kitchen! I brought some to work and my colleagues enjoyed them too so I think it should be fair to say that it was a success!

Ooooh... Salivating yet? 

Will definitely make this again especially when there are guests coming to our house! :)

Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells!

Time for a little wedding update that is long overdue yaw!
This time around I would like to give you guys a sneak peek to our wedding theme and our choice of theme colours. :)

Choosing Our Wedding Theme
I know, right from the beginning that our wedding would not be those romantic and lovey dovey kinda occasion, simply because while Deardo and I love each other like crazy, we are not so much into the whole corny kinda stuff, publicly, at least. So we wanted to make it fun, you know like a party more than a wedding. It is after all, already going to be a boring Chinese-styled wedding, so we wanted to do something different, food aside, at least.
It was pretty easy to pick a theme - movie theme, simply because both of us love movies, like we literally grew up watching movies, and yours truly was minoring in film back in university! We have very extreme tastes sometimes though, but that just going to mean that this isn't a romance movie theme wedding! It's going to be just MOVIES!
So I googled it up and found out we are absolutely not the first couple to have a movie themed wedding. Some ang mohs really went all out having their wedding held at a cinema! Fuuuh... Can't beat that man!

Blogger Andrea from Singapore probably has the closest ideas to ours. 

Kyle and Nicole had their wedding held in a cinema! 

Anyway, I'm clear that with our limited budget, I'm definitely not going to try to beat these people. So without being going overboard, these are some of the stuff you can expect from our wedding: movie poster, movie-titled-table numbers, snacks for movies, loads and loads of movie soundtracks playing whole night long. Of course, we have some that are secrets for the time being because you know, it won't be fun anymore if you know everything, right? :p

Choosing Our Wedding/Movie Title
Since we are very sure that we want a movie poster at the reception area, we had to think of a name. Some titles I found online were too common, e.g. Mr. & Mrs something, Our Wedding, Our Big Day, The Wedding, etc. Some were pretty cool e.g. The Search is Over, Stuck on You, etc.

Josh and Rachel's cool wedding poster/invites is by far, one of my top favourites! 

After some discussions, Deardo and I went with Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells. Clearly, we were being bias. LOL! Well, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was the first movie we watched together so I guess that explained a lot! And plus, I actually think it's quite a cute title for a wedding! :)

Our Invites
A lot of the artworks are not done yet at the moment. My designer, Ducum Tan is a very busy person so yea there is a little delay but I think we can make it on time, fingers crossed!!!
Anyway, some of you may have received them, but here you go, our very cool (at least we think so) wedding invites!!!

Our movie-theme wedding invites! Woot~~~!!!

Ducum gave me two designs and because I can't decide between the two of them, we went with both so some of you may get the classier one, some of you may get the rugged and fun one. Well I don't know about you but most of the people actually love the cards, so kudos to my very talented sister! *clap clap clap~~~*

As for our relatives, we also have a little card to remind them to come earlier for the tea ceremony!

The card which comes just slightly bigger than a business card. 

So if you are one of my relatives like Uncle Ah Hin here, these are what you can expect from us! :)

 Design aside, yours truly did all the copy-writing so if you love them too, thank you!!! :D

Choosing the Theme Colours

This is probably the only part of the entire wedding that I will stay as traditional as possible. I mean, there is no way I am making my wedding a black wedding because the superstitious side of me just can't take that, let alone our parents or even relatives. I've also been to a church wedding with yellow and orange colours as their theme and I'm sorry to say this but the church suddenly looked more like a Chinese temple and their bridal car looks like they are ready for a Wesak Day parade! LOL! 

This is absolutely breath-taking! But nah, we are not going so extreme! :p

So we stay really safe and went for purple and pink (you probably figured that out in our invites). I think purple and pink are romantic yet not as common as white for wedding. And I think the most important part is that it is much convenient! You see, it is so easy to find purple and pink decor and flower arrangements; easier for our guests (relatives in particular) to find clothes in purple and pink and of course for myself to choose the colours for my gowns! :)

There we go, slightly more than a month to go people! Surprisingly, after we have settled the invite list, I am not as stress anymore. Of course, there are still more to come so I know the stress will come as the date draws closer and closer! So good luck to us! :p 

The Internship

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rose Byrne, etc
Director: Shawn Levy
Synopsis: Billy and Nick, two very good and experienced salesmen find themselves in deep shit as their boss decided to close his company down. By accident, they got an internship at Google, hoping to fight with the youngsters to get a job at the globally known company, with little knowledge in terms of technology.
The Thumb-Up(s): The storyline, although very common and predictable, has a very good message behind it, which I think is very nice and important especially to youngsters nowadays (sorry, aunty talk now). It is also a comedy without the lame jokes that you will simply enjoy watching, especially if you are a techy person. I also love how there is a diversity of races, characters and personalities in each of the very roles in the movie. Very heart-warming kinda movie, at least to me personally! :)
The Thumb-Down(s): Hmmm... Perhaps it looks too much like a hard-selling commercial for Google? And not much of acting can be said?
Verdict: Very predictable story yet a movie that you and your kids could learn a lot from.
3.5 out of 5

Breakie with a Twist @ Milk and Butter, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar

About a few weeks ago I met up with my graphic designer a.k.a. Ducum Tan a.k.a my sister to collect my very important wedding invitation cards. As a reward, I told her to choose something that she would like to eat and she said Western breakfast!

So we went to Telawi, hunting for a right place to eat. We walked past Antipodean but I gave that a miss because it was too crowded and I wanted to try something new. So I saw Milk and Butter just opposite and thought hey this one not much people, let's go!

My stack of invites! Woot~!!! 

Surprisingly, their breakfast menu itself is quite impressive! Whole long list with some different dishes that you can rarely find elsewhere! So Ducum and I made our picks...

Lazy Day Breakfast, RM23.

Lamb Breakfast, RM24.

My Lazy Day Breakfast was really unique, I must say. The tomato paste or whatever you call it on the slice of yummy bread is something to-die-for and I love the fact that my meal comes with fresh vegetables! :) The only downside was the fact that if the breakfast said comes with sunny-side-up, you cannot change to any other types of eggs or they will charge you a bomb! Mine for example, they wanted to charge me RM5 for scrambled eggs!!! So no flexibility on the eggs... LOL, why does that sound a bit wrong? Ducum's Lamb Breakfast was also another cool option, especially for those lamb lovers! Yummy yet simply marinated lamb patties and sausages with beef bacon, although very high in Cholesterol, was definitely satisfying!

Ice Latte, RM10.

Ice Peach Tea, RM9.

Unfortunately, I find their Latte very plain but Ducum's Ice Peach Tea was quite special, like she said, that was the first time she saw someone adding real peach in the ice peach tea! LOL!

Time for a little late breakie babey~! 

Deardo came to join us about 40 minutes later after parking his car (yeah, Telawi is a shithole man) and had a Prawn Aglio Olio (RM22) which he didn't quite like so we didn't bother taking photo of it also.
Everything, including the service charge and government tax, the bill comes up to RM102.10, which is still reasonable. If only their coffee are better but you know there are still couples of cafes for you to go have your drink after breakfast so it really doesn't matter that much. Maybe you should just skip ordering coffees here. It is indeed a cafe that offers some unique choices of dishes and I can't wait to go back again for their breakfast but CAR PARK IS THE ISSUE NOW!!!! GRRRHHH...

Milk and Butter
25G, Jalan Telawi 2,
Bangsar Baru,
59100 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2201 9869

Maddy's Big Day! :D

With my wedding happening in less than two months time, I believe I still have a lot to share about the the preparations but then again, a lot haven't been done yet! *freaked out~* So yea I think better do those stuff first before blogging about them!

So my colleague, Madeleine's wedding was quite close to mine, so most of the time we shared our experiences and researches on wedding stuff. In fact, we are actually using the same photographer and videographer for our weddings!
For her wedding, I had the pleasure to not only attend her wedding, but also her hen's night, which was also my first hen's night experience (me the suaku).

Yay! We booked the entire spa just for the bridal shower! 

We pampared ourselves with some manicure and pedicure (my first pedicure experience, another suaku part of me) at Posh Nail Spa at TTDI and I don't know about Maddy, but I really enjoyed the session! Ha! 

Loving my first pedicure experience!!!

And then off we went to Tabletalk at TTDI for dinner!!!

Stuffed Chicken Wing, RM15.

Wagyu Beef Patty, RM38. 

Chicken Parmesan, RM26.

Carbonara Beef, RM15.

Overall the food were pretty good, I must say! I love my Wagyu Patty which comes with a really nice and creamy gravy. I tried the Parmesan Chicken and it was quite nice too, although I would prefer it to be chicken chop than chicken breast. The must try here would be the Stuffed Chicken Wing. Very nicely done, flavourful but not oily, a real perfect starter! 
And then we got free desserts!!! Wheeee~~~!!!

And the boss who was nice enough to give us FOC desserts! 

We were kinda playing some games and Maddy got to get someone to buy her a drink and we smartly asked her to ask the boss to buy her a drink and that's when he also served us the desserts for free! So to the boss, if you are reading this, thanks! :)

Us all with the then-bride-to-be! 

The entire atmosphere of the restaurant is pretty nice, although it doesn't have fancy designs and all. Prices of the food are also quite reasonable. I'm really looking forward to go back to try their breakfast one day! Anyone?

*Photos credit to Lea.

Tabletalk
No.4, Jalan Datuk Sulaiman,
Taman Tun Dr. Ismail,
68000 KL
Tel: 03-7733 7718

Our little doorgift. 

Maddy's wedding was quite a simple yet romantic one. We had tears in our eyes looking at their akad nikah video and hearing her funny yet touching speech!

Me with Maddy who was still in tears! 

Maddy was stunning! I especially love her hair piece (picture above) I wish my make-up artist has similar one! 

Catching-up with Ducum Tan...

Of course, we had fun ourselves having a little rendezvous with some ex-colleagues, making a lot of noises (we were definitely the noisiest and loudest)! LOL!

Group picture! 

Us pulling a Miley Cyrus! 

Jason, whom we miss very dearly. 

One of my closest colleagues, Lea. 

Me and the diva, Matthew! 

*Photos credit to Lea and June.

It was great to have a wedding before mine to see what are there to learn and what are there to refer to. But I supposed our weddings have very different styles, so I have basically no pressure in making mine better, or whatsoever. I think for now, the pressure comes from myself, and sometimes Deardo as we got a bit more excited in the entire planning. Clashing of opinions, differences in thinking really show in the process but I guess compromise is the major major word here! 
Till then, stay tuned for more updates guys!  

Famous Hokkien Mee Closer to Home @ Kim Lian Kee Restaurant, Sunway Pyramid

I've visited both the original Kim Lian Kee at Petaling Street and their small branch at the Heritage Food Village in Lot 10. I always love the fact that their famous Hokkien Mee has the most generous amount of pork lard and baby octopus so I was thrilled when I found out they recently opened a branch in Sunway Pyramid, which is like 10 minutes away from home! :)

Of course, this is a cleaner and quieter place to dine at compared to the one at Petaling Street, and possibly also the one at Lot 10. We also didn't know if the food would be as good or are their Hokkien Mee still done with charcoal fire? We gave it a try anyway!

Our Fried Hokkien Mee with Meehoon Mee in it, RM9.50.

Singaopore Fried Meehoon, RM9.50. 

Amaranth Soup (Spinach Soup), RM4.90. 

Taste wise, their Hokkien Mee is definitely on par with those we had at Petaling Street, the only difference is in stead of those cute baby octopus, they use those dried sotong here, which is quite a turn down. The Singaporean Fried Meehoon was also above averagely good. Not too oily and comes with whole loads of ingredients. The Spinach Soup (they call it Amarath Soup)  was ok lar, definitely not the best but with RM4.90 per bowl, I wouldn't complain so much! Of course, must eat your Hokkien Mee with their very nice chili paste too! 

Their service also damn fast although I wouldn't say all servers are well-trained. 

Us, really enjoying our dinner! 

Together with a pot of Heong Pin (Chinese tea) (RM5) and service charge, we paid RM31.80 for our dinner and I thought that was very reasonable!
I'm just so glad that I can now have one of the most famous Hokkien Mee brands in Malaysia so close to home! :) 

Kim Lian Kee Restaurant
Sunway Pyramid (right opposite Kim Gary)

激战 Unbeatable

Cast: 张家辉、彭于晏、梅婷、李巧馨等

Director: 林超贤
Synopsis: 过气拳王程辉偶然的机会下认识及开始成为思齐的师傅，最终自己也重回到了拳击比赛。
The Thumb-Up(s): 许多久违了的演员的出现都很令人兴奋及惊喜，算是个很棒的买点。运用英文旧曲融入拳击也还蛮酷的。自己也特别喜欢几幕showcase澳门美景的戏，跟一般只是打打杀杀的血腥动作片确实有点不一样。
The Thumb-Down(s): 非常了解林导演想要为一部动作片加些什么，但许多side stories因为犏得不够细腻，感觉很多余。虽然有点cliche，但Deardo说得对，如果电影只讲述张家辉的角色，看他如何comeback，加上他和女儿的戏效果会更好。动作片而言节奏就太慢了，文艺片而言更加不够到位。另外，也不太明白张家辉和李巧馨怎么凭这部电影得奖。不是说他们演技差，而是角色根本没什么好发挥！
Verdict: 比起逆战的恰到好处，这部电影真的差好远。建议林导演下次可以和许鞍华导演合作，把情绪部分和动作部分都搞好！
2.5 out of 5