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We made some roll rice noodle sheets yesterday (phở cuốn/ rolling Pho) and in result, we had a lot of herbs on hands so I decided to make some fresh spring rolls with steamed shrimps, Vietnamese sausage, omelette, left over rice noodle and a lot of herbs. Those were served cold dipped in fish sauce. BTW Choya plum wine is our favorite to compliment Asian food. Yummy!

A colleague gave Chomchom some kitchen utensils on his birthday party, one of which is a big transparent plastic bowl. What a wonderful gift that is nice to make a trifle with!

I tried buying Vietnamese fish to prepare braised fish today the real Vietnamese style with lots of lemongrass and galangal.

Tomorrow is Monday again, urg work!

I was so excited to make my own cake recipe today!

Yogi Charlotte Cake a.k.a Summer Berry Charlotte Cake

Well all roads lead to Rome, with me all reasons led me to create this version of a charlotte.

My bf Chomchom loves charlotte and always is craving for a trifle, while I should be busy digging in my thesis and find making sponge cake and custard to fill a real English trifle is too much to do at this particular moment.

How about a charlotte – trifle combination?

So that was my initial idea, I used my ‘precious’ charlotte mould bought by my bf’s mom ( I really like it, imagine how she carefully chose it for me, it had beautiful shape and where the lid is supposed to be, it can be different shapes, including a heart, a star, a tulip or a Xmas tree. It’s difficult to show you with only words, you’ll see what I meant later by looking at a star-shaped charlotte that I got from the mould.

As usual I first lined the mould with a layer of ladyfingers which had been dipped in syrup and rum, ( I love using alcohol in both cooking and baking, and my bf always asks for more) then filled half of the mould with a layer of strawberry mousse with fresh strawberries and a layer of ladyfingers, followed by a layer of blueberry mousse with fresh blueberries and closed with a layer of ladyfingers. Phew it sounds wordy but it’s really in an order, isn’t it?! Let’s refrigerate it in 4 hours and here it is, what I called a Yogi Charlotte Cake, the name of which was inspired by my bf (YogiN).

I was so in a rush to cut the cake, it might not look perfect but the taste is very refreshing!

For “the” mango lover ♥ A 3 layer- combination of mangoes and dark chocolate.  I created the recipe to use up a mango that hadbeen lying around for quite sometimes and it had become too soft to cut beautifully.

I personally prefer simple muffins, so this was the first time I made and iced cupcakes.  A friend tagged me on her facebook page convincing me to make cupcakes with her and I just could not resist. Those were made on the 19th of May, and I find it quite fun to play with them.

I merely used natural colours on hands so that’s it, only two colours. I know a lot of people are fond of those beautiful cupcakes but to me they are extremely sweet and sometimes just to beautiful or cute to eat.

The shades of brown and green are from cocoa powder and pandan leaf extract.

Banitsa- Bulgarian cheese pie (Баница) is “a Bulgarian traditional food, prepared by layering a mixture of whisked eggs” and Bulgarian white cheese “sirene” between filo pastry. Traditionally lucky charms/wishes are put into the pastry on special occasion such as Xmas or New Year’s Eve. Wishes people tend to send into the pies are often happiness, health, money, luck, love etc. Banitsa can be eaten hot or cold. And there are a few variations of it, including pumpkin fillings, apple fillings or spinach… (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banitsa )
I was first introduced to Banitsa while visiting my ant family in Bulgaria in 2009 for Xmas and New year, can’t remember which lucky charm I got that day though. My cousin, in my memory, was addicted to this pie 😡