Wraps for lunch

Recently, I bought some frozen soft thin bread from one of my favourite store, Ikea.

I don't usually buy food stuff from Ikea, even though I quite enjoy eating there. But I thought the soft thin bread was thin enough, and if I made pizza, I didn't have to make my own pizza base.

Inspired by Petunialee, I ended up making some wraps with them.

I made 2 kinds of wraps for lunch today, Otak with Cheese and Rosemary Chicken with Basil Sauce.

Ingredients
For Otak with Cheese
2 pcs Otak
Half a Tomato
Shreds of Mozarrella Cheese

For Rosemary Chicken with Basil Sauce
Roast Chicken (Or whatever chicken you have left-over is fine)
A pinch of chopped fresh rosemary
Half a Tomato
A generous helping of Pesto Sauce

(Side note: I made my pesto sauce with fresh basil leaves, grated Parmesan cheese, pine nuts, a little garlic and olive oil. I blended all these together and then add pepper and salt to taste. I usually use them in pasta. Jamie Oliver's blog has the detailed recipe for pesto sauce - he suggests adding lemon juice which I think should be great. Will try that next time! You can always freeze any unused pesto sauce so I find it even more convenient than canned pasta sauce.

BTW, this is the first time I'm using pesto sauce in something other than pasta. They really dressed up my wrap though, I must say.)

What I did
I just dumped all the ingredients on top of the soft thin bread and sent them into the oven for about 3 - 5 mins at 180 deg C. Did no artistic arrangements and all since it was lunch-time and I was getting hungry.

Is a really quick, easy and delicious lunch.

Fun beads

I found some really interesting beads and decided to get them to make some simple accessories.

Here are some pictures for a start. (I really ought to find a way to take good pictures indoors, I think it is my window film that is making all my pictures look a bit gloomy. If anyone knows of good tips for indoor photo-taking, pls kindly share them..)

I like this red apple bead because it has 2 sides to it, a "whole apple" side and a "cross-section" side. Plus it has a couple of shiny crystals on it that make it look quite cute. I made it as part of a necklace and paired it with a red Swarovski heart at the back of the chain to make it look more special. I thought the quality of the snake chain - the finishing and the weight - was really good too.


I also bought a milk bottle bead, 2 handbag beads and 2 baby pram beads from the same series.

This antique car bead is very cute too. I've always liked 3 dimensional beads. And "antique-look" beads. Since I've got quite a few of them, I used 2 and made them into a pair of dangling earrings. I paired them each with a tiny pearl bead to give a quainter look.


I bought loads of antique beads along with these. Too many to even list here. Will slowly but surely start to make more of these..

Chocolatey Butter Cake

This cake is making me a believer in The Cake Bible.

It is chocolatey, moist and soft... and makes eating one just not enough.

That said, there are things I can improve on the next time around. Firstly, adjusting my oven temperature so I don't get the big ugly crack on my cake. Secondly, a little more butter would be nice (I really should follow the recipe for that, but I didn't have enough butter today...) Thirdly, I should really try to use cake flour instead of plain flour. And lastly, making some brandied cherries to go with the cake would make the cake really fantastic.

Here's what I did today. Today, I weighed everything instead of using cups and spoons to measure.

Ingredients
63 g (1/2 cup + 3 tbsp) Dutch processed unsweetened cocoa (Hersheys)
236g Boiling water
3 Large eggs
9g (2 and 1/4 tsp) Vanilla
235g (2 and 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp) Sifted plain flour - I didn't have cake flour, which the book reccomended, supposed to give it a finer flavour. I thought plain flour was ok.
15g (1 tbsp) Baking Powder
5g (3/4 tbsp) Salt
300g Sugar
200g Softened Unsalted Butter - Recipe reccomended 237g, or 1 cup.

What I did
(Note: I used only 3 bowls, a whisk and a spoon, to minimise washing up, as always.. And since I didn't have a mixer, I did it all by hand. If you use a mixer, beat at medium speed, or high speed if using a hand-held mixture）
1. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and mix well
2. Combine the cocoa and boiling water in a medium bowl and whisk until mixture is smooth. Allow it to cool to room temperature
3. Combine eggs, 1/4 of the cocoa mixture and vanilla in another medium bowl, beat well
4. Add butter to the dry ingredients in large bowl (from step 1) and beat well. Add remaining cocoa mixture (from step 2) and beat well
4. Add the egg mixture to the large bowl into 3 batches, mixing well after each addition

Bake in 2 9-inch cake pans, greased and lined with parchment paper at the bottom, greased and lightly floured.

Being lazy and having all those aluminium disposable pans, I used those.

Bake in preheated oven at 170 deg Celcius for 25 - 35 minutes.

This picture of a tiny piece of the cake doesn't really it justice, since you can see how moist and soft it is, but here it is anyway..