Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This cake was inpired by the Hummigbird Bakery Cookbook my colleagues and friends gave me as part of my work farewell gift. There are many tempting recipes in there but the carrot cake captured my heart. I must thank my friend who organised a guinea pig session for the girls where everyone is to cook/bake something they haven't made/baked before. HM and I teamed up to make this cake together. The cake making process was fun and we did make a few silly mistakes but that's part of the fun and learning. At the end we realised we fogot to put in the vanilla essence but thankfully this is not critical to the success of the cake.

The cake came out really nice, fluffy and fresh. We thought we have grated the carrot too coarsely but it appeared to be just right. The weather was very hot that day and we didn't have enough time to chill the cake long enough otherwise the frosting will look a bit better, it was looking a little tired when we arrived at the friend's house.

Fried Koay Teow

Almond Crisps

'King Do' spareribs (hot and spicy spareribs)

Breakfast

Lemon Curd Cookies

Apart from chocolate, lemon curd is something i can't put down once I started eating. Am Absolutely in love with the sweet savoury citrus favour comined with butter yum yum.

These cookies are best eaten fresh from oven as the cookies are still crunchy on the outside and the lemon curd is soft and moist. I let the cookies cooled on a rack then stored into airtight container but because of the lemon curd which is moist, the cookies texture will turn into softer/chewy the next day. It is still delicous, just don't expect it to be crunchy. I baked 2 batches 2 days apart as the lemon curd recipe yielded too much lemon curd and I have lots of left over!

Assam Prawns

Assam Prawns is a Penang speciality dish. I love this dish, the sourish tamrind taste and the sweetness of the prawns is such a good combination. You are guaranteed to find this dish at any Economy Rice stall in Penang. I haven't eaten this dish for many many years, I had the impression it's messy handling tamarind pulp and had no idea where to get it too!

Thanks to the increasing migration of Asians to Melbourne, many Chinese grocery stores now sell ingredients that weren't available years ago, and they also come in easy to use form. Like this Tamarind Pulp Concentrate I found in the store the other day, all i needed to do is to marinade the prawns with this concentrate then pan fried. How easy can it be?!! I am so happy to be able to eat this dish again and it brought back many fond memories of Penang.