Desaru road trip ; 29-30 March 2013

This was last year 29-30 March 2013 and it has been lying in my drafts folder for a really long time and I've finally decided to post this up.

It's our first ever road trip with my family & I'm glad we enjoyed ourselves even though it's only for a night! :)

I'm not able to transfer pictures over from my phone, so here are the ones that are from my dad's camera.

"date in da zooooooooooooooo"

& so the boy and I spent our Good Friday yesterday at the Singapore Zoo! But before that, we headed to the temple to pray and had brunch with his parents. Thank god it didn't rain as the previous time we wanted to go to the Zoo, it rained cats & dogs!

Haha and while we were on the way to the Zoo's carpark, we saw that there were many cars parked illegally alongside the road, and next time we will do just that! Parking fees was $7 for the 3 hours we were there. #soexpensive!

Shall let some of the pictures do the talking now:

Thank you for the wonderful day well spent honey, you are always amazing in your own way. You never fail to bring a smile to my face and ease my troubled mind & heart. I really love you so, so much, always and always will be.


"I'll give you all of me, cause you're my end and my beginning" <3

Strawberry buttermilk scones

My 2nd attempt at making scones wasn't as delicious as the first's! (You can read the 1st attempt here)

As NTUC was having offers for strawberries at S$3.55 per punnet, I decided to try making strawberry scones! However, as there's juices in the strawberries, the end product for both strawberry scones attempt wasn't what I was looking for. It was dry and crumbly in the middle and I couldn't really taste much of the strawberries.

The recipe that I used was exactly the same as the first's, the only 2 additions I added were half a teaspoon of baking powder and 3 pieces of chopped strawberries (because this recipe calls for 5 scones)

Also, I think that as I'm using fresh strawberries rather than dried ones, the moisture content in them caused the dough to be unable to rise up and crack well!

Ingredients:

• 200g self raising flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 50g cold butter
• 150g buttermilk (I used Meiji low fat milk + 2 tbsp lemon juice & let it stand for 30mins)
• 4 pieces of strawberries, chopped 

Steps:

• preheat oven to 220 deg celsius
• Sift flour 3x
• combine all dry ingredients in a bowl and manually whisk it to combine
• add cold butter (straight from the fridge and cut into cubes) and use fingers to combine all together until it looks like bread crumbs
• create a well in the middle and add milk (careful not to add too much like I did!) 
• use a spatula to combine all ingredients together until it becomes thick and sticky
• transfer to lightly floured tabletop and lightly knead (i've read from various blogs that we shouldn't knead too much as it may cause the scones to toughen.)
• use a cookie cutter and transfer the scones to place them beside each other onto baking tray lined with parchment paper.
• bake @ 220deg celsius for 15-20mins 
• transfer onto wire tray to cool
• serve warm with jam/butter any seasoning of choice

Buttermilk scones

Whenever I dine at Popeyes, I seldom eat the biscuit (which I later knew from BunnyBoi) that they're actually called "scones". He would always say that they're nice and it's his favourite, hence I've decided to try my hands on it!

I adapted the recipe from: http://www.nofrillsrecipes.com/2012/07/buttermilk-scones.html?m=1 and I like that the recipe makes out 5 instead of a dozen like other recipes do.

Ingredients:

• 200g self raising flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 50g cold butter
• 150g buttermilk (I used Meiji low fat milk + 2 tbsp lemon juice & let it stand for 30mins)

Steps:

• preheat oven to 220 deg celsius
• Sift flour 3x
• combine all dry ingredients in a bowl and manually whisk it to combine
• add cold butter (straight from the fridge and cut into cubes) and use fingers to combine all together until it looks like bread crumbs
• create a well in the middle and add milk (careful not to add too much like I did!) 
• use a spatula to combine all ingredients together until it becomes thick and sticky
• transfer to lightly floured tabletop and lightly knead (i've read from various blogs that we shouldn't knead too much as it may cause the scones to toughen.)
• use a cookie cutter and transfer the scones to place them beside each other onto baking tray lined with parchment paper.
• bake @ 220deg celsius for 15-20mins (however for mine, i don't know why it took me close to 60mins for the browning on top to surface!)
• transfer onto wire tray to cool
• serve warm with jam/butter any seasoning of choice

Unfortunately, I've added too much milk onto the batter and it turned out quite gooey, hence I've to keep adding more flour for the texture to be right before lightly kneading them into a dough to be cut out using a cup. 

Another thing to note was maybe the circumference of my cup was too big? Instead of 5 pieces I managed to cut 3, & it took about an hour for the scones to brown at the top. 

I was about to think that "this is yet another failed attempt" when......

TAAAADAAAAA!!!

I'm so so happy! Thank you @nofrillsrecipe for this wonderful recipe! :)