Beef in Red Wine

I remember watching David Rocco's Viva Dolce when he shared this recipe in the programme. It seemed so easy to make. Just need to add lots of purple onions with garlic and then season the red meat with pepper and salt and stew the whole pot with a whole bottle of red wine called Chianti for about 2 hours.

I found Chianti a bit too expensive for me and decided to get what you see here based on the recomendation of the promoter at Giant.

By the time the dish was ready I had dh to do the taste test. He took one look at the dish and commented, "Why is the meat purplish black in color? Gosh ...are you going to serve this for our gathering? Maybe you better not serve this." Calmly , I said, "What about the taste? You think it's passable?" He replied in half jest, " If I close my eyes to eat, it's actually quite good if you like the red wine taste." What went on inside my head was what a waste it would be to throw away a whole kilogram of beef chunks after spending so much effort to cook the dish.

So what you see in the photo was my attempt to make the color of the dish more appealing by adding in the colored peppers after frying them with garlic. The verdict at the gathering was... some liked it and some did not. So I guess, the taste of red wine is an acquired taste. I think it's better to cook this dish with Carlsberg beer instead since my family hardly drink red wine.

Dd's Birthday Cake

I did this using the vanilla cupcake recipe from IK and frosted the cupcakes with buttercream.
Must say that there's still a lot of room for improvement for the whole works.
My dd loved them even though the cuppies were half baked LOL
I'm still wondering what went wrong that day when I baked the cuppies.

Almond Cranberry Walnut Qbread

I baked this quickbread recipe too as a gift during Christmas. Here's sharing with you what I did ....

Ingredients:

250 g butter
200 g sugar
3 nos. eggs, beaten
200 g AP flour
100 g ground almond
2 tsp baking powder
6 tbsp evaporated milk
100 g dried cranberries soaked in 2 tbsp Bailey's
100 g walnuts, chopped

Method:

Cream soften butter and sugar together till white and fluffy.

Add in the beaten eggs and stir in the flour, ground almond and baking powder.

Mix till well blended and then add in the milk and the cranberries and the nuts.

Batter can be spooned off into 4 aluminium loaf pans and baked in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for 40 minutes or till skewer comes out clean.

Blueberry Orange Oats Qbread

This was one of the three quickbreads that I baked as a gift.

Dry Ingredients:
206 g AP flour
40 g quick cooking oats
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
200 g caster sugar

Wet Ingredients:
120 ml orange juice and zest (2 large oranges)
120 ml vegetable oil
2 nos. eggs, beaten

Fold into batter 140 g fresh/frozen blueberries

Topping: 2 tsp caster sugar + 2 tsp cinnamon

Method:

Pour all the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

Stir till they are well blended.

There's enough batter to fill up to 4 aluminium loaf tins till 1/2 way.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for 45 mins or till skewer comes out clean.

IK Gathering Dec 07

This time round we had a small group gathering at the newest joint at Keong Saik Rd ....
25 Degree Celsius Pte Ltd .... a joint that sells fusion food and cook books too!
I had a good time there chilling out with the regulars and new members too. Vi from the US and Chin from Australia joined us.
After doing so much cooking and baking during the week before Christmas, it was really good to just sit back and relax and enjoy the food the joint cooked LOL

Here's sharing with you the gals and the food there .....

Some of the main courses that were eaten .....

The yummy desserts ......

The gals ..... and a gentleman and a pre-teen :-)

My Gifts of Quickbreads

My gifts of qbread this year for my sil, mil, aunties, uncles, tuition teachers and friends.
I made three recipes this year .... Pumpkin Pecan Quickbread, Almond Cranberry Walnut Quickbread and Blueberry Orange Oats Quickbread. I hope they like them.

X'mas Gathering 2

Here was what we had for the 2nd party.

Baked Pasta
Bacon Roll
Beef in Red Wine
Sausage/Fish Ball Platter

Curry Chicken
Assam Pork
Smoked Chicken from CS
Honey Baked Ham from CS
Vegetable Salad


Brownie Muffins
Mochi
Cookies
Lime Jelly Cheesecake

Uncle W bought Steamed Crab and Chilly Crabs .
Dh bought Oatmeal Prawns, Salted Yolk Crabs, Peppered Crabs and Chilly Crabs too.
Because of dear Uncle W's contribution, we ended up with 5 kinds of crabs this year.

It was a night of catching up with the extended family members, lots of food when everyone had a chance to 'ta pao' something home. Good memories were formed when the younger ones had a chance to play with one another. My dear SIL helped me out with the washing up after the rest left and I'm so thankful for having her do that for me. GT 'xie xie ni'.

X'mas Gathering 1

This year I will have two family X'mas gathering at my home. So for the last week I had been kept busy planning the menu for the two days, marketing for the party food as well as cooking and baking. It is tiring but I always feel joy when I see family members enjoying the food I prepared for them.

The Menu for this gathering .....

Curry Chicken
Sausage Platter with Fish Balls
Baked Hickory Chicken Wings
Black Pepper Roast Beef from CS
Honey Baked Ham from CS

Rice and Bread

Peach Agar-agar
Orange Jelly Cheesecake
2 Kinds of Cookies (Chocochips and Lavender)
Pumpkin Chocolate Brownies

Vegetable Salad
Seedless Black Grapes with Strawberries
Chickpeas

My SIL also contributed Sushi from Sakae Sushi and dh bought butter oatmeal prawns and peppered and chilli crabs too.

There was a lot of food ... more than we could eat and everyone had lots of ta pao food to bring home.

Have A Blessed Christmas Everyone :-)

Wishing all who visit my blog to have blessings and the hope, peace, joy and love of the season of Christmastide befall on you and your families too.

Here you see the mini X'mas tree and the Nativity set up at the balcony in my home. This has been a yearly ritual since I moved into this home. The baby Jesus is still missing in the set up and the family will put in the final baby figurine on Christmas day as a short blessing prayer is being said.

Soya Bread

Bought a loaf of this bread from the supermarket and intended to have it for myself. Came dinner time and realised that there was not enough food for all in the family. Knowing that the boys and dh didn't like anything to do with bread that has grains in them I really was at a lost as to how I could share the bread and make them eat it. Finally decided to do it this way to hide the grains in the bread by spreading some butter on the bread and then putting some ham and cheddar cheese on it and toasted them crunchy. Then I squeezed some Japanese mayonnaise on them and wallah ... they ate the bread without complaining about the grains in the bread.

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 5

After Ocean Park we headed towards the Avenue of Stars at Tsim Sha Tshui to experience the Symphony of Lights. The show starts at 8 pm every night. At HK Island there are at least ten major buildings wired up with lights to 'dance' to the music. Below is a 4 min. video clip to show how it's done. Enjoy!

And finally after the Symphony of Lights we headed down to Ladies Market at Mongkok .... Tung Choi Street. Actually by then I was already dead tired and didn't want to go there. But on dh's insistence ... he said ... how could I not visit Ladies Market when I'm in HK ????
Everybody visits Ladies Market when in HK .... OK ... I got what he meant .... no regrets ! LOL

So here ends our stay in HK. We flew back to Singapore on day 5 morning 11.30 am.

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 4

Day 4 found us heading towards Admiralty Station to take Bus 629 to Ocean Park. We took a 20 minute ride during off peak to Ocean Park and reached there about the time the Park opened.

We sat in a double decker air-conditioned bus .... a familiar bus to us :-)

Here's letting the pics do the talking ....

At this place we did a lot of walking and the only thing lacking are water coolers. The unique thing this year at this place were the live panda mascots on display. They had a huge display enclosure built for them for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. So the pandas are named ....
Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying, Nin Nin .... from the sentence Beijing Huan Ying Nin.

Below here is a 1 min. video clip of part of the Dolphin Show at the Ocean Theatre. To reach this place you need to take the cable car to the hill part of the park. There's also a bus shuttle from the lower main entrance too. Due to the popularity of the show, the theatre was already 90%
filled to capacity at 3 pm when the show was to start at 3.30 pm.

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 3

Day 3 found us transfered from Lantau Island to Kowloon. We stayed at the YMCA International House at Yau Ma Tei. The hotel is about a 3 minutes walk to the nearest MTR entrance. With 4 people in tow, we were upgraded to a Junior suit when we checked in. It's very basic in amenities and it's clean. This place has a history of more than 30 years :-)

Refreshed and all ready to go after a simple sandwich lunch. Took a slow walk to Shanghai Street where the bakeware shops are. Then we headed towards the MTR to Central to get to the Peak Tram Station. Visited the Peak.

In the early evening, we headed back to Lantau Island to experience the ride on the MTR Disneyland train cabin. It definetly has the luxurious feel of being transported to fantasy land. Then we headed towards Citygate at Tung Chung Station where the world of factory outlets are. Over at Citygate we dined at Food Republic. The name familiar to you? Even the concept is familiar :-)

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 2

Here are the snippets of what we did at HKDisneyland. There were at least nine must dos at the resort .....

At Adventure Land .... Take the Boat Ride; Visit Tarzen Treehouse;
Watch The Festival Of The Lion King
At Fantasy Land .... Watch The Philhar Magic Show; Watch The Golden Mickeys Show
At Tomorrow Land ... Do the Astroblaster; Do Stitch Encounter; Do Space Mountain
Watch the Fireworks and The Parade

However during our time there the Parade was suspended. We did see some of the parade characters walking around though. We didn't do space mountain cos' dh chickened out and ds J refused it flatly.

The video below shows the finale of the fireworks display in front of the castle. It began at 7 pm but the whole area was already packed by 6.30pm. We had a good 15 minutes show. It was really captivating with the lights, sounds and pyrotechnics. The video here shows the last 30 secs of the finale.

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 1

Booked a trip in mid October 2007 with Focal travel to Hong Kong for the period of
20th Nov(tuesday) to 24th Nov(saturday) 2007. Did a 5 days 4 nights free and easy there. The agency helped us to book the Cathay Pacific flights, Hotel acoommodations and the transfers to and from airport and also the hotel transfer to Kowloon from Disneyland resort. The rest of the time we used the HK MTR to reach all our other destinations for sight seeing. We bought the MTR day pass for tourist for the family of 2adults and 2 children.

Day 1
Reached HK at about 2.30 pm and took the airport transfer to HK Disneyland Resort.
We reached the hotel about 4.30 pm, freshened up and was at the Disneyland resort
by 5 pm.

Here's sharing with you snippets of the Hollywood Hotel were stayed in.

Rosemary Red Wine Chicken

Thanks to Jo who directed this recipe to me when I was looking for a red wine chicken recipe.
Thanks also to Ginny who shared this recipe in her blog.
http://mycookingescapades.blogspot.com/2006/08/coq-au-vin.html

The recipe looked quite simple to follow and the only change I did was to use rosemary herb instead if the bouquet garni of thyme and bay leaves. As for the marinating , I did allow the meat to season for about 5 hours instead of overnight.
The family gave the dish a thumbs up and I found out that it's even more flavourful if kept overnight.

Dried Lavender Flowers

This is what dried lavender flowers look like. They smell heavenly fragrant.

Here's the website that tells you quite a bit of information on using these fragrant dried flowers.
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Lavender.htm

My Gifts for the Happy Holidays Party.

On the last day of the kindy school term, dd had her class party. I just did something simple for her to give to her teachers and also to share with her class. Here they are ... the brownie muffins and rolled oats cookies.

Parent's Wishes

To my dear children,
If ever you forget to be kind to us, please remember this ....

http://parentswish.com/site02/big.html

Baked Tumeric Chickthighs

I adapted this recipe from the Kitchencapers website.

Here's sharing with you the recipe ....

Ingredients:

about 1 kg chicken thighs
1 tbsp tumeric powder
1 tbsp ginger juice
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp DOM
1 tsp salt

Method:

Marinate the chicken thighs for at least 1 hour or more.
Pre-heat oven at 220 degree C.
Place seasoned chicken thighs onto aluminium foil on tray.
Bake the chicken thighs for 30 minutes or till the skin turn a golden yellwish brown.

Baked Hickory Chickwings

Got to know about using this seasoning when my friend B shared her lunch with me sometime ago. I managed to buy this from Cold Storage and used this to season the chickenwing sticks.
The chickwings tasted good and dh commented that they tasted like the chickwings were BBQ.

Here's sharing with you the recipe ....

Ingredients:

1 kg chicken wings
3 tbsp light soya sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp sunflower oil
2 tbsp chinese wine
1 tbsp Hickory sauce (liquid smoke)

Method:

Marinade the chicken wings with the above ingredients for at least an hour.
Pre-heat oven at 220 degree C.
Place seasoned chicken wings on aluminium foil on tray.
Bake chicken wings for 30 minutes or till skin turn golden brown.
Serve hot.

Brownie Muffin

I got the recipe from a fellow blogger and adapted it to make it moist. The family loved this and it's very easy to do. I even baked more of it for a class party and gave them out as gifts.


Here's sharing with you the recipe (makes 12 standard muffin cups).

Ingredients:

3 tbsp Valhorna Chocolate powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup AP flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 tbsp Bailey's Irish Cream
2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Method:

Pre-heat oven at 180 degree C.
Sieve the flour , chocolate powder and baking powder together.
Mix all the wet ingredients together and then pour them into the dry ingredients.
Add in the chocochips and mix well.
Place the batter into muffin cups and bake them for 15 mins.
Cool the muffins and place them in air-tight containers.

Nutty Mochi

What can I do with some of the left over moonie filling I had? I made Japanese Mochi out of them and they tasted good. I couldn't stop myself eating them and my brother loved them too.
The filling was made of the white lotus paste with almond nuts and sesame seeds and dried orange peel. The skin recipe was obtained from Baking Mum's blog. Thanks LeeLee for sharing the recipe.

A whole lot of information and other Mochi recipes can be found in the website below ...

http://www.geocities.com/scocasso/mochi/mochi04/mochi04.htm

Below is the Mochi skin recipe I used ....

http://bakingmum.blogspot.com/2006/11/mochi.html

Lavender Cookies

My first introduction to dried lavender flowers was when I read about a fellow blogger baked cookies using them. I had a chance to purchase these dried flowers at Shermay's cooking school and they were expensive. I paid almost $10 for a packet of 20 g dried lavender flowers for cooking and baking. I searched the internet for a simple drop cookie recipe using these precious flowers and baked them.

Presenting the final product here. See the precious flower peering from just the cookie surface. The flowers are tiny but they really gave a lovely fragrance while the cookies were baking and after which the fragrance lingered on in the container where the cookies were kept. The recipe gave a soft and chewy cookie and the lavender fragrance gave a new experience to eating them.

Here is also sharing the website to know how to use these lovely dried lavender flowers.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Lavender.htm

Here's is the recipe I used ....

Ingredients:
2 tsp dried lavender flowers
2 cups AP flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
125 g salted butter, soften
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp evaporated milk
1 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey

Method:

Pre-heat oven at 180 degree C
Sieve together baking powder and flour.

Whisk butter and sugar together till fluffy.

Add in the beaten egg, Irish Cream Bailey and milk.

Add in the dried lavender flowers and stir well.

Add in the flour and stir till well combined.

Drop tsps of cookie dough onto cookie sheets lined with baking mat.

Decorate with quinns.

Bake for 10-15 mins or till cookie turn a golden brown.

Cool completely on a wire rack before storing in an air-tight container.

Cornflakes / Rolled Oats Cookies

My family and my parents loved them to bits.. I managed to find the time to bake these last weekend. The recipe was adapted from Kitchencapers contributed by Gina here. Thanks Gina for sharing the recipe.

Rolled Oats Cookies

Cornflakes Cookies

Here's how I did mine .....

Ingredients:

180 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
125 ml sunflower oil
90 g caster sugar
1 beaten egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup cornflakes or rolled oats
a couple of tbsp of milk to bind the ingredients if you still find it dry.

Method:

Sift flour, baking powder and soda together.
Mix in the sugar, cornflakes or rolled oats till well mixed.
Add in the oil, essence, beaten egg and milk and stir till a dough is formed.
Use a cookie scoop or spoon to form balls and place them on cookie trays.
Bake in a pre-heated oven of 180 degree C for 15 mins. or till cookie turns a golden brown.
Remove and cool on wire rack completely.
Store in air-tight container.

Beef Slices With Onion and Oyster Mushroom

This is one of my family's favourite beef dish. The recipe was adapted from The Chinese Pregnancy and Confinement Cookbook by Ng Siong Mui.


Ingredients:

400 g beef fillet
1 big onion, wedged
1 clove garlic, minced
half a packet of oyster mushroom

Marinade for beef slices ....

1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp light soya sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp ginger juice
1 tbsp chinese rice wine
1 tbsp potato starch
2 tbsp oil

Method:

Heat up a cooking pot with 2 tbsp of oil and stir fry the onion wedges and oyster mushrooms till
fragrant. Put aside for further use.

Heat up another tbsp of oil and stir fry the minced garlic till fragrant.

Add in the marinated beef slices and stir-fry them for a minute and then add in the sauted onions and oyster mushrooms. Stir fry for another minute.

Add in about a quarter cup or less of hot water and let beef slices simmer for about a minute.

Ladle out and serve hot with white rice.

Baked Golden Pomfret

This is a simple way to bake a fish and it has a tasty gravy too. The family completely finished it up.

I used a 400 gm Golden Pomfret. Scored the body with a few lines back and front.
Seasoned it with salt and pepper and placed the entire fish on aluminium foil.
I added julienned ginger slices, 2 cloves garlic sliced and also sprigs of green onions on the fish as well as inside the fish.
I added 2 tbsps each of light soya sauce, Dom (or you may want to use Chinese wine instead), sesame oil , 1 tbsp of cooking oil and 1 tsp of sugar over the fish.
I then covered the entire fish with another piece of aluminium foil.
I let the tray of fish stand for about half an hour and the placed the tray in a pre-heated oven at 190 degree C for 30 minutes.

Winter Dates

I saw a lady handling a packet of these when I was browsing at the fruit section. I caught her eyes and smiled at her and then asked her if I could just eat these dates by themselves. She replied affirmative and then even shared with me that I need to choose those which had the red skin as they tasted sweeter than the dual colored or green dates. I bought a packet and here is what I have to say about them ......

Texturewise ... they are rather crunchy like the texture of apples but the sweetness was rather mild and not at all like apple sweetness. I tried to find some more information from the web but information was limited to where they can be imported from and that is from China.
Since they are crunchy, they can be used as part of a salad dish and also in muffins and cakes too but I have yet to try using them in a salad or baking them in muffins.

I shared them with my parents and they commented that they ate these winter dates in China some years back and they were plucked fresh from the trees and they tasted very much sweeter than the ones I shared with them. They did say that when these were dried they can be use to boil soups just like the red dates we used.

The Red Dragonfruit

Found out that it is also know as the Makana dragonfruit. More information is given here http://reddragonfruit.com/

My first knowledge of this fruit was when a fellow blogger G used it for making snowskin mooncake and the fruit gave a lovely deep pink color to the snowskin. Also almost everyone who tasted this particular fruit said that it was much sweeter than the Pitaya dragonfruit ...that's the one with the light grey flesh. So during the weekend I bought a packet of two fruits from Cold Storage which cost about $3.

I cut it up into pieces so that dh and I would slowly eat them. On offering the tub of pink dragonfruit pieces to dh, he made a face on seeing the pink bleeding pieces LOL I knew straight away that he would not touch them after eating the piece I offered. So much for my presentation of bleeding pink dargonfruit pieces.



The taste of the red dragonfruit has a bland sweetness to it and there is also a tinge of sour sweetness. It doesn't have a distinctive taste and one may have to eat it often before one can grow accustom to the taste.

I pureed the rest of the fruit pieces and dumped them into the chiffon cake batter. They gave a lovely girlish pink to the batter. The black seeds also gave a bit of a crunch to the cake. However after baking the chiffon cake I would expect to see the lovely pink in the pink but the pink seemed to have disappeared and the result was a yellowish cake tinged with the pink bleeding dragonfruit pieces. Not a very nice effect to look at.

MeMe : Five Things

I got tagged by Precious Moments for this meme LOL
OK ... this was what I came up with for the Simple Me ....

Found in my room :
TV/VCD player
Dressing table with mirror
Bookshelves
Digital weighing scale
Remote control ceiling fan

Found in my handbag :
Handphone
Wallet
Red Shawl
Handkerchief
Keys

Found in my wallet :
ATM card
Notes and coins
ID
Popular card
Hairdressing card

I've always wanted to ....
... Be an inspiration for my children.
... Plan a pilgramage with good company to the Holy Land.
... Make use of interesting ingredients to cook and bake newly discovered delicious foods for my family and friends.
... Own a little piece of land by the sea and be an ecological guide there to teach children about nature and conservation.
... Exercise regularly to keep good health.

I'm currently into ...
... Blogging.
... Researching songs for Praise and Worship for children for next year's catechism program.
... Cooking the same old recipes for the family who don't seem to mind eating them repeatedly.
... Helping out at Catechism class on Sundays.
... Planning out the Christmas activities and menu for the extended family gatherings at my place this year. ( Just thinking about it gives me stress ah LOL).

So this is just about it. And I'll tag just one person .... http://www.hutofcranberry.blogspot.com/

Stash

The weekend had me and dh visiting Chip Bee Gardens. So I had the chance to visit Magic Pantry , Shermay's Cooking School and that stretch of walkway that lead all the way to Phoon Huat too. LOL At Shermay's , I bought the Valhorna Choco Powder and the dried Lavender flowers. Since I couldn't find the cookie scoop at this part of Singapore I suggested to dh to head down to Chinatown and visit Lau Choy Seng. Finally I managed to get this elusive 100 mm ice-cream scoop for less then $10. I'm one happy lady this weekend. Muack, muack to dh if you're reading this dear :-)

Total cost of stash here ...less than $30

Lemongrass Kueh Ambon

Had a chat last weekend with dh's nephew who is doing his 2nd year in the Polytechnic. Realised that he just came back from Medan after doing his Community Service there. Before we left the house he gave me a box. He said that in the box was Kueh Ambon and this kueh has a lemon grass flavour to it. That was the first time I heard about a lemongrass flavoured kueh ambon.

Back home when I wanted to eat a couple of pieces of the kueh I just needed to microwave them for about 20 secs. covered after taking them out from the fridge.

Ahhhh .... the lemongrass flavour is indeed refreshing and fragrant. It gave a different experience eating the Kueh Ambon which usually has a very strong oily coconut flavour and taste to it. I definitely liked it and here shown were the last two pieces before they disappeared into my stomach LOL. Not sure where you can buy this in Singapore though. Anyone knows?

Date and Nut Loaf

With the last 300 gm of my mozafati dates, this was what I did with them .....

The recipe was adapted from Alex Goh's Fruity Cakes and I love this loaf to bits. Almost ate the entire loaf by myself, oh greedy me! The recipe uses brown sugar and the combination of the dates with the butter and cinnamon can almost make me salivate all over again just thinking about the loaf baking in the oven.

Here's sharing the recipe with you :-)

Ingredients:

150 gm water
90 gm butter
180 gm brown sugar (reduce it to 150 gm if you want it less sweet)
300 gm chopped dates with seed removed
3 nos medium size eggs, beaten
200 gm cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon powder
100 gm chopped pecan nuts (increase this to 200gm if you want more nuts)

Method:
Boil water, butter and brown sugar together till well combined.

Add in the chopped dates and stir till well blended. Leave aside to cool.

Add into the mixture above the flour, baking powder and baking soda and mix well.

Add in the beaten eggs till well blended.

Add in the chopped nuts till well mix.

Pour into two lined and greased loaf pans till half full.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for about 50 minutes to an hour.

Check with a wooden skewer for loaf to be ready.

Jelly Candy Alphabets

I find these jelly candy alphabets very useful for making instant greeting words on cakes and cupcakes.

They are good for me cos' I've so little practise piping out words. I happen to chance upon these at the Japan Home shop at Hougang Point and I understand that they are also available at Sheng Shiong. I remember they cost less than $3 a bottle and you may need several bottles to make the necessary greetings for your cakes.

I noticed that these jelly candy tend to "sweat" or turn damp if you leave your cake in the fridge with them. So It's better not to leave the cake in the fridge after you've placed them on the cake.