Brunch @ Whisk & Paddle

During the Jubliee long weekend, the first appointment I scheduled was to have a catch up session with highness. It's time for a good brunch session since we haven't met for quite sometime. Long weekends are best for catching up with friends :) 

This time round, we decide to go to a brunch venue somewhere so near to home! It's none other than Whisk & Paddle located at Punggol. 

There's straight bus from my place to the brunch venue but we met at Sengkang MRT station and took a train there instead even though it's just 1 MRT stop away. We then took the LRT and alighted at Riveria LRT station. I only came to know about the straight bus once I alighted at the LRT Station.

We took a slow walk to Tebing Lane. It's my first time there even though I've stayed in the north eastern part of Singapore for a year plus. There's other restaurants/eateries located there too. One of the more famous ones has got to be Uncle Leong seafood restaurant . I've heard sooo much about it but no chance to try it yet. Maybe soon! 

Even though it was a public holiday, the crowd at that area do surprise me despite being very way off on the Singapore map. There were actually many cyclists/families stopping by for their brunch/lunch. 

Easily spotted with their big signage 

The interior of the cafe. 

The cafe is overlooking my favorite park. A view that is nothing new but always beautiful to me.

There was a queue so we left our names and telephone numbers down while waiting for the seats to be ready. We went to take some photos and within 15 minutes, we got our seats. Time to help each other take #OOTD to kill some time. 

#OOTD taken with the signage. 

After we were seated inside the cafe, I spotted the kids corner. This cafe is kids friendly and makes it easier for the parents to enjoy their meal/catch up with friends. There were cyclists parking their bikes outside the cafe too while they have dine in the cafe. 

The menu 

While waiting for our seats, we have some sort decided on what to have for brunch so we ordered our food within 5 minutes after sitting down.

Our drinks! That's my Iced Latte (if I never remember wrongly) and highness's Iced Tea. 

As for my mains. I ordered the Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon - $13

This is the very first time I ate Eggs Benedict on a waffle and also smoked salmon to goes with it. It actually goes really well with it. The waffles are of the right texture and everything taste good! 

#flatlay of our brunch

Highness ordered the Eggs Benedict with Streaky Bacon which also costs $13. There are other choices like honey baked ham and sauteed mushrooms.  

Some photos we took before we start eating..

Love the fish eye lens that Highness always brings with her :) Definitely face no problem capturing all the details inside 1 photo.  Maybe I should consider investing in one too lol. 

Last photo of the day and I love this pic of us! 

This cafe has make it to one of my top choice to revisit again to have brunch or perhaps lunch/dinner soon since it's so near and convenient for me. The price is pretty reasonable for brunch but slightly on the pricey side for their mains for lunch/dinner. 

I hope that there will be more cafes/eateries popping out in the north eastern area in time to come :) 

Whisk & Paddle

Address: 10 Tebing Lane, #01-01, Singapore 828836

Phone: +65 6242 4617

Fax: +65 6242 4634

Website: http://whiskandpaddle.com.sg/

Homemade Snowskin Mooncakes

The Mid Autumn Festival is just around the corner and to be exact happening in less than a week time! Just weeks back (on the night of Singapore's General Election), I tried making snowskin mooncakes. 

Many baking enthusiasts have started making mooncakes, be it traditional type or snowskin type few months ago. Practice makes perfect :) 

After seeing so many homemade mooncakes post on the Facebook baking group, it sparked my curiosity. Hence, I went to find out how to make snowskin mooncake because everyone seemed to be doing it. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it will be because the ingredients are simple as it requires just a few items.

I even saw people making Hello Kitty shape snowskin mooncake and sharing it on Facebook. It looks just like those Hello Kitty mooncake that Breadtalk is selling(price near to $60 for 4 Hello Kitty moon cakes), totally not worth to buy it! Why not make it yourself? :) 

To be honest, the ingredients for mooncake are quite affordable and it can be used to make lots and lots of mooncake (especially the filling). 

It was a last minute decision to make snowskin mooncakes together with my BIL and SIL. They were already coming over for dinner on GE night and decided on cooking Army Stew for dinner (will blog about that some other time). Making mooncakes have been added to the itinerary since the mooncake mould came earlier than expected!

This is the mooncake mould which I've waited excitedly for :) 

The mould can be bought from here. They may not sell the mould at the cheapest price on Qoo10, but the delivery is really fast and the quality of the mould is as promised. No regrets paying slightly more for the fast delivery.

Hereby introducing you the ingredients we have used to make Snowskin Mooncake :)

Ingredients for Snowskin Mooncake:

1) Sugar Free Green Bean Paste

2) Sugar Free Red Bean Paste

3) Snowskin Premix

4) Shortening(the one in the tupperware)

5) Green Pandan and Purple Yam flavour coloring. 

All these can be bought from Phoon Huat. You may visit their website as they have lots of branches around Singapore. We decided to make 2 different flavors of mooncake hence that explains the 2 different coloring and 2 different paste. 

Phoon Huat has this snowskin premix which helps save time. If you do not wish to use the premix, you can actually substitute with Kao Fen( Glutinous Rice Flour) and Icing Sugar. The advantage of not using the premix will be you can adjust the amount of icing sugar to your own liking :) You can google for the quantity of each ingredient if you will like to. 

This is the quantity that we used for the mooncakes (Yields around 20 mini mooncakes, I can't remember exactly the quantity):

1) Snowskin Premix 290 gram

2) Shortening 56 gram (Can used slightly lesser as this is fats! But not too little if not the whole dough will be too dry )

3) Desired Coloring 10 gram.

4) Water 140ml.

The instructions is pretty simple and is as follow:

1) Pour out the snowskin premix into a bowl.

2) Mix coloring and water together.

3) Get ready the shortening while letting the dough to rest for 15mins.
4) Mix snowskin premix with coloring.
5) Add in shortening.
6) Prepare paste and divide into 24 gram each (we used 20gram each because we doesn't have a digital weighing scale).
7) Divide dough into 20 gram each.
8) Flatten the dough and wrap the filling in it.
9) Freeze it for roughly half and hour.

This is the video from Phoon Huat teaching you how to make snowskin mooncake. So for better illustration, you can watch it! :) 

After typing so much, here are some of the photos from behind the scene! We lay baking sheets all over the dining table to prevent dirtying it. We did all this while waiting for the announcement of GE results till the results are announced. The ingredients that we bought were enough for us to make lots of mooncake.

We took turns to knead the dough but frankly speaking, it requires some strength to do it. Not as easy as it seems on the video lol.I couldn't even out the coloring so I passed on to the next person to do it. So yea, you can imagine the dough went through quite a few of our hands lol!

Starting it was quite dry and we thought something went wrong. I remember at some point of time we added a little more shortening to reduce the dryness just so to get the smooth dough. 

The dough seems much better now. 

The only behind the scene photo. Our hands are all too oily! They may not look oily at all but it's actually very oily. In short, mooncakes are really sinful especially snowskin mooncakes! 

Our first batch. 

We didn't make the mooncakes that fast because there's only 1 mooncake mould so we took turns. 

And here comes the GE inspired mooncakes by the 2 guys lol. Seems like they got bored using the cute kind of mould.

No prize for guessing which political parties are those. :)

Another familiar looking political party logo.

The 2nd batch of mooncakes with a different coloring being used. 

More political parties' logo appearing lol. 

All the GE inspired mooncakes made that night. #GE2015

We did tried a few mooncakes that we have made and they tast better that what we expect (even though the appearance may not seems to be right lol). 

I gave it out to some friends who came to our house the very next day for wedding-related stuff and they praise that it was well made.

It seems that the mooncake making session was successful. Perhaps next year we should learn how to make durian snowksin mooncake instead because that will really save us lots of money then! 

That's all for my homemade mooncake entry and Happy Mid Autumn in advance! 

BKK Day 2 Part 3 - Ookii Ookii Village @ Siam Paragon, Night Market @ Central World

After our trip to Silom Thai Cooking School, it's back to shopping time. We went to take the BTS back to our hotel area. It was during the peak period so the BTS station were quite crowded especially at Siam (it's the interchange for passengers to change to different route).  

We headed to Siam Paragon to pay Ookii Ookkii Village a visit. Even though I came out empty handed, this place have become a must-visit place every time we go BKK. 

Back here again after 2 years :) 

Yay the huge Rilakkuma is still around! 

Very pretty Rilakkuma watches on sales :)

For directions on how to go there, you may refer to my BKK 2013 post. I highly recommend this place for all the Rilakkuma fans when they visit Bangkok even though one may not have the intention to buy anything from there because it's really expensive.

We didn't eat our dinner that night because we were really full from eating all the food that we cooked at Silom Thai Cooking School. Our main objective that night was to visit the night market outside Central World to get souvenirs for our colis and friends.

Way before we depart for our trip, we have already planned to get souvenirs for our 'brothers' and 'sisters' from BKK. We came across this pretty apt gift for them which can be bought in BKK. I went around to ask where to get and most of them replied street stalls outside Platinum Mall and Central World. On the first night in BKK, we have already came across these stalls and there were many of them along the road side.

We shortlisted 1 stall (directly outside Central World) which sells the thick leather kind of passport holder (instead of the thin type) and the stall owners are really friendly! We asked them about their opening time and they only opened at night from 7pm onwards.

They allow us to take photos for reference and we had to do some 'homework' on our first night in BKK. The 1st night when we were back in our hotel room, we have already started writing down the names, color of the leather for the person and also the 'charm'. So that it will save us some time rather than deciding on the spot because we are customizing for quite a number of people.

We went back to find them and they were surprise and happy to see us because we kept to our promise to go back to find them the very next day :)

The young chap making our orders. 

Many Singaporeans came over to look for customized souvenirs too! 

Oh well, we went back to the shop on every night of our Bangkok trip. lol. We find ourselves missing out some people now and then hence we have to go back. We also went to other shops to patronize as different stalls have different colors and charms.

We also walked around the pasar malam outside Central World. They are not always there because for the past few times when we went to BKK, there wasn't any pasar malam but rather, there's some fashion show/concert going on.  

Many many food sold at the pasar malam just like our local pasar malam. 

I once ate this yummy grilled pork at Chatuchak. Now they are often seen at street stalls outside Platinum Mall and Central World.  

Many other stalls selling the customized leather products. All these can be customize with your name on it! 

We made our way back to our hotel after walking through the night market and street stalls. Just before we cross the road from outside Platinum Mall back to Pratunam, we spotted this shop selling really cute edible buns.

So cute aren't they? :)

It was really late (like close to 11pm Singapore time) so they were closing soon. I bought one back to try and it's really not expensive (not out to 'tok' tourists). If I never remember wrongly, it's around SGD1 for 1 bun :) They even sell in boxes of 6 which look really exquisite and can be kept up to 1 month if you placed it in the freezer.

As we didn't have any dinner, we randomly bought tom yum cup noodles from the mini mart located conveniently at our hotel lobby. This is one of the must-eat when we go BKK for holiday.

Our supper that night. We can have mango sticky rice every night in BKK! :) 

The bun that I bought. They don't sell bun which is Rilakkuma-inspired so I bought this. Kiiroitori is one of the character from Rilakkuma's family and friends.  

The filling inside is custard paste. Surprisingly, they are of the correct sweetness and the texture and everything is just like those bun found locally.

Ending my post with the customized leather passport cover for the 'brothers' and 'sisters'.

We also made these for our close friends and key holder for our colis. We bought all the souvenirs from more than 1 stalls but all of them were located at the same place. Do look out for those thick leather material kind because they are more lasting and looks nicer for a gift. 

Will share the picture of it in my next few travelogue blogposts :) That's all for now! Till the next BKK post then. 

You may read other post of my BKK2015 trip here:

http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bangkok-2015-day-1-part-1-singapore-bkk.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bkk-day-1-part-2-after-you-dessert-cafe.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bkk-day-2-part-1-coffman-by-friends.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/09/bkk-day-2-part-2-silom-thai-cooking.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/10/bkk-day-3-part-1-big-c-supermarket.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/11/bkk-day-3-part-2-som-tam-nua-siam.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2016/01/bkk-day-4-back-to-singapore.html

2XU Compression Run 2015

2XU Compression run was supposed to be held on the last weekend of March but however due to the state funeral of Mr LKY, the run was postponed.

I've very much wanted to run this race because it's my very first 2XU run. I'm glad that we were able to make it for the postpone run as it doesn't clash with our schedule.

The racepack collection was held wayback in mid of March at Velocity @ Novena. The queue for the racepack collection was really long and especially so for the half marathons runner. The 10km racepack collection queue was much shorter hence I managed to collect my racepack within 15 minutes.

And as expected from big races, there's nothing special inside the racepack except for the nice looking race singlet and good quality shoebag. 

The race was rescheduled to 2nd of August(1 week after my Shape Run). The starting point was changed due to the ongoing national day rehearsals. The starting point was located opposite Marina Barrage and they advised us to walk from Marina Barrage to the starting point. 

It was quite a long walk but the beautiful sunrise that morning made one forget about the distance but rather, everyone is enjoying the sunrise. I spot many people taking selfie or welfie with the nice background. 

The beautiful sunrise 

We were slightly late for the race because there was a massive human jam on the way to the starting point. 

Reason being, the half marathon runners who have completed the race were walking back to Marina Barrage whereas 10km runners were making their way to the starting point. And on another lane, it's for the 21km runners who were running back. The narrow lane was divided up into 3 lanes. 

Despite the race being postponed, what surprises me most were the large turnout for the race even though runners were allow to collect their medal if they do not wish to run the race anymore. Oh well, I believe runners will prefer to run to earn the hard earned medal rather than doing nothing and collect the medal.

Late for the race but still want to take a photo before the race start haha.

The beautiful sky that greeted us before we reached the starting point. 

The race route was nothing new to us except for the 4KM inside ECP. Having run so many races, this is actually the first race which I joined that cut through ECP (I know many local races have route which passes through ECP but I've no fate with them).

The view was really scenic despite the sorching sun. The downside of having a race which starts after 7:30am will be to endure the heat.

Passing through ECP

The return route was pretty unbearable for me because of the heat from the sun. I was't out to aim for a personal best this race because I treat this as a recovery run and some quality pak tor time with Derp :) Afterall, we hardly run together these days and it's usually me out pounding the pavements alone on normal days.

The timing that we gotten was kind of expected because I usually achieve this kind of timing under normal hot weather haha. #nopbnevermind

We were given a wet towel to wipe ourselves after we crossed the finishing line. There's a place for you to return to and it got us wondering do they recycle the towels? haha! And that's after we use it so it's kind of late to do anything.

It's the first time I was given a wet towel instead of a normal towel after the race. We collected our medals and water quite swiftly and took some photos before heading to take the free shuttle bus to City Hall MRT. 

His first race after 5 months. 

Yay to completing another race. 

A #welfie and we barely can open our eyes. 

Another #welfie 

Thanks to the passerby for helping us to take the photo 

We walked back to Marina Barrage to queue for the shuttle bus to City Hall. Yay to free shuttle service to save our trouble.

One more medal added to our collection 

The offical timing. 

I started the race 10 minutes after flag off. Many runners were caught up with the massive human jam so there was not a need for multiple flag offs. I heard that there were 4 to 5 flag off for the half marathon runners. We were quite lucky in the sense but to start a race at such a late timing only create disadvantage to the runners. 

Pictures that I've gotten from Running Shots

Thank you for the nicely taken photos :) 

p/s: My thigh muscles look kind of scary in the last photo.

Overall the 2XU Compression Run was a successful event despite the postpone of date and etc. There were still a large turn out and everything went on as usual. Kudos to them for pressing on to make the race happen. I won't mind joining 2XU compression run again if their race singlet continues to look as good :)

We are taking a short hiatus (or should I say I am since Derp don't have race for the rest of the year) from races this few months due to the wedding prep.

Till the next race then!