cake and health foods

i just baked a cake. the recipe was meant for cupcakes, but i didnt have the proper tray, so i just baked it as a cake instead. taste-wise its fine anyway!

it was a chocolate and cheese cake. in the cupcake version, you were supposed to fill it 3/4 with the choc mixture then drop a little cheese cake mixture into the side. so the baked product would be a chocolate cupcake with cheese cake wedged up and a little mingled in it. but since i was doing the cake version, i just poured the cheese cake mixture onto the chocolate layer, so i had two distinct layers. pictures when i post up my next round of pictures taken with my phone! =p

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recently, i've taken to buying foods which are good for me, without really having any idea how i planned to cook them or how they were generally to be used. i guess this way, im slowly introducing myself to new ingredients that i have never previously used before in the ordinary course of my cooking.

last (academic year. meaning it ended aug '09. its so confusing because the english start their academic years 3/4 through a calender year) year, it was red beans and green beans. i was obsessed with tong sui at one point. LOL. it may not be a new ingredient to alot of people, but in my family, we only eat tong suis like this once in a blue moon (except that time when there was the silly myth about eating green bean soup), so i was not particularly familiar with these beans, what to say cook them.

the first such ingredient this year was barley. back home, my grandmother used to make a sweet barley drink for us every sunday. we had to drink at least 3 cups each a day. funny how i used to think of it as a chore to drink, but now i kinda miss it. not sure if she still does it now though. anyway, most people are used to barley in desserts. but that wasnt the aspect of barley i was interested in. i wanted to have it savoury for main meals. so i read up some recipes on it online to get a gist of how it could be used. surprisingly, barley is really versatile. you could have it in nearly all kinds of soup. all you have to do is boil it for the appropriate amount of time depending on the kind of barley you have, and then dump in all your usual ingredients. it doesnt affect the taste of the soup much but adds depth and a slight thickness to your soup, making it a hearty broth. perfect for winter! and check out the health benefits of barley here.

the second such ingredient is tofu. i've always like the japanese tofu because i felt the normal tofu is too bland. and so i always avoided cooking tofu (like most other people, i tend to only cook what i like to eat =p). but im not blind to the nutritional benefits that tofu provides, so i decided to start using tofu in my cooking. first i started with the japanese tofu as you can see the in the bento picture several posts before this. then a few days ago, i happened to be in an oriental store, so i purchased a huge slab of tofu without any idea of how to cook it. just now, i saw that the expiry date was the 8th and it was already the 9th, but i had already eaten lunch and dinner and had a cake in the oven. there was no way i was gonna have space for tofu in my tummy. nevertheless, something had to be done quickly about the tofu. so i cut up the tofu and deep-fried all of it. now i have a container stuffed with fried tofu and dunno wad to do with it. well, thats tomorrow's problem. *shrugs*

not sure what my third new ingredient is gonna be. i usually just browse the supermarket until i see something new and acceptable. acceptable meaning i wouldnt mind eating. unacceptable would be like red or green peppers and celery. healthy but too ugh.