Archive for Baking

A Nifty Gadget for a Cooking Foodie

April 12, 2009 · Filed under Baking, Cooking, Food, Shopping

I adore browsing through food and recipe blogs and have bookmarked a gazillion, of which I probably will never find the time to actually try out all of the places and recipes. But it always feels good to know they’re there, safely and neatly put in a bookmark folder and categorized in case I ever suddenly have the urge, or extra cash, to re-create someone else’s edible masterpiece in my own kitchen.

Well, I have tried some out (including the now infamous brownie that I made for Jim’s birthday cake last year but have never ever found the exact recipe till today) and one big problem is getting the recipe from the screen of my laptop into the kitchen.

Strange problem? I’m sure it happens to many of us budding internet cooks and bakers.

For me, because I really try not to waste printer ink/paper and in my small bid to save the world, I tend to copy out the recipes into pieces of paper, and more often than not, scrap paper. Not only is it small, the hastility scribbled handwriting (due to impatient excitment to get cooking) makes it difficult to decipher, especially when one is juggling a measuring cup of flour in one hand, closing the fridge door with the other and trying to read what is the correct temperature to preheat the oven for.

So…you can imagine my excitment when I found this really useful kitchen tool from my favourite all-in-one browsing foodblog tastespotting.com.

Behold the Demy Kitchen Safe Touchscreen Recipe Reader!

(picture credit to Amazon.com)

New from Amazon (in fact, so new “This item has not yet been released.
You may pre-order it now and we will deliver it to you when it arrives.”) this nifty thing features a comfortable 7-inch sized touchscreen which is splash-resistant and a sturdy plastic exterior which can be cleaned with a damp cloth. It also comes pre-loaded with 250 so you can whisk it off (pun intended) to the kitchen and start straight-away. Or, simply plug it to your PC or laptop via a USB cable to upload all your bookmarked and saved recipes.  This little high-tech kitchen-helper stores up to 2500 recipes so you’ll have something new to make everyday for the next 7 years!

Sadly, like most other high-end counter-top appliances, this one too comes with a price. Retailing for USD$299.99 (about SGD$454.88), this price doesn’t even include shipping all the way to Singapore. With this same amount of money, I probably could buy a good set of knives and pots and pans – things I’d probably use more often!

But of course, if anyone would so kindly want to give this to me as a house-warming gift (you have about 2 years to save!), I’ll be more than happy to receive with a big fat smile and invite you for dinner!

(:

Comments (1) »

Teach me how to bake…

March 24, 2008 · Filed under Baking, Birthday, Church, Friends · Tagged , , , , , ,

First up, as usual, do accept my apologies for the lack of posts. Its not that I don’t have anything to talk about. It’s just that I’m plain lazy. Heh.

Secondly, my sincere apologies to Jim for forgetting his birthday! (It was on the 19th of march by the way…). To make it worse, BOTH Amanda and I forgot about it. Heh. So sorry fella. You know we both didn’t mean to.

And so to make it up to him, we decided we would do a little celebration for him on Sunday. Amanda would get the card and I would get the cake.

To show my sincerity, I decided to bake the birthday cake instead of merely handing over a few notes in exchange for a run-of-the-mill cake from the local bakery.

It’s been a while since I baked actually. I never really got down to doing it as much as I wanted to. Partly because the ingredients themselves was going to cost quite a bit and there never really was any good reason to bring out all the pots, pans, equipment and not forgetting all that washing and cleaning up to be done.

I baked Jim quite a large slab of brownie. I must say it turned out pretty good. I was quite impressed really. The brownie wasn’t typically sweet (i.e cloying and sore-throat inducing) but turned out with a yummy crusty top, moist centre and just the right sweetness. It probably had to do with the use of dark chocolate instead of the usual semi-sweet chocolate chips. Delicious stuff, I would definitely bake it again…some other time.

To complete the cake, Amanda and I arranged the letters J-I-M with mini-smarties. Simple and yet provided that personal touch to a plain ol’ brownie. Pictures are with those two so you’ll just have to wait till one of them remembers to send it (or rather, bluetooth it) to me!

Happy (belated) Birthday again Jim! We still owe you a 23rd birthday present!

Comments (2) »