Update! All at once.

I've been rather busy of late, rushing school assignments and shuffling between two part-time jobs on my free days. I have an extremely large backlog of work, but at this very moment, I am too unmotivated to work on it. 

Happiness for me has taken the form of procrastination. In between late night chats, consoling and lending a listening ear to friends, I've found back my joy and love for baking, late night solitude of reading, and watching movies again. 

Recently my neighbour hauled an entire salmon to my place, and demanded that my mother take the whole fish. A compromise was reached and we took slightly more than half, resulting in salmon meals, every night, every meal, for about a month. 

I had initially wanted to experiment a little more.. but I think simplicity is best. Salmon is a fish that really speaks for itself. It's nice pan fried, grilled, mashed into croquettes and so on. I personally love covering it in salt, pepper, brown sugar and... down in the hot pan. 

I've also made great use of the air fryer - constantly making potatoes wherever I go. 

My cooking trysts have also involved having friends over, whipping up some of my favourite spaghetti bolognese and yummy honey and soy seasoned chicken wings. 

But what has made me most happy in the cooking department lately.. is that I've found my love for baking again. I think of late I've been quite lazy. I don't read my recipes properly and whip things up in a whim. Mother says I am too impatient, and I agree. 

When my sister took me to The Bravery near my place lately, I had one of their scones and it was so.damn.good. I stared down that doughy little thing and said to myself "surely I can do this." And so I did!! I took the recipe from allrecipes.com and you may find it here. It was the simplest I could find, and easy to make within an hour with simple staples from the fridge. No need to run out to the supermarket just to get supplies for this. 

However, I think my latest treasure find was this recipe from crepesofwrath. Double Chocolate Chunk Muffins. I made it twice, and probably a total of 40 muffins in just a week. It was all gone within days when I brought it to class. Best.muffins.ever. I variated the recipe a little - instead of using semisweet chocolates, I just went headfirst into cadbury milk chocolate bars. I also used macadamia and almond nuts instead. Still just as good! 

And this was my latest bake/cook! I've been very busy prepping for a Halloween + Oktoberfest event that some classmates and I have been planning for. I'm super excited because I love parties with people I love, and I love dressing up and cooking for others. I came home early today (around 5.30pm, which is really early for me considering I'm never home till at least 10pm and bake into the middle of the night), and spent an ungodly 5 hours making these Halloween-y muffins again from Crepes of Wrath (this lady can sureeee bake!) I replaced the icing with ganache, though I think my ganache didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.. Tasty still nonetheless!

I also made an awesome tub of Hummus, recipe taken from Two Tarts. I replaced Tahini with sesame seeds instead, because Tahini is ridiculously expensive in Singapore, and will probably only last you 1-2 hummus making sessions. I will list the substitute below and hopefully some may find it useful! I also added a bit more chickpeas than the recipe required because I found the lemon a little overpowering. It is up to your discretion! I'm not sure if the recipe recommended olive oil - although the pictures did - but I just added some olive oil to the hummus anyway and got it to a smoother texture, that was also easier to blend and mix.

How to replace Tahini with Sesame Seeds

Ingredients (yield ½ Cup)

1 Tablespoon of Sesame seeds, pounded
¼ tsp of Sesame Oil
1/8 Tsp of Salt
¼ Cup of Tepid Water (mostly warm water)

Step 1) First pound your sesame seeds, and then put them into the food processor to get it to a smoother consistency.

Step 2) Blend in the oil and salt with the food processor

Step 3) Add the tepid water in parts. I did it in two.

And voila! You should have enough 'Tahini' to make Hummus like the one in this recipe. I decided against using Peanut Butter as a substitute because I didn't want that sweetness to come through.
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Okay. That's all about my life so far. I need to log all my recipes used for my own sake (keep losing my links!)

Have a happy halloween everyone! <3 p="">

P.S. I apologise for the instagram photographs. My beloved 1.8/f Prime Lens crashed and burned on the ground last month. Since then, I lost interest in taking more 'professional' photos of my food. I will try to get a replacement soon!