Christmas Fruitcake

Fruitcake is a cake made with chopped candied fruit and/or dried fruit, nuts, and spices that soaked in spirits. Since Christmas is around the corner, it will be the time where you can spot all kinds of fruitcake in the bakery showcase. No matter which type you prefer, what ingredients you want it to be, I am sure there is always a kind to your liking.

From what I had read from books before, it shares that actually fruitcakes were consumed on the twelfth night which is the last day of Christmas traditionally. But despite of what it is, today, you can buy or even make a decent fruitcake at anytime of the year. So today what I wanted to share with you is this golden fruitcake which is full with antioxidants in yellow orange dried fruit like Mango, Apricot and Peach.

Ingredients:
125g Butter, soften
250g Dried Mixed Fruit
1 Orange Rind, roughly chopped
40ml Fresh Orange Juice
40ml RUM
1 Tablespoon Caster Sugar
2 Eggs
1 Cup(125g) Plain Flour

For Decor:
Some extra Dried Mixed Fruit/Candied Fruit

For Glace:
1 1/2 Tablespoon Apricot Jam with 1 Teaspoon Hot Water

Method:
1. In a bowl, combined dried mixed fruit and orange rind together, pour in the rum and orange juice.
2. Leave it to soak overnight in the fridge.
3. Grease a tube cake pan or 2 disposal small rectangle paper case.
4. Beat butter together with caster sugar till light and creamy, add in egg one at a time and beat well after each addition.
5. Fold in dried fruit alternately with flour and pour batter into cake pan and bake in a preheat oven of 150 degree for about 25 - 30 minutes or until cooked.
6. When the cake cooled down, brush with apricot jam and decorate with extra mixed fruit on top.

Note:
1) You can buy the pre-packed dried mixed fruit from any supermarket under dried fruit session.
2) I use the cold storage brand "Breakfast Mix" that consists of California Raisins and Cranberries. Other than these, I also add in chopped mango, apricot and peach.

For this fruitcake, it is infuse with a very light and fragrance citric and fruity taste due to the use of fresh orange juice, orange rind and Rum. You can see from the cross-section of the cake that it is fully packed with assorted mixed fruits. So what can be more meaning to make something like this and pack it up as this coming Christmas Gift and share it with your love ones.

Hup Chong Yong Dao Foo

Those who stays around Toa Payoh Lorong 2, or working either around Yellow Pages Building or Singapore Press Holdings might have tried this famous Hak Ka Yong Dao Foo. According to those friends who have tried, they all comment that the soup is nice and the handmade ingredients are fresh and worth the waiting time. So perhaps next round when you are near Braddell MRT area, you can try this stall at Block 116, #01-148, Toa Payoh Lorong 2.

The stall located at the right end corner in the coffee shop and you can find a range of homemade yong dao foo arranged nicely on the shelf. On and off you can see people queuing up to pick their ingredients and everyone have to wait for at least 20 minutes or so during lunch/dinner hours for a good bowl of Yong Dao Foo here.

I have heard a lot of good review about their soup and their specialty items. The must tries are the deep fried meatball and they special homemade "ngoh hiang". So without much delay, I order a set of Soup with Rice and another set of dry version with yellow noodle.

Overall the soup base is great is full of flavour and kind of sweet due to the adding of Ikan Bilis, Soy Bean and etc. And their special homemade "ngoh hiang" really taste different from those that is serve in other stall as their filling is smooth, soft and tasty.

Din Tai Fung

A few months back I have shared a "Blog Post" on some of the dishes from "Din Tai Fung - 鼎泰丰" that we have tried. Today we shall continue with some other new dishes that you might be interested with.

For the appetiser, we start off with our all time favour which is the "Steamed Dumplings - 小笼包" whereby you will find exactly 18 folds on each dumpling which marks a distinguishing feature of Din Tai Fung's dumplings.

Mum loves this spicy " Hong You Chao Shou - 红油抄手" which are cooked dumpling served in chilli oil and vinegar. The dumplings filling are always very fresh and it taste great with that chilli oil dipping sauce which act as a very good appetising dish.

This is my 1st time trying their " Zha Jiang Mian - 炸酱面" which is "La Mian - 拉面" topped with spicy minced pork, tofu and beans. Overall we are quiet satisfy with the texture of the noodles which is bouncy when eaten and combines well with the sauce ingredients too.

Since last visit we have tried their "Pork Chop Fried Rice - 排骨蛋飯" which we all loves, this round we shall give their "Fried Pork Chop Noodles Soup - 排骨面" a go. Although the present of the dish might not look good as it seems to have too much soup covering the noodles and pork chop but basically it still taste great.

Finally to wrapped up today's dinner, we ordered their sweet dumplings that consists our favourite yam paste. But unfortunately this "Yam Paste Dumplings - 芋泥小包" is not really up to our standard. As you can still see that the top peak of the skin seems to be too thick which cost is to be hard or undercooked when served.

Char-Grill Bar

Saw some good reviews from some food bloggers site about this Western Stall in one of the coffee shop at Yishun Ave 11. And after taking a close look at the address, I realised that it is actually near-by to our Church cell-group venue. So today before dropping mum to the cell-group class, we decided to try out the food in this stall.

The stall has indeed a nice fast-food style menu with pretty lights and a bar counter with tall seats. They have many variety of food too, from different types of meat like chicken, beef and lamb to fish and even pastas. Other than food, they also serve alcoholic beverages like Long Island Ice Tea and the stall is open till 3am on weekends.

For the start, we try their soup of the day which is the Cream of Mushroom that comes together with the set meal that we have ordered. The taste of the soup is ok, cannot expected too much from a coffee shop stall, but then at least it is not salty and it still taste good.

This is the Grill Fish Italian Herbs which come with a huge serving of Dory Fish Fillet, Salad and Cut-in Fries at the price of S$5.80 per set. You can choose any two side dishes with the main course from raisin rice, fries, salad, baked potato, pasta and etc.

Other than the fish fillet, we also ordered the Single Rock Burger Set, which come with coleslaw and baked potato. The Single Rock come with a piece of Handmade Beef patty that is sandwich before the burger bread and top with their special sauce.

While dinning at the coffee shop, at the place where we were seated which is just directly from the stall. We can see that most of the tables were fill with either the Italian grill fish or steak. So I guess these must be the popular dishes of the stall.