The minimalist storefront of Plain Vanilla Bakery at1D Yong Siak Street says “I’ve nothing fancy to offer, just simple, good cupcakes”. This place has the best salted caramel frosting I’ve tasted so far! 

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Sometimes I bake just to feel productive. 

Caramel Macarons

Savour 2013 Highlights!

Butter croissants and Kouign Amann from Tiong Bahru Bakery

I was sold on truffle oil after trying this Cold Angel Hair Pasta with Truffle and Oscietra Caviar by Chef Gunther Hubrechsen from GUNTHER’S - a little cup set me back by $18 but it tastes great on a hot afternoon!! Now I feel like getting my hands on some nice white truffle oil and truffle salt. 

Food Photography 101 conducted by William Aung, sponsored by Samsung, with plated food prepared by Chef Diego Chiarini from Oso. Food in natural light always looks best. 

Super chic custom made fondant cakes by Cake Over Heels. Their shop is located at Sin Ming and they conduct classes too! It’s my goal to have the time and skill to do stuff like this some day. 

Free fondant modelling demonstration conducted by one of the pastry chefs from Cake Over Heels. It’s a mini Chanel bag made with black fondant and painted over with a mixture of pure gold dust and alcohol, and then sprayed with an edible varnish for a bit of gloss. 

Cake Over Heels uses a ready coloured fondant called Fancy Fondant. Phoon Huat also sells a sugar paste powder (Tylose) or sth that you can roll into the fondant to make it dry quicker and harder so you can made delicate stuff like flowers. The thing about fondant is that you’ll need a de-humidified environment for it to treat you well. Try to do it out at Singapore room temperature and humidity and you’ll end up with a sticky mess. 

Mille Crepe Class by Bake King. It tasted very good but unfortunately I didn’t manage to get the recipe for this! Nevertheless the trick is to make your crepes as thin as possible, use top flour, filling can be a simple whipped cream, and serve it chilled!

The Gourmet Market has lots of vendors displaying their products for free sampling - there’s plenty of cheese, cured meats, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and spreads! Jason’s Gourmet Market took up a large section of the place, they sell some pretty neat stuff (I eyed some pretty gooseberries that I could potentially use for future cake decor), and there was also a counter where you could choose your cut of meat and the cooks will prepare it for you on the spot.

At the Gourmet Auditorium (you’ll need to buy a Savour Premier Pass to access this), celebrity chefs conduct masterclasses on how they prepare the dishes that gets served up in their restaurants. Here, Chef Emilio Macias (Peru) and Chef Margot Janse (S.Africa) prepare a Beetroot Sponge, Wild Rice and Macadamia Salad with Baobab Yoghurt, which is served at Chef Margot’s restaurant The Tasting Room At Le Quartier Francais. She mixed together beetroot juice together with gelatin and whipped it up till it had a mousse-like consistency, chilled it in the fridge and then filled the center with a little bit of spinach and onion puree. 

Chef Michael Liu from Windowsill Pies conducted a hands-on macaron making class.The queue for the class was probably insanely long, so I just stood around and copied the recipe: 

Macaron Shells (Italian Meringue Method)

• 120g ground almonds
• 120g icing sugar
• 90g egg whites
• 120g fine sugar
• 35g water
• food coloring 

1. Mix ground almonds, icing sugar and half of egg whites into a paste. 
2. Cool fine sugar, food coloring and water till 120’C.
3. When sugar mixture reaches 115’C, start whisking the remaining egg whites slowly in a bowl. Add the 120’C sugar mixture all at once down the side of the mixing bowl and whisk at high speed till 35’C or cooler. 
4. When Italian meringue is done, switch to beater attachment and scrape batter down the sides of the bowl. Add half of almond paste mixture, and beat on medium-low speed till combined. Scrape down bowl again and add remaining almond paste mixture. Mix till paste is glossy, and when you stop beating, batter should recede slowly. 
5. Pipe shells and let them dry out in dehumidified environment for about half hour or until shells do not stick to your fingers when touched. 
6. Bake at 145’C for 7-8 minutes for small/med sized shells. 

Caramel Filling

• 200g fine sugar
• 1 vanilla pod
• 80g butter
• 25g cocoa butter
• 420g cream, warmed
• 25g glucose 
• 2g salt

1. Scrape vanilla pod seeds into cream, add glucose and salt and warm up the cream mixture.
2. Heat fine sugar in saucepan till smoking. Add in warm cream when sugar just starts to froth (around 130-140’C). Add in butter and cocoa butter.
3. Cook the caramel till 110’C till sticky and thick. 

Again, you’ll need a nice air-conditioned kitchen for this. Someone lend me your air-conditioned kitchen for the day and you can have 50% of the macarons!! 

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If you are thinking of going next year, here are some tips! 

1. Buy tickets early! The cheapest tickets sell out fast! There are 3 different ticket prices: $35 (w $20 Savour dollars to spend) for the regular Savour Pass, which grants you access to the Gourmet Market; and $55 Lunch Premier Pass (w $20 Savour dollars) or $65 Dinner Premier Pass (w $30 Savour dollars) which grants you access to the Gourmet Auditorium and Gourmet Village in addition to the Gourmet Market. In my opinion the $35 Savour Pass is the best value for money, because the Gourmet Market is where most of the cooking demonstrations are, where all the vendors are stationed, and where you can buy and sample lots of food. There were enough events here to keep me occupied for the entire day. But if you’re interested in meeting the celebrity chefs, watching them do demos, and sampling their food (not for free mind you), then you’ll need to spend a bit more for the Premier Pass. I would suggest getting the Dinner Premier Pass, because the Gourmet Village (where the atas food is sold) is outdoors and going during dinner can help you avoid the sweltering Singapore heat. Don’t worry about not being able to spend $30 Savour dollars, cus atas celebrity chef food comes with atas prices and they’ll be gone in no time. 

2. Dress comfortably and wear good shoes. While most of the event was held indoors, you can’t run away from the heat. I suggest bringing an umbrella in case you have to queue under the hot sun for a painfully long time at the entrance due to volunteers who can’t get their act together. While there were at least 5 different free demonstration sessions held at any one time, the turnout to Savour was so good that you had to start queuing for popular ones (like The Science of Cooking, A Pastry & Tea Pairing Experience, Macaron Magic) at least half an hour before the session started. And its just darn annoying when you’ve been queueing for so long only to realize that the person in front of you was the last person allowed to get a seat in the class. Maybe next year the organizers may want to consider expanding the size of each demonstration class? 

3. Come with friends! More friends means more Savour Dollars to spend on more types of food, meaning more variety! I tend to be v stingy with money when I attend food events on my own. 

4. Have a chat with the vendors! People seemed to be more friendly and spontaneous during the event, maybe cus you’re around like-minded foodies with common topics to talk about! Or maybe they’ve been drinking too much wine.. 

Happy birthday Mum and Aunty Betty! Strawberry shortcake recipe from YouTube.

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Cosy little place for a hot drink on a rainy Saturday afternoon

Homemade Bagels
Recipe from Cooking Light

2 cups warm water (100° to 110°)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
28.5 ounces bread flour, divided (about 6 1/2 cups)
1 tablespoon barley malt syrup
2 teaspoons kosher salt
Cooking spray
12 cups water
3/4 cup sugar

1. Combine 2 cups warm water and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with dough hook; let stand 5 minutes or until bubbles form on the surface. Weigh or lightly spoon 28.13 ounces flour (about 6 1/4 cups) into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Add flour, syrup, and salt to yeast mixture. Mix dough at low speed 6 minutes. Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Knead 2 minutes or until smooth and elastic; add enough of remaining 1/4 cup flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to prevent dough from sticking to hands. Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray, turning to coat top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85°), free from drafts, 30 minutes.

2. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and divide into 12 equal portions. Working with one portion at a time (cover remaining dough to prevent drying), shape each portion into a ball. Make a hole in the center of each ball using your index finger. Using fingers of both hands, gently pull dough away from center to make a 1 1/2-inch hole. Place bagels on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Lightly coat bagels with cooking spray; cover with plastic wrap. Let rise 10 minutes (bagels will rise only slightly).

3. Preheat oven to 450°.

4. Combine 12 cups water and 3/4 cup sugar in a Dutch oven, and bring to a boil. Gently lower 3 bagels into pan. Cook for 30 seconds. Transfer the bagels to a wire rack lightly coated with cooking spray. Repeat the procedure with remaining bagels, working in batches of 3. Divide the bagels between two baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake at 450° for 7 minutes. Rotate pans, and bake for 7 minutes or until golden. Cool on wire racks.

(Source: myrecipes.com)

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Sickeningly sweet

CNY Almond Cookies

Chinese New Year is always associated with visiting parents’ friends, and snacking on CNY goodies while the parents chit chat. Because we only visit these people in Malaysia once a year, I’ve come to know them as “the uncle who lives in a big house on a hill”, or “the aunty whose neighbour makes the most awesome almond cookies and ships them in trucks to Singapore to sell”. Yes the almond cookies are so yummy that I still think about them despite having visited that aunty for at least the past 5 years. This year I finally got down to hunting for a recipe and making some of my own almond cookies, in part because I bought a big pack of almond flour from PH with the intention of making macarons, but the humidity in Singapore is a killer.

The recipe below is really pretty good and super easy to execute, and I made at least 6 batches of these little round cookies to eat and share in office. I experimented with caster sugar and icing sugar - caster sugar gives a more crunchy cookie and you can see the sugar crystals in the cookie, icing sugar a more powdery one and its a bit harder to shape them into balls. I liked a 50:50 combination of both. A word of warning though: as with lots of handmade CNY cookies, expect to spend a long long time shaping them one by one and to glaze them with egg wash afterwards, thereby rendering these cookies too expensive to make for sale if you consider personal labour cost, though still irresistible enough for you to spend an hour or so to make a batch for your own consumption. If you can, please grab your very free sibling/parent/friend/domestic helper to give you a hand! 

Chinese New Year Almond Cookies
Adapted from Bread et Butter
Makes approximately 50-60 cookies, depending on size

• 100g ground almonds/ almond flour
• 150g plain flour
• 75-100g sugar to taste (I used half caster sugar, half icing sugar)
• 3/4tsp baking powder
• 3/4tsp baking soda
• pinch salt
• 100ml corn oil, or other flavourless oil 
  
• 1 egg yolk, beaten

1. Sieve the flour, caster sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt into bowl of your stand mixer.
2. Add the ground almonds to the flour/sugar mixture.
3. With your mixer on medium speed (with the beater attachment), slowly trickle in the corn oil into the bowl containing the flour/sugar/almonds. Mix until a cohesive dough forms. You may need more or less oil depending on the humidity/moisture levels – the aim is to reach a dough which is just able to hold it’s shape (and doesn’t crumble) when you attempt to roll it into a ball. 
4. Heat the oven to 180′C.
5. Roll the dough into ~2.5cm balls, and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper/a silpat mat. Repeat until all the dough is used up.
6. Using a pastry brush, lightly glaze the tops of the cookie balls with the beaten egg yolk.
7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the cookies become slightly golden.
8. Leave to cool on a wire rack, then tuck in. Store in airtight container. 

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Apple Strudel

Apple Filling

• 2 apples, peeled and diced 
• 15g butter
• 45g sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
• 25g raisins 
• juice and zest from 1/4 lemon 
• 1 tsp cornflour