Recipe: Red Velvet Cupcakes

I have heard about this cupcake a gazillion times. Everyone says it is super good. I have never tasted it nor tried to bake it. Suddenly a friend of mine told me about this and asked me to bake it. Immediately, I felt inspired. Hahahahaha! So I went on to get the recipe from a friend and tried it. It is really super good. The way to make this cake seems a little different to me and it turned out very nice. Here is the recipe.


Ingredients for cupcake
1. 290g of cake flour (not plain flour, CAKE flour)
2. 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
3. 1 teaspoon of salt
4. 300g of sugar
5. 1 and a half cup of vegetable oil
6. 2 large eggs at room temperature
7. 1 teaspoon of red colouring (only if you want, you don't have to actually)
8. 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
9. 1 cup of buttermilk
10. 1 and half teaspoons of bicarbonate soda
11. 2 teaspoons of vinegar


Instructions for cupcake
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Sift the flour, cocoa and salt and set it aside.

2. With a mixer, mix the sugar and oil till it is blended. The add in the eggs one at a time and blend till it is pale yellow, like a paste. Then mix in the vanilla essence and colouring.

3. Reduce the speed of the mixer and add in the flour/cocoa/salt mixture in 3 batches, alternating with 2 batches of buttrmilk. So basically is adding in part of the flour mixture, and blend. Then buttermilk and blend and vice versa till everything is well incorporated.

4. Now mix the bicarbonate soda and vinegar in a separate bowl, it will bubble. Then add it into the mixture and blend it for only 10 seconds.

5. Pour the mixture to about half of your cupcake cups and bake for about 25-30mins. When you pierce the middle of the cake all the way through, it should come out almost clean, then it is ready.


Then let the cake cool and prepare the cream cheese frosting.


Ingredients for cream cheese frosting
1. 500g of cream cheese
2. 250g of butter
3. 200g of ICING sugar
4. 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract


Instructions for cream cheese frosting

1. With a blender, cream the cheese till it is soft and fluffy. Then place it aside.

2. Now, in the same blending bowl which you just blended you cream cheese in, cream the butter. Let it blend till it is soft and creamy and pale yellow.

3. Then add in the creamed cream cheese and allow both the ingredients to be well blended.

4. Sift the icing sugar twice.

5. Once the cream cheese and butter is well blended, add in the icing sugar and blend well.

6. Then add in the vanilla extract and blend well. Then it id READY!


Spread over your cooled cupcakes and enjoy!


Here are some bad quality pictures.

SimpleMakan

Food Review: Cafe 107 @ Serangoon North Ave 1

Ever since my army friend introduced this coffee shop to me, I totally fell in love with it. It was a very nice place. Friendly staff and GOOD FOOD. I might seem to be exaggerating here but seriously, everything in this coffee shop seems good to me. Except for their "zhe char". The "zhe char" is so so, not horrible but its fine.


The reason why I am writing about this coffee shop is because the food is really good. Do not be put off by the China guys preparing the food. I remembered the first time I ate there, I was pretty much wondering if these guys from China can actually really cook Singapore fare. Guess what, to me, they passed with flying colours!


At the coffee shop, they have the usual "zhe char" which starts at night. They have western food, which has a ton of variety. They have another store which serves dishes like char kway teow, minipot noodles, sambal stingray, sambal sotong, sambal prawns, mee pok, hokkien mee, and seriously many more!


When I say coffee shop, I am sure you are thinking that it is a coffee shop with stalls owned by individual hawkers cooking making their signature dish. This is not the case here. From my understanding, this entire coffee shop is owned by one boss, and all the stalls in it is his. And all the workers in the stalls are also his. So there are no differences between each stall.


There are many instances when people ask me out to Chomp Chomp to have hokkien mee and sting ray. All I can say is that place is utterly over-rated, messy, crowded, stuffy and horrible. For $5.50 at Cafe 107, you get a piece of sambal sting ray, rice, egg and abit of pickles. What more can I say?


Seriously, just go over and try the food there. It is really awesome.
Here are some pictures which I hope could make you hungry, sorry for the poor quality.

The address of this place is Blk 107 Serangoon North Ave 1.

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Food Review: River South Prawn Noodles @ Macpherson

So the other day, I had a simple bet among four friends. One of our friends in our clique was going to take his riding test and we placed a wager on whether he would pass. Two of use said he would and two of us said he would not. I said he would pass. I was wrong. In the end, both of us had to treat all of us to dinner. Haha! It was all in good fun.


We decided to go to this Prawn Noodles shop at Macpherson area. The name of the shop is River South Prawn Noodles. The address of this place is 31 Tai Thong Crescent. I have always loved prawn noodles ever since I was young. Usually I ate prawn noodles which was not full of flavour and the soup was often quite thin. I knew that those were definitely not the best but I found it hard to get real good prawn noodles.


So when I tried this, I was extremely shocked! Number one, soup was quite thick. It was extremely filled with flavour! I totally loved it. Number two, the prawn was fresh. Number three, the pork ribs were so tender and soft and came off the bone very easily. I ordered the $5 prawn and pork ribs noodle and I really really really enjoyed it. The best part about this is that I totally had no appetite that day. I did not want to eat at all. I told the guys to carry on and I'll pay, but the friend who told us to try it pestered and pestered and pestered till I gave in.


This is what was on my bowl when I ordered it.

This is what that was left after I apparently had no appetite and did not want to eat AT ALL.

So all I can say is that, GO AND TRY! Very sinful, unhealthy and SHIOK!




SimpleMakan

Food Review: Sarpino's Pizza @ Jalan Pemimpin

Who doesn't like pizza? Personally, I loveeeeee pizza, even though I find it a little expensive here. So whenever I eat pizza, I really would expect it to taste awesome, or else, to me it is a waste. I've tried a few pizzas, but definitely not all. Sarpino's was introduced to me by a friend of a friend. His family owns one of the restaurants here. And yes, I fell in love with Sarpino's since the first day I had it. 


I mean, have you eaten cold pizza? Like pizza which has been on the table for over 3-4 hours? It is usually rock hard, tasteless and all the bad things. But for Sarpino's, even when it was cold, IT TASTED AWESOME. I don't know, maybe it is personal preference, but I just love it so much. So I would like to recommend you peeps to go ahead and give Sarpino's a try. It is really good.


I went over to their dine-in restaurant recently for their pizza. Since it is located in quite a secluded area, there wasn't anyone in the restaurant, which I LOVED. It felt so peaceful to eat your pizza and relax with no one else around you. Here are some pictures to entice you. The balls are cheesy meatballs; don't lie to me and say they do not look appetising at all. :)

The address of this dine-in restaurant is 9 Clover Way.


SimpleMakan

Food Review: Fatboy's The Burger Bar @ Thomson

Buddies wanted to go out just to chill and suggested going to Fatboy's. This is the first time I'm visiting this place. I checked reviews of this place before we went but seemed like there was quite a number of bad reviews in terms of food and service. Oh well, I'll never know until I try so I agreed to go along.


The place itself was very spacious. There were a good number of seats in the restaurant. It was a little warm but still bearable.


The variety of food was quite good but I wasn't in the mood for too much of food, so I ordered their grilled chicken caesar salad. Surprisingly, I enjoyed my salad! The chicken was really good and it was very moist. My friends ordered some sort of a kebab and that was realy good as well. Here are some pictures. Go ahead and give Fatboy's a try. :)

Here are a few more pictures taken recently.

The address of this place is 187 Upper Thomson Road.




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Food Review: Antoinette @ Penhas Road

Alright, I followed a few of my friends to some sale recently. After they shopped, one of them suggested going for tea at this place called Antoinette. Reached there and I was surprised at the ambience. It felt really peaceful and beautiful in there. Sadly, the tea session had ended and they were about to close. So we opted to take-away some of the cakes and pastries they had. Sorry I did not get photos of the place but I guess it would be nicer if you saw the place in person.


Here are pictures of the pastries we bought. They tasted really awesome and I would definitely go there for more next time.
(Sorry for the blur and amateurish pictures.)


UPDATES: Hi people, I know I posted on this place before but recently, I went there again with my girlfriend and took much nicer photos. This time, we tried their pasta as well. It was delicious.  Not the best, but well, I seriously do not mind at all because the environment is just amazing. Below are my updated photos.

Updated photos:

The address of this place is 30 Penhas Road.


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