No-Frills Recipes ... cooking, baking & excerpts on travel

This was  my  maiden attempt at making  baked curry puffs and although it entailed a lot of standing, dividing and rolling out the dough, wrapping, etc. it was all worth the effort when everybody gave the thumbs up! 

Of late, you must have noticed that I've quite a number of  'booze' posts in my blog.  Well, I was doing some cleaning up of my fridge not long ago and stumbled upon some cans of beer and stout lying idle in the cool comfort of the fridge.  Being a naive teetotaller I didn't realise that these booze do expire just like other foodstuff until I turned them over while rearranging them.  Gosh, they're going to expire in two months time and what am I going to do with them!  Fret not, I told myself, surf the net and that's exactly what I did ..........

We took a drive along the beach, passed by Waikiki but as it was so crowded, didn't stop to take pictures.   This is wind-surfing at the Kahala Beach Lookout.

B lack glutinous rice chiffon cake has been on my 'to-do' list for quite a while.  Well, I finally managed to make it using a recipe from  Anncoo Journal but have adjusted the recipe to fit  my 23 cm chiffon pan.

Before we went shopping at Ala Moana Center , the biggest shopping mall in Hawaii, we stopped by U-Choice Inn for breakfast ......  

Made these cupcakes quite some time back but only  managed to put it up now.   I rarely dress up my bakes but in this case thought that  a little bit of light glazing will enhance the flavour as grapefruits are reputed to be sour.  The cuppies were soft and fragrant and disappeared within a day.....

We spent 3 nights in this quaint cottage in Makawao which is near for us to travel to Haleakala National Park.  This is the Rainbow Bridge House   but I like to refer to it as the 'Sun Cottage' because of the image of the smiling sun on the facade of the cottage.  This cottage is nestled in the Eucalyptus forest of Upcountry Maui, full of pristine green lush.  Each morning we were greeted by the symphony of tropical birds and fresh mountain air and we had total privacy. This is the view taken from the loft of the cottage. Haleakala ,  in Hawaiian, the 'House of The Sun' rises 10,023 feet above Maui's coastal areas, a massive shield volcano that doubles as an easily accessible visitor destination and a drive up to see is a definite must for any Maui visitor. This picture is not a crater or caldera, but an erosional depression or erosional valley created by wind, rain, freezing and thawing over many thousand years. The volcanoes that make up all...

Stone fruits were aplenty in Hawaii when I was there - nectarines, peaches, apricots, plums and cherries.  I jumped upon the opportunity to bake this Cherry Beer Cake  and was delighted that it was well received and everybody liked it.

Aloha and welcome to Maui, the 'Valley Isle'.  It was a short flight about 35 mins.  from Honolulu in Oahu island to Maui.   Upon touching down at Kahului airport, we headed off to fill our stomachs at Sam Sato's to have a taste of their  local Hawaiian food. This is dry noodles or mein with meat.  Looks like our wonton mee with char siew. 'Chow fun' with some char siew.  There's no sauce in this dish.  So it's rather bland but you can add in the sauces which are on each table.  The 'fun' here looks like our 'kway teow' and 'chee cheong fun'. This is a popular dessert.  The round pastries are called 'manju'.  We had one with red bean filling and the other with lima beans.  The curry puff looking pastries are turnovers and there's one with pineapple and the other with apricot fillings. After having our fill at Sam Sato's we drove to Lahaina, a former whaler's village, on the west  for our ...