Selamat Menyambut Ramadhan Al Mubarak !

Sheikh Yahya Ibrahim

The company that I am working with had the opportunity to sponsor the stay of Shaikh Yahya while he was in Malaysia recently.  Sheikh Yahya is a muslim scholar, of Egyption descent, born in Canada, married and now living in Australia.  More on the Sheikh, visit http://www.alkauthar.org/content.asp?pgc=yibrahim&From=Our%20Instructors

I was first introduced to the teaching of Sheikh Yahya when I attended a 2-day class with the Al-Kauthar Institute, Out of Sight - Angels, Jinns and Ain.  Their approach is different from what I'm used to, the ways of our local Ustaz and Ustazahs... It was a wonderful change.  His lectures were lively, using up-to-date examples (I mean, he uses our current 'language' or lingo, which is makes he's talk much more interesting and not so 'dronny' if you know what I mean...  More on the Out of Sight class, visit http://www.alkauthar.org/content.asp?pgc=less_outofsight&From=Our%20Courses

We had the great opportunity to hear to man give us a talk on Management, the Rasulullah saw Way. One hour is not enough... it feels like half-hour only but he's a very busy man so one hour it was. Even my dear hubby attended and he too enjoyed the talk.  Am trying to find out how to attached audio file here... How?

From this talk too, based on the Sheik's recommendations, I got myself these books to content with... now to find the time to start reading them! I sure do have a number of books to go thru this coming Ramadhan.

 Okay, so the Sheik did not recommend this third book below, but while I was looking for the 2 books above, I found this book at MPH !  hehehe....  The 2 books above, I got them from the Dakwah Corner bookstore in PJ.  MPH priced those 2 quite expensive, really and stock were only available at MPH Mid Valley !

PS: Got myself a lovely abaya from Makkah too plus a jubah for hubs for the Dakwah Corner (and its a bookstore mind you....  but I'm in a very happy mood of course!)

Selamat Menyambut Ramadhan al Mubarak!

Egg Sandwiches anyone ?

Sometimes strange things happens in most unlikely ways...  And somehow, this past two weeks, I've been making sandwiches for some of my office meetings.  It started with one of the guys forgetting to inform me early of his meeting and that he needs refreshments arranged. So I decided to buy a couple of banana loaf cakes and make myself some open faced sandwiches using baguettes with eggs and tuna.

Then, a collegue found out about it and asked me to do some for our unit meeting. Today I made another batch for another unit's meeting....

I love getting myself pocket money this way....  :D

First batch.... chilly tuna and egg sandwiches, but since I sliced the baguettes slanting, the sandwiches were rather big.

For the 2nd and today's batch, I decided to cut the baguettes rounder and just do egg with pickled flavoured mayo only. Skip the tuna, which turned out just the way I want them. The picture below are those I made today. Forgot to take pictures for yesterday's sandwiches, which I made a side dish of vegetarian sandwiches, for a totally vegetarian colleague.



Above was the full serving. Below is pic of the sandwiches with red cherry tomatoes and sliced olives for deco (the tomatoes were sweet and the olives taste heavenly, at least to me! :D)

Next, with japanese cucumber and olives, followed by orange cherry tomatores (fat fat cherry tomatoes) and of course olives..

 

Other than the sandwiches, I also made some chocolate cake slices for a couple of meetings.... Delicious chocolate slices with chocolate ganache toppings.

These are to die for !

 

..... and I happily call them, Rezeki !

Welcome Home My Sistah

My sister, Kak Cik is the third among the four of us sisters. Yes, all girls. Now there's only 2 of us left after our two elder sisters had passed on. I'm the youngest. Kak Cik have a daughter, Juanita and a son Hafiz. Nita is married and now residing in New York. Nita have a pair of twins, now 1 years old (just a week ago actually). A boy and a girl, Zain and Anasofia. See the pics, that's Zain looking cool in his sunglasses.... Anasofia really looks like her mummy.

 

 

My sister went to New York to help look after the twins early in the year when Nita had to go through what thought to be a minor operation for torn muscles, but turned out to be much more. Other than the torn muscles, it seems the docs found several benign fibrous/polyp growth kinda thingies, which they also threw away during the operations. So in the end the operation became quite serious. And Nita actually needed about a year (instead of the initial 2 months) to fully recover. To make things worst, the babies nanny had to leave cause her mom had a stroke ! And getting a nanny in the US is not like us getting a maid here in Msia okay.  Their pay rate is US$850.00 a week that does not include Saturday and Sunday.  Apa macam? mau pigi kereja sana ka?

Anyway, my sister came back after being there for about 6 months.  She's kinda worried about her hubby and son who are fending for themselves here in Msia la !  So I baked her a lovely Red Velvet cake to welcome here home.

Since I was baking, my son who was going out on a picnic with some friends, decides to grab the opportunity to give me a really sorry puppy look, to get back to back him some cupcakes.  He got them, here's a pic of cuppies. He got 2 boxes of them.... Okay la tu kan?  Free pulak tuh ! :D

 

Macarons

Apart from Red Velvet cakes, the current trend now is macaron (or macaroons). HOWEVER, macarons are such a temperamental cookie. I tried 4 times before I even got the 'feet' to appear. I hear, some people went thru many many more times.  Even then, I still get loads of unsuccessful trays of macarons among the successful ones when I'm baking them. So, in the end I baked in small batches, and my success rates went up! I make french macarons. I have not tried the italian method properly. I did once but burnt the sugar, problem is I've not seen a demonstration on how this is done, so it was like cooking in the dark. Lucky I didn't burn my fingers....

But I've got orders done anyhow, and these have turned up quite nicely.  I've also made hazelnut macaron shell.  I've bought pistachios and macadamia nuts. I'm gonna try these too, soon.

Below are pictures that I've taken so far... From single color to double, nor multi-colored. I started with cream cheese, chocolate ganache and lemon curd fillings. I've added raspberry, blueberry and now tiramisu... soon hazelnut filling too.

These are macarons made when I was learning how to make them. Macarons turned out quite alright during class, yes? 

After four unsuccesful tries at home, I got these, perfect just perfect..... I was so happy.

These I made for my friend and collegue, for her birthday.  She ordered actually, so I had to be brave and bake them. Glad I did!

  

From then on, I received quite a number of orders.

Then I tried using ground hazelnuts, and these turned out quite nicely too. Not only that, these shells are delicious, goes well with cream cheese or chocolate ganache.

My friends loved these...

A green and white theme for daughter of an old old school chum from my hometown, Taiping.

Recently, I finally received my slipat baking sheets and mastrad macaron baking sheets. Can't wait to use these....

P.S: have not read that book either...  :D