Trip to Genting

On our recent trip to KL, we spent 2 nights at Genting where the kids really had a blast trying out all the games and activities on offer inside and outside. Zahra was at first quite upset they didn't have a small harness for her to go wall climbing, the others ofcourse had a go though didn't get up so high! Zahra also couldn't try the archery as all the bows were too big! Thank god she was tall enough to go on the roller coaster even braving the 15minutes queue for the 2 minutes ride!!and when the rain finally cleared she had more rides to go on outside!

Selamat Menyambut Bulan Ramadhan

Amin's feet being cleaned and massaged by tiny fish

At the restaurant on the 39th floor of PNB Darby Park celebrating my 40th Birthday. Zahra upset waiting for her spaghetti!
In front of the F n N cans murial

Wow how time has flown, tomorrow it's the sighting of the moon for Ramadhan, we have been busy since setting up kitchenofjasmine.blogspot.com and alhamdulillah we have had a great response. In the midst of this I left Hanna to deal with the orders with Anita and went for our week long holiday to KL. As always we shopped our way all over the major shopping centers of KL and the kids also had a blast at Genting. Whilst in KL I celebrated my 40th birthday with the family, got lots of presents and we had a great dinner at the restaurant on top of PNB Darby park which specialises in Malay cuisine we were all quite impressed with the food although Zahra insisted on ordering spaghetti from another cafe in the Hotel!!. The view from the restaurant was overlooking KLCC so it was quite awesome! as Zahra and Fatin kept saying! We stayed at PNB Darby park and I really recommend this place to those of you looking for good, clean and spacious apartment style lodgings in KL. it is directly in front of the KLCC surau and a 10 minutes stroll into the KLCC park across the road from the PNB darby park will ofcourse get you to the KLCC shopping center. The apartments are well equiped with full kitchen utensils and our apartment even had a large ricecooker although we only utilised the kitchen to cook maggi and eggs! The laundry is quite large and there is huge pool and children playground too.

Outside the KLCC there was a huge murial made out of empty tin cans...another Awesome moment!! The kids ofcourse were impressed, maybe we should do somrthing like this with all the cans from HariRaya nanti?!!

Right now in KL there seems to be craze to let little fish clean your feet by sucking off all the dead cells. Amin, Fatin and Hazim had a go whilst we were in Genting and thoroughly enjoyed it although Fatin was very squeamish!!

We met up with Rizal and Nurul although we didn't take any photos, hopefully we'll see them again over Hari Raya depending on Rizal's work schedule ofcourse.

OK Selamat berpuasa everybody!

ASEAN Schools Tennis Championship

Yesterday 12th August 2008, Amin left with his Tennis Squad to represent Brunei in the ASEAN Schools Tennis Championships. This competition is held once in every 2 years and this year Singapore is the host country. More importantly it is Amin's first tennis trip abroad! It was quite official with a flag handing over ceremony and a doa selamat before they left! Hopefully they wont come back empty handed. Good luck Team!

Kids in the kitchen

Once in a while the kids from the compound converge at my house more accurately in my kitchen to try and come out with their own creations...albeit in the end not all seem edible to eat! Fatin being leader tried out my new alphabet cookie cutters which mum bought in the US. They used the cookie recipe from Nigella Lawson's book although the end products looked nothing like what Nigella had produced! Nevertheless it filled up an afternoon!

Soft Centered Chocolate cakes

Amin my food Techie son/kitchen messer!! has been using up a lot of my good chocolate which I bought all the way back from Singapore to make us these...soft centered chocolate cake. Actually kan these cakes only take less than 10 minutes to bake and around 10 minutes to prepare, anyway they really are sooo yummy and in actual effect uncooked chocolate cakes!! Tapi nyaman and not eggy or weird tasting, I think some restaurants around town also do this dish but at times overcook it so you dont get the soft centered effect!! I was going to put up the site from which Amin got the recipe tapi he said he had tweeked it to make it easier and has not allowed me to reproduce it here so liat gambar saja lah! He has served it here with thickened cream and a dash of chocolate sauce hearts.

Zahra's trip to the musuem

On our recent trip to Singapore we went to the Museum of Civilisation and History to check out the Mozart exhibition that Hariz went on and on about! The exhibition was a hands on one and Zahra got to see what life was like in the time of Mozart...actually i had to explain who Mozart was because the guide rambled on quite fast about Mozart and Zahra complained she didn't understand him!!! Anyway She got to make tooth paste by grinding chalk and mint I think! Then she got to make a paper wig. When it came to trying out a real wig and some mozart costumes, Zahra refused saying lots of people have worn the costume and she didn't want to!! That's Zahra for you! At the end of the tour we had a small picnic outside the hall and Zahra agreed to try on her own made paper wig!

Summer holidays ramblings..

I've just realised that its almost half way through the children's summer school holidays and the last time I've posted something was in June!! We started out the holidays by going back to Singapore to collect my Anty Hj Sarimah as she finished her 6 weeks course of radiation therapy. Alhamdulillah she's doing ok now. Since then I've been busy with a few cake orders and my sister and I have now launched our on line bakery service which you all can access via my other blog- www.kitchenofjasmine.blogspot.com, the internet service at my house is really slow at the moment and it looks as if I have to buy a new and stronger router!! So posting of photos has been painfully slow and sometimes quite frustrating!! But do check out the site as we will post hopefully on a daily basis.
Other than that the kids have had their round of sore throats and cold and in a way I am glad its the school holidays as there seems to be some outbreaks of HFMD in some schools. Touch wood it will not infect any of our kids, we're staying away from the padang this year, not that my husband is interested in anyway to see the coloured lights this year! I guess it's almost the smae every year and the thought of having to mingle in the humid weather at night does not really appeal to us anyway!!
My mum had her birthday celebrations last week and I was extra busy with that baking and cooking. I think my sisters took photos because by the time I got back to my mum's house after helping to set up for the functions the ladies had already tucked into the prawn and chicken briyani that I had cooked as well as the Laksa Lemak, not to mention the chocolate eclairs, pavlove, marbe cheesecake and cupcakes!! Hopefully some of the pictures insyallah will be in the food blog.
Time just seems to be flying by so quicky there is only 4 weeks of school holidays left and soon my son Amin will be off for a 10 days tennis trip for the ASEAN Schools tournaments in Singapore before he joins us in KL. We've done all the essentials like going to the dentist, getting materials and baju's sorted for Hari Raya...what else do we have to do?....bbq's? days by the pool?..Ah roll on Summer holidays!

Amin's Silver Medal

Amin won his first silver medal yesterday, with his team, the Sports school council competing in the Pesta Sukan 2008. We are really proud of him and glad that at last his tennis practice has earned him a medal! He's now competing in the Open category and so far it looks positive too. Zahra in the picture below did not want to be left out and wanted to show off the medal too!! Who knows in a couple of years time she might win a couple of medals herself for....? which sports.....time can only tell. Well done again Amin!

Chocolatey birthday cakes

Last month my parents went to Switzerland and Suisse Maman very kindly bought me these two giant bars of cooking chocolate. I never got to thank her properly for them until now when I had the chance to use the dark chocolate to make chocolate cakes for my two nephews whose birthdays it was last week- Hariz and Hamdi or Awang as we know him! Thanks again Suisse Maman for these two giant bars as well as the other goodies you sent us..nanti if you come back for holiday we blanja ok!!

Hariz had very early on sat me down and went through my book of children birthday cakes and chose this simple design. Thank God!! The chin was slightly damaged by Jagabar who was carrying it from the car in the mini typhoon that occured prior to the cutting of the cake!!

As for Awang well I just made it simple and decorated using my M nMs. Zahra unfortunately has a great affectons for M n Ms and took two off before we even managed to cut the cake!! After another brief hiatus to Singapore at the end of the month I am hoping to be producing more of these cakes by the summer as well as others which we will put up pictures and prices of very shortly!

Middle Eastern Food Cooking Class

Yesterday was really fun as I was invited by Zaena our Lebanese friend to a lebanese cooking class . It was interesting to meet the expat ladies - some new friends and and some familiar faces. Zaena went through 9 recipes and showed us how simple and healthy middle eastern food was- provided you have your trusted blender!!.

Preparing the Samboulik or minced beef in puff pastry The fried pine nuts were really yummy in this.There were several ways of doing this either in the open style or like a curry puff.

The Tabouleh with curly parsley, chopped tomatoes and fluffed up bulgur wheat. This is one of my favourite dishes as it is really refreshing.

The shish taouk or chicken kebabs were spactacular. Next to that is another dip made of aubergines and Zaena made capsicum cakes as well. Something different was the Hummus topped with the minced beef filling used in the Sambousik.


The bonus dish in the middle spoilt yoghurt- I know this sounds weird but this is just wonderful,and tastes in between yoghurt and cream cheese

The demonstrations all ended with a sumptious lunch ofcourse! Thanks Zaena for a great morning!

Day out at Vivo City

We spent a day out at Vivo City where Usuh and I spent most of the time sitting in the shade while Zahra had a blast in the small play area with spurting fountains and some playground things! She went on the slide and burnt her bum cos it was too hot! Then she went on the animal rides which was fun she said although she got tired of jumping up and down on the seat to move the toy. She climbed vigariously on the plastic figures set around the play area for climbing. Then when she got tired and thirsty we had a quick and not so yummy lunch at Secret Recipe. After lunch Zahra continued with her day of play at the small paint shop where she filled in 3 pictures with the paints. Getting to Vivo City cost us $7 from Hyatt and overall I think its a good day out with the kids and if you get bored you could always hop on the sky train and go around Sentosa, but we'll leave that for another day.

Zahra on the slide which was hot !!

Zahra on the dog


Zahra on top of a plastic climbing figurine

Filling in the colours at the paint shop

Showing off her finished product at the deck overlooking Sentosa

Singapore Hiatus

Hello from Singapore! We are here for the the next week to accompany usus to undergo Radiation Therapy at the National Cancer Center here. She is ok just a bit nervous I guess. The therapy starts this wednesday and the doctors have explained that there are no real side effects. In the meantime we are just taking it easy hanging out sometimes at the shops not really shopping just window shopping! Despite it being the Singapore Sales now. Zahra ofcourse has bought her stash of toys and by the afternoon we settle down to our comfy room at the Hyatt to watch her CDs on Usuh's mobile CD player. Unfortunately the pool at the Hyatt is undergoing renovations so we can only see from our room the rubble below! Anyway the photos are of our abode for the next 10 days. Zahra and her large TV!!

Will do another post later!

Happy Mother's Day!!

Well it was a quiet mother's day really as I had one order of cucpcakes to do, for lunch we just had takeaways and in the evening amidst the mini hurricane in Gadong, we had to run around the mall looking for Fatin's school shoes! I swear she really eats through her shoes!

Still my kids were sweet enough to make chocolate chip cookies for me. I think Amin and Zahra raided my baking cupboard and found my stash of M n Ms.

In the evening Amin my aspiring cook did steak, mash potatoes and courgettes for us. He made this special pepper sauce which was not to my liking but as always he had his own style! My own mum is still overseas or else no doubt we would have had lunch or high tea at their house. Happy Mothers day to all you mums.

My e-mail account dissappeared!!

What a weekend! From the start of thursday morning I was inundated with calls and smses from friends abroad and within Brunei that they had recieved a weird e-mail from my hotmail account! Then a kind friend told me that sadly my e-mail account was probably hacked into. Once I could get hold of a computer I checked and tried to open my account and lo and behold I couldn't. The hackers had changed my password and even changed my reminder question! At an instant I felt lost and so down because all the contacts I had in that account had disappeared and whatsmore they all had been duped into thinking that I was lost and stranded in Malaysia with no money and awaiting for their kind donations!!! Some friends actually thought I really was stranded and immediately called me to reconfirm I was ok..others were cautious in asking what was going on!! As if I would stoop so low so as to ask for donations via e-mail!!! Hello!!!



Anyway I have now set up another e-mail with g mail and this time I have be very vigilant with giving out personal info etc!! But I couldn't wallow in self pity too long there were a couple of orders for pavlovas and mini cupcakes to do. I would upload the photos but my naughty daughter has kidnapped my camera's battery. I am over all the self pity and feeling of annoyance and helplessness after all it was only an e-mail address adn ALL my contacts!!

weekend of birthday cakes

Jack's little train.




Chocolate cupcakes made out of excess chocolate cake mix from Jack's cake


Fozia's order- the strawberries looked really yummy after being drizzled with chocolate.



Jack's pavlova.

Last weekend I was quite inundated with orders for 2 birthday cakes, one of which was for Jack who turned three earlier on in the week. On his actual birthday I made him a pavlova but came time for the party I made him a train shaped cake out of a mould I got in Singapore. Ofcourse his sister Iman was quick to point out it looks nothing like Thomas the tank Engine as Jack had requested but I thought I did ok as the cake took me about 1 hour to ice with a few mistakes here and there! The base was made of rich chocolate cake and it was ices in butter icing with lots of patience and cover ups here and there. So if anybody out there needs a train shaped cake let me know because I have this mould now!

My Sister in law Fozia also ordered a small chocolate cake for another birthday celebrant and as always you can never go wrong with strawberries and chocolate decorations!

My Little cupcakes

Look at what I can do? I made these for Hazel who ordered them for her gathering of friends and the cupcakes below I did for Intan to share with her family who seem to love these little beauties. A box of 49 mini suspcakes cost $13 but the slightly bigger ones with chococlate ganache or M nMs cost $18 (36 pieces in a box) After a while they are quite fun to do although at first it was hard to conjur up nice designs.

The children ofcourse prefer the chocolate covered cupcakes and my little Zahra would ony pick the M n M's and lick off the icing!! E-mail me at jasminetaib@hotmail.com if you guys are interested. I also do Birthday cakes of different sizes and variety of styles with prices starting from $35 upwards. Another favourite are these mini pavlovas. They are available for $1.50 each. Really light and yummy. The large pavlova which is about 16 inches will cost $45.

The New GIANT Hypermarket

The easter holidays are almost over, as usual the kids are eating their way through whatever is in the fridge, cupboards and the pantry! So much so that my normal once a week shopping routine has had to be broken and today we finally made it to the new hypermarket Giant at Tasek Rimba. After going past it for several days and waiting for all the long Queues of cars going in to die down, we finally made it and even found parking quite easily.

So what's the big deal? It's a new concept of shopping in Brunei everything on sale under one roof, although their range of shops could have been greater rather than just the normal selling hairstuff for girls, tudongs and kains. For kids there is one play area in the middle which is quite full right now because of the school holidays. The seating area for the foodcourt which hosts around 6 or 7 stalls seems quite limited. But there are other eateries such as KFC and Jollibee and another Malaysian Food Outlet selling roast chicken for $14 per chicken!!

Yes so the place is huge and some items are cheap and the range of goods on offer especially Malaysian made products is quite tremendous, but.. I don't think it will beat Supasave in any way for Australian or UK products. Even their vegetables and range of fruits at 2.30pm today were looking a quite sad and very layu! So Hua Ho and Pasar Burong will still be a necessity. From time to time their offers might be worth a visit, Their beef products did not impress me at all, Supasave still a winner in that area nor did their bakery were on par with that at Suapsave, obviously it caters for the masses being a hypermarket but I have seen better Hypermarkets overseas. For now it will be a novelty to most and parking will be scarce for the next week or so, but most of their prices are at the same range as those offered by the other supermarkets. Obviously for us the consumers it will be good as there is now more competition and better prices all round.

Air of Change?

I have been mulling over how to change my blog as to whether I should commercialise it more to get proper (?- meaning other than family members) customers for my cakes or whether I should create 2 different blogs ie one for family news and general thoughts etc and another one for recipes and photos of cakes etc. But... at the end of the day my laziness has won over me and you know what, I think I should just improve this blog site instead so as not to confuse firends and create unnecassary waste of time for me also in updating 2 blogs ..eski banar jua kali tu ah kan ada 2 blog satu sudah payah-payah!!.

So I am in the midst of compiling my Blog Phlet as Ka Whiz calls them or a slide show of the cakes I have done and I will attach prices to the pictures. It's taking a while because I am not terribly good at downloading photos and arranging them if anybody is using a simpler method please do share your trick of the trade.

As for family news- the family all trouped down to the Empire Theatre last Saturday night to see Amin take part in the 10th Anniversary musical Gala. The show was very well put together and performed brilliantly with not just orchestra performances, but superb singing and entertaining dancers! It was nice to see familiar faces of friends of the children showing off their talents! Amin was part of the drum line and percussion team for the Orchestra and Jazz Band. He practiced real hard for the show and was so happy to be involved after all he is one of the original students of JIS having been there since the school was set up in 1997. It was particularly a proud moment Amin especially as his Grandpa was guest of Honour last Saturday. I could not get up close to take photos of Amin as we were quite high up and he was way at the back with the other percussionists. There have been some photos posted in http://www.ranoadidas.com/ though for those who missed the show though sadly there none of the drumline or percussionists!

I have also been following avidly the political developments in Malaysia considering my first thesis was on the disunity within BN and UMNO in the late 80's. It has taken 20 odd years for that disunity amongst party leaders and racial discontent to finally reach the grass roots level and cause such an upset in the elections. What an election! Despite what we see or hear on the general media, where everthing is ofcourse very pro BN,there were indeed rumblings of discontent on the internet via blogs etc for the last couple of years already, so you could say the oppostion had a head start in their campaigning!!..some views were indeed very radical and I myself did not really believe that the bloggers could have caused such an upset but maybe Malaysians were fed up and not contented with what was going on around them and their daily lives. It will be interesting to see now how things will develop in the opposition led states and how BN will reshape itself after this. Whatever it is I hope all goes well!!

More Chocolate Cakes

Well the weekend just past being a long weekend I was hoping to get some time off to lounge about and read my new O magazine, but it was not to be as on Saturday I had to cook for Iqah's birthday tea party plus do her cake. Iqah's cake actually is filled with chocolate mousse and is not as dense as my normal rich chocolate cake. On Sunday I had to a large birthday cake for Norah for her to bring to school tomorrow as well as for a family friend Iyah who celebrated her birthday two weeks ago ! But I promised her a Rich Chocolate cake so voila! Happy birthday Iqah, Norah and a belated birthday to Iyah. I was going to make 3 blueberry cheesecakes for a few friends also since I was on a roll!! skali...my oven broke down!! Aaargh! This is soo annoying. Some people from Mayer came by today and said some parts needed replacing but they were not sure if they had them?!! Does this mean I need a new oven? We will just have to wait and see I guess. If I do need a new oven for sure I will a need a huge bake sale to support the move! By the way chocolate cakes the size for Norah which is 14 x14 will cost $60 to order and the size of Iqah's cake which is 12 inches and around 5 inches high will cost $50 to order, 10inches cake will cost you $40 to order. E-mail me at jasminetaib@hotmail.com for enquiries.

I have posted some photos which we took in Singapore recently. There was an exhibition on Formula One cars by Petronas at the front of Takashimaya. Amin I think was hoping to try out the simulators but the queue was too long. Zahra my little shopaholic had a blast at 2 Toys R Us stores - one at Paragon and a bigger one at Vivo City. No I diidn't let her buy the Hanny Manny or Dora doll btu she only wanted a picture of her favourite cartoon figures! I quite like Vivo City as it reminds a lot of shopping centres in Europe, although the information staff were not helpful in explaining where the restaurants were located. We ended up going to one of the food courts on the top floor which had limited choice of muslim food only one Indonesian stall and one Indian stall selling admitedly very yummy briyani. After lunch we went one floor down and found one whole row of restaurants which we could have gone to!! Still we had a good trip to Singapore as always! I managed to stock up on my baking needs but prices were exhorbitently high! As for classes in decorating, this will prove to be difficult in Singapore as they do not really cater to clients with tight time schedule in Singapore, so it looks like Kl might be the better choice as they are more friendly in organising classes for overseas clients.