miaomee

Perhaps what I described had totally defied your experience, I am sorry I didn't know that we shall use Canton or Hong Kong's style as a blueprint.

"Bak Zham Gai" matches with ginger dippy or oyster sauce dippy might appeal to older generations from Singapore or Malaysia. Steam egg makes another good dishes for old folks. You could do as simple as "steam water egg" with a garnish of soy sauce and coriander leaves or you could "steam 3 yolk egg" with shrimps and some small char siew pieces. When the egg is ready to be served, put a 1/4 teaspoon of garlic oil, and some fried garlic flakes on the egg, smells marvelous.

That's rather interesting. It is totally different from the Chinese custom. In formal Cantonese banquets in Hong Kong, the "soup" is usually shark-fin soup which is the 4th/5th (I forgot) course. The eighth course is usually fried chicken, right after steamed fish, followed by the "starch" like fried noodles/fried rice and such. In Cantonese banquets in USA, things are altered a bit. They usually bring out "soup" (such as West Lake beef soup, crab-meat asparagus soup, etc.) as the first course. In casual dining in USA, they would bring out the "house soup" before the main course arrive. I have not seen soup seved at the end, unless you are talking about the "dessert soup" such as red bean dessert soup, or cantaloupe soup with tapioca, etc.. ← I once read an article to explain the reason different dishes were arranged in a Chinese banquet, most of the menus follows a few simple rule: 1) Entree or Chinese call it "cold dish", for a formal banquet setup, there could be a warm entree and a cold entree 2) The rest of the dishes will be arranged according to their tastes - from the lightest to the heaviest. In Malaysia and Singapore, shark fin soup is normally served soon after the entree. 3) Vegetable dish is normally served after all the meat dishes, as it is a Chinese tradition to serve their guests with meat as a token of respect. 4) Rice and noodles are served after vegetable dish, just in case guests still had not enough. 5) Lastly comes dessert or fruits. For rich people banquet, or those who are very particular about "eating", menu shall be created with no repetition of dishes in mind. For example, if fried chicken wings were served in warm entree, there shall not be xing li gai or zai zi gai in the menu. Not sure if the above are true but I did follow these rules when creating the menu for my own wedding banquet

Thank you for posting all these photos, else I would not have a chance to see all these wonderful creations!

plk, there is dimension stated with the miniature pans, it is rather small... each of it would produce a single serving. I've seen decorators using these pans to make miniature wedding cakes, but they don't bake using these pans, they apply a layer of chocolate, let cold and set and fill it with cakes, then remove the whole thing from the mold. I suggest you write to cooksdream to inquire on how to use their mini cake mold prior to purchase.

joshalow, I am so jealous on your collections of Alan Dunn's book, We have the same reasoning over the Sugar Roses book, I prefer a book that will cover more flower types, the Floral Wedding Cakes and Sprays sounds fabulous!

we make the soup with ikan bilis (dried small fish), it taste yummy and compliment the wonton well.

Wendy, I have Alan Dunn's Sugar Roses and Sugar Orchids, I will recommend Sugar Orchids, since this book also covers instructions for sugar roses and other foliage... and variety of lively orchids Don't worry, regardless which book you buy first, you will feel the need to buy all

My dear.....I most certainly know this. I'm a professional cake artist. Most of the time I have no control over temperature change....especially when I have up to 6 wedding cakes in a weekend, with fillings that need to be refrigerated, and I have to work on all of them the week prior. Into the walk in they go, and out they come. The temperature changes. They sweat. The Health Dept. would most certainly have my head if I kept my walk-in close to room temperature. This is the reality for most cake artists and I was speaking to that. Just so you know and stuff. ← I'm sorry, I knew you are a professional cake artist, I visited your website and am amazed with your beautiful cakes. I just write that down for reference of beginners, no offence.

depends on situation, if you only need fondant cut outs or pieces in navy blue, it will be alright to try to knead your fondant to navy blue. But if you need to get a navy blue fondant to cover your cakes, it will be better to tint it to light blue, or leave it in white, and airbrush the colour on. Personally I wouldn't eat a "fully" coloured fondant, it looks scary to eat so many colourings though we know those colours are food safe.

my mom too make her sauce each time from scratch, reasons giving she thinks to keep master sauce is inhygenic, and we also love to mix the braise sauce with steamed rice... hmmm.... yum and we always finished off all the sauce. I believe it will be no harm to make from scratch each time you want to braise, just using master sauce will provide a more flavourful braised dish.

I've watched a short documentary film about the master sauce, lu2 shui2 (han yu). The restaurant featured in the film is selling braised goose, duck, chicken, pork, pork organs and anything else you could think of. The owner of the shop mentioned that the lu shui was passed to his generation from his father, and he prepares to pass to his son when he finally ready to take over the business. He said the master sauce can be kept indefinitely. However, he braises different meat in different pot because certain type of leftover braise sauce would not be kept for reuse (i forgotten which type). He also add different amount of soy sauce and spices for braising different type of meat. He mentioned that there was once they moved from old shop to the current one and he accidentally dropped the pot of master sauce, and managed to save half of the sauce only, and he always felt upset about that incident and be very careful when handling with master sauce. Here a little I watched about master sauce.

Karen, do you add any tylose or gum trag into your paste?

Kevin, nice site you have there! and I found two beautiful cakes on your site under "dessert" page. Since you are self taught in learning sugar flowers, do you mind to show us some of your works? Probably some flowers that you learned from classes too? just out of curiousity :-)