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 :-)

Not sure if Bakuteh is Hokkien Dish, but it does not originate from mainland China, it is a South East Asia invention, either Malaysian or Singaporean.

My MIL is Hokkien, about 70yo, she cooks very typical Hokkien food but spicy stuff like above mentioned is never cooked, I believe there is a difference between Fuzhou and Hokkien people. Hokkien also seldom cook congee, it's more like a Cantonese thing.

Steve made some very useful points and I really learn alots from his posts. Perhaps "I (personally) think you can't get started in gum paste from a book--that you need to learn hands on then use books as an adjunct" is the only point I don't really agree with. Anyone who wish to learn sugar flowers, be confident that you could do that with reference to books and internet resources, helps from forum pals, hands on is a good to have or a need to have for some people who learns better by viewing the process of doing it but certainly is not a must to have. Just like any other medium of art, practises make perfect! There are many of us that never attend hands on classes, that could make beautiful flowers. Before you start with any flowers, try to read and understand the instructions, with reference to step by step photos. Once you master and learn your way to make sugar flowers, that include to make the sugar dough that works the best for you, to cut, vein, wired, and assemble the flowers, then you could move further to learn on colouring it to give a realistic look. On the level of realistic, I believe that depends on the usage of sugar flowers. For example, if you would want to make some sugar flowers for display, perhaps you should spend some time to do some research on that particular type of flower to make it botanical correct. However, if you are going to place the sugar flowers on a cake, then you could attempt to make a simplified version of the flowers, or even apply a dramatic colour to give a special decor to your cake. There is no restrictions when comes to art, feel free to play around Would like to share with you a short paragraph Alison Procter wrote in her book Simplifying Sugar Flowers: "It was never my intention that every flower and leaf should be copied exactly - use my examples as starting points, and then allow your own ideas to unfold. Learn to think shape not flower, and you will soon discover that there are only a few basic shapes, but thousands of flowers to be made!" I'm sure you will enjoy Alison's book, she is also a watercolour artists, hence you will get inspired by her artistic approach in making sugar flowers.

Actually, the taste of soy sauce has been localised to suit the taste bud of locals. Therefore, if "authetic" in taste of a recipe you pursue is important to you, you should first research on the geographical origin of that particular recipe, and try to source the right soy sauce for that particular recipe. I believe it is more like a habitual taste preference

in contrast to Gastro888, my tongue is very sensitive to fatty bits in char siu bao, even a tiny little bit will make me aware of it and I will pick it out from my mouth! haha.. my ingredient list of making char siu seems very simplified>> pork loin marinate with light soy sauce and a little premium dark soy sauce (lao3 chou1), five spice and cinnamon powder to taste, honey and red colouring (try to omit colouring if cook for family). Pork loin is a little dry when done, but definitely a healthier choice.

For those who already knows how to make some gp flowers, I strongly recommend any Alan Dunn, Tombi Peck et al's book on sugar flowers: Exotic Sugar Flowers for Cakes Sugar Roses for Cakes Sugar Orchids for Cakes. very detailed step by step instructions to make each flowers, bulbs, leaves, colourings etc. I don't have SCW's book but his cutters and veiners are very very good Apologize>> I didn't know that I should not post photos from other websites, photos have been removed.

If you do not have any experience with sugar flowers at all, Alison Procter's Simplifying Sugar Flowers is a very good book to start at... she will teach you how to create many types of sugar flowers from very simple tools and just a few cutters. Another good book to start from is Wilton's gp flower starter kit, with an instruction book, some plastic cutters and veiners to make flowers the Wilton way, and wooden sticks in a few sizes to roll and thin the gp. Apologize>> I didn't know that I should post photos from other websites, photo has been removed.

I am a Malaysian Chinese, the soy sauce we normally use, whether to make simple dippy like cut chillies or chilli padi, or simple marination of meat or seafood, or addy to taste when we found food not salty enough is the thin soy sauce (in Han Yu, we call jiang4 qin1 or sheng1 chou1) There is a type of dark soy sauce, in Han Yu we pronounce as "lao3 chou1" that is much thicker and richer in flavour, that normally used to enhance the taste of a dish, the adding of lao chou will make the dish to look darker. Another type of dark soy sauce, that we could "jiang4 you2" is thick and very dark, carries a special aroma, but not salty in taste (and doesn't taste sweet too) is commonly used to add dark colour to dishes. If your dark soy sauce tasted sweet and was manufactured in Indonesia, it is very likely that you bought the one that is used for Indonesian dishes. My ex-house mate is Indonesian, her soy sauce is sweet in taste as you desbribed, she added lots of soy sauce to darker her soto ayam and claimed it was wonderful! :-P this website has a little description of different type of soy sauce: http://www.leekumkee.com Select : Global / Products / Retail Product / Soy Sauce They also provide a Soy Sauce Production Virtual Tour I do not recommend attempts on making your own soy sauce as most of the soy sauce is very reasonable priced, but if your purpose of making own soy sauce is to have some fun as well as to gain some knowledge in the process of soy sauce making, please keep us updated on your progress :-) Thanks.

The safest to transport multi-tiered cakes would be to box each tier separately and assemble on site. However, for a six tier cake you could do that by stacking every two tier hence end up with 3pcs for easy stacking on site, a stack of two-tier cake is very stable, especially for fondant wrapped cakes. Straws can be used as dowels for butter cakes filled and frosted with bc and wrapped with fondant, tried and true but make sure you use those solid type of straws like the ones we get from McDonnald's.