11 Years old today with a Chocolate Awesomeness Cake

I know its been a while since I updated this blog with any recipes so I suppose it's kind of fitting that this latest update is about my son's 11th Birthday! It was kinda fortunate that his birthday fell on a Public Holiday today so we were able to stay at home with him and also invited the family over for a Birthday Lunch. My parents were away in Melbourne while my brother and his daughters were in Gold Coast so that meant slightly fewer people. Still, there were about 15 odd people invited!

As per the tradition in this household, we woke my son up after hiding his presents under the bed. My little princess had 'camped' on the floor in his room the previous night too!



For his birthday this year, he got a replica Chelsea jersey and also a table football game - Subbuteo - something that Dads had always wanted when he was young as well! It didnt take long for both the kids to test out the game.


The Lovely Wife, together with help from her Mom, did their magic and whipped up the lunch spread. For lunch there was Stewed Pork (Tau Yew Bak) with Man Tau buns;



Fried Prawns, Chicken Curry,




Yoghurt Curry (Mohr Curry) Mixed Vegetables,




Vegetable Accar (Pickles) and Onion Rice.



Quite a fancy little spread if you ask me! My contribution as usual was dessert and the Birthday Cake.

My son had asked for a different cake, something that would be really nice but also chocolatey. He especially liked the Chocolate Truffle Torte that I had made for Christmas last year so I decided to adapt that recipe and make something completely new.

Actually, for this cake, I adapted various different recipes and components that I had made before to assemble this cake. I used the tried and tested Cake Boss Sponge recipe that I have grown to love as the base. I modified my Tiramisu soaking syrup to make it less coffee flavoured. I used the Praline Feulletine component of the Le Kit Kat cake inspired by Michel Richard and adapted the Truffle from the Chocolate Truffle Torte to assemble this cake.

Second Article in New Sunday Times

This is the second article from me for The New Sunday Times. The articles focus on Cooking at Home and involving the family.

This is the link for the article: Sunday - Life and Times - FAMILY: Somethings Stewing

The tagline reads:
Dharm Navaratnam, engineer by day and a closet chef at other times, offers more comfort recipes you can try out with the family.

A Closet chef! LOL, I quite like that description!!

Featured in New Sunday Times

I was commissioned by The New Straits Times to write a few articles on Cooking at Home and focusing on involving the family. The first article appeared today in the New Sunday Times.

This is the link for the article: Sunday - Life and Times - FAMILY: Family affair

Spaghetti ei Gamberi

You do know that a name for a pasta dish in Italian always sounds better right? Doesn't Pasta Gamberi sound so much better than Prawn Pasta with Roasted Garlic and Mushroom Sauce? I think it does!

So anyway, you'd have figured out that I made a Prawn Pasta in a Roasted Garlic and Mushroom Sauce. The Lovely Wife had bought some prawns from the market and had planned to fry them up as the kids just love fried prawns.

Since I haven't made any new pasta for a while, I decided to make a meal out of the prawns and came up with the quick yet very tasty dish. I had originally planned to just make my aglio olio and then stir fry the prawns and add it in. However, seeing that there were mushrooms available as well, I decided to use mushrooms together with the prawns for a nice mix of earthiness and sea produce!

Brownie Throwdown - Gary Mehigan

All of us are big fans of Junior MasterChef Australia so it was no surprise that on a recent quick trip to Sydney on work, The Lovely Wife bought me a copy of Gary Mehigan's cookbook. Over the weekend, I was in the mood to bake something and was rifling through Gary's book. I came across his Brownies and although I have my own tried and tested recipe, I thought why not try his out and see how it compares?
The kids also love watching Bobby Flay's 'throwdown' and so when I suggested that I make the Mehigan Brownie, the kids were game and likened it to a 'throwdown'! Okay, not quite the same as a real throwdown but it would be a fun thing to do. In any case, I really wanted to see how Gary's brownies would turn out.

Chocolate Chip Cookies - a recipe vs a packet!

For those of you that follow this blog, you would know that I am not really a biscuit/cookie person. Sure, I love to eat them but I dont often have the patience to make them preferring to bake cakes anytime.

That is not to say that I have never baked cookies/biscuits. I have and I will continue to do so. My two darling kids love chocolate chip cookies and they love the ready-mix Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip cookies. I'm usually very against using ready-mixed anything but somehow the Betty Crocker ones turn out really well and are really very tasty. It's getting harder to find the Betty Crocker premixes here but we had two packets on hand not too long ago when some of Michael's friends came over for a school project.