DESSERT FOR BREAKFAST!?

TOO GOOD NOT TO SHARE.

Ok so I've been having peanut butter/nutella cravings for a long time now. I've occasionally splurged out on a packet of peanut M&M's, shared a cupcake or an ice cream if presented with a nutty flavour but haven't properly had the chance to fully indulge. You can imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon this COMPLETELY HEALTHY RECIPE online (healthy as in nutritionally actually REALLY good for you - what!?)

"Nutella" Overnight Dessert Oats (don't let the name fool you - it doesn't taste like oats what so ever - tasted like the most delicious moussey chocolatey goodness)

I love food blogs. And I love experimenting in the kitchen. HOWEVER I find the hardest part (a part from the cleanup, of course) is actually finding all the ingredients. After that throwing it all together doesn't seem too menicing. It's when I don't understand the ingredients or even know where to find them... So you can imagine how EVEN MORE EXCITED I was to find out that I could find every single ingredient I needed in Brown Rice Paradise at Tanglin Mall (except the protein powder which I already had lying around..)! All in one place! Amazing.

Ran there, ran home and did this.. (recipe from CHOCKOHLAWTAY which can be found here, she has so many other really cool ones so do have a look at her site!)

Source: http://chockohlawtay.blogspot.sg/

Step 1 ingredients:
1/2 cup Rolled Oats (old fashioned - gluten free if needed)
1 tbs Hazelnut Butter (natural, no sugar/salt/oil added)
1/3 - 1/2 Almond Milk (unsweetened; or any other milk) - I used 1/2 almond milk

Step 2 ingredients:
1 scoop Chocolate Protein Powder (32g scoop) - I used my own 'Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard Double Rich Chocolate' which I got at GNC.1 tbs Regular Cocoa Powder - I used Organic Green & Black's1 tbs Ground Flaxseeds (or ground chia seeds)
1/16 tsp Salt
2 - 5 packets Sweetener (I used 3 stevia packets and it was pretty sweet so I personally wouldn't put anymore unless you have a serious sweet tooth)

Method:- In a medium sized bowl, add all the Step 1 ingredients and stir.
- Add the Step 2 ingredients and stir again.
- Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight and enjoy the next morning! (I left mine in the fridge til the morning after and they were still ok - Just, you know, if you were intending to make more for .. later days.. I thought you should know).

IT IS THAT SIMPLE!
I moved my mix into a prettier bowl before covering it with plastic wrap just so it was pretty to present in the morning!


I did a little comparison of the nutritional value compared to that of a cup of Chocolate Haagen Daz and holy moly! (This is just what I found on a calorie counter website for Haagen Daz and the other was putting in the ingredients I personally used, MAY NOT BE ACCURATE WHAT SO EVER - It was just something I wanted to look at)

2 SERVINGS OF 'NUTELLA' BREAKFAST OATS                       1 CUP OF CHOCOLATE HAAGEN DAZ ICE CREAM 

1 cup of Haagen Daz chocolate ice cream next to 2 servings of the Nutella Dessert (dad and I shared) - CRAZY! Look at the fat, especially saturated fat! AND it includes dietary fibre and so much more protein! wahoo! Having said that I'll never go off ice cream - but it's good to know, hehe. The funny thing is this is probably more nutritionally satisfying than a normal breakfast for me even thought it feels a million times more naughty. Weird? Maybe I should study nutritional science. Dad describes it as a "chocolate ice cream bircher muesli" and that he'd "eat it everyday", hahaha.

SUCCESS!

CHOCOLATE CAKE AND POPSICLE STICKS

What could have been a better combination for a blog title!? OK so this has been a long time coming and I'm so so so x 100 sorry that I'm so slow (as always) with the blogging. BUT as promised, here are my easy recipies that I found to making this yummy (super duper easy) chocolate cake and these refreshingly healthy (healthy? what!?) popsicle sticks! SO GOOD.

Basically got the recipie from one of my favourite blog reads here. Looks A LOT better but hey, a girl can try right? I replaced the strawberry cake with chocolate cause the birthday boy I was cooking for turned out to be a chocolate on chocolate kind of guy (although I personally would have gone with the strawberry, nomnomnom!)

As stated on her page, its more of a 'how-to' than a recipe but all in all its definitely worth making! Chocolate cake, chocolate icing covered in gobsmakingly good chocolate treats. I used whoppers just because I passed Candy Emporium and realised that they actually had them in Singapore but it works with maltesers (and could potentially beat the whoppers) so, either way.

Although I love baking from scratch, the box cake mix idea was really appealing as it saved a lot of time and the pre-made frosting is recommended as the whoppers stuck a lot better to it! (Therefore you can use whatever cake recipe and buttercream you want to!).

METHOD:

- Bake the cake and let it cool
- Place cake on a platter and ice the cake

-Before the icing sets start a row of Whoppers/Maltesers around the bottom of the cake (resting each one on top of the plate but lightly pressed into the sides of the cake). Continue around the bottom and then add another row above the first and keep going until the sides of the cake are completely coated in Whoppers/Maltesers.
-Once covered, continue on the top until the whole cake is covered. I did mine in a circular motion working towards the middle.

AND TADAAAAAAA.. now wasn't that easy? This blog is making me really hungry, I'm so glad I have a dessert buffet date in a sec (but thats for another post..).

And now to get a little more fruity..

Berry Yogurt Popsicles. The best part? Their actually healthy! WOOHOO! (Over the moon with my new health kick). I got the recipe from this amazing website that not only provides yummy healthier versions of your favourite meals (and your soon to be favourites..), it also gives you the calorie counter and nutritional information so you don't have to guess around (especially if maths isn't your forte). You can view it here.

Once again I am working on presentation but pretty popsicle molds are hard to find! I got mine from Shermay's Cooking School located at Chip Bee Gardens (Holland Village).

 INGREDIENTS:

For the purple:
- 1 cup blueberries
- 1/2 cup blackberies
- 6 oz fat free blueberry yogurt
- 1 cup crushed ice 

For the white:
- 14 oz fat free vanilla yogurt
- 2 tbsp agave or sugar
 - 1 cup crushed ice

For the pink:
- 3/4 cup raspberries
- 3/4 cup strawberries
- 6 oz fat free strawberry yogurt
- 1 cup crushed ice METHOD:

- Blend each colour smoothie separately in a blender and set aside
- Pour the pink smoothie mix into the popsicle molds 1/4 of the way and then put it in the freezer for 30 minutes. Remove from the freezer AND THEN insert the popsicle stick, and freeze again for one hour.

- Add the white smoothie mix into each popsicle mold 1/3 more of the way (so that 2/3s of the mold is full) and freeze again for another hour.
- Add the purple smoothie mix and fill it up to the top of the mold and freeze until ready to eat!
This recipe makes 16 popsicles and is 51 calories each!

WOOHOO! My first little recipe thing done! Not sure if it was at all that interesting but I hope you enjoy and if you have a free afternoon, definitely give them a go because they were delicious.

Love!
Ming xx P.S. You can continue to let me know on twitter if theres anything in particular you want me to (attempt to) blog about - just like these on instagram!

ANGMO SINGS MANDARIN!?

The reaction I generally get when I'm doing an english set and I suddenly break out in mandarin (even though I am eurasian.. hehe). I LOVE mandarin songs and I adore singing them - there's just so much emotion and the lyrics are always beautiful. I've always always always wanted to have my own chinese songs and its literally a dream come true that I now do. 'Some Guys' has been playing on YES933 since yesterday so keep a look out for that! You can let me know if my diction is passable, hehe. Downloads should be up soon - I'll keep you updated on everything. And... I'm so excited for you to see the video which comes out later this month! And... MY ALBUM COMES OUT IN UNDER A MONTH! So excited! Another thing I'm very excited about is Chinese New Year! I missed my first one ever last year when I was in boarding school in england (but I did have a mini CNY dinner there with my friends - I couldn't not!)

Skirt from FEMMEX

So anyway - I headed out to do a little CNY shopping. I'm now decked out with all the red clothes I need and my Ama should be very pleased! Afterwards me and Yen went to catch a mandarin police thriller to give my mandarin a little practice.

Colourful! Had a little down time on the weekend so my cousins and I made rainbow cupcakes! SO girly but I love it!

Pretty!! Ok wow these photos are HUGE. 

Had a little trouble with the icing as we got too excited and didn't wait for the cupcakes to cool down resulting with all of the pink prettiness on top melting! But the inside is so colourful! I'm now currently saving myself for Chinese New Year but its not going so well with all the treats on sale at the moment. Urgh. My constant battle with all the delicious foods of the world.

Now just getting ready for my next shoot! Tada! After days of sitting in my room writing songs, hair up, baggy clothes, it's nice to dress up! Well I'm still wearing normal clothes for this shoot but you know what I mean... I love wavy hair!

Love love love!

Ming xx

TOP OF THE WORLD

So... right now I'm approaching the end of a very satisfying 2 week break off recording - F1, AVALON AT LARGE GO! (LMFAO!), RAZOR TV (with Kevin Lao Shi!!), FOAM PARTY, YOGA, THE CATARACS, HYPE plus my first experience with chilli crab (after living here for 18 years, I'm a bit embarrassed..) there's too much to talk about!

In my last 48 hours I made my first appearance at Filter to see The Catarac's - they played a disappointing short set, but Top Of The World made it worth while! I'm not a big drinker I'm actually allergic to alcohol so spent most of the night with my 'vodka-orange' being only orange juice (shhhhh!) but alas, what's a girl to do!

Awesome sunnies courtesy of Alvin Ng - Also you'll see I'm a HUGE fan of the leopard print trend

I then embarked further on my journey towards becoming master chef by attending my first ever baking class at Poon Huat (horay!). I wore my favourite FEMMEX shirt there but fortunately was given a sweet apron (see below) to protect it. I'm also in love with my spike-y shoes, hehe.

It's all been super fun but I'm pretty excited to get back into the studio and finish off the last of my album - shooting and everything for the new single is happening soon as well so I'm getting back into 'beach bod' mode - not good when you're a huge fan of food, haha. Any advice?

Love love!

Ming.