Almond Coffee Cake

My mother-in-law gave me her gorgeous coffee cake recipe for Christmas because she knows I've been wanting it for a long time. Thanks Irene :) The recipe called for pecans but I didn't have any around the house so I replaced it with almonds. You can definitely use any kind of oily nuts for this cake like pecans, walnuts, pistachios or even pine nuts. Oh my, I loved the cinnamon aroma filling up the entire house while the cake was being baked! Just as the name suggests, this cake is best served with a piping hot cup of coffee or tea.

This is what it looks like while still in the pan

On the plate, what a beaut!

Phở Gà

My first try at making chicken Phở and it was wildly successful. One chicken yielded such a big batch so I froze the rest of the broth into ice cubes. Things to remember next time:
- Make a big batch of broth only, sugar+salt, leave out the spice and fish sauce
- Rock sugar is quite sweet, 1 lump of 1/4 size of my palm is good enough

Pumpkin carving

This was my first pumpkin carving experience with two other pumpkin-carving veteran Moms. Obviously I'm not a Halloween kind of person so needless to day, I entered this competition with certain hesitation. It turns out to be alot better than I thought considering I almost cut off my fingers a few times! This was surprisingly scary with all sort of razor sharp serrated knives we used for scooping and carving, some pointy ones for intricate details. I actually don't know how the Moms could have this as a kid-friendly activity!

Here's the end product. It looks quite cute huh =) So proud of myself! I can't wait to do this again next year. There were some other pumpkins on the floor with much more intricate details but I still rate ours as the best for cuteness factor.