Hello! I've finally found some time to post a recipe on my blog. I have always been a huge fan of sour/tart foods. When I order smoothies, I'll always go for something with passionfruit, and I'll always order a scoop of fruity & sour ice cream/sorbet to go with the other scoop of rich creamy ice cream. It's a taste that never bores you y'know, aka you'll never be gelat (Singaporean slang for "sick") Anyway, I digress. As you can read from the title, it's on lemon meringue cupcakes! Yes, not the pie because I didn't have a 9" pie tin ugh.
There's 3 parts to this recipe: lemon curd, lemon cupcake, meringue
Lemon curd
1 egg, lightly whisked
50g butter
4 teaspoons lemon zest
1/4 cup (60ml) lemon juice
1/2 cup (100g) caster sugar
Step 1:
Combine the egg, butter, lemon rind and juice and sugar in a small saucepan over low heat. Cook and stir for 5 minutes or until mixture boils and thickens. Remove from heat.
Note: Stirring is extremely important to prevent the egg from scrambling too much. Mine had a little bit of whites that got cooked but it's okay because you'll strain it eventually. You can add more/less lemon zest/juice/sugar based on how tart/sweet you like it to be.
Step 2:
Strain through a fine sieve into a clean bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to cool and thicken more, so don't worry if it isn't too thick when you're cooking it.
This lemon curd can fill more than 12 cupcakes :)
Zesting 2 lemons would give you enough zests for the curd and cupcake. 60ml of juice is 1 lemon's worth :)
Here's the end product!
Lemon cupcakes
100g butter, softened
1 cup (200g) caster sugar
3 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups (225g) self-raising flour (If you only have plain flour, check here on how to turn it into "self-raising flour")
1/2 cup (125ml) milk/almond/soy milk (I used almond milk)
Step 1:
Preheat oven to 180°C. Line twelve 1/3-cup (80ml) muffin pans with paper cases.
Step 2:
Use an electric mixer to beat the butter, sugar and lemon rind until pale and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Add the flour and milk, in alternate batches until just combined.
Step 3:
Spoon mixture evenly among the lined pans, about 3/4 full, and smooth the surface. Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until cooked through. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Step 4:
Core the cupcakes with an apple corer or simply use a knife to cut a well in the middle of the cupcakes. Fill it with the lemon curd you've made previously.
I'm super proud of my rather smooth looking cupcakes :)
Meringue
I picked this up from Ben at Sorted Food and it's super easy to remember. The ratio is just 1:1:1.
2 egg whites
Caster sugar (of equivalent mass as whites)
Icing sugar (of equivalent mass as whites)
1/2 teaspoon of white wine vinegar (optional)
Step 1:
Wipe bowl and whisk with rice vinegar to get rid of any possible oil that would prevent the meringues from rising. Add in egg whites and beat on high until stiff peaks are formed
Step 2:
Add in caster sugar and beat till dissolved, then add in the icing sugar.
Step 3:
Add 1/2 teaspoon of white wine vinegar if you like your meringue to be soft and chewy in the middle. (you can skip this part if you don't want it) Then beat until all the sugar has dissolved and glossy stiff peaks are formed.
Glossy stiff peaks of meringue omg. <3
Step 4:
For a rustic look, just scoop it onto the cupcakes and create random peaks and swirls.
For a neater look, scoop the meringue into a piping bag with any piping tip of your choice (I used Wilton 1M tip)
Step 5:
To brown the meringue, either use a torch or use your oven/grill, but be sure to keep an eye on it to prevent it from burning.
Final product!
Just look at that filling oozing out of the cupcake omg haha. The problem I have with this recipe is that the lemon taste in the cupcake isn't that strong, but the lemon curd makes up for it. The sweet meringue compliments the tartness, so it's a good balance. Of course, if you don't like sweet things, you can always reduce the sugar to your own preference. This however, was given the stamp of approval by both my parents, who don't like overly sweet foods.
Hello there! I haven't been updating this space because I was lazy, as per usual. But I just wanted to share my experience at Montigo Resorts. Do note that these are all based on my own experiences and I am not paid to advertise for them. Do not rip my photos or I'll stab you (I kid lol)
Getting there
We went to the one at Nongsa, Batam, Indonesia. They have just recently opened one in Bali, Indonesia as well. As you guys know, there's actually two terminals that have ferries to bring us to Indonesia: Tanah Merah & Harbourfront. We had to go to the Tanah merah one, which is also the one that people go to to go to (that's confusing lol) Bintan. It is super out of the way, but luckily I had my dad to send me there. (But FYI, the trip from my house - Admiralty - to the terminal cost about $25)
We booked our tickets from Batamfast and we bought insurance as well, so we ended up spending about $50 each on tickets (two ways). Singaporeans do not need to have visas or anything, just be sure to head to the Batamfast counter with your passports and get your physical tickets. Be at the terminal about 1 hour before so you can chill and get things done. Small luggages can be brought up the ferry but huge ones have to be checked in.
The ferry ride was only about 30min, and good thing was that the haze wasn't bad for the entire trip. (Must thank the wind god) Upon arrival at Nongsa terminal, the first thing that struck me was that it wasn't as high tech as the one at Sekupang because this didn't have the electronic scanners (for Singapore passports) and wasn't air conditioned as well. But whatever, it's not like I'm sleeping there HAHAHA.
So, as what most resorts would do is that they would send someone to bring you to the resort (remember to liase with them via email) and we were well on our way. When we arrived at the resort, we were greeted warmly with cold towels (soaked in lemon, I presume) and some cold drink that we had no idea what it was LOL. We were then brought to the reception where we waited while a guy, I remember he's called Ricky, helped us out with check in procedures. They were super friendly, like throughout our entire stay and I loved it. Once everything was settled, they helped us call the buggy and sent us to our villa, VILLA 86!
I know there hasn't been much photos till now, they're coming up! HEH. I snapchatted instead, so.... oops.
Villa
There are 5 types of villas: Garden villa, Hill top villa, Hill side villa, Seafront villa and Spa villa. We chose the seafront villa because we wanted unobstructed view of the sea. One night cost us $320, but be sure to check out the offers that they have so you'll get to save money! Oh and, they only allow a maximum of 4 guests per villa because there's only 1 master bedroom (1 King sized bed) and 1 guest room (2 single beds). There's also 3 levels, usually the infinity pool and the living room is on the first floor, bedrooms on the second and the sky terrace is (obviously) on the rooftop. Oh, and we booked it for 4 days 3 nights, which totaled up to $1.1k after other charges.
A photo posted by c y n t h i a 🔱 (@thlovecarousel) on
It's a really good photo taking spot since you get all the natural sunlight that you need, and it's white. Instagram worthy!
Just me and my donut float HAHAHA
The view from our private infinity pool
Yes, I bought this for the trip HAHAHA
They do provide mosquito sprays and creams for us. I swear that while sitting in the living room, we were constantly killing mosquitoes with the spray, there'd be one every few minutes or so. Now that I think about it, the amount of karma we've accumulated would have been quite significant HEH.
I didn't take a photo of the super awesome bathroom in the master bedroom though, coz I snapchatted it instead lol. But it was huge! One huge ass bathtub, glass ceiling so we could watch stars, two sinks etc etc. They would come and clean every morning, so if you don't want them to disturb you while you snooze, you can hang a sign. Pretty common everywhere. They've got a safe for you to put your valuable stuff so be sure to put it inside, and lock your luggages too. You can't be too careless when you're overseas, else it'll be a major pain in the ass.
REMEMBER, you can call the buggy to go everywhere. They are damn nice, just chat with them k!
Food
There are 3 dining areas within the resort: Tadd's (All day dining - Indonesian, Western), Pantai (Seafood, tze char/Chinese) and Tiigo (beach club/bar)
Unfortunately, Tiigo is only open from Thursdays to Sundays and we checked in on a Sunday, so we didn't really try it. It would be cool to chill by the pool with drinks though.
This is Tadd's
Food at Tadd's
Food: Beef burger, nachos and Nasi Goreng
Drinks: Blue cappuccino and coconut
Coconut creme brulee, can't quite taste the coconut though
This is the food from Pantai
Don't judge the amount of food we ordered for each meal, my friend clears it all, no joke. I apologize for bad quality photos because it was taken at night. Okay so, there's not as much mosquitoes at Pantai because they burnt the mosquito coil (the green one) but at Tadd's, they didn't, so be sure to apply some repellant on you before you go.
If you don't really want to head to the restaurants, then you can call for room service!
We only had room service on the last day because.... we just decided to eat out the first few days
Activities
There's quite a lot of things you can do there, be sure to check their site to find out more. We pretty much just went to the gym and chilled in our pool on the first day since we only had half a day. On the second day, we went to Nagoya Hill shopping centre, it cost us RP60,000 (SGD$6) per pax for this. We had to leave at 10am and they'd pick us up at 4pm. However, if you prefer to do it at your own time, then they can get a taxi for you, but that would cost you RP200,000 (SGD$20) I think. The ride there took us about 30-45min, depending on the traffic.
The first place we went to when we alighted was A&W.
Okay, the reason why we went there first was because we don't have it in Singapore anymore. When we entered, there wasn't a single soul hence the staff all attended to us LOL. But anyway, the food were meh. Quite pathetic actually. We ordered 2 meals, upgraded the drink to the float, and that cost us about SGD$12. Well, slightly cheaper than Maccas, but the meat inside was miserable. It did fill me though, probably because of the float. HAHA.
As I've mentioned earlier, my friend has a HUGE ASS appetite, so we went around eating again, well.. most of the time I was watching him eat LOL. It was pretty similar to the one at Batam central, but this had a lot of food! Maybe because I was with someone who could eat more.
We passed by a store called "Panties pizza". We really LOL-ed. We entered out of curiosity, curious what this store had to offer. Turns out, the pizza was supposed to look like panties, but it doesn't. It wasn't even a pizza, looks like some pocket thingy instead. It was tasty nonetheless, he ordered the banana one, added chocolate to it. Oh and to our surprise, there was cheese inside! Pretty cool haha.
We then walked around, and as usual, we didn't see anything we like, simply because the stuff there didn't really suit our taste. Some things were priced about the same as in Singapore as well, so there wasn't much point.
Now, for the water sports. As this resort is still relatively new, not all facilities are built. After chatting with the staff, we realized that they still haven't have their own water sports because of administrative procedures which require time (but I heard it would be partially done by Nov!)
So instead, we had to head to Turi Beach resort. We took a taxi (They have taxis on standby) and that cost us RP$100,000 (SGD$10) for a round trip, which is really cheap and it took us 15-20min to get there, if I'm not mistaken.
We wanted to go snorkeling, but the water had been pretty murky for the past 2 months due to haze, so that was a no go. None of us dared to operate the jetski, so nope. In the end, we rode on the banana boat for 30min. I totally regretted sitting in front, I was constantly splashed with water -.- But hey, we could see our resort when we were out at sea.
We then tried parasailing. I mean, I've sky dived, so this shouldn't be hard.
Pardon the quality of the video, it got compressed hahahaha
A photo posted by c y n t h i a 🔱 (@thlovecarousel) on
Here's my instagram worthy shot hahahha. But it was really fun! Just that I got a bit of scratches from the parachute while running. Clumsy as usual. Landing in the water was pretty scary for me though since it was open waters, even though I had my life jacket. I love being in the air, flying and though it lasted for about 10min or so, I still enjoyed it a lot. Maybe I should try snorkeling next time and overcome my fear of open waters. Pretty disappointed that we didn't get to go see fireflies though, because there wasn't much tides and all on the nights we were there. Sighpie. :(
So after the water sports, we went for a dip in the pool at the resort and headed back for lunch. And after lunch, we went to the public infinity pool to soak somemore LOL.
The public infinity pool at Montigo
LOL at our shameless photos. But who cares. AHAHAH
Well, after dipping, I went for my SPA. He didn't like massages, so I went alone.
They sent a buggy to pick me up, and once I entered, the receptionist brought me tea and a cold towel. She then proceeded to ask me to fill up a form to ask about the strength etc etc, and whether I was prone to headaches and all. I think this is pretty good since it can help the masseur figure out where to focus on more. I'm pretty ticklish, so I chose medium because having a super soft massage probably won't be useful. They also gave me more head and neck massages since I was prone to headaches. Oh yes! The receptionist also gave me 4 test tubes, each with a different scented massage oil, for me to pick one. 2 of them had black pepper and smelled weird to me, 1 had lavender or something and the last one had lemon grass. I chose the lemon grass one. I already had a complimentary 30min SPA from the package I booked, so I only had to top up another 30min worth. I opted for the Montigo massage, which has softer strokes by the way.
After everything, I was brought to a room to have peppermint tea and cookies. I LOVED THE COOKIES. They had 4 and I finished all 4. What a glutton. They must have cursed me after I left HAHAHA! I then went back to the receptionist, got the receipt and went back to the villa and chilled the last night away.
Overall
All in all, I really enjoyed myself a lot at Montigo. The staff were always very helpful and friendly. The gym instructor loved my friend so much, as he went there every morning, that he drew a portrait of him and waited at the reception to give it to him. Having a private pool was amazing as I can go for a soak whenever I want to. Loved the clean and simple decor of the place, it's so white, super good for photos. The whole resort reminded me of the picturesque Santorini. The only downside was the bugs, but there's nothing much you can do. All I say is that this is a really good place to go to if you want a pretty resort. The rest of the resorts were a lot cheaper, but the rooms were miserably tiny and the service wasn't as great. I would love to try the one at Bali if I get a chance to, since I've never been to Bali.
I hope that this post would come in handy when you need to plan for a trip there! :)
Some might say it's a little pricey, but we don't really like squeezing with too many ppl, and we had a lot of space to ourselves, which was pretty good
I went there twice, so I'll compile the photos, and I might add on more as the deal is valid till December hehe.
The first time I went, it was after school, around 2-3pm, so the lunch crowd was gone.
It was nice because we got to enjoy :)
Wild Funghi soup ($9.90)
This is good in my opinion, it wasn't too thick, like you won't feel sick after drinking it.
But then again, it's a little pricey for me. Haha.
Seafood risotto ($28.90)
This wasn't very good though. I thought risottos are supposed to be stickier?
Maybe it's just my personal preference. Even Sammie said there was nothing fantastic about it.
Smoked salmon with caviar in vodka cream ($23.90)
First, I couldn't taste the vodka LOL
But then, this was nicer than the risotto HAHAHAHA.
Okay, so, of course, we were only charged for the risotto because of the one for one deal :)
Then I went back there the next day for Theo's belated bday celebration with my level 5 short wing girls.
Hawaiian Pizza ($18.90)
Thin crust pizza haha. It wasn't that bad, but to me, pizzas all taste the same LOL
I still love the Classified chicken one from Domino's :P
Sausage pizza ($20.90)
This was a bit salty for me, probably because of the sausage LOL
But still not that bad :)
Clam Vongole ($18.90)
The amount of clams in this is ridiculous. HAHA
But it's good because I like clams. However, I can't taste the spaghetti. Look at how little spaghetti there is :(
Bacon Aglio Olio ($18.90)
THIS THIS THIS.
This is a must try! Even though it's a bit oily, it's really delicious.
It's also spicy, so if you can't take spicy food, you'll have to be careful LOL
JUST TRY THIS WHEN YOU GO THERE! :)
Oh and, did I mention, the coupon/card thing I bought came with a free bottle of red wine.
I don't usually appreciate red wine, but it was quite good, even my friend who drinks wine said so!
In the end, we couldn't finish because we had to rush back for coach supper, which was another round of calories accumulation HAHA.
As you can see, the dishes here are slightly pricey, and I wouldn't have eaten here if not for the coupon I bought. I'm not that rich, even though I like to eat at cafes ><
But anyway, I think it'll be a nice place to go to for a special occasion. With that said, it is definitely not comparable to those super atas (high class) restaurants. Speaking of restaurants, maybe I should check out restaurant week and try out some restaurants :)
It's a really pretty place and because I love things made of wood, I love it even more :)
It is located right opposite the Jalan Besar stadium and the nearest MRT station is Lavender.
It stands out quite a bit because the shops beside it are all older looking, so you won't have difficulty finding it :)
When you enter, you will be greeted with a lot of pies
(okay, squidward looks creepy)
The staff are really nice and guess what, there's no service charge and GST!
Well, but most of the things are self serviced, except for the plain water and your drinks which they'll serve you, otherwise, cutleries and all, you'll have to get them yourself.
I told you the interior looks pretty right? :)
I love the wooden ceiling piece because it's really unique and the lights that come down from it makes the place looks cute.
They have an area with books and magazines and well, the cool yellow fridge is for the chilled water they serve everyone :)
And guess what, they have a humongous teddy bear for your to hug and take photos with!
But then.. I guess many people have hugged it and all, so if you're allergic to dust, please do not risk it!
So, enough for the pretty interior, now for the yums hehe.
I ordered Aloe Vera Rooibus ($6) which was a non-caffeinated drink which smells like peach.
I know because I worked at a teadot cafe before.
Lemon strawberry meringue, grasshopper, white chocolate & truffle (not on the menu on site)
$7 per slice
I loved the lemon strawberry meringue one because it wasn't too sickening.
I get sick of chocolatey stuff easily.
However, I liked the white chocolate pie more than the grasshopper one.
Oh btw! The grasshopper one is mint & chocolate HAHAHA.
I'm gonna come back and try the other pies soon because they all look so good.
Okay, now for more photos!
Then, we took a photo of each other LOL
My dear Sammie :)
AND ME!
And this aspiring photographer took the magazines and the flowers on the table and started snapping photos. She even took photos of me for me!
I'll blog about those photos separately :)
Oh and yes. I'm gonna blog about my Electric Run experience, so maybe if you're interested, you can join next year! ^^
