Chicken Salad with Yoghurt Dressing


Today I decided I was going to be virtuously healthy. I woke up early. I went swimming, and successfully swam 40 laps. (yay!) Then I headed to the neighbourhood supermarket to gather ingredients for a Superbly Healthy home-made salad.

It's still healthy even when you consume the entirety of a two-person share, right?

I am really pleased with my salad - I will not hesitate to state that it IS healthy. The only meat is chicken breast, boiled. Everything else is raw veggie or fruit. The dressing doesn't contain mayonnaise or anything too fattening - just yoghurt, honey and lemon juice. I will definitely make it the next time I crave a salad... but a smaller serving, perhaps! :)

Chicken Salad with Assorted Fruits/Veggies and Yoghurt Dressing

Ingredients
Around 2 small pieces chicken breast
1 green apple, cubed
Assorted lettuce (I used a bagful of ready-made assorted lettuce for salads. I forgot to note down the exact amount I used, but you can just use as much as you like!)
~10 cherry tomatoes

For the dressing
1 cup (around 100g) plain yoghurt - I may use more next time, though
~2 teaspoons honey
~2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Steps
Wash the chicken breasts and boil them until cooked. Cut into bite-sized pieces and set aside.

Wash and dry all the fruits and vegetables. Put into a giant mixing bowl! :)

Add the chicken breasts. Stir a bit and set aside.

Make the dressing - just combine the yoghurt, honey and lemon juice together until well-mixed. Pour over the salad and mix well.

Enjoy! Bon appetit! :)

Serves 2, or 1 giant appetite

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Written on Monday, June 18, 2012 at 9:07 PM by huis

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Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Yesterday was my birthday. I'm now 23! (Wow I feel old.) Happy birthday to me! In honour of the day my mother likes to term "the most painful day of her life", I decided to bake a birthday cake for myself. After doing lots of research online I decided to try out a recipe for red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I've always loved the colour of red velvet cake and I've never actually tried baking a two-layer cake before, so I wanted to challenge myself.

The recipe I used is from Bakerella - click for the link! Her photos are gorgeous and mine just don't match up to them, but the results were, I'm sure, equally satisfying. The cake is super moist! I wasn't too sure if I liked the cake when I first tried it, but it received rave reviews and it's starting to grow on me!

I didn't make any changes to the original recipe except that my baking time was longer (but I think that's just my oven) and I only used 2 and a half cups of confectioner's sugar instead of 6 for the frosting. It was more than sweet enough for me already. Next time I think I'll add more cream cheese, because the frosting wasn't cheesy enough for my liking.

Also, I felt that my frosting was runny and it wasn't easy to frost the cake. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because I used much lesser sugar than the recipe called for? The sugar is supposed to thicken the frosting, I assume? Hmmm.

Just a little anecdote to share: Overall this cake turned out a success, but the journey was pretty rough. The cakes I had previously made tend to crack, so I did some googling and read that it was probably due to overheating. I decided to salvage this with a solution I found on some website - I placed the cake tin in a baking pan full of water when baking. Well - the results were DISASTROUS. My first layer came out mushy and ruined even after like 45 minutes of baking. I was distraught but refused to give up. It was my birthday cake! So after 5 minutes of moaning, I whipped up a new batch (I still had batter for one cake layer left, so I halved the recipe to make a new bowl of batter)... this time without following the whole water in a pan thing. Strangely enough, my cakes didn't crack this time round! Hmmm... a birthday miracle?

Photos and recipe ahead. Sorry for the poor quality photos. One day, when (if?) I become a skilled food photographer, I'll look back at the first couple of entries in my blog and cringe...

   
 (I also still need to master the art of frosting spreading. How do people make them all smooth and nice?)



 
 Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting 
Adapted from Bakerella 

Red Velvet Cake 

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour 
2 cups sugar 
1 Tablespoon cocoa 
1 teaspoon salt 
1 teaspoon baking soda 
2 eggs 
1 1/2 cups oil 
1 cup buttermilk 
1 Tablespoon vinegar 
1 teaspoon vanilla 
2 oz. red food coloring 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
Grease and flour two 8 inch cake pans. 
Lightly stir eggs in a medium bowl with a wire whisk. Add remaining liquid ingredients and stir together with whisk until blended. Set aside. 
Place all the dry ingredients in your mixing bowl and stir together really good with another wire whisk. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix on medium-high for about a minute or until completely combined. 
Pour into cake pans and then drop the pans on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles. 
Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. 
After about ten minutes, remove from pans and cool completely on a wire rack. I also cover in plastic wrap while the cakes cool. 
Then make the frosting. 

Cream Cheese Frosting 
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature 
1 cup butter, room temperature 
1 teaspoon vanilla 
2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar 

Sift sugar and set aside. 
Beat cream cheese and butter on high until creamy. Add vanilla. 
Then, add the sugar in batches. Scrape down the sides in between each addition. 
And frost away.

Enjoy!

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Written on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 6:59 PM by huis

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