How to make Osmanthus Sugar | 糖桂花

23/04/2021

Osmanthus Sugar (糖桂花, tang gui hua) is made from fresh osmanthus flowers white sugar. It’s a runny, jelly-like syrup that is sweet and infused with the flavour of the osmanthus flower. Compared to normal syrup, it’s lighter in flavour and has a refreshing flowery aroma.

It’s no chance in heck of having a garden thus we get our dried osmanthus flowers 桂花乾 from the dried good store located at Albert Centre around Bugis. There’s a herb and spices lady that sells all kinds of wonderful and mysterious things there.

Benefit of Osmanthus

In the previous post of Osmanthus Longan Tea, we mentioned all the benefit of Osmanthus. During this hot and wet season, it the best natural remedy to keep it at home. It is a well-known herb that can improve skin, detoxify the body, reduce thick saliva in the throat and boost lung health. It is great for all season, osmanthus tea is often consumed when one suffers from dry skin or hoarseness. Staying indoors with aircon room, we tend to have dry skin and throat and this will be your favourite remedy from now on!

Why make Osmanthus Sugar?

First of all, making sugar out of these flowers will increase the storability of both fresh and dried osmanthus. Besides this, our favourite way is to make Osmanthus Sugar in advance, store them in a cool dark place.

Make a cup of sweet tea from the sugar by simply dissolving it in water. (ideally served room temperature or iced)
Make a creative beverage from the sugar by simply dissolving it in soda/coffee.
You can use it to sweeten desserts instead of using normal sugar.
A new replacement of your pure honey, it is like infused honey with make before.

Traditional Method for better flavour.

Many of the methods you see online now, is to melt the sugar and osmanthus, making it the osmanthus syrup before adding it to the honey. The method is simple and fast, however, the fragrance of the osmanthus you will have for the honey is lighter than using this traditional method that we found.

Start by ‘Cleaning the osmanthus’ in the water, pour the osmanthus, gently rub it a few times, wash off the dirty things like dust. Spread the kitchen paper or toilet paper, dry towel, remove the washed sweet-scented osmanthus, spread it out, dry it, don’t pile it together, don’t dry it, or else it will oxidise and discolour.

After the osmanthus is slightly dried, put it in a bowl and add in your sugar. Using your fingertips, rub the sugar and osmanthus, letting it infuse well with the sugar. Then fridge overnight for it to infuse well before steaming it on high for 8 minutes. Cover the bowl with aluminium foil well, as we do not want a water droplet in it. Let the osmanthus sugar mixture cool well before combining it with the honey.

What kind of honey?

During the making of Osmanthus sugar, we tried both dark and light honey. With our experiment of 2 types, we found a distinct flavour for both and it is subjective to individuals. While Angela prefers the light, pure marigold, runny honey, personally I preferred the dark, amber honey, thick-textured honey.

Light – Soft and sweet flavours great for baking and desserts.
Medium – Mild and mellow bite a tasty breakfast choice.
Dark – sharp, bold flavour, warm bite, suited for health remedies. (great making tea and beverage)

Always be creative, never limit yourself with this Osmanthus sugar by just making a cup of sweet tea. Stay tuned, we will be sharing lots of Osmanthus’s recipes with this Osmanthus sugar. Let’s enjoy the season with love and this intense buttery scent.

xoxo, The Sister.

How to make Osmanthus Sugar | 糖桂花

Ingredients

8g of dried osmanthus flower
80 g of caster sugar
200g of honey

Method

Start by ‘Cleaning the osmanthus’ in the water, pour the osmanthus, gently rub it a few times, wash off the dirty things like dust.
Spread the kitchen paper or toilet paper, dry towel, remove the washed sweet-scented osmanthus, spread it out, dry it, don’t pile it together, don’t dry it, or else it will oxidise and discolour.
After the osmanthus is slightly dried, put it in a bowl and add in your sugar. Using your fingertips, rub the sugar and osmanthus, letting it infuse well with the sugar. Then fridge overnight for it to infuse well before steaming it on high for 8 minutes.
Cover the bowl with aluminium foil well, as we do not want a water droplet in it. Let the osmanthus sugar mixture cool well before combining it with the honey.

Singapore / TRAVEL

Birthday’s Staycation at The Capitol Kempinski Hotel Photo Journal

21/04/2021

It was Angela’s birthday a week and a half ago – I’ve booked The Capitol Kempinski Hotel for her birthday celebration. With difficulties in decision making, it took me a while to decide which hotel to go and it is the best decision we have made this year. I’m glad that it all happened before her misfortunate incident happened on her actual birthday’s date.

The Capitol Kempinski Hotel is located at the heart of the City Hall area, and host the once iconic landmark of Singapore – the Capitol Building and Stamford House. Once we step in we are welcomed by “The Lady in Red” (the Kempinski’s brand ambassador) and warmly assist us for the check-in and to the room. Along the way, the hotel hosts a vibe of fusion of art deco and Victorian aesthetics where we really like it. We are also offered an early check-in and an upgrade from the hotel which make the whole event started delightfully.

Starting from the Room

The first thing we noticed when we stepped into the Deluxe Room was how comforting it made us feel. The room is split into 2 parts the bathroom and bedroom areas.

We head in to have a look at the bathroom first, the wooden flooring, warm tones, and plush pillows made us want to jump onto the bed immediately! However, we did not due to the OCD of Angela. The room also comes complete with a working desk, sofa, and television that hooks up to a Sonos soundbar. One of the highlights of the room is the high ceiling and huge window – although it doesn’t have a good view due to the construction taking place near the hotel it’s still good to have some natural light in which is very important for us who want to take some pictures.

Stay hidden to keep it simple
In the room, you can find that there are many doors. Such as there’s a door to hide your television when it is not in use. In front of the television is has a long vanity table, the centre portion flipped up to reveal a Hollywood -style mirror and hairdryer. Likewise, there are doors acting as a division from places to places – making things looks simple to look at.

The room adopts an “open bathroom” concept, however, you could close up the door for more privacy. All suit has her and ~~his~~ her sinks, where no compromising will be needed at here. The highlight of the bathroom was the free-standing deep-soaking bathtub that easily fit two people, where it is one of the reasons we choose here. It is complete with television, which will make you end your whole night there. That said, the shower was also impressive, the one and only rain shower that I’ve seen that was built that high. It is totally a perfect bath and dress room for girls.

Every corner of the place is well done which cause us non-stop praising. So far the Deluxe Room is one of the nicest hotel room we have ever seen. From the tall ceiling, spacious, fittings and finishes, it gave a premium feel of the hotel. We couldn’t believe how well made it is, let’s continue to discover if there’s any bad point to it?

Beauty both inside-out.

It is a historical hotel – where you’ll find Chengal wood flooring from the original building in some places of the hotel. The hotel’s general aesthetic pairs decidedly Victorian sensibilities with a certain fondness of geometric shapes, tessellations and grand archways. Despite the relatively small size of the property, the layout of the room floors is fairly The Shining-esque in its labyrinthine complexity, with a significant number of meandering passageways and turns.

Bathroom, Breakfast and Pool are some of the top 3 areas we also look into when visiting a hotel. While we knew the pool will be small, thus no much expectation was given. The pool is Singapore first saltwater swimming pool with jacuzzi functions. It’s great for chilling and relaxing, where it’s great for people who don’t know how to swim like us. As we stay at the Stamford building, it requires us to take a short walk to the pool where it’s located at the Capitol Building.

As we know as part of safe distancing measures and for exclusivity, you’ll need to book your pool time for all hotel now. Thus we drop an email ahead to secure a slot weeks earlier to avoid disappointment. Each booking will be for a 90-minute slot. On the first day, we head to the pool from 5 pm to 6.30 pm where it was packed with 8-10 pax (the standard amount of people based on the safe distancing measures). However on the second day, it was empty on the 9.30 am to 11 am slot, It allowed us to be in a serene environment, surrounded by walls of green. Lovely!

Every corner is Photogenic

There’s no better feeling than slipping into something unrestricted after a long day in dressy and swimwear during the Staycation. We are, of course, talking about bathrobes, but those that are so comfortable, you wear them all day in the room, and it helps us to save someplace in our luggage. When it comes to robes, you need something that feels good and plush against your skin. Well, The Capitol Kempinski Hotel has one of the largest bathrobes we have ever seen (felt like wearing a giant outfit for our smaller Asian-body size).

It doesn’t really affect much, just you may need to drag the robe around but it’s a great prop for some photos. Some tips for those who want to take some photo in the room, you may though that there won’t be enough natural light in the room. That’s what we thought and we use the spotlight in the room and it is AWFUL! We promise that the room will provide enough light even without the full glass window. (That’s if you are so unlucky that you met the bad weather!!)

Did you notice that something is missing? Yes! The most important part of the hotel is also the dining experience. One of the trademarks of the hotel is their breakfast, stay-tuned for our story on 15 Stamford. Can’t wait to bring our parents back here for a staycation again!

xoxo, Angela & Joe

LIFESTYLE / Moodboard

Mood Board | Door to Spring

19/04/2021

With spring here, open your door and window and look out for pretty flowers. In Singapore, there is a lot of Singapore’s “sakura” aka the trumpet flower. As it is rainy weather recently, it is not only good for naps, it also brought about the blooming of Singapore’s own ‘sakura’ trees. The beautiful trees, which usually yield crowns of soft pink and white flowers, are commonly found along streets and in parks here. When in full bloom, the fallen flowers form a pretty pastel carpet on the ground.

However, if you don’t have the privilege you could always give your facade a quick and easy makeover for spring, the front door is a great place to get started: a cheerful wreath, fresh welcome mat or colorful plant can instantly make a tired entrance look more inviting. Kick-off the season with these simple door decor projects.

xoxo, Joe

Credit | All shots used on the mood board via our Pinterest boards.

Healthy Breakfast / RECIPES

Avocado Tofu Onigirazu

17/04/2021

Previously we did a Tamago Origirazu with Cucumber and Bacon where we use the basic ingredients that you are able to find easily in your pantry. This time we decided to incorporate Angela favourite fruits – Avocado to it and create this Avocado Tofu Origizuru.

The main star here is the Crispy Sesame Tofu – a thick crust of black and white sesame seeds coats slabs of tofu, and a simple sesame sauce infuses them with sweet and tangy flavour. Adding rice, sprouts, tomato, mashed avocado and lettuce it became an Origirazu Burger. It’s just as fun and flavourful as takeout, but it’s so much healthier.

Making Soya Sesame Tofu “Katsu”

Tofu can get a bad rap as being bland, and that’s because it is! In order for tofu to transform into delicious recipes, you have to season it well. Here, a simple marinade infuses the sesame tofu with flavor. It’s savory, tangy, and easy to mix together, and it makes this recipe really tasty. Here’s what’s in it:

Soy sauce, for salty, savoury flavour
Rice vinegar, for brightness
Sesame oil, for richness and toasty, nutty flavour
Ginger and garlic, to freshen it up
Brown sugar, to add a sweet counterpoint to the other tangy, salty ingredients

Instead of reaching for a large bowl for your marinade, choose a small, shallow dish so that the sides of each tofu slab will be well-coated. Sara recommends marinating your tofu for at least an hour or overnight, but we only let ours sit for about 20 minutes, and it came out delicious. Of course, the longer you marinate it, the more flavorful it will be.

When you’re ready to cook, dip each block of tofu into an egg wash and dredge it in the sesame seeds. Then, cook it in the oven, and enjoy! Find the full recipe with oven instructions at the bottom of this post.

Adding in your Greens

After preparing your mains – Tofu “Katsu” you can also start preparing your greens. You can pick anything you have in your fridge that you think compliment well with the Tofu “Katsu”. However, below is our pick and you could refer to it as references.

Avocado, deshelled and deseed it. Mashed it and add drops of lemon juice for preventing the avocado from turning yellowish.
Lettuce and bean sprouts, wash and drain. (We doesn’t want wet vegetables.)
Cherry Tomatoes, we tend to eat the whole slide of tomatoes as it is hard to bite off. Thus using cherry tomatoes make it easier.

You can even use sweet corns, or even cucumber here. However, we encourage to use something light as we doesn’t want to overpower the Tofu “Katsu” which is the main of this dish.

Time to put together

Mentioned in Tamago Origirazu with Cucumber and Bacon – it may seem like a complicated dish when you first start to wrap them up but once you get a hang of it, you can use this phrase to describe it as “a piece of cake”. To ensure the onigirazu is tightly wrapped up, make sure you start and end with rice.

This dish is best made in the morning with fresh rice and eaten the same day! As leaving it overnight in the fridge will give you dry and hard rice. After getting a hang of it, this could be your lunch staple.

Doesn’t it look simple? A vegan option for a healthier health ! If you make this Avocado Tofu Onigirazu, don’t forget to tag us on Instagram as @leplaincanvas and use the #byplaincanvas hashtag. We love seeing your takes on our recipes!

xoxo, Joe

Avocado Tofu Onigirazu

Ingredients

Crispy Sesame
7 ounces extra-firm tofu, drained and cut into 4 (1/2-inch thick) slices
2 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1 garlic clove, grated
1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1/3 cup white and black sesame seeds
1 egg
olive oil spray
Greens
1 avocado, mashed
Cherry Tomatoes, halved
Lettuce
Bean sprouts
2 cups of cooked sushi rice , room temperature
4 sheets of nori

Method

Prepare the Rice: Place rice in a large saucepan, add water to cover, and swirl rice with your hand (water will become cloudy). Drain through a fine-mesh sieve and return the rice to the saucepan. Repeat the process until the water is clear when mixed with rice (3 or 4 times). Drain rice a final time and cover sieve with a kitchen towel; let rest 15 minutes (this will help the grains hydrate evenly).

Return rice to the same saucepan and add 2 cups of water. Partially cover the pot and bring it to a boil. Stir once, cover, and reduce heat. Simmer until water is mostly absorbed and rice is very fragrant and tender 10–12 minutes. Remove from heat and let rest, covered 10 minutes. Fluff rice with a large spoon, re-cover the pot and let sit 5 minutes before serving. Cool it before use.
Prepare Crispy Tofu: Place the tofu slices on a kitchen towel or paper towels. Place another towel on top and lightly press to remove most of the water from the tofu. Transfer to a shallow dish big enough for the tofu to lie in a single layer.
In a small bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, brown sugar, garlic, and ginger. Drizzle half of the marinade over the tofu, then gently flip and drizzle the rest on the other side. Marinate in the refrigerator for 20 minutes to 1 hour.
Preheat an air fryer to 400°F or preheat a regular oven to 350°F.
Place the sesame seeds on a small plate. In a small bowl, beat the egg. Remove each tofu slice from the marinade, allowing the excess to drip off, then dip in the egg. Using a fork, dip in the sesame seeds, coating each side. Transfer to a plate. Spray one side with olive oil, then gently flip and spray the other side. (Discard the excess marinade.)
Wrapping it up: Start with the nori sheet, layer it with rice, bacon, cucumber, tamagoyaki and end it with the rice. Fold the 4 corners to the middle of the nori sheet. Only halved them up before consuming it, we don’t want the rice to dry up.

Our Table Stories / RECIPES

The Perfect Season of Making Jams

16/04/2021

One of our must-have pieces of equipment in the kitchen is Mason Jar! You can use it for many purposes like storing dry food, a jar of pasta/salad and more important our favourite Jam. April is the month of many seasonal fruits. From January till May we have mandarin, kiwi, kumquats and from April till August, we will have cherries and strawberry. This is the month where we will see all the fruit in the market. And it is time to make our favourite fruit jam.

Before making your Jam or Honey, remember to sterilize jars for all your lovely preserves. A clean sterilized jar is essential to the success and longevity of the jams and preserves you spend a lot of time making. Click here to find out how can you do so.

Strawberry Jam

On our top of the list, first came Strawberry Jam, from April till July, it is the perfect season for strawberry! While it’s easy to go buy a jar at the store – it’s just much more fun and so much tastier when you can whip up a jar for yourself in under an hour, right?

The beauty of this easy jam recipe is in the use of lemon juice and sugar instead of pectin to make the strawberry jam set. (Lemon juice is a natural pectin source that helps the jam set up and also helps prevent the growth of bacteria.)

The bright red colour of the jam simply brightens up my day every time we dig onto it!

Orange Marmalade Jam

Here come our favourite and Paddington Bear favourite – Marmalade! Every sunshiny spoonful makes your morning toast sparkle. If you love candied oranges and fruit preserves, we bet you’ll be making this regularly. Our recipe is not wildly complicated compare to what you see out there: peel this, but not too much, scoop out that, strain something else, then add it back in. Cut the citrus you have and add them to the pot with the rest of the ingredients. With the skin, you may taste a little bitter but the texture of the chewy skin is another level.

What is the difference between Orange Marmalade Jam and Traditional Marmalade Jam? Yes, there’s a huge difference! The best marmalade is made from Seville oranges which have a very short season. The small sweet Spanish fruit is available at its best from mid-January for the next four weeks. Hence the new way of having non-traditional Marmalade Jam, we make use of what we can get from the family tree – other oranges within the family tree.

Mixed Berries Jam

While it is best to use fresh fruit but there are times where we love to use our leftover frozen berries for jam. It tastes almost the same as using fresh fruit, not to mention how convenient it could be. Compare to the rest of the homemade jam recipes the mixed berries are on the sour side. We like to use it on our meat like meatball and chicken, as it will balance up the oily taste and make the flavour more balance. We use cranberry and blueberry for this recipe.

Peach Jam

While the season of peach is usually in the summer of the year (not yet there) but who doesn’t love to have some peach jam? Marmalade has complicated steps, Berries Jam is the easiest and for Peach Jam it is the tricky one. For the Peach Jam, you have to understand your fruits and choose the right one. Use ripe peaches. Not overripe, but soft and ready to eat. The skins come off a lot easier. If the skins don’t easily come off you should blanch the peaches. When you have the right fruit, the rest of the steps is just a piece of cake.

An alternative to this Peach Jam is to add some bourbon – Peach and bourbon come together in this delightfully tipsy drunken peach jam. With ripe summer peaches, a splash of lemon juice and more than a splash of bourbon, this might just be your new summer jam.

We use this jam in our doughnut recipe.

Pomelo Honey “Jam”

During the mid-lunar festival, we believed many families are loaded with pomelo. Most will eat the juicy flesh in throw away the skin. What most may not know is that the skin can be churned into dishes and jam, etc. In this recipes, you will learn how to skin the pomelo beautifully and how to make jam from the fruits.

There are many benefits to pomelos, such as prevent urinary tract infection, promote fast healing of wounds, prevent anaemia and even colds and flu. You can use this pomelo honey in your drinks by stirring them into tea or water, however, we love to drizzle them on our toast and pancakes too!

Which is your favourite jam from the above?
Looking at them again makes us want to stock up our homemade jam too.

xoxo, Joe

RECIPES

Mood Board | Neo-Classical

12/04/2021

A few days back we headed to The Capitol Kempinski Hotel Singapore for a staycation for Angela’s birthday celebration. We are amazed at how the interior of the hotel is, incorporating the modern element to the heritage building. One of the elements that are heavily used is the neo-classical and rattan elements.

This time we are going to touch on the neo-classical style. Bridging the gap between the traditional and contemporary, neoclassical design offers a rich method of self-expression that differs from eclectic and transitional styles in a few important ways.

Neoclassical interiors embrace luxury – far from modest, but careful to remain tasteful. It offers a playground for bold colors more than its transitional pastel-hued neighbor. It requires a more curated approach to furniture than its distant cousin the free-spirited eclectic. The interiors featured in this post range from those inspired by Hollywood Regency style all the way to a super-modern interpretation with faint neoclassical influences.

The wall edge frame and round edges are heavily spotted in the hotel. Incorporating rattan, leather, and arts, created a totally different style. Stay tuned for our post of our experiences in The Capitol Kempinski Hotel Singapore.

xoxo, Joe

Credit | All shots used on the mood board via our Pinterest boards.

LePlainCanvas

LePlainCanvas

LePlainCanvas

How to make Osmanthus Sugar | 糖桂花

Birthday’s Staycation at The Capitol Kempinski Hotel Photo Journal

Avocado Tofu Onigirazu

The Perfect Season of Making Jams

Mood Board | Neo-Classical

Tamago Onigirazu with Bacon Cucumber

Refreshing Kiwi Soda

Garlic Butter Prawns

leplaincanvas

INSTAGRAM

TRAVEL GUIDES

RECEPIES

Benefit of Osmanthus

Why make Osmanthus Sugar?

Traditional Method for better flavour.

What kind of honey?

How to make Osmanthus Sugar | 糖桂花

Ingredients

Method

Starting from the Room

Beauty both inside-out.

Every corner is Photogenic

Making Soya Sesame Tofu “Katsu”

Adding in your Greens

Time to put together

Avocado Tofu Onigirazu

Ingredients

Method