Green Tea Banana & Granola Cupcakes

A lot of times, I tweak a recipe to utilise  certain ingredients I have in my pantry. I don't like wasting food, so I always watch out for stuff that needs to be used before they expire. Last weekend, I whipped up a batch of cupcakes from some soon to be unwanted ingredients from my pantry. The cupcakes are made from mashed, overripe bananas (the best for any kind of banana cakes or cupcakes!), breakfast granola, soy milk (a leftover when my husband made tofu; that's another recipe altogether), green tea powder and some chocolates a friend gave us for Christmas. So I made this:

Plus I wanted to use these very cute, girly Hello Kitty silicon cupcake holders which I bought at a recent vacation at Bangkok.

Sooooo cute, right? :)

Baked Cheesy Rigatoni with Spicy Sausage

This is like Mac & Cheese but only better. The rigatoni pasta is much bigger than macaroni, and holds more of the cheesy sauce, and the spicy sausage adds a flavour contrast to an otherwise rich dish. It's baked with flavoured breadcrumbs which makes the top crispy. Mmmmm!

Roasted Cauliflower Head

This recipe is adapted from Domenica Restaurant in New Orleans, and the recipe was featured in Epicurious magazine here. It made quite a stir and launched the lowly cauliflower to become one of  2013's "it" food.

The original dish is served with a cheese sauce (which I've tried making too), but when we eat it at home, we actually prefer it without the sauce as it is healthier. My version omits the salt and I use chicken bouillon instead, and I also add a tablespoon of mustard seeds. If you want to make it purely vegetarian, then substitute the bouillon with salt.

I love this recipe and have served it to friends, who are amazed how the mundane cauliflower can taste soooooo good!