For someone who hardly took MC for the past 3 years or so, today is the 3rd day of sick leave I've taken in this year alone (the other 2 days were in Feb when I was plagued by a very bad cough).

Haha I wonder what happened to my immune system? Is this a sign of the body growing old? :(

Or maybe in the past I didn't quite like to take MC even if I was sick. Dunno last time so geng for what. Not as if we get extra money for going to work every day. Hahahaha. :p


Anyway it was just a mild flu and a slight cough. Nothing too serious. For a while I was worried that my cough would develop into that allergic cough since the haze is back and all (I don't want to spend $100 buying an inhaler again!) but the doc prescribed some wonder steroid and it cleared within a day. So it was pretty nice to stay home today since I wasn't exactly bedridden. Ahaha.

And it was a rainy and cooling day, perfect weather for bumming around at home. Except that I didn't exactly bum around, but did some baking (again). Now baking is like my default activity whenever I'm home on weekends! It's a pretty costly and not to mention FATTENING hobby come to think of it. :x I completed my yearly health checkup recently and gained some weight. Bah! :(

Anyhoooo for some reason I baked a lot in August. Was baking something almost every weekend! Gosh. No wonder I gained weight. This also means another thing. I need more friends! :( I need to go out and do more exciting things! See Saint now that you have left for the States I am bored at home with nothing to do except to bake! :(

Hahaha guilt trip much? Never mind Saint, if you read this it's OK, study hard and get that golden goose, I will entertain myself with my bakes and send you photos of yummy treats and you can feast on them with your eyes LOL.

Erm ok back to what I baked. The last time I mentioned on my blog that I wanted to bake egg tarts, and bake them I did! :) They turned out wonderful - warm and fragrant with smooth custard that melts in your mouth. Tastes best when fresh out of the oven! My mom was extremely impressed with my newfound baking prowess and kept raving about it. Even -I- was pretty impressed by myself and how pretty they turned out LOL :D

 

You'd think egg tarts are difficult to make - it wasn't! It was surprisingly easy to bake them

 

I baked them in 2 sizes - mini and normal. Don't they look like pretty sunflowers? :)

很好吃!

I followed this recipe from Baking on Cloud 9 :)

Some people have asked me to try the Portuguese version or the flaky crust version... I saw the recipe for the flaky crust version before and it looks super complicated and it calls for quite a fair bit of ingredients. I think I'll save that more adventurous outing for perhaps, a long long time later.

Over the National Day weekend my parents were away and I attempted another tart - Blueberry Cheese Tarts. I think the recipe was also from Baking on Cloud 9 - I usually read up on a few recipes and have a lot of tabs open before deciding on one or perhaps a combination of a few.

 

This was from the first batch - looks paler but at least the blueberry didn't "run" all over the place

This second batch looks like a blueberry explosion just hapened LOL

Blueberry Cheese Tart

I like cheesecake but sometimes it can be quite gelat. I've been wanting to bake this lighter version of cheese cake sticks for a very long time ever since I saw the recipe on Hearty Bakes. So I baked them on the same day as I did the blueberry cheese tarts.

 

I had to bake this in a water bath, and thanks to my baking tin which has a removable base, half the bottom of the cake became wet -___-

 

 

Still, I think it turned out pretty OK, with a lemony twang (was too generous with the lemon juice). I think it could have been fluffier though.

Tiramisu was also one of the to-bake things on my list and sometimes when I'm bored at work, I'll surf for recipes (shhhhhhhhh). There are sooooo many recipes out there, sometimes it's really time consuming just checking out recipes coz I keep clicking on whatever looks yummy or interesting.
I also like to keep using up ingredients that I already have so that they won't take up more space in the fridge/containers, and had a big bag of matcha powder left from the matcha macarons I made the last time, so a Matcha Tiramisu it is!

 

 Unfortunately this didn't turn out well. I didn't know when to stop whisking the whipping cream and overwhisked it. Recipe called for stiff peaks but I didn't use non-dairy whipping cream like she did, and I later read up on it and realized that there's a chance of over beating dairy whipping cream and it will turn lumpy. Which is exactly what happened to mine!!!! :( As a result the cheese mixture didn't quite double in volume and the cheese layers were very thin.

 

 Layering sponge fingers soaked in green tea syrup over the marcaspone cheese mixture

 

 

 See the lumpy texture? Heard from my mom that my dad thinks it's not too bad, but I attribute it to him not having tried tiramisu before so he has no basis for comparison haha. One of my lunch kaki was more blunt - she said this was the worst item that I have ever made so far. Evidently she has not tried my rock hard muffins before ahahaha.

This Earl Grey Salted Caramel Macarons was also one of those recipes that I wanted to try for the longest time but I always lacked that elusive ingredient - Fleur de sel. That's French for flower of salt or something, to me it's just atas sea salt. But from what I read, it really makes a difference to the taste of the salted caramel. I finally hunted it down at Carrefour (which is closing down! boo) so I could finally get started on this!

The earl grey was really fragrant, and I like the grey shells littered with specks of tea leaves. Unfortunately my macarons always turn out brown after baking and it ruins the original colour! :(

 

Though the macarons lost their grey colour, they it still tasted great! Earl grey and salted caramel is really quite a fantastic combination. The filling consisted of caramel in the middle and salted caramel cream cheese around it to balance out the sweetness. I would imagine one taking a delicate bite of the macaron and then sipping a hot cup of earl grey tea... ahhh... utter decadence.

The macarons with a tinge of green - those are not mould, nor algae, nor did they mutate, but rather I was trying to create the rainbow effect as seen here.

My experiment obviously failed. I couldn't get the colours to stay on the piping bag because I think liquid colouring doesn't work for this method. I need to get some gel colours before I can try it again. The thing is, macaron making is sooooo time consuming!!! :( The part I dislike most is when I have to sift the almond flour and icing sugar. It takes ages!!! The thought of sifting is enough to put me off making macarons for the next 3 months or so.

Speaking of caramel, this has gotta be the trickiest thing I've made! Maybe I didn't do enough research, but I burnt 2 batches before finally attaining the perfect caramel sauce on the 3rd try. :x

For my first try, I stirred the sugar in the pot while waiting for it to caramelize. Wrong move, because all these crystals starting forming on the side of the pot and the whole thing just became one big brown sugar lump. Bleah.

Very unappetizing photo of the clump of sugar in the dustbin

For the second try, I didn't stir the mixture but I didn't realize that the caramel was so hot that the heat would keep it boiling if I didn't dump in the cream mixture immediately after taking it off the heat. The caramel became chao tah (there was really a chao tah smell in the kitchen) and when it cooled, it hardened into a black rock. :x

 

 The black mess in the pot

Finally got it right on the third time, and it yielded this thick, delicious sauce:

Finally, the desired consistency!!!

The salted caramel sauce is actually pretty good on its own! I used half of it for a salted caramel cream cheese frosting and the other half to pipe onto the macarons.

I still had a fair bit of frosting and caramel left over, and what other better way to finish up frosting than to use it to frost cupcakes? Presenting Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes! One of the best combinations ever. Ahhhh... can life can any more decadent than this?

Aren't they pretty? :) I can't resist eating them nom nom noms :D I don't usually eat a lot of the stuff that I bake but I think I ate like 3 or 4 of this by myself :x

 

Each cupcake comes with a caramel filled centre! Wah I really spend a lot of time trying making a hole in the capcakes using a knife... I need to get one of those cupcake corers in future.

And those silver decorative balls, I foolishly bought them at Cold Storage without checking the price and they cost like $9 for a tube!!! I subsequently realized I can get them at Phoon Huat for $1++!!! Feel so cheated now.

My mom also came back from Vietnam with a bottle of Kahlua and I wanted to try my hand at Tiramisu again - must get it right this time round!

Instead of Matcha, I decided to just stick to the traditional coffee/cocoa powder combination. I use eggless recipes because I'm a little icky about eating raw egg yolks. 

I found this eggless recipe from Noobcook. Tiramisu is actually an easy dessert to prepare!

Here goes!

I also halved the ladyfingers because I thought the ladyfingers sponges were too thick when I last made the Matcha Tiramisu.

 

Layering the ladyfinger sponges over the mascarpone cheese layer

With a dusting of cocoa powder

At least I got the texture right this time round

Unfortunately my family doesn't quite appreciate the more "angmoh" type of desserts so it has been rotting in the fridge for a while now. To date I still have a small piece left in the fridge and it has been more than a week since I made it!!!

Just last week I was browsing through Mad's Itchysole blog and saw a Nutella Swiss Roll that she made. And so I decided to bake a swiss roll on a whim last weekend! I followed Happy Home Baking's Nutella Swiss Roll recipe.

Unfortunately a few things went wrong - 

1) Tray used was not of ideal dimensions. I used an aluminium square tray when I should have used a rectangular tray so that it would be easier to roll the cake up.

2) Because the tray was too small, the sponge cake was too thick to roll. I tried to half it but didn't do a good job (I need to get a cake leveller!!!) resulting in uneven sponge cake layers.

  

The sponge cake layer

 

Cake cracked when I tried to roll it because it was too thin (and too short)

 

Never judge a cake by its looks! It still tastes pretty good - I guess you can never go too wrong with Nutella!

And lastly, my most recent baking experiment today!

Yeah I know this blog entry has been extremely long winded. Haha.

I had leftover blueberries from the blueberry cheese tart bake and I think they were overripe and probably going to go mouldy or something. Better use them before they spoil. But I only had 50g left and what can I do with 50g of blueberries?!

Finally found a recipe that I thought could work with a puny amount of blueberries. Blueberry Yoghurt Muffins!!! It seemed simple enough and the best thing is, I don't need the stand mixer (so troublesome to lug it in and out of the storeroom each time) and I only have to use one mixing bowl so that means I don't have to do so much washing up! I like baking and mixing things and eating them but I don't like washing up. Washing oily mixing bowls and utensils and stuff especially is such a chore!!! :x

Due to the lack of ingredients (in this case, I was limited by the blueberries), I halved the recipe and it yielded a very small batch - only 4 regular sized muffins. I know, seems pretty silly to go through so much trouble just to get 4 muffins right? Haha.

 

Still, the results were satisfactory. Moist muffins literally bursting with blueberries. I suppose they were really overripe and exploded in the baking process hurhur. 

Since the oven was already turned on and the 4 muffins look quite lonely, might as well bake some more. Settled on Nutella Stuffed Cinnamon Sugar Muffins since I had all the ingredients at home.

Glob of nutella

The muffins rose spectacularly! I might have been too generous with the batter for each muffin since the recipe only made 7 regular-sized muffins.

 

The final product, with a dusting of cinnamon sugar on top!

 

The 2 muffins I baked today

 

 

With a Nutella centre!

What a super long post. Wah come to think of it I baked so much in a month! I wanted catch up on a few episodes of Shinhwa Broadcast today but now there is no more time! Bah! I think I should try and update my baking adventures more regularly in future. It is now time to sleep! I have no MC for tomorrow!

Another pretty green cupcake!

 

Matcha Green Tea Cupcakes with Matcha Buttercream from Amy's Food Adventures

There are too many things on my to-bake list!

Session #4
Distance covered: 12.52km
Time: 1:32:56
Average speed: 8.08 km/h

The first 5km were quite a breeze, even reached an all time high average speed of 8.21km/h. Maybe it's the route or because I laced my shoes tighter this time? Haha. I ought to bring a small bottle of water along for long jogs, I always start to feel very thirsty around the 8-9km mark.

So far so good, seems pretty on track to not collaspe during the half marathon!

I first heard about the Capture the Colours contest through Mad, who nominated me to join. (Check out her awesome entry here!) The idea is to post 5 photos from your travels, each representing a different colour and I thought it was an interesting concept for a blog post, even if I'm not out to win anything.

Initially I was highly doubtful that I can even find 5 representative photos, since I usually take human beings and food more than gorgeous scenery. Anyway, I quickly scanned through all my photos and woah I'm quite glad all these photos exist because although I won't say that I'm quite the globe-trotter (there are still so many parts of the world I haven't been to!), I realized I have seen and experienced quite a number of things through my travels. And without these photos to remind me of what I have seen, I think I would have forgotten most of them. For example, I can't even remember all the places I visited in Beijing.

Also I realized that the quality of my photos were all pretty lousy circa 2006, not that it's fantastic now but I guess the quality of the camera also helps LOL.

There might be more hidden gems in my folders but sifting through everything is gonna be super time consuming. I tried to find one photo from each of my more memorable trips so here goes:

Red

 

The Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, Japan. Taken in June 2009. It looks orangey here but the pillars are red in real life, perhaps my camera wasn't good enough to capture the colours properly. There's a picture of me mimicking a scene out of Memoirs of a Geisha floating around somewhere hahaha.
Read more about my Japan trip here.

White

I visited Cambodia the same year, in December 2009. This was taken in the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I thought this really suited the white theme well and sent a really strong message about the sombre sentiment of our visit to the Killing Fields. It reminds you of the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge regime, and perhaps even of mankind in general.

Yellow

  

I had a few photos for the Yellow category but ultimately chose this even though it only has slight accents of yellow because 1) It's THE Great Wall of China! 2) It was during the World Cup in 2010 and we saw a group of Brazilians who were very enthusiastic about their support for their country, as you can see from above. 3) We didn't know them but just went ahead to take a photo with them anyway. :D

Taken in Beijing, China, June 2010.

Blue

  

I had such a hard time trying to find a photo that suited the blue theme because I felt that they all weren't representative enough. In the end I settled for this shot, taken at the Death Valley, California, USA, June 2011. We stayed over a night here en route to Las Vegas and this place really lives up to its name. There were very few people around, it was super dry and scorching hot, so much so that I could feel the heat radiating up from the ground.

Green

 

Last but not least, this is my shortlisted photo for Green. The most recent of the lot, taken in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in July 2012. This trip was a purposeful one, as the aim was to summit Mount Kinabalu, and I feel that this shot was very representative of the seemingly never-ending hike up to the top. Surrounded by lush greenery, all we could do was to focus on taking one step at a time, slowly, ploddingly, surely.

Read more about my Kota Kinabalu experience here!

Check out more awesome photos on their Facebook page, I just did and it sure puts my lousy humble photos to shame!!!

OK I'm supposed to nominate 5 people to join too and I hereby "arrow" the following (no obligations though! The deadline's nearing anyway...)

1) Gillian

2) Adelene

3) Mabel 

Shucks running out of friends to arrow...

4) Su Yi

5) Can I re-nominate Mad? Haha

I will save the other photos that I selected but didn't make the cut for another entry next time! Laters!

Session #3
Distance covered: 8.98km
Time: 1:11:50
Average speed: 7.50kmph

Shorter run today because I wanted to go to Cold Storage to stock up on some baking supplies.
Definitely a more manageable distance. And music definitely helps.

Note to self: Need to get one of those straps to strap my phone to my arm.

For all my gushing over the Olympics 4 years ago, I have been largely silent about it on my blog this time round. Hahahaha. I think it's because I'm more active on Twitter, and it's convenient and easy to post one-liners on anything and everything there.

So now the curtain has lowered in London. As always, there are plenty of defining moments for each installment of the Games. Phelps and Bolt were again the main talking points, just like 4 years ago.
Phelps emerged as the most decorated Olympian ever with 18 gold and 22 medals in total 0_0 Usain Bolt's impossibly long legs and impressive stride earned him the 100m, 200m and 4x100m. Sun Yang came out of nowhere to win the Gold in the 400m free from Park Taehwan. Ye Shiwen was remembered for swimming her last freestyle IM lap faster than Ryan Lochte, and the Australian swim team this year only managed one gold medal. What happened Australia?!?! And of course, Singapore's 2 bronzes in Table Tennis!

I caught bits and pieces of the Games live, staying up to watch mainly the swim finals if I haven't concussed by then. It's great that now they have clips of various events and almost-live streaming on the Olympic Youtube channel!! Very convenient. And this is probably the only time when I watch mioTV at home, hahaha. Else I won't even know how to turn on the mioTV function.

Every 4 years there will be new names to watch out for, while the older ones become a shadow of their former selves... which is a little sad actually. I'm quite happy that Phelps has decided to retire on a high. Let everyone remember him at his peak! (Then there are some who would argue that he peaked in Beijing.)

Ahhhh the Olympics. So much drama and sporting acting packed into 2 weeks. That's why I like to watch it so much! We shall meet again 4 years later in Rio de Janeiro... I think the time difference is gonna kill all of us haha.

I also like to look at cute athletes. Here's a cute swimmer, Nathan Adrian, 100m free gold medalist! :D

So pretty!!!

Chocolate cupcakes with mint buttercream frosting from Amy's Food Adventures

Would love to try this out some day... provided I can find peppermint oil.

I had some pretty good fish porridge at Amoy Street hawker centre on Saturday when I was in the Tanjong Pagar area after a manicure/pedicure pampering session.

There weren't many stalls open on a Saturday but I noticed that the majority of customers at dining on the second floor ordered from Han Kee Fish Porridge. Luckily I didn't have to queue for long. It's pretty pricey, at $5 a bowl. But after eating it, I understood why. The fish is fresh, thick and so ermmm tender? Not tough and overcooked. The soup was a tad salty, but still pretty flavourful.

http://ieatishootipost.sg/2006/11/han-kee-fish-porridge-amoy-street-food.html

Ah I wish I can have a bowl of that for lunch now! Either that or the excellent 猪什汤 near the Lavender/Boon Keng area. I don't know what the stall is called but oh the soup is great!!!!! Drools.

Session #2
Distance covered: 12.80km
Time: 1:43:17
Average speed: 7.44km/h

I'M KILLING MY KNEES!!!! :(

Definitely gonna have to take it slow during the actual run. In fact, I think I'm gonna forgo the target of evening finishing in 3.5 hours. My new goal is to make it past the finish line. End of story.

If not for the fact that I had a form of a distraction around the 9km mark (bumped into my auntie and uncle who were cycling), I would probably have just given up and jogged home after 10km. zzzz.

Though after a while, the legs just go on auto pilot. I didn't really slow down to walk but I think for the actual run, I will inject frequent walks after every few kms or so to protect my knees.

This Tiramisu Cheesecake looks so good!

http://my-sweet-hut.blogspot.sg/2010/08/tiramisu-cheesecake.html

I asked my mother to buy a bottle of Kahlua back from Duty Free (the folks are in Vietnam for a holiday over the National Day weekend). I hope she manages to find it so that I can try out various tiramisu recipes!!!

It's approximately 3 more months to the half-marathon, and I'm starting to feel a wave of panic since I'm like super unprepared for such a long run. And I'll be in Taiwan for the whole week before the run, busy getting fat. Sigh, why didn't I stick to the more manageable 10km distance? :(

Anyway after the extremely strenuous KK trip and the Marina 21K run, I've slacked off a little but I've decided that I've got to start training and prepping myself now so that I can at least crawl to the finish line! Today marks the start and I'm going to use this blog as a training log.

Session #1

Distance covered: 10.19km

Time: 1:18:09

Average speed: 7.83 km/h

Had a little difficulty right after the 8km mark, felt strain in my knees and had to walk for a bit. This run didn't feel as easy as my last run. Was yearning for a cup of cold 100plus halfway through and was starting to feel hungry too. :( 

Hope to cover 12km for next week's run. The goal is to finish the half-marathon in 3.5 hours and survive to tell the tale!

Hilarious review of Fifty Shades Darker - http://www.amazon.com/review/RYSJE0MRSAAW5/ref=cm_cr_dp_title/187-1217350-7343153?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0345803493&nodeID=283155&store=books

and Fifty Shades Freed - http://www.amazon.com/review/R16U7WCSXSQRJR/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

LOL!!! I totally agree with whatever the reviewer wrote. It's like crack!!!