What I have been up to lately:

1) As part of the anniversary plans...

Staycation at Oasia Hotel! Uber shiok.

Breakfast at Level 22 coz we got a club room

Atas dinner at Salt Grill & Sky Bar!

Oh hey we are 2 years old! How time flies!

I have a frivolous question for the married people - do you celebrate your "get together" anniversary after getting married, or do you only celebrate your wedding anniversary?

Moving on...

2) Exercising (but weight has not gone down! Faint!)

3) Trying to eat clean(er), like so:

Post-workout dinner - Oven roasted chicken with assorted veg and steamed sweet pototoes courtesy of Corinne! (Who is now helping to whip me into shape) 

On a 3-day course and forced to eat expensive food at ARC

Expensive food part 2: Tandoori chicken salad

Post-yoga dinner

Post-run dinner (I)

Post-run dinner (II). This was awesome! Baked Salmon seasoned with some salt, black pepper, olive oil, basil and rosemary

Post-workout dinner. This was awesome too and hastily whipped up at 1030pm last night

And the not so healthy haha. Finally put my vday present to good use and whipped up a batch of caramel popcorn cupcakes! :D

Woah~ before I know it September's rounding up to an end!

Some moments from Sandy's wedding before I forget: 

 Typical props... or rather, food for gatecrash + a love poem

 

The bread that we didn't get to use due to time constraints

ROARRRRRR!!! Brothers you are VERY LATE!!!

One of my favourite photos from the day!

Another nice group shot! Glad to have these lovely ladies in my life! :D

Then we move on to domesticated Si Yi:

Went for a 5 course Japanese meal lesson to learn how to cook miso soup, tempura, omu rice, chicken katsu curry, tofu cheesecake! Taste - 6.5/10, curry was wayyyyy too salty :x

Lemon drizzle loaf from The Meat Men - recipe here 

Candied lemon was too sweet :x

Sweet corn ice cream bread - saw this insanely easy recipe on Facebook and gave it a try. Just 2 ingredients, mix. But I got the measurements wrong and this turned out kueh-like. #fail!

Gave it another try with chocolate chip ice cream and it turned out better, but bread was really dry. :x

I guess the quality of ice cream affects the bread. Recipe here.

 
And I can haz Tim Ho Wan char siew baos! Queued 50 mins to eat there!

And miscellaneous happenings:

 

Sandy's hen party on a boat! Got a little giddy after that though :x

 Our completed lego caravan! It's pretty cool, the inside is furnished! :)

 

You can't find clothes cheaper than what I was selling at the flea :x

 

And yes look who received her long service award yesterday. Haha. Technically it's 5.5 years already!

Dim Sum baking class yesterday!

 

Amigos hard at work making Portuguese egg tarts

Wah I didn't know that to make the flaky kind of crust, it actually involves a lot of layering of fat (margarine) and flour

 

Fresh out of the oven! The egg custard looks a bit puffy here but they sank after cooling down. There wasn't enough egg filling by the time it came to us :( so ours was only like 3/4 filled while the rest of the aunties filled theirs to the brim :x

 

Piping hot 流沙包 that just came out of the steamer! Haha for some reason the salted egg custard erupted while steaming :x

 

波箩包. OMG I was so frustrated trying to roll the pastry dough into a round shape, then creating the textured patterns, and then getting it OFF the baking sheet. Rarrrrrr that must have been the most difficult step of the day

 

 

What we got to take home! The fruits of our labour! Nom nom :)

The Portuguese egg tart and bo luo bao is really a little too tedious to do at home, but I think I can give the liu sha bao a try. Problem is, the salted egg custard was already pre-made for us hahaha so not sure if I can replicate it at home.

And there goes another busy weekend!

Been neglecting this space quite a fair a bit I know. Sometimes I have nothing to say about my life, other times I just don't have the time to put them down into words.
 
Did quite a fair bit of baking and some cooking recently. The bakes were pretty expensive since I attended classes for them but oh well. For the fun of it! :D

Plus usually the stuff that comes out from baking classes looks pretty decent and tastes excellent. Hahaha.

So I'm taking the easy way out and shall spam pictures. Haha.

Easiest banana cake to bake ever! I like easy to bake stuff coz washing up and carrying the standing mixer out from the storeroom is damn leceh. So when I found this recipe I had to try it. This is as easy as it gets. Recipe here.

 

Warm and soft and delightfully fragrant, fresh out of the oven!

 

The day we baked Caramel Popcorn cupcakes. This vanilla cake base is awesome, I think I shall use this recipe for all my cupcakes from now hahaha.

 

After slathering the frosting on!

Topped with Garrett's popcorn and drizzled with salted caramel sauce. 

I NEED TO EAT THIS NOW

 Yup this is seriously good stuff. I'm imagining the taste of it right now as I look at the photos...

OK must bake this again when I'm free.

 

We baked again the following weekend! Yes that's two consecutive weekends spent baking. 

Guess what this square is going to morph into?

 

Cake coated with raspberry cream! Not a fan of normal whipped cream but I love this version coz it's so light and fluffy!

 

And it's a double-tier cake! Don't be deceived by the photos, the actual size is actually quite tiny.

Here we have Paul trying to squeeze raspberry jam out of a tiny hole

 

ARGHHH SO HARD TO SQUEEZE IT OUT!

Turns out that Paul has quite a talent for slathering cream onto cakes and frosting them evenly haha :D

 

My completed Raspberry Cake! Before the cream collapsed that is.

 
Top view. My "waves" around the cake got squashed by the fruits :(

 

 

Cross section of the lovely two-tiered cake!

 

Banana cake again for Mabel's housewarming! I had the honour of breaking in her new oven haha :D

Well it was supposed to be banana cake with walnut and chocolate chips, but we were out the whole day and I was lugging the ingredients all around so the choc chips melted when mixed with the batter. Hence it became chocolate banana cake haha.

 

It's not a brownie!!! Although it does taste fabulous with vanilla ice cream :D

Oh and btw I won money at poker!!! Was up almost $30 at one point but I played a little too recklessly and ended up halving that. But still walked home $16 richer hurhur. Considering I have supremely bad luck when it comes to gambling (mahjong, slot machines, blackjack...) this must have been one of my good days. Hurhurhur.

 

The next day after Mabel's housewarming was le 100th day hurhur and I had been dreaming of aglio olio for a while prior to that so we decided to get busy in the kitchen! We looked to the holy grail of cooking for noobs for assistance - Noobcook! Followed this Prawns Aglio Olio recipe.

Btw photo above is a lot of pasta for 3 pax.

 

Essence de prawns

 

Not in the recipe but shrooms!!! for me and bacon!!! for the pork loving Paul. 

But poor Paul is allergic to shrooms :( ok nevermind I'll eat them all next time! 

 

Oh btw Paul also has another hidden talent in de-shelling and de-veining prawns :D

Here we have the prawns cooking nicely!

Le Master Chef

 

Must have for every meal - some veg for fibre!

 

So basically I didn't do much because this was chopped by Paul haha

 

And here we have it! The completed dish! Nom noms

 

Topped with parsley and a lot of black pepper. Rating: 7/10!

Also July is bonus month and nope, didn't get promoted (which was entirely expected to be honest - considering how slack I am sometimes). Bonus is also sadly not as good as last year's, which is tragic because I really really really really really really really really need the money (as of now I have $300 in my bank account till PAYDAY! hahaha and that's really almost all the cash I have except for the Untouchable Savings which, I'm almost on the verge of Touching).

So yup the job search's now on! Albeit really slowly. Applied for a few - all in the civil service hurhur - zero response thus far, but ah well, we've all got to start somewhere! *cross fingers and toes*