Terrible! No time to do anything!

Helping out with the decor for Yuanshan's wedding... seems like there are ten thousand things to prepare just for the decor! Aiyo. When it's my turn I think I will turn into a Bridezilla :x

Snippets of the weekend just past:

  

Mostest beaming after Garfield Run!

The pinks and purples at the successful Hen's photoshoot! Was sweltering hot but great fun!

 

Atas dinner at Pollen! Here's my perfectly cooked salmon

And snippets of last last weekend:

 

Up close and personal with a panda haha

 

 Baked some white chocolate macadamia nut brownies

And snippets of last last last weekend:

 

FOOD (belated Father's day lunch)

 

MORE FOOD (great pig organ soup with selected organs) 

 

Brunch on a Sunday!

That seems to quite accurately sum up July. Not including never ending work at work.

I could go on and on and on about last x 4 weekend (meetup with Ichee after 4 or 5 months and melty charsiew) and last x 5 weekend (Hatter Street, cream puff baking class and meetup with Gassers after 3 or 4 months)... but ok I need to sleep, so till the next time, whenever that is. I need to find some time to blog and compose some coherent thoughts!!!!!!!!!

In case I go MIA again, this is what's up:

This long weekend: KL to attend a dinner/leisure trip/get stuck in a terrible jam back home

Next weekend: Yuanshan's wedding

Next next weekend: National Day and I HAVE NOTHING SCHEDULED! Woohoo!!!

Well well! Being mostest efficient, the date has been settled within a week of booking of our dinner venue!

Date - check
Church - check
Dinner venue - check

So if all goes well, it looks like I'll be getting married on my 30th birthday heh.

双喜! :D

Also I baked an awesome sweet corn chiffon cake today:

*blows dust off blog*

My poor, long suffering blog. Always here when I am angry or upset and I need an outlet to rant. But when things are calm and peaceful, it goes down the pecking order and gets ignored while I get distracted by Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and what-have-you. Ever selfless and giving, my blog doesn't fight for my attention and always waits patiently in the shadows. *pat pat*


And seriously how many social media platforms do I need?! Haha recently I hopped on the Dayre bandwagon (it's like microblogging on the go - if Twitter and Instagram had a rendezvous and had a kid, Dayre would be it).

But well nothing fascinating has been happening... or wait has there been? OK let me share some recent bakes:

Went for a log cake baking class last Saturday and this ended up as dessert for the Nepal celebratory dinner!

I asked my mom to buy lots of Christmas cake decorations back from Phoon Huat. Haha. Shall attempt to replicate the log cake again closer to Christmas.

 Banana Walnut Muffins

I'm pretty sure I baked something similar before but since I only had 3 small bananas left, I went to google for stuff that I could make with 150g bananas haha. So specific. But anyway I liked this version a lot, they were incredibly soft and fragrant. As with all banana+walnut combinations, it could do with some choc chips but I ran out of them.

Been really tempted to buy a lot of stuff lately, like a hand mixer, the Olympus Stylus XZ-10, and the Babyliss Big Hair 42mm. AHHH CONSUMERISM IS EVIL!!! All these are just wants and not needs. Like my Olympus E-PM1 is still serving me well but sometimes it's a little bulky to carry around plus I want something that can transfer photos from camera to phone using the wi-fi card. -_-

And I want a hand mixer because it's more handy and convenient instead of having to lug the huge mixer out of the storeroom when I want to bake something simple.

And seriously I always tie my hair up so why do I need the Babyliss product so that my hair can look like I just stepped out of the salon?

OK I shall convince myself that all this is not needed. Coz if I buy all these then essentially I will have nothing leftover from my AWS.

#firstworldproblems

And recently Paul got himself a second-hand bike and I've never ridden on a bike before (save for one time in Cambodia) so this will take some getting used to! Riding a bike requires lots of planning and also the mood of the skies. I wanted an orange helmet hurhurhur but I guess most riders like boring colours because there are absolutely no orange helmets out there unless I spray paint it myself. So my helmet is pink. Haha. Wave if you see a pink head that looks vaguely like me on the roads!

Still trying to find a good time to break the news to the boss ㅠ.ㅠ
But there's never a good time for such things. Sigh!

Anyway I finally found some time to bake after a long while! After my parents packed all the baking supplies into the storeroom I find it such a hassle to dig everything out when I want to bake something. So now I go for super fuss free recipes that require as little baking tools as possible. Better still if it doesn't require the mixer!

Haha I've been feeling bad about all the weight I've gained over the past 7 months so I tried to make it more healthy by using oatmeal. And it's flourless. I hope it's healthier? Trying my darnest to #eatclean but failing LOL.

Presenting the Flourless Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies! Woah what a mouthful haha.

 

Round little patties

 They expanded nicely! :D

Probably one of the simplest recipes ever. Quick prep time too. All I needed was a weighing scale, a big bowl, a baking tray and my hands. Dump everything into bowl, mix, shape into circles, bake. Hurhur.

And I keep failing at making caramel!!! SIGH! I wanted to make salted caramel cupcakes for Paul's birthday but I failed twice :( and I ran out of sugar so I couldn't make a third batch. So bo bian, settled for vanilla cupcakes topped with cream cheese frosting. Luckily the birthday boy is as easy-going as I am! Hahahaha :)

 

LOL handmade signs 

I'm going for a Christmas log cake baking class this Saturday! Excited to finally learn the art of rolling the cake - hope it'll turn out much better than the one I did last year!

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!

It keeps raining in the mornings. Makes for very conducive sleep-ins.
Unfortunately it also means I'm always late for work. Very blatantly so. I just happily stroll in after 930am or later every day whether rain or shine. If I find another job I have no idea how I am going to adapt to the normal hours of working haha.

Speaking of which the job search has been very stagnant! Why nobody wants to hire me? :(

Sigh. OK on to happier things. Long weekend that just passed:

 

Baked egg tarts on Thurs. The egg custard didn't curdle like it did the last time so that's good! I originally wanted to bake a Lemon Drizzle Loaf from this video I saw. It looks so gooooooooooooooood! It's the way the shot the video I guess haha. But my mother asked for egg tarts so ok lor. Haha.

Then I went for Muay Thai and kicked some ass (I wish). Haha but it's a very tiring sport and I say that even as I do Boxercise regularly.

Staycation at Wanderlust Hotel on National Day! It's a boutique hotel so the rooms are quite quirky - each level has a different theme and we got the Pantone Room on the second floor. The room is entirely decked out in a single colour so there's a red room, a yellow room, a blue room, you get the gist. We got the green room and proceeded to look like Shrek coz of the green tinge hahaha.

 

It's a small room and these capsules are the toilet and shower, right in the middle of the room haha. The bed is just adjacent to the toilet!

 

The bed is good for huggling hurhurhurhur

 

Yup so that's the longish room

 

The French (? I think?) restaurant on the first floor called Cocotte where we also had our breakfast

 Being a boutique hotel, there wasn't any swimming pool or any other facilities, but they did have an open air jacuzzi on the second floor which was right next to our room.

To catch the fireworks from the parade that night, we walked from Bugis all the way to Promenade MRT station. Took us a good half an hour I think. Aaaaand we were then blocked by a tree when the fireworks came on. Bahh.

I did girly stuff on Saturday, met some Ichee folks for lunch, and on Sunday enjoyed an afternoon dip in the MBS infinity pool thanks to free passes hurhur.

 

And yup so that wraps up the long weekend. Weekends can never be long enough though. :(

Next break would be Nepal in Oct, and I'm not sure if that's a break or not coz I think I'll be trekking every day. OH NO I AM SO NOT PREPARED FOR NEPAL!!! Have not been training at all! Yikes!!!

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*