Mini baking marathon and WWOOFing

Last Fri was quite exhausting, as I whipped up a record 3 desserts in a day - the blueberry cheesecake I made a couple of weeks back (sadly it turned out less yummy this time round); pear and cinnamon frangipane tarts and more cake pops! I wanted to treat my ex-colleagues to some home-made desserts at our housewarming and had planned to make 2 things... But I got a little paranoid that my pears (painstakingly sourced by D) wld become stale if I left them for too long and so ended up making 3 things. It was tiring though still satisfying - just wished someone else cld have done the washing up for me as my hands were rougher from all the washing up :( How do the real bakers manage to whip up so many things everyday?!

Come this Fri I will also fly off to Taiwan to volunteer at an organic farm as a WWOOFer! D and I will have a weekend getaway in Taipei before I begin my 2-week self-imposed hardship posting... Am getting cold feet and wondering if I can take 2 weeks of manual labour and scorching sun... but it's too late to regret and will just try to make the best of it. Hopefully turning vegetarian for 2 weeks can help me shed some calories :P Unfortunately typhoons are looming large - crossing my fingers that Taiwan wun be too badly affected while I'm there! And that we'd be lucky enough to get at least one nice sunny day this weekend (it's likely to be rainy the whole weekend. boo.)

Above: Tarts before cooking and while baking. 

Was really pleased that my tarts turned out quite pretty! :)

 and yummy too! (thanks to an excellent but a bit mafan recipe from What Katie Ate)

Also attempted to replicate the cake pops I learnt to make last Wed. They were relatively successful too - though the white choc coating provided by the instructor was a lot thicker than the one I made...

If you feel like you've had an overdose of baking blog posts - I can assure you that you wun be seeing any more in the next couple of weeks :P Will try to pen an entry or two about my farming adventures - if the internet access at the farm is good :)