This week's creations!

I am 'settling well' into my state of joblessness and getting more housewifey :P Baked some cranberry and white chocolate cookies on Mon afternoon; and blueberry cheesecake yesterday afternoon. Am getting quite interested in food styling, and have started to amass a mini collection of various knick knacks that can further enhance my food shots. And thankfully it's National Day today; so I was able to share my baked treats with my family - the cookies have been devoured over the past few days and I am now down to 2 pieces of cheesecake in the fridge :)

The cheesecake (with a thin layer of baked sour cream finish) wasn't supposed to be this shallow - but a few cm wider cake pan led to quite a significant fall in height. Well it turned out looking like a cheesecake pie, but actually not too bad lah, it's now slightly healthier with less cheese per slice of cake :P

Cooking is something I am somewhat capable of but enjoy less and prob will never be v good at - because I don't quite fancy the food preparation part, which can be quite stinky or 'gooey'... like getting rid of fats, ending up with garlic-smelling fingers etc. But we had some leftover cheese sausage from the weekend, so I threw together a 'chapalang' pasta with mushroms, grape tomatoes, asparagus and sausage for yesterday's dinner  :) 

Wonders of 3D printing and a lovely book trailer

I came across 2 interesting videos this morning while surfing online - one on 3D printing and another of a book on the topic of happiness.

I've come across several 3D printing videos/ articles during the course of work; but I've mostly seen it used for manufacturing factory parts, home-produced toys and stuff. The vastly improved quality of life that this 3D printed prosthetic arms/ device brings to little Emma here in the video is quite amazing and touching:



I also saw a book 'review' with a very cute animated book trailer. I wish I can draw and sketch like these people - actually our v own Civil Service College is also gradually having a couple of courses on visual facilitation. I've gone for one taught by a civil servant who had the privilege to take one of these classes when The Grove experts came to SG - but it's quite hard to 'get it' if you're not already that talented at sketching/ drawing...

From tmr onwards, I will be relatively free to do whatever I like with my weekdays; and a day or two each week will prob be set aside for baking. I have amassed several to-try recipes from food blogs, lib books and random recipes I come across. If only there's some place I can borrow baking equipment from; cos many recipes require this baking pan or other (or several, to make a layered cake) that I dun alri have and need to buy... :(

With more baking plans in mind, I shld also seriously start exercising more. Have been terribly ill disciplined and lazy the past couple of weeks - wld I be able to get up early tmr morning to go for a morning run? Very questionable, but I shall try... 

Here are some new food photos - last Thurs (my first day of bummer-hood), I made some choc peanut butter ice-cream!

Home-made chocolate & peanut butter ice-cream. The original recipe showed visible swirls of peanut butter - but had I followed the recipe faithfully this treat would be extremely extremely sinful so I cut down on the peanut butter and kinda incorporated my crunch Skippy PB into the choc ice cream instead. 

 My lovely ex-colleague gave me a box of cookies on my last day - I decided to use them as props for my choc peanut butter ice-cream.. Choc cookie ice-cream sandwiches!

I didn't show any shot with the completed cookie - because when I put them tog the ice-cream started oozing out and became not so sightly :P

This is the latest addition to our kitchen! - we got it from Groupon and picked it up last weekend. It's apparently a limited edition colour - raspberry pink - not the colour I wld usually have chosen; but I suppose given the discount we can't complain too much about the colour. Kitchen Aids are ridiculously expensive in SG (more than twice what it wld have cost in the States) - but we were too lazy to ship it from the States; so the Groupon deal was a decent compromise :P

Hopefully it lives up to its name! Apparently (with the suitable accessories) this machine can do a lot more than mixing dough for baking - we have watched enough Iron Chef episodes to attest to that :P And hopefully we end up using it frequently enough to justify the money spent!

Next Wed will be my last day of work at HDB and I went back to MND this afternoon to visit some Hsg Div folks after my meeting with the HR side to 'explain' my departure.. It was a nice little catch-up session with some ex-colleagues. Those who were still there are still about the same - and it felt nice seeing some ppl whom I've not quite spoken to at all in the past year! In particular, was quite surprised when Miss M (the veteran appeals tracking officer who used to scare me by her aloofness but eventually warmed up to me in my 2 yrs there) decided to pass me an angbao for 'braveness to quit'! Thought she wanted to give me an angbao for getting married; but that was apparently less deserving of an angbao. Of course I didn't accept; but thought it was kinda cute and sweet of her to offer me such an interesting 'award' :P Not sure if I should call it brave or foolish; but I had better make good use of this break else my decision will definitely veer towards the 'foolish' end.

 Raspberry and White Choc Honey Almond Meal muffins

Yesterday I tried baking some Raspberry and White Choc Honey Almond Meal muffins with the recipe from Honey and Jam, a very lovely food blog by a 22-year old American young lady photographer/baker. The "selling point" about these muffins is that they are flourless and thus quite healthy.. No sugar, just a little bit of butter, and lotsa relatively wholesome ingredients like almond meal and honey. I was careless with the oven temp and accidentally set it at a higher temp; so the top came out a little burnt... but thankfully they still tasted quite delicious. This is a relatively simple recipe with good results, so will definitely make this again and try to do a better job next time!

 Muffin ingredients! (the yellow-looking chunks are white choc, not butter!)

 Baked muffins. One of them looked like it had a funny bird face ;)

Cross-section of my muffins - I shall stuff them with even more raspberry and white choc bits next time :P

Where are the best cupcakes in town?

I had a cupcake day on Wednesday. Decided to order some cupcakes from Plain Vannila Bakery for some ex-colleagues this week. Also happened to drop by Lor 4 Toa Payoh and got more cupcakes for the Thursday's breakfast from Charlotte Grace cakeshop. Plain Vanilla's one of the newest 'kid' on the block and is supposed to have one of the best cupcakes in town - they were quite good and very pretty, but somehow the flavours I tried (sea salt caramel and dark choc ganache) were not that WOW. The sea salt caramel cream was a tad too sweet for my liking - but to be fair I typically dun fancy caramel that much.

I got a red velvet and cookies and cream cupcake from Charlotte Grace - their cookies and cream one was alright but the red velvet one was quite delicious. There are quite a few more cupcake places in town, like Swirls and Twelve Cupcakes (tried the latter once, but cannot remb if it was good haha so i suppose it was alright). Shall trot down to Swirls one day on an August afternoon :)

 PV cupcakes - photo taken using my iphone in office! 

The yummy Charlotte Grace red velvet cupcake! The frosting a little melty alri in our hot climate :(

D has had persistent fever the entire week; and it was only this morning at CGH that the doc diagnosed him as having caught pneumonia. We were quite fearful it was dengue and have been pretty vicious in eradicating the mozzies in the house (as the symptoms looked like dengue to a layman) but thankfully it wasn't. Nonetheless pneumonia is pretty bad too and he keeps coughing non-stop. It was quite baffling too where he caught it from.

To fulfill my duties as the caretaker, I finally inaugurated our rice cooker today - not to cook rice but to cook porridge! Attempted to replicate the sweet potato taiwanese porridge by dumping some sweet potato into the rice cooker too. Though I only got hold of yellow and not the orange kind of sweet potato the porridge still turned out quite decent; and I realised that it's actually quite simple to cook porridge with the rice cooker. So quite happy with our purchase; except that the metal portion where all the steam rises up to isn't detachable for washing! Eeks, so we have to wipe conscientiously with damp cloth each time... :(

Japanese desserts-weekend

Baking and trying out new recipes is my current obsession and passion (But given my 3-min hotness character, I wonder how long this phase will last though). I have succumbed to this "weak spot" the past few weekends and ended up spending a good few hrs each time whipping up something new. Sometimes the experiments  succeed, sometimes they fail. Often my bad whisking skills and layman equipment causes sugared egg mixture/ egg white to splatter onto my kitchen cabinets (which requires wiping afterwards). And a few fingers are getting slightly rougher washing all the baking equipment :( But so far.. the motivation remains. I suppose taking nice food pics thereafter gives me a kick too; and keeps me going.

This Sat - I resolved to make tiramisu again, so as not to waste the mascarpone cheese (which expires Mon) that has been sitting in the fridge. I decided to have a Jap theme, and thus attempted a black sesame recipe too. They both turned out quite decent; but there are still some issues an amateur like me can't quite figure out yet. 

 I also had a surprise find at our neighbourhood NTUC. They suddenly stocked fresh apricots and these were really fresh and sweet! I couldn't resist taking a shot of these yummy fruits :) 

And there goes another weekend of baking... But since I will be bond-free in 2 days' time and jobless in about 3 weeks' time I shall have lotsa free time to make more stuff soon! :P

More dessert adventures

Last sunday afternoon, I thought of having a green theme for the desserts I'd make. The main thing I wanted to try was another ice-cream recipe; but since I had two ripe avocados in the fridge and I came across a avocado pound cake recipe, I thought why not try baking that too. Then I can have some green-themed photos. Heh turns out that the main thing I wanted to make failed while the side project succeeded - in part because I forgot to freeze my ice-cream bowl in the freezer beforehand, and realised 1/2 an hour before the ice-cream mixture was done that I had nothing to churn it in!!! Thus I frantically put it in the freezer, hoping that it wld freeze in 6 hrs in time for me to churn and make the ice-cream later in the night. Alas that did not happen; the ice-cream bowl was only half-frozen by 11pm but I threw in the ice-cream mixture anyways so that I won't have to keep the egg yolks in the mixture in the fridge (and not frozen) overnight. Alas... insufficient churning of the ice-cream mixture gave me a ice-cream block full of ice crystals. I attempted to introduce more air by re-mixing the frozen mixture; but it was DISASTROUS. So I ended up with a hulk-like mess instead of my basil gelato. Oh well, but it was a small consolation that the recipe didn't taste that great either so I didn't feel so upset dumping everything in the bin. Nmind, I will try again next time and make sure my kitchen produces some decently-aired ice-cream!

The avocado pound cake received good reviews; so I shall make this again some time :) 

 

 Ingredients for my basil gelato, pre-mixed

The horrifying re-frozen icy green mess... :P

 On a unrelated note - I want complain against the MAC OS! I recently had to upgrade to a more advanced OS to take an online course, but it requires me to upgrade to all the intermediate OSes before I can upgrade to the most advanced one :( So my Leopard has to morph into a Snow Leopard, transform into a Lion and if I still have $ I can then upgrade it into a Mountain Lion (which will be available this July). Bleah! 

We tried two new restaurants today and came across a new 'gem' in our neighbourhood - the Indian Restaurant Zaffron Kitchen near Katong I12. The menu covers South/North Indian cuisine as well as some local Indian food. Their dishes were quite delicious and relatively reasonably-priced, and food was served pretty quickly too. That the place was done up relatively casually but tastefully also left a good impression on me. We had a seat near the entrance and the open kitchen, and so got to spy on the yummy stuff everyone else was eating ;P We seldom eat Indian food aside from roti prata, but I now have a new place on my list!

On a food-related note, I wanted to try Starbucks' new hojicha with earl grey tea jelly frap this afternoon... but was horrified to find out that a TALL cost S$6.80, almost twice the price of normal bubble teas... The stingy me refused to pay an exorbitant 7 bucks for some ice tea and jelly; and walked away "empty-handed". Maybe someone nice can let me have a sip some time (if it's nice) :P

More baking experiments

My fairly successful baking attempts recently have kept my baking enthusiasm level high - and so I decided to try out a few new recipes for a house blessing "party" over the weekend. I practically spent the whole of Sat baking, and wasted a good 3 hours on baking biscuit sponges for a green tea tiramisu recipe from scratch. However, I just couldn't get it right and in the end I ditched the entire tiramisu project for a healthy fruit tart recipe instead. Thankfully all the desserts turned out nicely in the end - the honey and walnut ice-cream; blueberry/ raspberry fruit tarts and my usual egg tarts as the back-up option.

The failed attempt to whip up decent airy biscuit sponges was rather annoying and discouraging as I had followed the recipe steps quite religiously :( Then again, I also learnt a valuable lesson - that I will prob fail many many more times trying out all sorts of new recipes; but many things worth learning/ mastering are never easy.

D picked some herbs from the garden for his roast veg dish - they were arranged so nicely out to 'dry' that I couldn't resist stealing them for a photo moment!

 Honey and walnut ice-cream topped with a mint leaf from our garden! 

Blueberry and raspberry tarts inspired by the Roost blog post on Vanilla cream pies with summer berries. The recipe comes with a very "lifestyle" video too. I had a very hard time trying to chopper off the top of the young thai coconuts required to make the "vanilla" cream though ;(

OK to add some realism to this post I have decided (after some struggle) to post a shot of my failed biscuit sponges - the bian3 bian3 ones were cos the mixture was too runny and unpipeable; and the fat squiggly ones were after I self-improvised and pumped them up by adding lotsa flour to the runny mixture. I took a bite and not too surprisingly the excess flour had made the biscuit finger too hard. Obviously these eventually went into the bin :(

Watering plants have become a daily routine for D & I since our landscaping for the garden was completed abt two weekends ago... It's pretty time consuming but the imagery of chio willows and a thriving spice garden has kept us pretty conscientious so far. Unfortunately the weather this week or two has been quite scorching n so the new plants aren't doing that well. Tonight - I discovered a snail at the spice garden... Being a gardening idiot I had to google before I was able to ascertain if it were a friend or foe. Alas, it's no friend of our garden and so I got brave D to displace it, ie gently toss out of our garden. I then decided to further inspect the sPice garden soil with my iPhone LED torchlight and to my horror discovered a small community of 6 - 8 snails all ready to feast on my various young herbs! Was really grossed out n consequently the tossing out became a bit more violent... Upon checking up further on my garden enemies and where they come from I realized that they lay eggs and are hermaphrodites.. Bleah.. Ok I suppose that is enough unsolicited info abt snails anyone can take for a night. I just hope I don't find more tomorrow :(

Blueberry pancakes for breakfast!

This morning I decided to try out a oatmeal pancake recipe, but alas, when I got to the neighbourhood NTUC I realised that they did not stock buttermilk! So I got a ready-to-use pancake mix instead heh. And two boxes of blueberries on offer! And made some blueberry pancakes! 

I happily laid the finished product on the nice blue plate we bought from Vancouver, and carried them up to my balcony, newly lined with artifical grass... and yay I get a relatively summery feel right at home :)

Home-made egg tarts and frozen yogurt! 

I decided to try out my 8-yr old egg tart recipe this afternoon; and thankfully it's still pretty good! This is my first time trying to make them again after a really long while. Was afraid I'd burn them so I took them out a little earlier. But seems like I can keep them in the oven for a couple more min the next time, to give a more burnt/ crusty look :) Wld also like to figure out how to make portuguese egg tarts..

 Egg tarts and milk - perfect for an afternoon snack! 

 I also decided to try out my ice cream maker (thks to Jeannice!) - since it's my first time using it, I attempted to do something basic - vanilla frozen yogurt. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be freezing very well in my freezer after I took it out from the machine. Maybe it's got to do with the type of yogurt i bought :( 

 

 Was quite surprised that the ice-cream maker doesn't come with a solid cover...  But the huge "spout" allows you to see the ice-cream making process. It's also designed to allow us to pour in toppings in the last 5 min as the ice-cream gets thicker! Shall try other ice-cream flavours next time!

Be Kind to Sticker Lady! 

I often look down on myself for feeling neutral about many things most of the time. But yesterday the "Sticker Lady" saga really got me rather upset and puzzled about SG's strict vandalism laws. Basically this lady decided to stick some humorous stickers at various pedestrian crossings (at the button you press to get the green man to appear). She also spray painted "My Grandfather Road" on a public road (incidentally at the junction leading to the MND building) and "My Grandfather building" on a public building. The punishment? The police arrested her yesterday for acts of vandalism and she's currently out on bail.

Netizens are lobbying for MHA to move the charge from one of vandalism (where she can be fined up to $2000, or jailed up to 3 years, or both) to that of an act of public nuisance (in which case the penalty is a fine of up to $1,000). As at now, some 12,500 netizens have signed the petition and it seems to be going strong.

This "case" is ongoing but I just hope the authorities don't go down the harsh road - in the first place, isn't it subjective what counts as vandalism/ graffiti and what counts as street art? Surely they can close one eye in this case, since her "vandalism" was pretty harmless mah. Am quite curious how this case will be assessed and plays out over the next few days. D thinks that a harsh penalty shld be in place as deterrence; but somehow this rather practical reasoning did not go down very well with me haha.

The long weekend in pictures

I had a good long weekend, which began with a little floral surprise from D! We spent some time on Sat morning putting up some of our photos at the wall leading to the kitchen... and the Hanoi propaganda poster at our washing machine area. Home improvements are still under way. The living room/ dining area will be somewhat complete by mid June, when the new sofa and sideboard arrive. The rooms upstairs look a lot more unfinished; and they will prob continue to look somewhat blah till later part of the year :P The grass on our balcony floor shld be up by this weekend if all goes well though!

 

 Before and After - Kitchen Wall/ Kitchen!

 the tiny visitor with huge eyes - ready to jump

 Cute popsicle containers that I got from Holland V over lunchtime today!

Ingrid Michaelson is coming to perform in SG!

http://is.asia-city.com/events/news/ingrid-michaelson-perform-singapore-first-time-september-10

I'm really excited 'cos I think she's cool and we used her song "The Way I Am" for my church wedding opening video ;) Now I must stalk the SISTIC website so that the tics dun get sold out before I know it!

And yay I am on leave tmr!!!  :)

Half my weekend was burnt working on someone's speech for tomorrow afternoon; but it was otherwise productive as we managed to find 2 more dining chairs and a sideboard for the dining area at discounted prices :)

Someone also shared this Christian song at service today and I thought the song and lyrics were beautiful. These two stanzas especially spoke to me - I suppose it's true that we learn through trials and not-so-pleasant experiences. But it's usually on hindsight that we appreciate the lessons they taught us.

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel you near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if each promise from Your Word is not enough
And all the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?

Last Sun, I spent 3 hours and $80 attending a sewing workshop organised by Books Actually... They had a tie up with someone to do this craft workshop. I felt like I was ripped off for paying so much to sew a little pouch I can easily buy for like less than $20 online; but oh well, I was trying to explore and made something concrete out of a few pieces of cloth!

 Today's dinner & dessert!

We attempted to cook the 2nd time this evening, drawing inspiration from a Food & Travel recipe for our soba with tomatoes dish. The dou4miao2 and shitake mushrooms was an impromptu addition to introduce more veg into the meal :) D also baked some chicken thighs with crispy skin but unfortunately that didn't turn out too photogenic so no pics of it here heh :P

A yummy and nutritious dinner - all thanks to my hubby :)

I was also quite excited to chance upon an easy lava cake recipe and attempted to make lava cake... Alas, one of my lava cakes decided to really erupt and all the lava flowed out 3 min before I was supposed to get the cakes out!

The midway 'eruption' made me slightly frantic and so I ended up leaving the lava cakes in the oven longer than I shld have and all the 'lava' got toasted in the end :( So there was no nice molten chocolate in the end but a pictorially lava-ish cake... FAIL! Nmind as it was kinda funny; and since this is easy I shall try to make it again!

Someone's DIY party blog post inspired me to try making my own party fans and hats this morning. Am supposed to help out with D's nephew's bday party in June - the art part. And this can be one idea! Thought it might be cool to use recycled materials so as to teach kids to be more environmentally conscious. Sadly my fan is quite flimsy so nice to see but not so nice to play with till I find a more hardy solution heh.

These were flowers we bought for Mother's Day last Sun - bright and cheerful :)

I made some home-made barley drink this evening for falling-sick D and felt v proud of myself! Haha. It turned out to be quite simple; just that being unfamiliar with our induction hob, wasn't too sure which power level to leave it at and the over-efficient cooker caused the water to overspill again.. :P But one whole pot with half a packet of barley only yielded me two cups of barley water.. Think I shld put less barley and more water next time heh.

We also i-roboted our living room floor for the very first time (all thanks to j & s)! The machine turned out to be a lot noisier than expected; but was amused how cleverly it could go around (quite closely) the legs of our nice green chair. It seems to go around in random spirals and knocks its head all the time; floor seems clean enough though it failed to wipe away the footprint a guest had left at my living room floor tile :P