Sunday, May 23, 2010

Mounds of love


My homemade truffles may not be as good as the ones from here but it was good enough to capture his heart, according to the bf. The story of how we fell in love or rather how he fell in love with me was in actual fact an entrapment in his opinion. It was I, the sultry temptress who employed the clever use of truffles that ensnared his senses and claimed his heart for my own. I know (hope) he jests about the entrapment business but truffles are really one of his favourite things. He gets as excited as a little boy whenever I gift him with these chocolate mounds.


What then can be a more perfect gift than truffles for his belated birthday celebration? In fact, I would go as far as to say that he would rather receive a box of 20 truffles than the crazy amount of things I had baked for him on his last birthday!



Remember how I talked about being a bad friend? I was made a bad girlfriend too because of schoolwork! I had a paper due the next day on his birthday and as I was rushing it, I had absolutely no time to celebrate it with him. Although, I guess I supposedly "celebrated" it for him by flashing a "sign" (pens+foolscap paper) that said "Happy Birthday" at 12am in the library which was where we were the day before his birthday.


We, of course celebrated it properly, truffles and all after our exams and although it was a small affair, it was by no means any less enjoyable.

Many thanks to Brad who bought me a block of awesome chocolate (Haigh's!) from Sydney of which I used to make these lovelies! I would have used the entire block to make these truffles if not for the chocolate mouses residing in my house! As luck would have it however, a friend gifted me with a bar of chocolate from Switzerland which made up for the needed grams! Awesome is it not to have lovely friends?


Since I have made these truffles a million times over with the same recipe, I decided a little change was in order and thus tried out a new recipe. The bf being the bf could not discern between the "new" and the "old" truffles but declared it delicious nonetheless. I thought it pretty tasty although I have to say that I prefer it without the new addition of Grand Marnier. Call me boring but I like my truffles simple.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Some birthday Snicker-whats

Just showing some Snickerdoodle love I gave my friends for their birthdays!





I have not been exactly a good friend this year and I totally blame school. With all the time devoted to academic work and procrastination, I did not have time to get presents, make cards and bake yummies! Since my holidays started 3 days ago, I have been trying to make it up to them, or at least the few that I met with some snickerdoodles! The next few days/weeks/months will be spent on getting belated birthday presents, laboring over cards and baking a lot of treats!

I do suppose I have to look for a summer job soon with the prospect of my cash running out but I managed to convince myself that I have until after I get my results to decide. I mean, I may be looking for a proper job instead by then so it is no point getting my knickers in a twist about getting hired now right? Of course, I really do need the cash but ah well.

Hi procrastination, I can see you waving with all the resumes I have to write, we are going to be best friends again huh? Blahhh. I have nothing, nothing to put in my resume! Boooo. Well, I am off to to eat some snickerdoodles with some ice cream right now and maybe life will be a teensy bit better.

Monday, May 10, 2010

FITS











Remember the fashion show I was talking about in this post? These are just a few pictures from then. I am sorry! Quite a few meme-s up there. No one was there bearing flowers for me or clicking their cameras for me as I went down the runway but there were a whole bunch of friends of friends and new found friends who captured the memories and I guess I am pretty lucky to have a few snapshots! The Bf did bring me out for a big dinner although he was not at the show and that is good enough for me.

Credits: from top (Wilson Chua, Llyod Lee, Becky, Elicia, Esther, Vivian, Alison, Farhan)

Mommy Pie





Happy Mother's Day!
Mother's Day= Apple pie at my house because my mom LOVES apple pie. She knows how to make it alright but she says she is too lazy and so it has become a yearly tradition (burden) for me to make apple pie for her on Mother's day. I say burden because I mean peeling, coring and cutting 7 apples for a pie that size is a ho-hum chore. Besides, I am a very slow peeler, corer and cutter so yes, burden, burden, burden. It almost just makes it worth it with that first bite (I mean, mom's first bite). It was tasty, pretty yummy, tart with a sweet tinge, just the way I like it (Mom, too!) but if I had help with the peeling, it would have tasted so much better (I am just saying)!


There is however an interesting story (as always) behind this 'burdensome' chore of making my mom's day apple pie.



The pictures of the apple pie with the pastry rose? They are pictures of the apple pie I made thinking it was Mother's Day. That was sometime back in uh March. Till now, I do not have an inkling as to why I thought that Sunday was Mother's Day in that week of March.

In fact, I thought it was pretty odd that there was no usual sleuth of advertisements on which restaurants to go to on Mother's day, which florists to purchase your carnations from for Mother's Day, no tweets asking people what they were doing for their good ole moms, no siblings eagerly pushing the duty of getting the present to each other, no friends complaining about how carnations the size of their thumbs cost 2 dollars. Zilch.



I did ask my siblings if they knew it was Mother's day on that particular Sunday. Despite their raised doubts, I was still somehow stupidly convinced that it was and berated them about forgetting about it. So Sunday rolled by and my mom asked me if she could eat the apple pie on the table and I said of course, it is your Mother's Day present! She looked at me and said it was not Mother's Day, Mother's Day was not for another 2 months. We all had a good laugh about it over some pie but two months rolled by and I still had to make one last Sunday for the real Mother's Day! I did try to weasel out of it by joking with my mom the day before, telling her that hey, you ate your present 2 months ago, I am not making another! She pretended not to hear me. How convenient.


So, along with the usual sleuth of advertisements, tweets and complains, Mother's Day was celebrated at my house with some pie. Mom being the happiest of course having gotten two pies this year.


This is a pretty long post with lots of pictures because well, I have time now and I was away for pretty darn long! Truce?


I absolutely love mornings like this with apple pie and Murakami. Simple yet immensely satisfying.

The milk is just there because milk and cookies go together just like milk and apple pie or was it vanilla ice cream? Anyways, I do not drink milk so le brother/s will have to finish it for me later on with his/their slice/s of apple pie when he/they get/s back from school.



Monday, May 3, 2010

Snicker-what?



SNICKERDOODLES!

I know there is crack down the middle of that snickerdoodle but the other one had two. Well, I know you want to hear the story (or not) but here I go boring you with WHY and other details:

I was on some snickerdoodle making frenzy just before all my deadline (hopefully you got one of them because I think I gave out a gazillion (not really) in school) and not forgetting about ma blog, I reserved like two snickerdoodles to take pictures of. As you know, however, things do not EVER go my way! I asked the bf to hold the box containing these precious snickerdoodles for like a minute so that I could adjust the strap of my bag and he SWUNG the box. There you go. Cr-ac-k. Lovely really.

For people who do not know what snickerdoodles are, like I have explained and tweeted and re-tweeted to the tweeples, they are soft and chewy sugar cookies rolled in cinnamon and sugar! Definitely one of my favourite cookies! They make me craving soft pretzels rolled in cinnamon sugar, cinnamon rolls and basically anything cinnamon-y. Unlike the Triple C though, I can only eat ONE of these because they are swwww-ee-t and I am as you know, not a HUGE fan of very sweet stuff. I am a lemon/tart girl through and through.

I have not found the ULTIMATE snickerdoodle recipe though so if you have any favourites, please please pretty please share them with me!

P.S 2 more final papers to go! I missed my blog and it looked so forlorn without new content that I gave in. See you all soon. I promise you apple pie!

P.S.S I forgot to change the post date and time and goodness me, this post is "late late late" by close to 1.5 months!