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.

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.

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.

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!

Alive

Sorry for the lack of updates.
I promise I am still alive.
Half-dead but yes, still alive.

Stay rainbow cheery till I am back!

Oh, here is a video, blog and carbonmade which you will definitely loveeeee.

Reunion

I know, I know.
Very belated but here it is anyway!
So every year on Chinese New Year's Eve, my mom would be slogging in the kitchen to prepare the food for the reunion diner, 团员饭 (tuan yuan fan). (Of course I help!) These are the pictures of some of the DELICIOUS dishes my mom whipped up. Sorry for my lousy angling but I hope you will still feast generously!

盆菜 (Peng Cai)/Fortune Pot
This is one of my favourite dish! As the name suggests, it is a sumptuous pot of chinese delicacies. I heart the prawns, sea cucumbers and the quail eggs most. I do not like abalone although it is considered the delicacy of all delicacies by many Chinese and my sibling chopstick fight over them. I got sick of eating them every Chinese New Year! Same goes for those mushrooms which I did not touch for similar reasons as the abalone. When I was a mushroom loving kid, I was given at lunch and dinner a towering bowl of all sorts of mushrooms. Well, you can pretty much guess one day, I got so sick of eating them and threw up so...



鮑魚 (Bao yu)/Abalone
These are the sliced abalone which everyone lovessssss! (Except me of course) I shall not go into details on how abalone from X is better than Y because of Z reasons.

五香 (Wu Xiang)/Ngoh Hiang

In simple terms, this is a deep fried meat roll which consists of minced pork meat, chestnuts, onions, spring onions mixed with a generous amount of five spice powder, seasoned with sesame oil and soya sauce. My paternal grandmother does it the best maybe because she is Hokkien and this IS a hokkien dish. Sad to say, I do not like this dish either. No traumatic experience of over-eating it like abalone and mushrooms by the way. It just does not "click" with my tummy.

帶子(Dai Zi)/Scallops
Fresh scallops stir fried in Mom's special sauce is sooooo yummy! I think there are two types of scallops here but I am no scallop expert so they would just be called scallops. This dish is usually adorned with boiled broccoli at the sides or would be stir-fried together with the scallops with eggs.

Vegtable Stir-Fry
I have to admit I do not know what this dish is called. My Mom basically just stir fried some chopped cauliflowers together with mushrooms, tofu, carrots and some vegetarian beancurd thing sprinkled with crispy deep fried soy things. Sorry for the poor description but I really do not know what they are called and neither does my Mom actually. This dish was one of those forgettable dishes. I love vegetables but this just did not cut it for me.

Roast Chicken
This is just down-to-earth roast chicken which is very very succulent. Do you know roast chicken is one of my comfort foods?

Fried pork cutlets with/without cheese
The "cheese pork cutlets" are the ones on the right side and the "normal" pork cutlets are the ones on the left. Um. Actually, I forgot. I made this dish all by myself. I mean how hard can dipping pieces of pork into beaten egg, flour and breadcrumbs be right? Wrong. The deep frying part was tricky because the oil and to be at the right temperature and I had to "know" when it was done. It was not too bad but not great because it was done by yours truly. It would have been ten times better if my Mom did it herself. Really.

燒肉(Shao rou)/ Barbequed Pork meat
This is my absolute favourite! I can never get sick of this I swear! My maternal grandma made this with her broiler and having eaten numerous pieces of it at lunch, I could still stomach another ten pieces at dinner. My Mom begged (ok, asked) my grandma to cut her a portion so that she could cook one dish less and I really do not mind, it is soooo good. To be honest, I like it wayyyy more than those sold in the stores. Man. I feel like eating those right now

now.