Happy Birthday!! :)

Tada... my really beautiful b'day cake. Yummy!! :)


Yes, it's happy birthday to ME... :) Time really flies, cos i'm feeling older already :p
Took leave today, not that there's going to be any extravagant celebration (it's recession period leh...) but just because the last thing I want to do is to slog my guts out at work on my supposedly special day... haha :)
Bought a birthday cake from my neighbourhood cake shop this year. Well... It's dad's contribution but I get to choose my own cake :p. Decided not to buy from prima deli or benganwan solo this time round because I have bought numerous times from these places (for my mum, dad, grandmas and myself etc...) and its always more or less the same thing. I saw this chocolate cake which looks really nice and decided to give it a try. Hope it taste just as nice as it looks (cross my fingers... haha).

CNY Festive Mood @ Chinatown

Decided to go down to Chinatown with Dad today since it was nearing the CNY festive season. It will be nice to mingle with the crowd on a Sunday and perk up the festive mood this year. Have taken some photos which I thought would be nice to share if any of you haven't got a chance to go down to Chinatown yet. =)

A stall selling "la wei"

Sweets anyone?

Cute pumpkins, gourds and buddha hand fruits??

Can't really leave out these decorative plants for CNY...

Which one to choose?

Look at all these colourful sweets...

CNY artsy display?

Taiwan Mochi!!!

Ingots for Sale?

Sea of flowers...

Sea of green pamelos...

Two-in-One Steamboat: Bak Kut Teh Soup and Ma La Soup

(We went for steamboat dinner after exploring the streets of Chinatown =))

View of Chinatown from the overhead bridge

Apple Crumble Pie

Was bored stiff today so decided to try my hands on making an apple crumble pie. The final product still looks ok (looks edible lor... haha) but then I thought it taste a bit funny. Let me explain why. Well... the bottom pastry taste alright. The apple filling wasn't that nice because I left the job of buying apples to my dad who couldn't find the nice big and sweet tasting apples. Instead, he came back with the small dark red kind which taste a bit hmmm sour la... Apparently, the sugar i added to make the apple filling wasn't enough to make up for the taste and thus the whole filling thing taste like a mixture of sweet and sour... Well, the crumble taste a bit saltish which I reckon is due to the salted butter used. As usual, I reduced the sugar used to make the crumble because I don't like the whole thing to taste too sweet. Also, because I didn't have any self rising flour which was required according to the recipe, I substituted with the DIY self rising flour (ie plain all purpose flour plus baking soda plus a bit of salt). Now it's time to put all the different tastes together: sweet and sour (apple filling) and a bit of saltiness (the crumble), the resultant taste becomes a bit weird lor... haha...
Well... maybe next time (if I ever decide to make this again), I'll try to blend the taste together so that it taste sweet. Apple crumble pie is supposed to taste sweet rite?
Haha, maybe next time I shall make my cheesecake or cheese tarts instead... =)

Farewell Gathering

Today, we had a farewell dinner gathering for a colleague of mine at Marina Square Thai Express. It was supposed to be a joyous event whereby we had a hearty talk among two of our ex-colleagues whom we had invited along for the gathering. However, something bad had to happen of all times...
One of my ex-colleague realize that her bag containing her handphone and wallet was missing after she moved over to talk to us. She was sitting at the far end of the table and her seat was closest to the exit making her bag an easy target, i guess. The worse thing was that she had important documents in her wallet (IC and some cards). We contacted the staff of Thai Express but they told us that there wasn't any security cameras on the premises that could probably caught the moment when the bag was stolen. The security guard at Marina Square said what they can do is to probably make a police report first.
It was a dampening moment to our high spirits for the day. I just hope that the stupid guy who took the bag had at least the conscience to return the IC and the important stuffs to my colleague.... Argh...

Happy 2009!!

Today is the last day of 2008 and the official countdown to 2009 will be starting soon. I wonder what lies in store for the year 2009? Hope it will be an even more exciting and fulfilling year. Anyway, I wish to thank all those people that have made my 2008 a memorable one. Lastly, happy new year to all and best wishes for the new year ahead!! =)

Cheese Tarts!

Today was my first attempt at making cheese tarts using a recipe I found on the internet. Was rather worried that my tart pastry doesn't turn out well. Luckily, it turned out ok... =) For the 1st batch of 6 tarts, I decided to pipe some hershey chocolate syrup as a decorative element for the tarts before sending them into the oven for baking. The hershey chocolate syrup was too watery to be piped and thus i ended up with a disasterous pattern for the very first tart. As I began to get used to the piping, the subsequent tarts looked better... haha..

For the second batch, I only had a little more pastry dough left so i could only make 3 cheese tarts. I decided to do the plain ones instead, just to see how it will turn out.

Dad turned out to be my first guinea pig... haha. To my relief, he commented that they taste good and even helped himself to a second one... =)

I think the tart pastry was nicer than i thought it will turn out to be.. the cheese filling wasn't too bad as well, not too sweet, just nice.

Guess my first attempt at making cheese tarts didn't turn out that bad... heehee... =)

Flowers...

Sometimes, life can be so hectic that these beautiful sights go un-noticed even if they're just along your corridor... =)