Since I've been gone...

..not for the first time. Please pardon my long absence. Activities just got more and I just simply didn't have the time, energy and mood for taking and editing photos, much less updating the blog.

I very much wish I had the time and enthusiasm I once had in updating this blog. Don't get me wrong! It doesn't mean I'm gonna lock this blog away in the safe forever but the updates will just come at a much slower rate. As the lack of time has affected my blog updates, so has it affected my baking schedule. Much as I wish to be baking away like a mad woman and updating this blog with tons of pictures and recipes, that's gotta wait.

On a happier note, let me catch up on what I've missed for the period of time I've been gone..

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who came to NUS to support Sweet Couture. My siblings, D and I had a fantastic time selling our goodies to you people and we hope you enjoyed eating them as much as we enjoyed selling them =D Of everything I made, I loved the macaron the most. Experimenting with earl grey and chocolate macarons was somehow quite a breakthrough for me. And, I'm glad it worked out perfect.

Being a chocoholic myself, I couldn't resist putting The Chocoholic cupcake on the menu and it was just as well-received. Needless to say, the cookies were the first ones to be sold out and it was nice knowing that people actually came back the following day to buy MORE! =)

While I thought I needed a break from baking madness, I cam across pictures of cupcake bouquets by chance. They looked SO captivating and I told myself I HAD to make one. Wouldn't it a perfect gift for mother's day? How sweet isn't it?

I caught the flower cupcake making bug that I decided to open a "class" for my friends and invited them over for a session of cupcake flower making!

Check out the variety of flowers we made during our baking session. I love making cupcake bouquets! They're simple to make and to top it up, simple to eat as well! No fuss over having to cut up the cake!! =p

If you havent got an idea what to get for your mother for this Mothers' Day, why make a cupcake bouquet and impress her with edible flowers?

I had meant to post these pictures up a long time back but I got lazy and tired and the pictures were just stored away in my laptop, waiting to be uploaded. Now that I am back from a really GREAT break/holiday, I thought to myself that I shouldn't procrastinate further.

At the boarding gates at the Singpore Budget Terminal. Just before we left for sunny Phuket!

D and I and a bunch of friends took the weekend off and had a really GRRREAT time in sunny Phuket! It was a nice break from work and all other things and now I'm pretty much recharged to be back baking and taking photos and uploading them, I hope. The fantastic shots my friend took with his DSLR captured really nice memories of the trip.

So, I shall let the photos do most of the talking.

Beach fun @ Patong Beach!

 

Street Food

What's visiting Phuket, Thailand without having a taste at their street food. Superb grilled chicken, with just the right doneness. YUMS!

 

Singha

Not forgetting a taste of their local produced, Singha Beer. I'm not a fan of alcohol nor do I even don't mind drinking. But Singha beer has sucessfully made it to my list of permitted alcohol beverages. =D

 

Preparing ourselves for snorkelling!

 

Lush Sea Anaemone

 

Sunset @ Bangla Street. One of the most happening streets in Phuket.

 

Fried rice.

 

Mixed Vegetables sauteed with garlic

The fried rice and mixed vegetables were something familiar, but the great company and a day of fun at the beach made the food seemed especially nice! =)

Clear tom yum soup.

Having tried Thai food in Singapore, I dare say that the Thai food standards in Singapore is as close as it could get as the authentic ones in Phuket.

 

The SUPERB fish

The fish was REALLY good. Nicely done with fantastic-tasting sauce. They even separate the meat out so that you don't even have to remove the bones! One of the advantages of having a friend who's a chef travelling with you is that he can ensure the freshness of the seafood. Especially so when you get to choose your own seafood in Phuket!

 

Fresh seafood

 

Beakfast @ Bodega

Museli @ Bodega

In case you were wondering, Bodega is the place we stayed in during our time in Phuket. An extremely affordable place with SUPER friendly staff. A very very nice place. Plus, it's close to the beach!

Eve of Songkran

To end of the wonderful trip, we managed to catch a glimpse of the Thai New Year, Songkran just before we left. And yes, we got drenched while walking along Bangla Street and went home in the plane with wet clothes!

If' you've persisted reading to the end of this post, I applaud you and thank you for reading this long long post. As with every blogger's wish, I hope to be back more regularly, posting more bakes and recipes!

forever twenty-one

I just had, not one, but two 21st birthday orders within just a week apart! To add on to the fun, this is my 100th post YAY! And of course, I hope my blog would remain as happening  as possible and just like the fashion label, forever twenty-one.

Many say that time seems to move twice the speed once you hit the age of twenty-one and I somehow got to agree with that. However, upon deeper reflection, I guess the magical fast forwarding of time doesn't happen when you hit the magic number 21, but rather, as you progress, responsibilities pile up and with that comes investment of time to maintain those responsibilities.

Just take for example, when we were young, all we had to fret was, studies, test and grades and probably how to prevent my classmate from stealing my notes or worse still, stealing my eraser or crossing over to my "territory" marked by an invisible line on our tables. Other than that, we lucky brats of this age practically had to worry nothing about food and clothing. Now that I've those who have crossed the 21 boundary, suddenly find themselves struggling to find an ideal job and managing their finanaces and increasing responsibilities. In a split second, the list of things to do gets longer and longer and you start finding that time is zooming by faster and faster.

And... I am reminded of how long ago was my 21st birthday whenever I come across someone else who has just turned 21.

Many thanks to my secondary school classmate, Eunice for introducing me to her friend, QY to order her 21st birthday cake from me =) It wasn't too difficult for me to conceive the idea of how the cake should look like because QY already had something in mind and even had a picture of how she wanted it to look. Of course decisions like sizes and colours and other minor details had to be made and THIS was what the final product was.

The cake was a simple vanilla butter cake sandwiched with yummy yummy nutella buttercream for the bottom two tiers and nice, tangy lemon buttercream for the top most layer! It was a pretty huge cake which was REALLY REALLY heavy. Cake sizes measured, 10" - 8" - 6". Each layer was a little more than 3" tall so you could just imagine how heavy the cake was with the fondant =XX

To complete the sweet pink, floral 'feel', I added a "tiara" and a fondant key since she was celebrating her 21st. Although I don't quite know the true significance of a key, but I do believe it's somehow symbolic of your key to the gates of adulthood.

And so, if you're wondering who's the next lucky one who's just turned 21, it's none other than Eunice's sister, Evon.

                 

Eunice saw my "chirstmas" cookies post and wanted those cute 3D cookies and in my opinion, I think those made perfect door gifts and not to mention, they are cute, even when plain!

These cookies are pretty huge so don't be fooled by the photo. Eunice actually asked how big a plate was needed to display the cookies so that the guests could jus take and eat them (like buffet style). I told her she'd need something that's at least 30" x 30" for 60 cookies.

Several days later, she increased the order to 70 cookies! 35 of pooh and 35 of mickey! Although no decoration needed to be done, assembling and packing the cookies were more time consuming and laborious than baking them! Not to mention, I had to bake extra because of my mighty strength I broke a few legs, necks and ears =X So I had to re-do almost 5-7 of mickey and pooh =(((

I had no idea how should I get the body stuck to the legs, so i used royal icing to "glue" them together. I guess the humidity in our Singapore air kinda softened the cookies a little and on hindsight, I think I should have placed a packet of oxygen absorber thingy in each packet. oh wells, lesson learnt! The cookies were a breeze to make, especially when I kinda memorised the ingredients after the 300 wedding cookies. BUT bending and rolling them out were a PAIN, literally and mentally. Especially if the ears broke off while transporting it from the table to the baking tray.

But nonetheless, I managed to get the cookies all packed, sealed. All tags cut and attached. DONE, before the scheduled pick-up time. PHEW! I think this is one of my rare orders that I need not rush and for once, I could breathe a sigh of relief and snap away while waiting for the cookies to be picked up! =DD

Like flowers which blossom and wilt and die, so do humans blossom, age and pass on. I guess it's not a matter of how long we maintain our youth or even "feel youthful" in our golden years. But rather, what have we accomplished in the days of our youth that is worth remembering. The period might be short-lived, but as long as it was spent meaningfully in an worthy, impactful manner, we could be, potentially, forever twenty-one.