Discombobulate

Hi!!!

So... the holidays have just started. We have Cross-Country tomorrow so there will be no lessons at school. And yes, I'm going; to support Macdougall in the hopes that we might actually win this year! Yeah! Green pride, yo! :D

While I was trying to make swiss meringue butter cream a week ago, my hand mixer died on me. :( One of the beaters just stopped working. So I couldn't finish whipping up the butter cream with only one beater so I deemed the swiss meringue butter cream a fail. D: I wasted so many eggs; so I don't think I will ever try it again.

But!!! I am never going to give up my goal of making the perfect frosting with good balance in terms of sweetness and stiffness for piping. I want to pipe beautiful swirls that will not melt on my cupcakes one day... AND I WILL.

But to achieve that goal... I will have to get a brand new mixer (I want a Kenwood one but they are so bloody expensive!!!). Which I will!!! Hopefully sooner than later. :D I have been suffering from baking deprivation AND IT IS KILLING ME!!! I just sat in front of my computer for the whole day last Sunday (I usually bake on Sundays) and I was so bored because I had no mixer to make CCC dough with. :(

I couldn't stand not baking anymore (And also because I was partly craving for something to eat) so I made crumbly cookies just now. They require absolutely nothing electronic, except for the oven, which I thought was perfect for my now mixer-less self. And I took pictures!!!

Yes, the lighting in my kitchen is that good. HAHA! No lah. I wish. I've been learning how to improve the lighting in pictures using Photoshop so that when I take pictures of food, they will look 10x more appealing. And yes, the cookies are supposed to be ugly like that.

So have a nice first term of holidays, guys!

Hopefully there won't be any accidents happening at Bukit Shahbandar tomorrow because it was raining pretty heavily just now. Good luck to all the houses tomorrow! But I am naturally biased; so MACDOUGALL is gonna win. Hopefully. :)

Enjoy the rest of the week and STAY SAFE! Remember to lock all the doors! :)

Love, Audrey
(11.24 PM)

P.S. Will make a lengthier post when I have something to blog about.

Musical Genes in Jeans

Hello! :D

As I mentioned in my previous post, I went to the Fiddle Fest last Sunday to watch Jasmine perform. It was really nice! Jasmine looked so bored when she was playing. That's because she's concentrating a lot lah. But I prefer to think that she's so good at playing the violin already, all the kiddy songs that she was playing was subpar to her standards. Hehe. :)

I went with Josephine and Sandra to watch Jasmine. And yes, there are pictures. (Finally, right?)

Having a mocha at Cheezbox. Jasmine was getting ready at Rizqun at that time so she wasn't with us.

Jos and I.

Sandra and Jos.

Sandra and I.

There was an intermission during the performance. Heh...

Only going to post photos with Jasmine in them because I'm biased like that. :D Love you Jassie. ♥

Group photo at the end.

During the 40 minute intermission, we had high-tea at the Rizqun Restaurant. It didn't meet up to my expectations. :( Wasn't very impressed with the food. But it was not bad lah. Haha.

Will probably blog again this Sunday. :)

I must get a hair cut soon. Fringe looks so ugly right now. :S

Love, Audrey
(9.43 PM)

P.S. I have been downloading MTV Movie and Video Music Awards and watching all of them. Haha. My favourite so far is the MTV Movie Awards last year. Aziz Ansari is really funny. :D

P.P.S. Haven't watched so many episodes of Pretty Little Liars, Glee, Gossip Girl and 90210. Downloaded them already, but I haven't watched them yet. Heh. :P

P.P.P.S. By the way, 'Musical Genes in Jeans' is the slogan for the concert. And that's why all the performers were wearing jeans.

P.P.P.P.S. All photos were taken using Sandra's freaking awesome Canon PowerShot G12! I want a camera with a swivel screen!!!! So fun to use! And so, so easy to take pictures. Even doubles as a mirror! :D

P.P.P.P.P.S. I wonder who's the guy who narrates the plots for movies in the trailers. Because all the voices sound the same. Or maybe it's computer-generated. Hmm...

Baking Post

Hello! Can you believe it's March already? Wow. I'm back after so many days of not blogging. It has been so long since I typed in this window. Not particularly proud of that.

1st Assessment Tests just ended today. So far, I've only gotten one paper back. It was... meh. Could've done better. :/ But on the bright side, I'm not moping around or anything like that. It didn't destroy my weekend.

I actually planned to bake this afternoon. Yes, after a week of baking depravity, my hands were just itching to grab my hand mixer and whip up some cookie dough. But, I didn't because I had to be somewhere.

Then, I thought that I would bake tomorrow. But instead I'm gonna be at Rizqun, supporting Jasmine in the Fiddle Fest (Musical Genes in Jeans, yo!) and eating cakes with Jos and Sandra. :) Can't wait!

So I have to wait until Friday when I have some free time to bake something. Up to just a few weeks ago, I thought chocolate chip cookie dough was supposed to be firm and can be cut with cookie cutters, sort of like shortbread cookie dough.

Shortbread cookie dough

Because every time I bake chocolate chip cookies, I have to add additional flour to the recipe because it was wet. So I asked Josephine about it and she told me that CCC dough isn't supposed to be dough-like, CCC dough is supposed to be kind of moist. The taste of the CCC that I made before wasn't bad but I wanted to give a go at making CCC the way it's supposed to be made. So I went online and watched so many baking instructional videos and found a lot of recipes pertaining to chocolate chip cookies.

This is how chocolate chip cookie dough is supposed to look like.

It has been my goal since I started baking to make the perfect CCCs; because I, myself, am an chocolate chip cookie aficionado. I still have yet to test out to 5 recipes that I got. If they don't measure up, then I will find more recipes. Yes, that's how enthusiastic I am about this. Never give up!!!!

Also, I have been scouring the internet, finding frosting recipes, because no cupcake is complete without frosting . Now, I have an issue with the only frosting that I use, whipped cream frosting (The frosting I used to ice Pat's cupcakes): it melts. Very fast too, so you can't leave it out at room temperature.

So I looked around and found a lot of recipes for butter cream frosting, a very common frosting that holds up pretty well at room temperature.

Butter cream frosting

I made the frosting and tasted it. It was like I was biting into sugar. It was too sweet, one bite into the frosting will have your teeth withering in pain. The average amount of sugar in butter cream frosting is about 2 and a half cups. 1 cup is very, very sweet already. Imagine two. There are also some recipes with four. D: The reason this frosting has to be very sweet is because the icing sugar is the backbone of this frosting, it is used to stabilize it and make it pipe-able and not soupy.

So after that, I found swiss meringue butter cream. It only has 1 and a quarter cups of sugar, so that's not too bad, considering that frosting is supposed to have that sweet taste. So I'm gonna try that one out and hope that it goes well. I will post pictures if it does go well. If not, then... I will keep looking for a frosting recipe that will satisfy my needs. :)

I'm really into baking right now, in case you can't tell from the paragraphs above. I can spend a whole day looking at pictures of beautiful cakes and cookies and searching for recipes and how-to videos. It give me a sense of hope when I look at the pretty deserts because if I were to master that particular technique, maybe one day my cakes and cupcakes can be that pretty too. :D The one thing that I would strive my hardest to bake is probably a mango cheesecake. I love mango cheesecakes (the one from Fleur-de-lys) and it would just be such an achievement for myself if I can successfully bake one of those. :D

Will post some pics of food that I actually baked by the end of this week. :)

Love, Audrey
(11.16 AM)

P.S. I miss my brothers. Haven't talked to them in so long. It is so quiet in the house. :(

P.P.S. I took all the pictures in this post from Google.

Random Post 13.0

I'm really sorry. :(

It's been almost three weeks since I last blogged. Yeah, I've been neglecting this blog for quite some time now. I'm really sorry to those of you who come here, expecting a new post, but ended up being disappointed from the lack of one. :(

My life has been really hectic lately. National Day practices for the last couple of weeks, tuition, my piano theory exam this Saturday (I still can't wrap my head around the musical terms!!!! We have to learn all of them from Grade 1 onwards and the crazy thing is, only less than five of them are coming out. And they can be from any grade. D:), me being sick for half of this month... yeah.

I got sick on the second day of Chinese New Year. Yeah. That was such a long time ago. HAHA! Went to the doctor and got some medicine. But they happened to be pills. And for those of you who have read my blog before, you would know that I have an aversion to pills/tablets/capsules because I can't swallow them. I could swallow them before, but now it just wouldn't go in. So I had to crush them into powder, taste that horrible bitter taste (Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting) and swallow them.

I still wouldn't get better after finishing my medication. So I went to the doctor I usually go to (He wasn't here the first few days of CNY). He prescribed me liquid medicine (THANK GOD) and I enjoyed taking my medicine after that. Then I got better. So yay! Last Wednesday, I was coughing a lot and had a sore throat. Then the following day, I was feeling like crap. Took the remainder of my fever medicine and went to school. I actually felt better when I got home. Then I went to piano and tuition and when I came back, I checked my temperature and I found out I had a high fever. I spent Chap Goh Mei sick too. :(:( But I felt better the next day. So all's good.

I don't know why my immune system is so low. :( I eat lots of vegetables and fruits (I'm actually eating fruits now! Pears and apples. And I always eat fruits on the way to tuition because they sustain my hunger before dinner at night and they give me something to munch on so I don't feel bored on the way. And plus! 100% fat free!) and drink lots of water and stay away from soft drinks and junk food (Except for the Cheetos that Pat tempted me into eating yesterday. Before that, I haven't eaten any junk food since... I dunno. But quite a long time already).

Chinese New Year wasn't very fun for me. For the most part, I was sick the first week of it. And I didn't collect a lot of ang pows this year. It was just another new year. Nothing special.

I smell like cupcake batter. Haha. Made chocolate chip cupcakes for no other reason except that I want to have something to eat before extra class tomorrow. Yes, that's why I bake. For myself to eat. :P

I'm gonna go pack my school bag now. And I'm not going to be blogging until after the 1st Assessment Test is over, which will be on the 5th of March, unless they postpone it. So until then! :) Good luck to everyone who are currently stressing over the upcoming exams!!

Love, Audrey
(8.19 PM)

Happy Advanced Chinese New Year!

Hi!!

It's already February and since the first day of the new year, I have only blogged... 3 times. Epic fail!!!! D:

I'm sorry I haven't blogged for a little over a week now. I have been busy with school and National Day Practices and practicals in the afternoon and piano and all that. Tuitions haven't started yet, but they will soon. Which means my life will be even more hectic then. Oh, joy.

I bought new heels for CNY!!! They're espadrilles and they're super pretty. They're a little over 2 inches so they're sort of alright to walk in. I already did my toenails while watching Mythbusters just now. Heh. I will probably take pictures of them for you to see. :P Doing my fingernails only tomorrow night because we still have school tomorrow. But that's alright because we have four straight days of holiday after that!!! YAY!!! :D

Chinese New Year is in a day and I can't wait! Hopefully it'll be a nice and enjoyable celebration. :D Brother #2 is coming back tomorrow. Can't wait to see him. :) Brother #3 and #2 are both leaving on Sunday though. So fast. D:

So I would just like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy and prosperous Chinese New Year! May this new year bring you much joy, health, wealth and success.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

It's Harlequin and Artemis' year this year!!! Love you both, you cute little bunny rabbits.

Love, Audrey
(10.31 PM)