transit

ok i so didn't sleep last night because i don't know why. instead, i went to make pastry cream for the banana cream pie. it was like 3am, and i went downstairs to buy milk. anyhow, it was a clear night sky with a half moon.
the pastry cream is more fluid this time; i think i turned off the heating much earlier than the last time. and the taste is not as nice, probably because i bought cheaper milk. ok so after making the pastry cream i tried going to sleep (at 4am). then i still couldn't sleep, and at 5am i began making the pie dough.
i really need to start getting the pie dough correct on the first try. and all throughout the night i was watching the green bananas slowly ripen. but alas, they can't ripen enough to use for the pie. so, i made the banana cream pie sans banana avec peach!
it is pretty, and it is a windy morning.

proof is in the pudding

just came back from a nice wedding dinner. not noisy, not bustling. just nice. and it's nice to come home and watch some 东方神起 on youtube and relax. haha here's a very cute video!

yishi says 'welcome to the fandom'. oh. my. dog.

clipped hairs

i think i've bought into the 东方神起 craze. anyway, i just realised i didn't reply to any of the christmas smses i received. i've been looking at postsecret today. and if i may, let me put up this really nice postcard that was on the blog today.
now there's a storm outside.

j3 soon

i have figured out what's wrong! it's because i haven't left house in four days. since coming home from the clara's house, i have not stepped out at all until today. so, when i went over to the old house, i finally moved some muscle.

i tuned the cello at the old house and played some brahms, only to realise that my calluses have softened much much.

i dug out old scores and played hymne a l'amour and plaisir d'amour.

6° of separation

last night i dreamt that i missed the last chemistry paper for the 'A' levels =( decided to skip it because i was too tired, but then i chose to go back for it and got off the bus, only to realise that it had started one hour ago. i squatted by the roadside; it looked like a parisian street. suddenly, more people came, and they all missed the chemistry paper in some way or another.

anyhow, the last paper for our real 'A' levels was not the chemistry paper.

on other news, i have found my old soft toys! and i could possibly hold on to shanghui's mendelssohn for the next ten years =(

you know you have been on facebook too often when you try to do anything but the thing still says you have maxed out the number of friends for the day.

i can smell the rain.

other halves

只要一个刻骨铭心的爱。

ten things to do this life

1. travel to a polar city
2. record and sell an album
3. meet jaejoong over coffee
4. become a master baker
5. raise two children
6. design, build and stay in a suburban house
7. make a fashion show
8. go for plasic surgery
9. host a dessert party
10. rival martha stewart's website

silver hairs

i am really bored these few days. baking has been overkilled, so i can't bake. but not baking means doing nothing =( last night i watched epic move, date movie and scary movie 4. today i learnt about triangular numbers and square numbers.

anyway, i've decided to take pooh bear out of the closet and give him a new home, becuase pooh bear deserves to be loved too.
right now i can't find my old soft toys anymore. i think they have been thrown away forever.

it's hard to get a clear sky these few nights. maybe i was really lucky that night we were supposed to go see the shooting stars.

轩

i have been highly active on facebook today! i fed beejuan to my werewolf, and fed clara to toffa's werewolf. and my werewolf fought toffa's; pieces of werewolf were flying around hahaha, and i won! i also uploaded many photos! i also saw this 'between your legs' thing on superwall; you're supposed to write down a movie name, followed by 'between your legs'. so here's mine:

what women want between your legs

anyway, 虾酱 is purple and smelly =(

you could have ever known

it is boxing day and it feels better much much. too bad there isn't a christmas tree with boxes of gifts under it. i think my sleep cycle is not disrupted after all. i slept from 2am to 1pm last night, even though i slept from 1pm to 7pm the previous day.

时间慢慢有

my sleeping pattern is officially reversed.

i truly believe that vodka masked as sweet and fizzy drinks is a deadly recipe for disaster. and clara goes very red when she drinks, and i will not drink when there are people around anymore. so sad, we didn't take any photos.

last night was the class party at clara's house. it was a night of excess food, sour beehoon, nice cherry pie =), murderer, monopoly, cleaning, mahjong, bridge, daidi, bluff. beejuan is the compulsive liar, and james always catches her! i caught once too.

on the christmas night, we want to be holding someone's hand walking together. unfortunately some of us will be carrying so many things that our hands are full; and we have no time for love.

so, merry christmas!

this really doesn't feel like christmas =( but amanda says 时间慢慢有.

the day

well i think the weather was fine, just cold enough for me to cut the butter without it softening. but i don't know why working the dough still proved too difficult. so i'm not sure how the pie will be like later. *hopes for the best* once again, i couldn't make a nice lattice, because the dough strips would break. but i think the 随便 one that i made is quite cute. turns out, the crust might be crumbly, so that's good; as long as it's not some flour chunk. also, i think that egg wash looks very sick. still, imma make sure i cover the pies completely with egg wash next time to get the gold colour in an even coat.

i dreamt that we were on a bus with the gp teacher, and i was shouting at her for being such a lousy teacher who was ill in our class for half the year.

photos for rich truffle mud cake

using the double boiler the correct way! i managed to melt the chocolate without any seizing, because i learnt well from the american book.
something felt a bit weird, because the six eggs didn't mix with the brown sugar to become thick and creamy. but i still went ahead with the recipe.
the liquidy batter that had much bubbles. and the bailey's was mild.
the baked mud cake! and as you can see i didn't centralise it on the cake board, and then i tried shifting it, but it was too sticky =(
i frosted the mud cake with ganache left over from the time i baked the peanut butter cupcakes, which was *quite* some time ago.
and some words that i piped on using the pipe i made from parchment paper. and i learnt that from the american book too!
dusting with cocoa. so pretty right! i love the tree! and the circle around it. it's like snow, but in sepia tone, so it's all brown!

temperature's climbing

woke up and baked the mud cake for home for christmas. the cherry pie for class will be done tomorrow. anyhow, i think the mud cake is well done this time, but damn i didn't centralise it on the cake board, and i can't push it anymore.

i had four egg whites left over from making the pastry cream for the banana cream pie, so i whipped it into a meringue, and tried making a baked alaska without the cake base; i substituted the cake base for more meringue. so cool, the ice cream only melted a bit! but i think there was overkill of meringue; i got sick of eating it.

so, i'll put photos of the mud cake only after i complete frosting it. for now, photos of the baked alaska!
meringue! recipe from the american book. this is meringue whipped to stiff peaks.
since i didn't bake the vanilla sponge cake base, i used some of the meringue as the base, and put the ice cream on top.
covered completely with meringue. do you know how it works? it's very cool! the meringue acts as a good insulator to prevent heat from reaching the ice cream in the short time it takes to bake the meringue. so the outside is hot while the inside remains cold.
and the baked alaska is complete! i like the parts of the meringue which were browned; they were just crispy and nice, but the unbaked parts were too eggy, and made me quite sick of it.
opposite to shanghui 哦!

shudder

ok hope i don't get any names wrong =( and hope none of them comes back to find me for posting this up.
from left to right,

front: huanghong, yuhan, edwin, caleb, daniel, cheesing, vanessa, jean ai, eileen, desmond, yuanhao, xavier, jianwei, glenn

middle: me, weijian, alvin, jordan, daryl, benben, cheesiang, jonathan, rodney, andre, andrew, zhenjie, kaiherng

back: mrs yan!, carmen, serene, tingyun, zheeyen, esther, sarah, yeenseen, joanne, dior, janice, huizhen, priscilla, deborah, 黄老师!

incontinent buffet

i want to vivocity and bought 2 things, which cost me much much altogether =( so now i have gotten all the required things for christmas. tomorrow i'm baking the rich truffle mud cake again, and the day after i'm doing the cherry pie. they will not fail.

have yourself a merry little christmas
judy garland

have yourself a merry little christmas
let your heart be light
next year all our troubles will be out of sight

have yourself a merry little christmas
make the yuletide gay
next year all our troubles will be miles away

once again as in olden days
happy golden days of yore
faithful friends who are dear to us
will be near to us once more

some day soon we all will be together
if the fates allow
until then we'll have to muddle through somehow

so have yourself a merry little christmas now

have yourself a merry little christmas

just listen until around 01:05; that's the song i wanted, and it's the nicest version i can find on youtube, though it's only a short bit of the song.

i think it's amazing how i think i heard a snippet of the song while walking at heeren, then i was trying to recall what song this was but couldn't, and gave up trying. then, at cine i saw it playing on the screen and heard the exact same snippet that i could identify with, and there was the title of the song on the screen.

sometimes we are just fated to find what we are looking for.

day out

just came back from a day out with kaiherng and carmen. priscilla joined us for lunch at vila'ge! see photo below; one of them may become an anchorwoman next time!
watched national treasure, and then walked around aimlessly at taka. we visited the art galleries! then we went kinokuniya and read some cooking and biology books.
forgive me for i have sinned on two brownies. and we will meet in two years and everything will be the way it was.

meebo

omg i did a banana cream pie, using the recipe from the american book! it was such a challenging recipe, because there were things like tempering involved, and i had to make ice bath!
this is the tempered egg mixture! so cool la i didn't get any egg yolk curdling, although i think somewhere inside there was some egg white, because i didn't separate the eggs completely.
the cooked pastry cream. i think i got it right on my first try! but it's a little too sweet. i think i should use less sugar; maybe it's just american to go overly sweet.
putting the cooked pastry cream into the ice bath. this was when i stirred the cream and found small bits of egg white inside haha.
oh and today's a really cool day, and so i managed to cut the butter without it softening! and so i did get the right 'coarse meal' texture for the flour/butter mixture. i left bigger pieces of butter and got a flaky crust instead of a crumbly crust, which very much suited the pastry cream filling!
"gather the shaggy mass into a ball and pat it into a disk. wrap well and chill in the refrigerator."
i did a very nice fluting for the first time! unfortunately, as you will find out later, this dough was too thick and i couldn't use it for the pie.
this is my cheap shot attempt at blind baking. i didn't have dry beans nor pie weights, and i didn't want to use the rice.
anyhow, this is the pie when it is filled with the pastry cream folded with bananas! but the crust is the second pie crust that i made, with mummy's help this time. it's much thinner, and much more thoroughly baked, but the dough still slipped down the side of the pan, so i got a shallow pie.
the cut-open pie! omg it's so freaking nice, just that the pastry cream is too sweet. the crust is really good! someone please pay me to make it for you!

RU12

i am up past midnight wishing for a better future/altered past. i still love you and it's not going away. i miss you terribly.

劫

this is like real lava spewing up. it happens when the lamp is just warming up. don't know why, but it comes out in a long column.

there are so many things i want to say, but i can't. it's probably five months late anyway.