revisiting 勞斯.萊斯

banana bread

it's fabulously easy, and fills the kitchen with that aromatic fug which is the natural atmospheric setting for the domestic goddess.

- nigella lawson

and that's pretty much enough said! nigella has given another wonderful recipe. you can find it here, and go try it too. the only problem i had was that the banana bread rose too much and cracked. if only that happened with the madeira cake. i think this time it's because my oven was just a bit too hot.
the sultanas boiled with bailey's and left to soak for one hour. as nigella says, you 'end up with stickily, aromatically swollen fruit'. nice!
a gathering of all the ingredients required in this simple recipe.
the completed batter. actually mashed bananas look quite sick to me.
these are the fifteen-minute interval shots of the bread as it baked in the oven. true enough, the kitchen/house was filled with the banana aroma! lovely lovely.

continuums

ah the tasting ceremony. well, i think it's a nice tiramisu after all! (because anyway the ugly ladyfingers are hidden by the mascarpone cheese.) but a little on the sweet side. maybe i need to brush on much more coffee syrup to balance the sugar.

isn't that what tiramisu is all about? finding the perfect spot between sweet and bitter.

pick me up

good afternoon! i just came back from more than three hours of baking! today i tried doing the tiramisu as the barmy baker did here. i guess the most significant part is doing the ladyfingers from scratch, because people generally just buy them ready-made from the supermarket. but that is to be the most screwed part of today's baking =(

but fear not. even though today's baking was not an entire success, tomorrow i'll be doing nigella's banana bread, and it's bound to succeed, for the simple fact that it's nigella!
i started with the coffee syrup first.
ingredients for the ladyfingers. this is the first time i've separated so many eggs! and i think the egg yolks look so cute huddled together.
the ladyfingers' batter, as done to the barmy baker's instructions. and until now everything went very well. and then the baking went spectacularly awful. ok, i think i get angry when i use a lousy piping bag, and i just can't do it the clean way martha stewart does. anyway, i have a strong feeling that the barmy baker has more than one oven operating, because there's no way i could bake the ladyfingers fast enough without the batter turning fluid.
i call this photo 'the sad state of things'. basically i was trying to assemble it in the pretty way that the barmy baker did, but given how sucky the ladyfingers turned out, i couldn't use my springform pan anymore.
ingredients for the mascarpone filling. oh i must reiterate that mascarpone is the right, and only, cheese that tiramisu should be made with. unlike the one we did last time.
this time the cream was creamy cream, not like the liquid cream we got the last time. oh and when i first opened that $15 tub of mascarpone, i licked the foil clean so as not to waste the cheese, and it was heaven. well, sometimes that's, perversely, what we like/want to do.
preparing for assembly. i decided to make two trifle-styled ones, just for photos' sake. and put the rest into one big square box. there was no way i could do it the springform pan way anymore. pouring the thick creamy mascarpone mixture and spreading it over the cake layers was strangely satisfying, like scooping out dollops of nutella for the torta alla gianduia!
so pretty! i love the way the cocoa powder flew around and dusted the sides of the glass when i blew gently at it. so here you see two trifles in front, and the big one at the back.

tiramisu.

ho e she joe nay

i don't know why, but i seem to be so lucky. even being posted to armour infantry isn't so bad (for now). my training schedule seems to include nothing but eating, sleeping, playing monopoly, playing risk, watching dvds, going to canteen, and sleeping in the night and day.

oh yes i am so on to baking this bookout. and i'm surprised that a guy in my company also wants to bake. he wants to do cheesecake for mothers' day! and i want to do tiramisu (from the barmy baker's recipe) tomorrow, and banana bread (from nigella's recipe) on sunday.

went shopping for the tiramisu ingredients today. omg mascarpone was so bloody expensive. oh, interestingly, xiufu called me while i was standing by the dairy section in cold storage. and then i found myself holding on to my shopping basket and talking on the phone for so long. put the basket down into the ice box to keep it cool while talking on the phone - couldn't have been more instinctive on that.

i guess some things won't change even with army. i will still stand with me feet pointing towards each other.

p.s. cold storage is far more superior than ntuc.

providence

dinner at shokudo with jia en and weiyang. with a very nice red bean dessert. who knows? maybe i'll like it.

the thing!

morgan: and when you go out you don't want to wear too much makeup, because otherwise the boys get the wrong idea. and you know how they are - they're only after one thing.

giselle: what's that?

morgan: i don't know; nobody will tell me.

wait and seed

my sky is turning black now. it's going to pour! and it's dark to the point that the only light source in my room seems to be the computer screen. it's time to switch on the lava lamp. i shall watch enchanted and read nigella at the same time now.

roll of thunder, hear my cry
o'er the waters, by and by
the fish
and full of rubbish

triangle

i'm counting money now. feeling restless again. facebook has nothing fun for me, except superpoking everyone to get new actions.

torrents

the moon tonight is round!

花无雪

情感流在温泉 全球没了这乐园
偿还共游乐的遭遇 望着一天飘雪打转
黄叶离地得远 寒流在接送未完
无缘份承受的美丽 落在心底不厌怨

谁也知 景色都总会换季
谁也等 光阴每段流逝
谁人可 让飞走的白雪
在掌心之中握过世
未抱紧便放低

为何你令我活到仲夏仍像秋冬
别了依旧后患无穷
没有胆一个到东京这麽痛
明寒只当我太爱被抱拥

以后也害怕独自凝望天空
被你抛下是极难溶的痛
面对花开似雪一般冰冻

陪我看过雪落要分手永远没法懂
大概是沿途心涌跟你仍然难感动
犹如细说没法灿放花瓣完全不受痛
还幸这里这样了情在最涷心中

为何你令我活到仲夏仍像秋冬
别了依旧后患无穷
没有胆一个到东京这麽痛
明寒只当我太爱被抱拥

以后也害怕独自凝望天空
被你抛下永远不懂
面对花开似雪一般冰冻
仍难相信你与我未过冬

以后纵是逛尽地球没星空
望雨点亦像石头如此重
在我心中有雪花不能溶
就算敢再冻温泉里浸

唯独发现世间竟可 这样冻

order order

falling in and out of sickness. yesterday's dinner was at some turkish place called sofra. my thing was nice, but weiyang's one is not nice. and the place was super cold. it was quite a big turn out, on the class level. and boyle was there. haha they were all getting recipes for coffee drinks from tcc.

yihui brought us to liang seah street for dessert. the place looked so nice, and toffa took many photos.

i also want to walk around aimlessly.

yanci the ass

pending

zomg i finally have some POP photos. so, this is part of section 1, with sergeant tzejung, who, despite what you may see, is actually the shortest >.<

thumb

at 11:43pm, i am finally done with all the brightsparks applications! if anything at all, i will use it again in two years' time.

now it's down to the local universities' scholarship applications =(

khor

ok my phone is revived.

the korean chicken place has jaejoong videos again. and the fan shop is open too. happyness! oh and i was at kino looking at baking book. everything's so lovely! i flipped through the culinary institute of america's baking and pastry, which is like the textbook for its students.

ok i have like five scholarship things to attend to.

secret storybook

omg just came back from a chamber dinner, which was at bloody simei because the organiser was yanci the ass, who came late because he thought we would be late, even though he emailed us to come early.

shanghui looks fatter, and still eats a lot. auntie is still taller than me. anyway, the dinner was at a very ulu place, and trust me, it's not because the food is good; it's because yanci the ass likes to look at the waitresses there.

then my phone died.

and we dumped yanci the ass into the pool. but even shanghui got wet, because yanci the ass was full of inertia.

carry a torch

hello, i just had a very successful baking experience! today's project was the madeira cake, recipe by nigella lawson('s mother-in-law?). once again, nigella has promised and delivered! so here are the pics:
simple ingredients, simple cake.
this is my first time grating a lemon. and squeezing the juice from the lemon was quite hard, because i've never done it before too haha.
hello hello dear loaf tin, thanks to nigella, you'll be used for the cake. otherwise you'll never get to come out of the cupboard. anyway, this was slightly bigger than the tin specified in the recipe. still, it gave a nice cake, alhough i think the correct-sized one would yield a prettier cake.
the final batter!
and into the oven it goes. the recipe said to sprinkle sugar on top, which i did, and i watched as the sugar melted and recrystallised in the baking process.
this is ten minutes into baking.
this is twenty minutes into baking.
this is thirty minutes into baking. by now the heavenly smell of the cake is coming out. and the top crust begins to crack. (it says in the recipe that the cake should have a long crack down the middle, but i think that happens only with the right loaf tin. for mine, i just got a flat-topped cake instead of a doming one, so there wasn't a substantial crack.)
and i gave the cake a turn so that the heating was more even. over here you can see the cracks forming.
this is forty minutes into baking.
this is fifty minutes into baking. by now the rising stops, and we're just waiting for nicer cracking. and still the smell was heavenly.
one hour of baking!
and it comes out of the oven. just in time too, because the top is about to get burnt!
oh yes i achieved the dull brown of the crust as shown in my recipe book. but my inside was not as yellow as nigella's. still, the cake was perfectly baked, and the crust was very nice.

ok time for some 东方神起!


these two songs are so nice, and they give me goosebumps (not in the bad way).

indolent

tried my luck at le bon marche again, but it refused to open its doors to me. it was just half-open and not ready for business. anyhow, i went to the nearby park to wait. it used to be called the '三角坡' because it was triangular. now i can't quite name its shape.

it was a hot day. did my university applications at casa de sonya.

now i feel much lighter because many things have fallen in place!

goreng ah goreng ah goreng ah pisang

interesting thoughts at midnight

1.

this chinese new year we were talking about how some names are so common and yet no one uses them. like, 'mary' is a very common name, but do you know anyone called 'mary'? or peter? or bobby? or tom? you would think no, but think harder. ok i think it's rare to find people with such common names.

but i just realised today that i do know a 'mary'!

2.

i realised that i didn't check up on the uk universities that i applied for, except for cambridge, which has already rejected me. but just now i was worrying about whether imperial college london actually has hostels! (omg the horrors of having to rent a room in urban london!)

and i don't know if imperial will allow deferments. then again, i don't even know if i will get to study there. that is, if i get the scholarship to go overseas.

3.

shanghui poked me on facebook and i poked back.

4.

i'm going sonya's house tomorrow to do local university applications. i'm supposed to flip a coin to decide whether to put accountancy or environmental engineering as the first choice. but what if the coin lands on its side? ah, that's when i'll go home and announce that i want to go to the culinary institute of america to get degrees in baking.

and after getting degrees in baking, i'll be baking at home for the rest of my life.

5.

1.177 has become synonymous with ++.

---

still i hope the coin lands on its side.

hero!

end of an orbit

i went to visit the le bon marche that sonya told me was at guan chuan street. if you remember, i said that my old block was u-shaped, and spanned across three streets; guan chuan street is one of them. anyway, the shop was not open when i went.

a le bon marche in the old flat in the middle of an old estate looks so chic and out-of-place, like an oddball. i think it signals the beginning of modernisation of this place. i can still remember mr lee teaching us how suburbanisation urbanises the rural areas.

the afternoon storm has trapped me in the old house. thank goodness i brought my external drive along. now i can listen to 东方神起's forever love. yesterday i was packing my army clothes and stuff, and after that i was suddenly having a feeling of looking forward to whatever army shit that comes my way.

but right now, as i sit in the old house, with rain pouring outside, i feel so scared of what is to come, again. it's time to create a cake that involves anmitsu. i don't know how the japanese can make red bean so nice!

i'm looking out at the carpark enclosed in the u-shaped block. the tallest tree seems to be less leafy than before. i miss joel.

popping bubble wraps

cut the cake and tried it last night. this was like the mud cakes i did last year, just that it has much more fluff to it.

i drank choya too!

today i'm looking at facebook profiles and photos.

hazelnut.

hmm luckily this cake is not for outsiders to try. i kind of failed on the cake, although i know what exactly should have been done to prevent the error; i just didn't think of it at the moment i made the big mistake =(

nevertheless, i think i can trust nigella lawson completely to give me workable recipes! so here is my first attempt at a nigella lawson recipe:

torta alla gianduia (hazelnut cake)

oh the lovely lindt block that i'm finally breaking into. shall try valrhona next time =)
using a double boiler to melt it. surprisingly, this chocolate melted very quickly and nicely, unlike the couverture i used last time, though couverture is supposed to be superior.
six eggs separated nicely, just that i broke my first yolk when i transferred it to the big bowl.
this is the first time i am making a cake so big. it took me quite a while to find a 23cm-cake pan! and this is the cake pan greased with crisco shortening and lined.
ah, doesn't nutella look extremely seductive once it's out of the bottle? trust me - it is! scooping it out by the dollops is strangely satisfying too... oh yes the fleck of thing on the left side of the second picture, however much it looks like a cockroach, is just nutella.
the nutella beaten with butter! omg glossiness = happiness!
folding in the melted lindt chocolate. the only thing i deviated from nigella's recipe is that i didn't put in ground hazelnuts, because i wouldn't have enough for the stunning decorations (see below); i decided to let the nutella do its job.
folded with the whisked egg whites. i didn't know exactly when to stop the whisking of the egg whites though. it was supposed to be 'stiff but not dry'. i don't exactly know what that point is, but i guess i shouldn't have gone too far with the whisking.
from batter to cake! ok, here is where the biggest error came =( you see, the top of the cake started to get burnt before the baking time was up, and i just took the cake out immediately without thinking through my options. the result? a cake that had only undergone half the required baking time. i knew that if i just covered the cake with a foil i could continue baking it completely; i just didn't think of it at that moment!
so anyway, when i tipped the cake out of the pan it was still wobbly. tell-tale sign that everyone knows means the cake is so not done! that was when i realised that i baked it for twenty minutes only. but too late, i can't put it back in to bake further. and so, as the cake cooled, it kept deflating until it looked like a caldera.
preparing for icing of the cake! despite the incompletely baked cake, i still went on with icing it, just to complete the outside, so that i can take a photo and remember it =( toasting hazelnuts, or any nuts, was a first for me. i was so afraid that i would burn any of them. not cheap!
and the final not-so-ideal-looking product! i guess professionally, it would fail so much on aesthetics, but it'll probably look super good to a child! personally, i think scattering the hazelnuts on top makes for a very stunning presentation.

the cake sits in the refrigerator now. in the back of my mind, i'm contemplating if i should eat the half-cooked cake. for now, i'm enjoying the leftover nutella straight from the bottle =) and contrary to what i would usually do, which is to keep trying a recipe until i get it right, i think i will leave this torta alla gianduia alone for some time, because i trust nigella lawson completely to give me workable recipes!