Red, white, pineapple tarts

Baked again ! Pineapple tarts this time round, am quite pleased with them, having received a fair bit of compliments, so here’s some BIG pics of them haha. Guess they’ll appear again the coming new year

Before

After

Close up

And we went back for our event, NDOC ! Though we cldn’t see it through to the very last week, was quite happy to see our one month of effort materialise before us. Many thanks to eileen, who probably suffered a lot during the last week =P

With some of the colleagues

With our very nice and cheery DD who always buy us goodies and got us our cute lil lunch pouches.

And her cute baby ! (who looks like he’s struggling to get out of my 魔掌muahahhaha)

The interns. I just realised we all have very different hairstyles. Reveals something about our characters no ?

With Viv! who has been baking yummies for us

Back in the office…

This is where i work

Outside of the building we started taking pics at every windows of different colours..

And at the last window i’ve only got one word to say: HOT.

One last pic of the colourful building.

Which we spent a large part of our summer in, working, freezing, eating, laughing, rushing, dozing off, chatting, dieting, making silly blunders, achieving, researching, gossiping, bonding and many manys.

Oh and guess what they got me on the last day:

Giving my daily nescafe a run for its money.

Going back to black

Felt like i haven’t blogged forever. What was my last entry about ? I think i’ve pretty much enjoyed the one week of break and did almost everything that i wanted to…baked. shopped. had good food. drank. pubbed. clubbed. slacked. BOF-ed. RC-ed. Except K, which will be next week ! Oh and i wanna have another sushi making session !

Tomorrow will be the official start of my internship. Can’t help but feel the pre-work jitters, simply cos i haven’t been ‘working’ for so long. Hope everything goes well.

Anyway, just an update ! Maybe i can blog away my jitters haha. (at the same time i’m wondering how on earth i’m gonna fall asleep at 1am and wake up ard 6am) I’m such a 4am/2pm person. darn.

Yup, i finally, FINALLY got down to baking.

Mini strawberry cheesecakes ! They don’t look that pretty but taste fab ! and ahem ‘experimental’ Mini mocha tarts

Baking is always immensely fun and satisfying. Did it with yee this time round and we headed to timbre in the evening.

Conclusion of the night: Never go to timbre at the substation cos it’s just TOO hot and stuffy. (we had wanted to go to the one at the arts house but it was closed for private event). The pizza is spectacular though, you’ll know when you see the pic. We had roasted duck + buffalo chicken combi.

And of cos, the night wouldn’t be complete without…

Sangria (which i recommend to all my girlfriends without fail)

Fav beer (I still don’t think beer goes well with pizza)

And champagne to round off the night !

Met huiqi there ! Having her post-exams celebration with friends

Too bad we cld only stay for the first set but the surrounding ain’t making us comfortable, so that’s that. But the legendary pizza is indeed worth trying heh.

Met the girls for sakae teppanyaki the next day and the only pic i got was this. haha.

That was the starter salad. I think after that we were all too busy eating and chatting away. It was not bad, but like i forgot who said it, the chef is really, really generous with the oil. He sprinkles it like it’s water.

Headed to iluma after and chilled at coffee bean and did a lil shopping at bugis village after. Everybody’s finally done with exams

And friday night…was supposedly a stay-home-and-slack-a-lot day but ended up at double O. last min clubbing. with a dramatic episode.

We had originally planned to sit by the river but the weather is simply unbearable and we NEEDED some aircon. Heh these are reasons, not excuses.

Anyway the night was really fun and we broke our records with 4 tequila shots and 1 jagerbomb each (what with double O and the dirt cheap drinks all night). Feels great to let loose after cramming for the exams (even when i was running a fever).

The drama came when some guys were pushing their luck too far. There was a point when i got really pissed and did something quite unimaginable on hindsight. and very, very unlike me. That of which involved me pushing two guys and asking them to fuck off. They must have been shocked but then backed off soon after. like wow, i amazed myself. Must have been one of my most aggressive moment ever. Some guys just don’t know their limits.

Anyway come saturday and i had my first taste of the really really really x 100 delicious 田鸡粥 at geylang Thanks to lei who brought me there, was a great recommendation. I also found the best yogurt ice cream along the way ! It’s called yoguru, be sure to try it if you have a chance. Ahh i seem to be pigging out everywhere lols.

Today marks the last day of ‘freedom’ and i haven’t even decided what to wear/bring to work tomorrow. But i did buy myself a pretty pair of wedges for the first day of work I must have more confidence in myself.

Am looking forward to getting more decent shoes though, cos i just cleared out my ’shoedrob’ today. Didn’t quite realise i fancy white shoes so much (I have like 6 pairs which is white based) !

And i have finally decided on what to do with my hair. I’m not going to rebond nor dye it anymore. At least not in the near future. I’m gonna grow my healthy hair out, cont trimming my damaged parts and embrace my waves ! Hahaha…that means i might be going back to black. Back to square one.

Any further investment on my hair will either be treatments or perhaps a few years down the road, a perm ? Gonna make a change to my style.

Ok gotta go bathe so my hair will dry in time for me to turn in early ! Ta~

This is up

Since i didn’t get to bake today =(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

This is my to-do list, sequence in order of what i want to make most. I’m currently plagued by a VERY, VERY STRONG COMPULSION to bake. aaarghh. And since i can’t bake now, I went to get my research done.

1. Matcha cookies
(from http://www.lovescool.com/archives/2007/05/15/best-bakery-recipe-finalist/)

2. Macarons, preferably chocolate.
(from http://www.xin.sg/article.php?article=20889. they even have a video of the chef making it !)

3. Browniiiiieeeeeeeeeeees, rocky road style.
(from http://happyhomebaking.blogspot.com/2007/09/rocky-road.html)

No it’s not like i’m very free. You know when you’re hit by compulsion to do something ? I’m the kind of person who have to do it right here, right now. It’s a torture not being able to do. =(

And one problem is who is going to help me clear all the stuff i bake LOLS. Anyway if you don’t already know, i bake for the process, not for the end product. So, i don’t usually eat a lot of what i bake.

Must be all that studying (ok it’s not as much as it sounds) bahhhhhhhh.

Temptations

Pictures as promised ! ( I know i know, recently my entries seem to be all about food but this is probably going to be the last haha)

I think they already looked good before going into the oven. hehe.

Shaping the pineapple paste. I think they look like dried apricots !

Meihui in action

And into the oven they go !

Storing the tarts away

We made round ones that looked like tau sa piah…

and these pretty tarts which everybody loves.

Feeling CNY in the air yet =) ?

Anyway that was on last thursday and we spent a good 6-7 hrs making them. Difficult? No. Tedious? Definitely. But I really looooooove those yummy pineapple tarts.

As for yesterday, we made sushi. Meihui will be off to exchange very soon so this will probably be the last time we’re seeing her. Ahh guess the next time we can all meet again will be in june. Hope her exchange will be good !

Our array of colourful ingredients

The crabmeat mayo which i painstakingly shredded, cut and mixed with mayo. I think it took me close to an hour =P

Meihui made this egg mayo ! Yumyum.

Glistering pearl rice mixed with japanese vinegar

Our work area

The Art of Sushi Making

Step 1: Spread an appropriate amount of rice evenly on the seaweed.

Step 2: Place any combination of ingredients you like in the middle of the rice. (Picture taken at a different angle cos before i rmb to take pics i rolled it up haha)

Step 3: Roll it up firmly.

Step 4: Cut the roll into even pieces and enjoy !

Simple huh. Making the sushi is quite an easy task. It’s really the preparation work that takes up more time.

More pictures of the sushi

Made these too and realised they are relatively simple to do. It’s the small sushi roll that got me stumped =( Then i had to finish the whole roll myself cos the roll wldn’t stick.

Last but not least, check out peiwen’s awesome combi ! haha…we all had fun with the baking and sushi making session. And i think we should definitely make it a yearly affair

Ok i guess that’s enough food for the day, anymore and you guys might develop strong cravings for certain kind of food like…pineapple tarts. LOLS.

Corey goes public

We made pineapple tarts on thurday and they turned out good. Was fun but bit tiring cos we took so long to get them all done. Think we made abt 90+ in total among the 3 of us. Photos to be up next week. Up next, sushi !

Gotten a piece of news to be happy about yest. Our NM2208 storybook project is chosen to be exhibited at the CNM upcoming exhibition at the Old School ! The one we worked on till 2am at the deck haha. I’m proud of us =D

Classes this sem seem to be interesting but rather challenging for some. And i can’t seem to focus fully on the readings as of yet. I call it the first week syndrome. Hmm the MNO Time Journal is starting to make guilt creeps up.

Update as of 11pm:

I did my readings for about half an hour ? =P

Ended up doing a fair bit of spring clearing instead. I think i cut out ard 30 pieces of clothing from my wardrobe. Now, i truly wonder…How on earth did i accumulate so much clothes ?? The last time i did the clearing i took out like 50 pieces. So why does my wardrobe still look full now ? Just the other day i think i threw away 2-3 pairs of shoes. Umm…i’m not exactly a shopaholic right.

And now my cupboards looks so much neater and organised. The table area got a lot more spacious too. Clearing and rearranging my stuff always makes me feel better. Gives a similar therapeutic effect like baking. If only feelings and thoughts can be organised that way…throw away the unwanted ones, and keep the positive.

Lei came over and gave me a really pretty gold necklace just now. Heh was a belated christmas present. So sweet =)