Cake Galore

For my sister's birthday, on 11th October 2013, my mom and my 3rd sister made her a blueberry cheesecake. Topped with the sweet sugary biscuits that you always had back then when you were little. Looks pretty isn't it?

And it was my birthday yesterday. We had some home cooked spaghetti and my parents bought me a white chocolate macadamia cake from Secret Recipe. 

I am really grateful for my parents and my family. They are my everything. And I still can't believe that number 25. Okay, bye!

Pastel & Petals

The other day, my mom suddenly decided to bake some cupcakes and voila! Magic happened! Well not really. There's no magic involved this time. It was just the normal baking stuff. My mom made the batter and my sister put them in the oven. Then I thought why not we give them cupcakes a make over. So there goes butter and sugar icing mixed with food colouring and sprinkles.

Honestly, we are no professional in cake decorating, but it turned out quite nice. Haha. While snapping pictures, I tried not to focus on a single cupcake because it can really emphasize the imperfections. Hence the crowded cupcakes in one picture. Then again, we were only baking for fun and there's no pressure in decorating for general viewing, just happy tummies.

Raya Convoy Part II

This post is the continuation from this one right here. It has been really long overdue, well to be honest I almost forgot about it. Nevertheless, here goes the story...

As I mentioned before, I was partially sick on the day we decided to have a raya convoy with my uni friends. By evening, I got sicker than ever and I didn't manage to eat or drink anything but sip of plain water. To be honest, I didn't want to make a fuss of me being sick in front of  my friends, especially on raya days. People were having fun, chit chatting all day long and I couldn't seem to have the nerve to tell anyone that I was not feeling well.

So when we were already at the final house, I literally surrender myself. All I did was sit alone in a corner with my head pounding in pain. Sigh what a nasty memory. How I wished that if only I didn't catch cold, the day would be much interesting and of course, I'll get to taste all of those scrumptious food! What a waste.

I guess the moral of the story is that we can never predict what the future holds for us. One day we are healthy as a horse and maybe the next day we'll stay in bed, sick as hell. Or maybe today we are facing some bad news while tomorrow, the rainbow awaits. For the time being, just keep on being grateful.

Raya Convoy

On the next morning after I attended the wedding reception, as I said before, sore throat came to greet me. This time around, it's a very nasty one. I had to take a couple of sore throat mints right after I woke up.To make it worst, it became severe through out the day.

This raya convoy was on the 8th Syawal aka 14th August 2013. Since a lot of our uni friends turned up for the wedding reception, we decided to organize a raya convoy. There were 14 of us altogether. And it was fun! Truth be told, I have never ever had this kind of experience like ever. Who would have guessed that this silent, introvert girl would have joined something as big as this huh?

The plan was to go to Shah Alam to the first house at 10 am. Since I woke up a little late than everyone else, we didn't manage to stick to the original plan. Din came to fetch me at 10 am and later we went to fetch Rashid. And since Malay promises are never good, we were only at Shah Alam around 11.30 am. Eiji did a really good job by cooking all the glorious and scrumptious Malaysian cuisines. There's nasi lemak, nasi impit, kuah lodeh, lemang, rendang and endless raya cookies. Lucky that we purposely didn't have any breakfast beforehand.

 L-R: Din, Eiji, Rayyan, Eiji's Dad, Faheem, Anis, Rashid, Me

 Eating time!

 Munching and chewing continues

 The usual family portrait

 Family portrait #2

At Eiji's house, there's Ain who came all the way from Langkawi  and Anis who came all the way from Ipoh. But Anis needed to be somewhere else so we only met her at Eiji's. After sending Anis to the train station, we went to Razan's place at Setia Alam. Unfortunately, we succeeded in getting lost.

 Out of the house going to Setia Alam

Posing with Din's fresh from-the-oven car!

After several highways and turns and toll gates we finally reached Setia Alam. After a few bites, we had the usual photo sessions. Albeit, the numerous pictures this time.

Much bigger crowd this time.

L-R: Suffi, Razan, Ain, Eiji, Fatin, Aimi, Fera, Rashid, Din, Me, Radin, Faheem

 Family portrait #3

These three people got lost on the road! 

*I'll tell the story in the next post

Hmm. This post is getting longer than what I've expected. I think I'm going to break it into several parts if I'm not lazy lah. Till then, good night!

All time favourite

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

 

Sugar sugar, honey honey

Since I don't really have anything interesting to write as a decent opening, let me just tell you a secret. Before that can you kindly scroll down until you find a picture of a chocolate cake? Got it? Good. Now, the secret is that I know who made it! 

It was... me who baked it, obviously. Otherwise how could I manage to get a cheap quality picture like this one below since I wasn't using any high end digital camera like others do. Pity me. But anyway, I still manage to get this one which I personally think that it turned out quite convincing.

This picture was dated last Sunday, and the real thing has long gone by now. I am not saying that I'm the best cook ever (in a cocky tone), since I believe that every one has cooking potential that can be polished. It's either you are up for the challenge or not. Oh, but if cooking is in everybody's blood, I guess we cannot refer it as a talent anymore?

I don't know the answer and should I leave that one for you to figure out. 

It has been a hectic week for me and I am really gad that Friday has finally arrived. Sadly I still need to go to the hospital tomorrow. But I am definitely up for cake hunting after those boring working hours.

To you guys whom are experiencing terrible, nasty, heavy rain like I do at my place currently, please please please take a good care of yourself. Cc to me too. Bye!

Perfectionism

*This is not a sponsored post, just barely a consumer's point of view :)

While I was walking to my workplace yesterday morning, I decided to stop by at the nearby mini mart to buy some snacks. Okay, actually that part is not true. I purposely stop by at the mini mart to buy the brand new Magnum Gold! For breakfast! Haha.

This one up here. Looks insanely delicious. I saw the ad a few weeks ago and been searching for it ever since. And since this little island is a wee bit far from the technology and modernization, it takes a quite long time for the ice cream to reach here. Regardless, I'm still relieved that they finally decided to ship some of it for citizens of this little island including yours truly.

I had ice cream for breakfast. And I still can't believe that one Magnum Gold has almost 490 kcal in it. It gave me sugar rush, I tell you. But in a good way anyway. See, I'm trying hard to count my calories and by having an ice cream it really helps a lot by increasing my total calorie count. Good guy, Magnum Gold. Haha.

Referring to the title 'Perfectionism', I once considered myself a perfectionist. But soon as I live my life, the term perfectionism seems to fade away little by little and finally... gone. I can't keep being a perfectionist while the world around me succeeded in giving the best %#!% they ever had. So I improvise. To cope with the imperfections that I have instead of the perfect things that I've always wished for.

Hmm. I'm still learning though, not that I mean that I can cope that easily.

Have a great Sunday!

Trifle-ed

Aaaaaand, voila!



So this was what I made for Raya last week. One of the desserts. Impressed? No need to be. Difficulty level is like reciting ABC in kindergarten only. Hmm. Homesick la you know?! Random.

The Art of Missing

Nasi lemak, nasi ayam, nasi tomato, nasi minyak, nasi kerabu, nasi dagang, nasi planta, nasi kandar, nasi goreng kampung, nasi goreng cina, nasi goreng pattaya, kari daging, kurma ayam, masak lemak cili padi, masak merah, masak kicap, masak taucu, masak black pepper, padprik, sup ikan merah, sup tulang, sup daging, sup ayam, ikan bawal steam sweet sour, rendang, kuah kacang, ketupat, lemang, pulut panggang, kuih cara, kuih bakar, kuih lapis, karipap, kuih keria, cubadak, seri muka etc etc.

I jotted those down on my pocket book and realized how much my stomach grumbled that other night. It was more than just those above actually.

Sadly, I only have some pancake mix which I brilliantly turned into cekodok. Not a good one of course. -____-

I feel like throwing up.
Sent from my AXIS Worry Free BlackBerry® smartphone

Good food

I knew that in my previous post I mentioned about putting up pictures from my digital camera. Sadly, there's some technical error with the camera. I don't know whether I can retrieve those good pictures (or I think so) or not. 

Nonetheless, thanks to Facebook because this one is from there. Well, there's still a lot of other pictures but if I put all of them right here then it'll be like redundant of pictures. 

Malaysian Batch of 2007 (L-R)

Girls: Razan, Rosa, Aaina, Me, Aimi, Ain, Hazierah, Nabilah, Mahfuzah, Ummi

Boys: Hafiz, Tauhid, Azman, Arifin, Izzuddin, Khalis

Shah, Hawairy, Syafiq Aizat, Firdaus, Fahim, Izzuddin

Wow! I can remember names. Lol. Anyways, my holidays are coming to an end. I've been spending my precious time by watching Hell's Kitchen back to back. I'm loving series related to food in the mean time while waiting for How I Met Your Mother, Grey's Anatomy, The Big Bang and Castle come out. But the most delicious and savory food series would be Man Vs Food! The runner-up is a tie between Hell's Kitchen and Masterchef. I can't make up my mind yet because there's just too much of drama.

I hope you guys have a wonderful day ahead!

Not really an update

I promise to update a.s.a.p. about Raya and stuff because at the mean time my camera's USB cable is with someone. I guess pictures are better than words in terms of celebrations right? :)

Cerita Raya

So Hari Raya Aidilfitri 2011 is tomorrow! I bet everyone must be busy as a bee completing or finishing up whatnot for Raya. Leaving me alone in this boring room, lying down while trying to figure out the plans for tomorrow.

Well actually, I was quite excited for tomorrow. I woke up early this morning as if I'm going to work today. But with that Raya spirit. Then I thought that I should start cooking stuffs for tomorrow right away. My plan was to get the moist chocolate cake done, then only I'll cook the chicken rendang and kuah kacang. For the night I'll get the nasi impit ready and if I'm still not sleepy yet I'll try the fruit trifle recipe. In other words, the full course meal for tomorrow was almost well executed.

Unfortunately, on my half way through making the most delicious moist chocolate cake, where I've placed everything that should be mixed into the pot, I suddenly forgot that I have no soda bicarbonate in my shelves. I guess that spirit was still burning so I put aside the pot and decided to make kuah kacang and chicken rendang instead. I don't know if I may sound a bit arrogant (sounding like as if I'm a pro in the kitchen) but my mom always tells me that she simply throw everything into a pot and voila! Miracle happens. Sometimes I like to imitate her way.

So before I could get the kuah kacang and chicken rendang, there comes the biggest part of all. The peeling and blending (and crying) tonnes of red onions, garlic, ginger and lengkuas. Since I don't have any blender, I need to use lesung batu instead. You can imagine that in the end I got my wrist sprained by using it. -___-

Well, that's it. That's the only thing that I managed to do so far. When I took a rest from whatever I was doing back then suddenly there's this weird feeling approaching from nowhere. I know that it's kind of lame to put this down, but it made me burst into tears. I'm homesick. No matter what I try to cook, dress, eat or even breathe it won't feel the same like when I'm back at home with my family. I thought I can get through it. Believe it or not I haven't heard any Raya songs for almost 1 month (and never intend to do so). It's not that I don't like Raya songs, it's just that I simply knew that Raya songs will break me a lot faster. Even if I didn't listen to any of the songs it already made me sad.

And there goes my Raya eve story. I'm left with a half-way-there chocolate cake, various blended onions and bucket full of tears. What about you?

Of telur masin and kicap kipas udang

Supposedly, I would like to say 'Wow, that's a lot of food!' but it seems that those 4 pictures are just not enough. My actual plan was to find every single pictures of me with food in it but you know my collection of pictures, well, they turned me down. I don't take pictures with food. It's either I don't eat a lot or I don't find food as an accessory for a picture or I'm not good in taking pictures. You're free to choose any of the options above. :)

For that is not my main point of writing this time. As we all know Sunday would be the last day of Syaaban which also means that it's the day for moon sighting. And most probably on Monday, all Muslims in the world would start their first day of fasting in the month of Ramadhan.

I'm just saying that I miss having telur masin and kicap for sahur.

Anyways, may the month of Ramadhan brings lots of barakah and blessings to all of us. Maybe it's the time for us to muhasabah and learn our mistakes in the past. Maybe it's the time for us to change.

Soup for the soul

So I went to have a grocery shopping the other day. And he told me that I should start eating real food instead. Well I'm not really sure about fake food because I thought of all these times I did eat real food. How come there's fake food? But never mind then. Anyway, I prep these stuff below. Can you guess what I'm trying to make?

With salt and some herbs it magically turned into this one below.

It looks and smells delicious!

When I'm done eating it then I suddenly remembered that wouldn't it be a lot nicer if I made myself an omelette too? Hmm. Maybe next time.

p.s. I really really love holidays. I get to cook and eat and sleep and have my self at ease all the time.

PB & J

I've started to cook again! Well yesterday I made these savory baked potatoes. Thanks to anis since she’s the one who did it first. And I get to invent a new recipe using what I have left in the kitchen.There’s nothing much in it really. Basically, it’s just chicken slice, onions, eggs, salt and pepper. See I told you. But it is yummy enough you know.

And for this morning I made nasi lemak!

Didn't it look delicious?! But you know what? I only eat those below without the sambal (obviously). LOL.

I'm not a big fan of anything spicy. Not that because after I ate anything spicy my face would turn fiery red instantly.

Last but not least, I decided to put up a picture of me.

p.s. I'm not a narcist. It's just a picture for my mom and dad to see how their beloved daughter had been doing. I am pretty as always right? :p

p.p.s. And fyi, I haven't gain much weigh yet.

yukon gold

Kak Emma made this delicious looking dumplings the other day. Then I suddenly recalled this one Polish delicacy made by Martha Stewart. It looks tasty enough for me to try. The dish is called pierogi with potatoes and cream cheese filling. Sounds delicious right?

Oh! I've been thinking to make some potato salad as well. But when I googled the images of potato salad, these pictures below appeared. And my, how can I resist it? I'm definitely going to try these too!

p.s. I'm going out. Is it time for shopping?