Special baking sessions

Past bakes include heart-shaped cookies for Valentine's and Almond/oatmeal crisps!

As some of you may already know, I recently started volunteering as a pseudo baking "instructor" with adults who attend the St Andrew's Autism Centre. Every week we attempt simple recipes that can be made under an hour, including wash-up time - but because there aren't that many different things with very basic steps that can be finished in about 30 - 45 min (aside from cookies) I am starting to run out of ideas!

Windowsill Pies@Jalan Besar

Windowsill Pies is located in the still somewhat quiet neighbourhood of Jalan Besar and there were just a handful of customers when we visited on a Sat night last month. But I think crowds of youngsters and yuppies would eventually swarm to this up-and-coming hip enclave (also home to Chye Seng Huat Hardware) and it wouldn't be as nice for hanging out anymore. So if you are a pie lover, my advice is to check this place out soon!

First (failed) attempt at macarons

Once in a while, I feel like I'm up for a baking challenge. It was one of those days when I finally decided to give macarons a try. Moreover, my macaron cheat mat (which comes with little macaron wells to facilitate the piping) from TANGS had been sitting in my kitchen for quite a few months, and would likely sink further into the depths of my baking drawer and fade into oblivion if I didn't start to use it soon!

Macarons are notoriously difficult to make, so I tried to follow my macaron recipe book instructions religiously. It helped that the author provided pretty detailed step-by-step instructions, but didn't help that I still managed to forget certain steps in the end (when I remembered and did it, it was probably a tad too late). 

Chocolate cake for Valentine's!

Happy Valentine's! It's also my mum's birthday today and I baked a small 2-layer 12-cm chocolate cake (topped with mascarpone cheese chocolate frosting) to celebrate the occasion :) It's probably going to turn into quite a mess once we try to cut this (as my frosting turned out a little too runny). But thankfully I've already captured its grandest moment :P

Naturally red velvet cupcakes

Mid-last week, I whipped up a batch of strawberry cupcakes an ex-colleague cum good friend had ordered for Chinese New Year. That she intentionally chose to be my first cupcake customer as moral support for my yet-to-materialise-but-work-in-progress potential cake business touched me immensely :)  Partly because of this, I was suddenly quite motivated to experiment with making other types of cupcakes that people might potentially buy - and the healthier red velvet cake came to mind. 

Peonies for Chinese New Year!

Today I finally got down to arranging the peonies and fillers I got from Star Vista last week. It was love at first sight - with the very natural-looking artificial peonies they had. The real ones are hardly available in Singapore and probably very expensive. And so I excitedly bought a whole bunch of these despite having to transport them home via MRT :) I now have a peony centrepiece for the house to usher in Chinese New Year! :)

A piece of nostalgia

For a change, I decided to create my version of an old-fashioned cake last Wednesday. This idea was seeded after I chanced upon someone's old-fashioned birthday cake post a couple of weeks ago; and my project materialised when I managed to find my nostalgic wafer roses! But unlike Nasi Lemak Lover, I was contented to just decorate two petite pieces of cake for fun and self-amusement.