Learning herb-growing from the experts

It's been a while since I last posted anything about our vegetable plot - mainly because our herbs haven't been doing too well! The lady fingers are going strong and regularly producing fresh lady's fingers, but most of our herbs have died. And so we decided to sign up for NParks' How to Grow Western Herbs workshop last Sat. 

Orange spice ribbon cake

Made an orange spice cake with cream cheese ribbons last Fri - for J's birthday "party" on Saturday. My piping still needs a bit more work; but am pretty thankful that the cake still turned out looking relatively nice in a rustic way. Sadly the cake itself doesn't seem to refrigerate well, and had the tendency to harden overnight in the fridge. Perhaps it had to do with the use of butter in the cake recipe? Will probably need to R&D a bit on making fluffier cake layers before I attempt to make this again for another celebration!

More Mother's Day-related bakes!

Sorry for my semi-absence the past couple of weeks - have been preparing for and going for a few job interviews in between cake R&D attempts and occasional FB posts; and these other preoccupations have been distracting me from penning a new blog entry.

This May has been an unusually busy month for me, cake-wise. I was lucky enough to have received a few cake orders for Mother's Day (which I blogged about in the previous post). Last week also saw me making 2 cakes for family - one for my sister's birthday cum Mother's Day and another for mother-in-law. This coming weekend, a dear friend also entrusted her birthday cake-to-be into my hands...

Bakes for Mother's Day!

My kitchen has been relatively busy since returning from New Zealand - and I baked and sold two Mother's Day cakes the first week of May :)

They were pretty different - one was an elaborately piped and feel-good cream cheese rosette chocolate cake, while the other one was a more rustic and wholesome blueberry lemon almond cake. Both customers seemed to be relatively satisfied with their cakes; and so naturally I was happy too!

Now... what should I bake for my own mum? :)

The Boat Shed Cafe & Bistro, Queenstown

We got back to sunny (and rainy!) Singapore a couple of days back; and am finally getting over the jetlag! So instead of retreating to bed by 10pm like I did the past few nights, I am finally awake enough to blog about a lovely cafe by the shores of Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, New Zealand. A cosy little place called The Boat Shed.

I know it's unlikely many of you would drop by New Zealand anytime soon, but if you happen to visit in the next year or so, do check out this place! We happened to be staying a short distance away from the town centre; and this cafe was just a 2 min walk from our accommodation.