One good thing about my internship is that outside of time in the office, I don’t have to think about or do anything related to my work. So I’ve been having a lot of free time at home to do my own stuff! Which includes running ~twice a week, reading books (finished the selfish gene, norwegian wood and the time traveler’s wife so far, now re-reading TCIOTDITNT), trying to learn a few songs on the piano (which I haven’t touched in years LOL), and of course baking! I’ve wanted to try making macarons for a long time but never got round to it because it seemed hard and time-consuming. But yeah I finally decided to try baking them a few weeks ago. I looked through a whole bunch of recipes/ tutorial videos and decided to follow this recipe, and it’s really legit hehe my macarons rose nicely and had feet like they’re supposed to!!
Ok time for picture spam!
My first batch – was afraid of over-mixing but ended up not mixing enough, so the batter wasn’t runny enough and it didn’t spread out and smoothen nicely. But they rose anyway!!
I mixed the next batch for a longer time so the consistency was better, and they turned out nicely!! I added a bit too much food colouring for the blue one but the colours fade after baking so it was still okay.
Today I discovered the amazingness of homemade salted caramel!!! It’s quite easy to make and soooo gooodd.
unfortunately the photo is not as good.
I had leftover whipping cream from the blackforest cake last week so I was searching for stuff to make with it and found this! Was a bit skeptical cos I always thought making caramel wasn’t that easy (usually need candy thermometer so that you don’t overcook the sugar or something) but I just tried it and it turned out v yummy hehe. I kept dipping a spoon into the pot to “test” while it was cooking xD
Made no bake oreo chocolate tarts with jolene on friday! I don’t make tarts much cos they usually need some type of cream (whipping/ heavy/ idk what else there is) which I have to specially go and buy, but these have only 4 super basic ingredients and are amazingly easy to make!!
pac man!!!haagen dazs salted caramel at the back 8) (though even I think it’s overly sweet)
Recipe by jolene:
No Bake Chocolate Tart makes 2-3 small tarts or 1 normal-sized tart
Tart crust:
1 roll oreo cookies (137g) or about 150g digestive biscuits (I like the digestives version more)
50g butter
Melt butter and crush cookies into crumbs. Mix together, mould into tart pan then freeze.
Filling:
200g dark choc chips
50ml milk
50g butter
Warm milk and butter, pour over choc chips and set for 5 min, then stir till homogenous. Pour into tart crust and freeze.
When you have a chocolate craving, go make this!! No need for expensive tarts at cafes that aren’t even that great (ahem ewf)
Can’t wait for cny!!! My house is accumulating food now but most of it isn’t opened yet = cannot eat until cny D: I came home early today for the first time in a while thanks to short (but tutorial-packed) friday timetable, and decided to make chocolate cornflake clusters! It was superr sweet at first cos of the golden syrup, so I added cocoa powder to make it less sweet and more chocolatey and it kinda worked but it’s still pretty sweet. Anyway it made so much- I almost used up a whole box of cornflakes!!
Made apple cinnamon pancakes for breakfast yesterday morning cos I woke up early and was surprisingly very awake! Sadly that awake-ness didn’t last haha by the end of the day I went back to being tired, didn’t help that h3 was quite useless lol I did chem during the lecture, then tutorial was very meh also so I ended up doing chem too hahaha. Our tutor is some china guy and he just went through all the tutorial qns on the board, but since we alr did them it was really slow. But good thing is I finished half of chem tutorial LOL for ionic equilibrium you really need to try doing some questions, then only you’ll get some idea of what’s going on. Had don’s pies for dinner with sean, it was yummy and surprisingly filling!
Not sure if/when you’ll see this but HAPPY BIRTHDAY CECILIA!!! Sorry I suck I haven’t made your card yet D: beatrice and I shared a slice of cake but we didn’t plan how to surprise her so it ended up some weird thing after assembly hahaha
My classmates are surprisingly funny sometimes like cos today was mathernoon, like an “afternoon of math” thing organised by math soc which is supposed to be pronounced like math-ter-noon. But jansen and benny called it “mothernoon” which caught on very quickly so everyone just called it mothernoon the whole day hahahaha except poor jiun harn the math soc vice chair who kept trying to correct it to math-ter-noon xD
my prettiest cake ever :DD made together with tiff for reudi’s birthday!
rainbow layersspreading frostinglayer by layer…all 5 layers covered!i spent ridiculously long trying to frost the sides perfectly and it turned out like thisthe layers \o/
Decided to try baking a red velvet cake for jolene’s birthday! I don’t actually know what red velvet is supposed to taste like haha but I just tried out this recipe. It wasn’t as chocolately as I’d expected (although I already added more cocoa powder) but it tasted interesting and texture was v good :D
had (quite) a lot of time before training so I tried to frost it nicelyheart made of hearts :Dquite-successful ombre whooodone!!
Didn’t manage to get a nice photo cos I was rushing to leave home D: and no photo of the inside of the cake also but meh it wasn’t very red anyway whoops. But overall I think this is the prettiest cake I’ve ever made (also the one I spent the longest decorating so I’m glad it turned out well)! Happy birthday jofats hope you liked it :))
Training was normal except jacknives were particularly bad, did backlay and barani and it felt about the same as before the long break? So yeah overall not bad except I sprained my ankle not even doing anything but just while I was bouncing off to the side of the tramp after jumping -____- reudi ran all the way to pe dept to get ice omg stupid boy! And it was v funny how everyone crowded around to avoid jumping and jiaolian ordered dawn to 安慰 me HAHAHA
Someone posted on fb “the march holiday is not much of a holiday” hahaha but for me it was a good break! Other than practising piano every day and gym (which was only twice yay) I was quite free :D
On sat after simo I met tiff in sch, then we went to j8 for lunch then went to watch rhy comps at bishan. Oh I met 4 out of the 6 people in my “clique” that day! 2 from simo lah but the other 2 quite coincidental, otw to j8 tiff and I met george so we walked from the amphi to near the gym there together, then at kfc we saw sean who was having band camp. The rhy comps was honestly quite boring cos everyone was doing fixed routines, but ok lah cos not that many people so the round went quite fast. I took 200+ photos of the rj/rg people competing but I realised that there are wayy more photos of the pro-er people haha :x
Sun and mon I just slacked around at home, mon afternoon benny and sean asked me to go kino with them + their friends but I was lazy to get out of the house haha. Decided to bake apple crumble instead hehe it’s pretty easy! But when I was taking it out of the oven I accidentally dropped the tin and half of the apple crumble fell out T__T throwing it away would’ve been too much of a waste though so I picked up the parts which weren’t in direct contact with the floor xD dumped it back in the tin to bake for a while more cos heat kills the bacteria hahaha then we ate it for dessert. Apple crumble is yummy!!
Went out with 211 people for ice cream! We were supposed to meet outside the marymount gate but everyone was late psh so fanjin and I decided to go into sch and sit at the canteen while waiting for the rest. I wanted udders lor but since it was shamen’s belated bday she got to pick so we ended up at salted caramel. At first we had individual/ shared with 2-3 people portions, then some people had to leave early and the remaining five of us wanted more icecream hahaha so we shared a tub! Uhm honestly right I can’t say it was fantastic to meet up with them again, but it was interesting cos I realised 1. how clueless I am about people in school, and 2. that I don’t actually care that much. So yeah haha :/
On wed my family made pizza bread for dinner :D
ingredients! with 3 different types of cheesebefore baking…
after baking :D
Oh and I made a bday cake for my sister! It’s called a hummingbird cake idk why also, but it’s kinda like carrot cake but pineapple instead of carrot. Tastes better than it sounds!!
putting frostingtwo layers with frosting in between!the cake!the yellow stuff on the cake are pineapple slices, baked to let them dry and become (supposedly) flower-like
We’re in week 3 now and I still haven’t finished this post argh shall summarize the rest. Thurs I went to rgs! Had lunch with sean and zhang wen at far east and it was quite weird cos the whole place was full of rgs people then 2 random guys hahaha. Ate kfc again heh and met ruhui, then we went to crash math soc camp at rgs. They were having oral quiz, where you sit in groups and they flash qns and you shout out your group name to answer. We formed our own group lololol and actually managed to get points at first! It was retarded though cos there was hardly any math, mostly very stupid qns but quite amusing lor, their sense of humour abit weird but at least got a sense of humour xD towards the end it got really boring though so the non math soc people left early.
Mugged with dawn in school on friday, it was super unproductive because we were both procrastinating econs T__T but we got free chocolate and drinks from these random people!
Sat-sun we had gym sleepover at amanda’s house! Lazy to write about it and most of the people who’re gonna read this probably went for it so aiya wtv yay finally publishing this post!
I got a pack of those cool muffin cups from phoon huat and couldn’t wait to use them so I decided to adapt a no-bake jelly cheesecake recipe to make cheesecake cups. This is my first original recipe! Though actually it’s more of a mash-up of a few recipes (onetwothree) that I mixed together and tweaked a little so the amounts would match.
I wanted a crunchy ish base so I baked the base blind, but if you don’t want to, just leave it in the fridge while making the cheesecake layer!
Baking blind removes the moisture so the base stays crunchy!
Pressing the bases down individually is quite tedious but everything else is pretty easy.
Two layers done…Tangerines for decoration!3-layer orange cheesecake cup
Orange jelly cheesecake cups
Makes 16-20
Ingredients:
120g digestive biscuits
50g butter, melted
375g cream cheese, left at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
200ml whipping cream
2 tbsp boiling water
2 tsp gelatine powder
1 pack of Tortally jelly crystals, orange flavour (or 85g jelly crystals)
2 tangarines for decoration (optional)
Zest of 1 medium lemon (about 1.5 tsp)
Method:
Base
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/ gas mark 4
2. Crush the digestives in a food processor or by hand (place the biscuits in a Ziploc bag and crush them with a rolling pin)
3. Combine biscuit crumbs and butter in a medium bowl
4. Scoop biscuit mixture into the cups (approx 1.5cm high) and press firmly into the base of each cup
5. Bake for 20min then leave to cool
Cheesecake
1. Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and lemon zest until smooth, then gradually beat in cream
2. Place water in a small bowl, sprinkle gelatine over and mix in with a fork until gelatine is dissolved
3. Beat gelatine into filling until combined
4. Pour filling over base and press in tangerine slices (choose those without seeds)
5. Refrigerate for 3 hours or until set
Jelly
1. Make jelly following packet directions. For Tortally jelly, dissolve crystals in 150ml hot water, then add in 150ml cold water
2. Refrigerate until jelly is cooled (alternatively, use less cold water and add a few ice cubes to cool the mixture)
3. Pour jelly over cheesecake and refrigerate for a further 3 hours or until jelly is set
Serve straight from the fridge. Alternatively, keep them in the freezer and they will stay solid for at least 3 hours after taking them out.
Unintentional but because of the cups I used, they have funny wave-like things around the edges!You can make them in different flavours and colours too just by changing the jellyLime and raspberry for christmas!
! 