Found It!

I have been hunting all over town for an 'Angry Bird' t-shirt, from shopping malls to the pasar malam, without much success...until today.

I was at The Mines shopping mall when from afar I spotted the familiar red angry-looking  feathered blob on a black t-shirt hanging at a stall across from the cineplex. There were also other colours and a choice of  3 designs but I had seen this design that I liked on a local website and had really, really wanted to get it...but it was RM55 plus postage, and I was unwilling to part with RM55 without knowing if the t-shirt would fit...after all, it's quite difficult to determine the exact fit through pictures on the internet even though measurements are given.

And I am glad I didn't buy the t-shirt through the internet because this one that I bought only costs RM19 (big smiles).

Cool, right?

A Little Home Improvement

The weather these days has been rather extreme - it's either scorching heat or thunderstorms. For a person blessed with an over-abundance of sweat glands like me, this means that I create a puddle whenever I stand still on the days that the temperature soars above 30 degrees Celsius...sigh.

Hubby and I were at Viva Home Centre with SweetTeen the other day when we came across some shops selling those large showerheads which are the current trend. Hubby has always liked these showerheads because it's like taking a shower in the rain and our current tiny little showerhead and low water pressure makes showering a chore rather than a pleasure.

Our kitchen tap and shower in the master bedroom share the water supply from the main pipe, so if someone is washing dishes in the sink there will be very little water supply to our bathroom...so pity the person who has a head full of shampoo in the shower and suddenly there's only a small trickle of water coming out from the showerhead...!

The large showerheads on display in the shops were rather costly, around RM1000 and above, but we found this DIY shop that sold them for only RM400...just because it's manufactured locally (the expensive ones are imported). They also have this water heater which comes with a double pump to go with it, perfect for bathrooms with low water pressure...which made it even more tempting for us. We had set aside some money to get our house painted, so it was now a decision between getting a new coat of paint or a showerhead plus water-heater...

...and the money goes to the...

The house will just have to be painted some other time. For now I am going to enjoy 'raindrops' falling on my head :)

Bake, Bake, Bake

A few days after bringing back samples from my recent baking class, hubby asked if I was going to bake any macarons. I had already tried baking chocolate cupcakes using the pre-mix powder that I got for free from attending the baking class, and they turned out beautifully, so I was all excited about making my 'Angry Bird Cupcakes'. Tried making a red 'Angry Bird' out of fondant (following the step-by step instructions from this page) only to realise that the recent hotspell we've been experiencing was making my fondant turn overly soft and gooey whenever I tried to fashion it into shapes, so it became really time-consuming to fashion even one bird and I had to quickly take photos of it before it started to melt in the humid weather. Hubby thought he would try making one too....


my red 'angry bird'

 

hubby's 'angry bird'...not too bad

'angry bird' sitting on a chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting

Making the 'Angry Birds' was a real challenge so those were the only 2 birds that we made...now I'm wondering what to do with the rest of the fondant that I had so painstakingly coloured.

Bought the macaron pre-mix powder and thankfully they turned out well...

pink macaron batter piped onto baking sheet... getting them all the same size wasn't as easy as I thought it would be

Made 2 batches, the pink ones turned out nice although the blue ones were a little burnt, but both tasted great :)

 

My Cookies Are Gone!

Blogger was experiencing some problems yesterday and my most recent blog entry 'My Second Baking Class' could not be viewed. When I checked again this morning, everything was more or less back to normal except that my 'cookies' were missing! Not edible cookies but comments from readers which I label as 'cookies' :(

My Second Baking Class

I've been hit with a sudden urge to bake ever since I bought these delicious macarons from Bread Delicious, a bakery in Viva, the new home furnishing mall at Jalan Loke Yew.

I looked up the internet and researched some recipes, then tried baking my own macarons. They didn't turn out so well, so that made me even more determined to get it right. Went to the baking supplies shop last week and saw a notice that there was going to be a class on  how to bake macarons...signed up without much thought.

Went for the class this afternoon... this is my second baking class, the first one I attended last year was to learn how to decorate cupcakes with fondant figurines, which was so much fun! This time I was a little disappointed that the chef used premix powder instead of teaching us to bake the macarons from scratch, just because he was promoting this Puratos brand of premix powders for cakes, cupcakes and macarons. Anyway, he also showed us how to make pralines (chocolate with fillings) as well as a moist layered chocolate cake and gave lots of tips about baking that I can't get from cookbooks, so it was worth the RM30 that I paid.



Chef Sheng piping the macarons with much skill...all the pieces were exactly the same size!



Chocolate pralines with banana custard filling

Chocolate layered cake with choco ganache and banana custard filling...the yummiest chocolate cake I have tasted in a long while:)

Freshly baked macarons with filling

After I make a perfect batch of macarons I plan to make Angry Birds cupcakes...already bought all the ingredients :)

Daily Bumpy Ride

My car suspension seems to need changing quite often these days and I think I know what the problem is (of course hubby would say that it is due to my bad driving)...speed bumps!

The distance from my house to my kids' school is about 2 km and within that 2 km stretch of road I have counted 15 speed bumps...yup, 15 of them...that's about 1 every 130m! Of course speed bumps are good, especially in housing areas and near the school gate...but this is overdoing it, don't you think? There seems to be an obsession with speed bumps nowadays...they can just appear overnight and some poor unsuspecting motorist would fly right over a newly-made one and get a shock of her life (speaking from my own experience) because it doesn't get painted until the following week or so.

So instead of producing cars with more powerful engines I suppose our local car manufacturers should produce cars with a superior suspension system to give us a more comfortable ride...now what would be a good name for that car...Suspenza? lol

One day when the Majlis Perbandaran workers get carried away....