Holland Village Cupcake

Finally went to this bakery at Holland Village to get some cupcakes that I've wanted to get since I got my hands on Twelve Cupcakes. I'm currently going through this cupcake phase which I'm not really sure whether or not end anytime soon because I love me some cake~

Plain Vanilla Bakery

So this shop is really hidden in Holland Village, if you were to scour the place thoroughly without even having the slightest clue where the bakery is, chances are you won't find it. I knew the bakery existed and even so it took me a while to find the bakery, my sister pointed out the signs that leads to the bakery, like treasure hunting, it's fun when you find it but frustrating when you are finding it... makes you look like a fool if you are searching for it alone.

....plus Cinnamon Brown Sugar

Bought half a dozen at $18, which is by no means cheap, I have no idea why cakes are so expensive, then again I'm too lazy to calculate the cost of making one when I actually bake them. I don't want to know how much money I'm throwing in the bin after baking because I literally throw away the cakes I bake if they are not up to standard, which is most of the time. Those damn recipes.



I blame the Hershey's Unsweetened Cocoa Powder, it sucks balls. I have completely moved on from blaming my oven to blaming the Cocoa Powder like it's a healing process that doesn't really lead to any healing of any sort, except for my Oven's pride maybe.  Cocoa Powder from Hershey gave my cupcake a metallic taste and it doesn't have a strong enough chocolate taste, so when I actually made a cupcake that has a recipe that calls for vegetable oil, my cupcake just taste and smells like the vegetable oil, it's really gross.  Time to get some Valrhona  Baking Chocolate soon.... and if the cupcake still comes out equally bad it's time to find something else to blame.



I digress....

From flickr~

So anyways, the shop suddenly became something I wanted to own, it's weird but that shop actually makes me want to own my own mini bakery, the way the shop is design is so simple and so vintage looking it's just screaming for me to plagiarize it. The shop is essentially a kitchen with a display table of cupcakes and what made the whole shop awesome for me was seeing the lady boss frosting her caramel cake. <-And my mind just painted a really dirty picture, nice job pervert.



The cupcakes themselves were delicious, better than Twelve Cupcakes in my opinion, both have really light cake base, but this one is better because some cupcakes like the Strawberry White Chocolate has actual diced strawberries compote inside, it was a pleasant surprise to find stuffing in some of the cupcakes. I actually like both Twelve Cupcake and Plain Vanilla frosting, they're both delicious in their own way, but probably more towards Plain Vanilla because I like to live on the edge and become that much closer to becoming a diabetic.


And the main reason why I prefer Plain Vanilla to Twelve Cupcakes is because Plain Vanilla is more jelak, like it feels more rich, so every time after I eat one cupcake, I'm pretty stuffed, and it's not because I have a eating disorder because I fucking love cake.... Twelve Cupcake is really light, which causes me to finish it really quickly and because I'm such a nice guy, I share them with my family so I usually only get to eat 2 of the 6 I buy. Twelve doesn't satisfy my craving for cake as much as Plain Vanilla.   

Customer Service Woes Self

One thing I've finally come to conclude when speaking to people manning the Cashiers in coffee shops or whatever stores you go to in Singapore is that being friendly to them isn't always the way to go.


I've always thought that being nice and speaking friendly to such people will probably make their job better, make them less tense and maybe more friendly...


BUT NO!



That's like the last thing you want to do because why? Well I shall give you 2 example that happened to me...



1. Home Delivery Service by Saprinos Pizza.



Ordered 2 Pizzas from Saprinos Pizza a few days back for dinner because I'm kinda sick of eating Chinese food thanks to the Army serving us really really awful looking Chinese food that looks as good as they taste, their worst one is their duck rice which they present in a ration box with the duck at one corner that has this really small cavity in the middle of whatever part of the duck you get be it their butt, their ass or their caboose because seriously they all look like shit, filled with a small well of chilli. It sounds really artsy but it's really bad because the foods stale and like lukewarm... not appetizing at all. Of course it doesn't apply to all camps, the cooks in my camp are just too lazy to try making anything nice.


But I digress...


So I ordered the pizza and the lady on the phone was okay, she was speaking like how a customer service person should, polite and friendly.




About an hour later the Pizza Guy comes and delivers the Pizza, he was a middle age looking Malay dude, a bit on the chubby side, not obese but you know he doesn't exercise.  So he was speaking to me, telling me the price and whatever not... and so we exchanged the Pizza for the money. He gives me the change but it was short of 10 cents which I decided to point out to him because he asked if I had received the correct change or not... and I said no because I was shortchanged.




Not only did he NOT apologize, he actually started to give an attitude like I was being picky when Chubs was the one who asked me if I received the correct change. And I was being really nice and friendly with him, I was going to ask him to keep the change but since Chubs had to be such a bitch about, decided to just waste his time and let him dig his little coin bag for a 10 cents coin. Chubs was of course very bitter about it but fuck it... if I attempted to be friendly to you, YOU as the person serving me should at least respond in kind instead of being such a bitch about it... would have gotten you an extra 10 cents if you did... that 10 cents you could've donated to those annoying kids on the streets asking for a donation where they will give you a sticker that will act as a shield to prevent the kids friends from coming up to you. So enjoy getting swarmed by kids who will be constantly ask you for donations you prick.






2. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Cashier.




Had just bought a few groceries from Cold Storage and decided to go to Coffee Bean to get a cold drink because the weather's been scorching lately.




I didn't know what to get but since I didn't want to make the cashier wait for me, I decided to order on the spot, which was a bad idea because I ended up changing mid sentence multiple times so it went like...


"Can I have the lemo... Rasbe... Hazelnu.... Ummmm can I have the Mango Munchy." or something with Mango..


Ordered my drink and thanked the guy when he gave me my change... waited for my drink and it kinda took a while... and once again this guy isn't very friendly looking, he looked a bit bored and like couldn't be fucked because he's been working at Coffee Bean for a while now.



So afterwards another lady comes up and orders her drink and she had the very typical Singaporean way of ordering her drink. She was taking her time choosing what she wanted, she wasn't smiling to the cashier when she was ordering her change, and she had this very uppity look on her face when the same cashier gave her the change. And I can tell that the cashier was a little more cautious looking when returning her the change.



And when he was serving me my drink he switched back to unfriendly can't be fucked mode, asked to checked my receipt and then walked away as I was digging through my wallet to look for it and never came back. I stopped after a while and just took my drink and left... the time in between I was really confused as to whether or not he still wanted to see my receipt I just stood there and waited a while like an idiot.






So one thing I've come to realize is that instead of being nice and friendly to them, you have to be fucking cold and haughty towards them. Like...

"If you want my money you better fucking serve me or I will feed you to the dogs..."

I will be chanting this in my head next time I order from Coffee Bean... unless the Cashier is really friendly and smiley towards me.


Self Entitlement Mode ON!

Cupcakes again

It has been a while since I've read any books.

The last one I read was pretty bad. I didn't like it personally



Rant on the book... feel free to skip through.

Metro 2033.

It's a Russian book that's been translated into English, and it's set in this post apocalyptic world in which humans have been forced to live in the Underground Subway station, and since it's a Russian book, the story takes place in Russia. And the problem with the book for me starts here.



The Metro system in Russia is pretty big, so at the front of the book there's this subway map, the problem with this is that the stations are in their original Russian name, and they all look the same and sound the same, every time I read the main character going from one station to another, I can't keep track which station he's at, which is a real issue for me because I keep getting more confused when they refer back to the other stations he's been at.


Another thing I really dislike about the book is how all the other characters other than the main characters are so quickly written off, like they will be introduced in maybe chapter 10 and at chapter 12 they will be written off, initially I was keeping track of the characters and thinking they might reappear at later chapters, but as I progress along I realize new characters keep popping up and kept getting written off afterwards.


I couldn't stand reading that book after the middle portion I decided to download the game to get a better understanding visually of how the environment would look like and the game actually changed the subway names to English names instead of sticking to their Russian names so it was easier to keep track.... and that was a little problematic again because that would mean when I go back to the book the subways names that I've remembered in the game will be a different name in the book.



Terrible experience reading it, just extremely confusing, plus they had this one chapter discussing about the new political system in the subway and the history of how the power came about, I felt I was reading a history textbook.

So now I've stopped reading for a while because of that terrible experience.



Baked cupcakes again because I was bored. I don't like baking anything else until I've perfected what I'm currently baking, first was Macaron and now it's cupcake. It's really annoying because I end up wasting a lot of money buying the ingredients. Chocolate isn't a cheap baking ingredient... and I'm not going to settle for Phoon Huat.


Made Chocolate Cupcakes with my favorite Chocolate Cupcake Recipe.

"This batter is so good I could just lick the bowl clean."

Or grab a spoon and eat it like a bowl of melted ice cream... Yums.

Probably one of the best cupcake recipe I've found online because the batter is really chocolatey which means it's a huge pain in the ass to clean up afterwards because the batter is so thick and I have no intention of licking the batter off the bowls because that's what the sponge is suppose to be doing and I don't want to deny it the pleasure. Plus it's uncooked batter.

I love frosting. To frost not to eat the frosting.

I actually used Betty Crocker's frosting for this cupcake because I don't really like buttercream, the oiliness is very uncomfortable, as if there isn't enough oil secreting from my face, I need to smear more on my lips. I also don't really like the butter smell.

Twelve Cupcakes.

That being said, I do love the buttercream on Twelve Cupcakes. I'm guessing they use Crisco because they don't really have that buttery smell, or maybe Swss Meringue Buttercream.