Driving and Froyo

5th driving lesson today and the end of my Stage 1 Practical Lesson.


The instructor I got today was a lot more stern than the previous few I had, I'm not sure if stern is the correct word, a more accurate phrase would probably be not give a fuck.



He was really impatient when he was pointing out the mistakes I was making, once in a while he would take out his iPad and I assume play a game and also checks the watch occasionally to see how much longer he has to endure my company, that feeling was mutual because half an hour into the lesson, I was already checking the time to see how much longer I had to endure sitting through this practical lesson taught by an instructor who obviously feels like he has more important things to... like eating his lunch right after my lesson. It sucked when I realized only half an hour had passed.




He was pretty much quiet throughout the entire lesson, excluding the times he is reprimanding me for driving too quickly, changing lane without checking the mirror, and really any scenario that might involve him dying in a car crash from my reckless driving, so at the end of the lesson, I was actually quite surprised when he started talking to me more patiently about the problems he had with my drivings and some other things I didn't really bother to absorb.... later I found out the reason why he suddenly stopped being such a sourpuss was because it was lunch time for him.




Worst lesson thus far and probably will be the last weekend lesson I will book that falls before their lunch time, also went for my Final Theory Evaluation and I failed that shit all over again, in fact I scored even worst than my last attempt, so frustrating.





After my driving lesson, i decided to drop by Westmall to try out this new craze of froyo called LlaoLlao, I knew it was frozen yoghurt, but I kept thinking it was going to taste like a regular softee but topped with fresh fruits and drizzled with sauce. I personally am not a fan of yogurt, I don't like how it taste, I don't like how it smells and I don't like how it looks all curdled and urgh!



The queue at that time wasn't very long, probably only had 6 people in front of me, but as I was waiting for my turn, the queue started getting longer and longer. I decided t go for their signature item which was the Sanum.


1 Crunch - Chocolate Crunchy Pearls

3 Fruits - Strawberries, Blueberries, Kiwi

1 Sauce - Raffaello




I wanted it to be as tart as possible, thus my choice of fruits, which was fucking stupid because the yogurt ice cream was already quite tart, the sauce was pretty good though, I had initially thought the sourness came from the sauce, but when I realized it was from the ice cream, I started to really dislike it, it was horrible and because I was taking a bus home, I didn't consume the froyo until I reached home, and by that time, it was already liquid. I actually threw my llao llao away because I couldn't finish it, not because I was full but because I just didn't like frozen yoghurt.




I know I'm not going to queue for it again.

Driving

Went for my third driving lesson yesterday, the weather initlaly started out fine when I was in the bus heading towards the school, there were dark clouds but the school was close by and I thought maybe I could get there in time before it starts to really rain, I was wrong.



The moment I got off the bus, it started pouring cats and dogs, there wasn't any slight drizzling before or any light rain that comes before a heavy rain, mother nature decided to skip all that and jump straight to a heavy downpour. I managed to get into the driving center 50% dry, my top was dry, my pants were half drenched in water and my shoes, well, it was a very unpleasant experience for the next 45 minutes.




The instructor who was taking me that day was very nice, he allowed me to drive barefoot when he realized how wet my shoes were, but now thinking back, it was probably extremely unsanitary, I doubt anyone actually cleans the accelerator and brake pedals, that would mean I was probably stepping on dried human pee, dog shit, dried up vomit, dead animal carcasses and many other things people step on with their shoes, with my bare feet. Urgh.



Got to drive on the public road from the get go, which was quite fun, drove around for about an hour, got to drove past my secondary school, which was quite nostalgic.  After that, went back to the circuit, drove a few rounds around it and the lesson was over, put on my disgustingly wet shoes and went back home after that. This is my third lesson, but the fourth one I have booked, I actually missed the third lesson I booked and ended up wasting $70 because I am a genius, and by genius I mean extremely stupid and forgetful.

Virgin Rainbow Cake Experience and more Cupcakes

Decided to have lunch at Dean and Deluca today.

I have visited Dean and Deluca once a long time ago when it only had a single outlet that was located in Orchard Central and it was the first time I saw a shop in Singapore selling Nielsen Massey Vanilla Extract, so that kind of elevated how posh Dean and Deluca was to me in my head. I almost bought the Vanilla Extract from but gave up when I realized how expensive it was.

They were selling one bottle for around $22, which at that time, I thought was really expensive, good thing I didn't buy it because my baking skills 2 years ago were abysmal, my cakes were always hard and the butter-cream I tried were thick and not fluffy at all, it was really bad, would have been a waste of a good bottle of vanilla extract, but now they are good and I can get my Nielsen Massey from Phoon Huat at a lower price. 

Anyways, went for lunch today and it really didn't surprise me that the menu items were all quite expensive, I was planning to pay for my own share but my sister decided to just treat me to a meal, so I went with it and bought a cup of iced tea as well.  When the total bill came back to almost $50 for the two of us, I got a bit shock at how expensive the meal was... $50 for 2 meals and 1 cup of tea, I can buy 10 cups of KOI with $50. I knew it was going to be expensive but I didn't expect it to cost that much.

Citrus Mint Iced Tea - $7.00

This cup of Citrus Mint Iced Tea cost $7, and it cost $7 because they gave us the biggest size without asking us, I didn't even realize there was a large cup until I saw the menu again.

It was more peppermint and not so much citrus because I couldn't taste any citrus flavor, so I won't be getting this drink again. The profit margin from selling this must be really fucking high because they probably have a huge jug of it in the fridge somewhere where all they do is probably fill that jug with water and let a few bags of peppermint tea sip in it for the whole day, throw a few slices of lemon while they are at it and viola... $7.00 per cup.

And then the lunch came and blah blah blah... boring savory stuff that I'm not going to get into. So before we left Dean and Deluca, I decided to get a slice of cake to bring home and consume, my stomach was bloated after my meal but I wasn't going to go home without a slice of cake.

The packaging was obviously too small

And I got myself a slice of their rainbow cake. I've always been fascinated by this cake because people are always so eager to get it for their kid's birthday party or for their own birthday party and I kind of understand the appeal, I mean look at those different colored layers of cake, it's a bloody nightmare to bake them in bulk.

Normally a rainbow cake sold at bakeries are just plain old vanilla cake dyed with food coloring and those aren't very fun for the taste bud, but the layers in this rainbow cake are individually flavored so every layer had a different taste.... doesn't make you feel cheated at the end of the day like normal rainbow cakes do. The disappointment the kids must feel when they realize the colors don't define the flavors... or maybe they can't be fucked.

So the flavors for each layers are...

Red is Strawberry

Orange is Orange

Yellow is Lemon

Green is Apple

Blue is Blueberry 

Purple is Grape

Awesome frosting.

When I first had a bite of it, I was very overwhelmed with the flavors, I guess the best way to describe the taste would be akin to eating all the different flavors of skittles at once, you can tell it's fruit flavored but the individual flavors don't really register, it's just this overwhelming sweetness in your mouth.

As satisfying as the different layers were, my favorite part about the cake has got to be the frosting. I'm not sure what it is exactly, it can't be whipped cream because it's too smooth and it held up really well at room temperature, I took hours to eat this cake because I was so full and the topping didn't show any sign of melting, and it can't be butter cream because it's too white... so my guess would be marshmallow frosting or some sort of meringue but definitely not dairy.  

Almost done.

Overall, it was a good rainbow cake experience and one I will probably revisit, should try out their red velvet one day and see if it's on par with the one from Lady M. I highly doubt it though. 

There was actually a cupcake shop within the vicinity called Cupcake Engineer and I would have bought some cupcakes from them had they not been priced at a ridiculous $4 a piece, and it's not even big, it's probably slightly smaller than those from Twelve Cupcakes who sells their cupcakes at $3 a piece. I mean I might try it out one day just for the sake of trying it out, but the price is really quite a big turn off, the price of 2 cupcakes would allow me to buy a slice of rainbow cake and still save 50 cents.

But I did get cupcakes from a shop I visited recently....

Your's Antidepressant... YOUR'S? Antidepressant

Cupcakes OCD, the sister brand of Oni Cupcakes. I have to admit, when I first saw the website of Oni Cupcakes, I didn't have a good impression of the cakes because the cupcakes themselves were flat, the buttercream designs were a bit tacky and the cupcake liners they used were really ugly, it's like the liners that neighborhood bread shop uses that screams cheapskate.

So when I went down to the shop to get the cupcakes with very low expectations. I wasn't expecting much, but I was curious to try, so I got 3 flavors, one my sister took which was their signature Nutella and I got myself 2 fruit flavored ones whose names I can't remember. 

I have to say, I am actually really surprised with the quality of the cupcakes...

Raspberry Buttercream and Vanilla Cake

The cake base itself isn't fluffy, it's not moist, it's a bit on the hard side and a little bit crumbly, but the flavor was good. The butter cream was great, can tell that they use real raspberry and not those artificial flavoring crap and I know because I myself recently made raspberry sauce from scratch.


It had a nice tartness to it, and this buttercream is as light as Swiss Meringue Buttercream but you don't see them charging their customers $4 a cupcake because of it, or maybe it's French which is equally time consuming to make.

Mango Buttercream with Chocolate Cake base.

Okay, so I just tasted this one, the cake base is bad, like really dry and crumbly, it's not very flavorful as well, if I were to bake a batch at home that came out like that, I would probably throw the whole batch away and burn the bloody recipe.

I really like the buttercream though, it has a nice creamy mango taste. They have really yummy buttercream but their cakes just aren't that good, definitely not as bad as I thought it was, the buttercream is definitely better than the ones from Cupcakes with Love whereas Cupcake with Love has a better cake base, but of course both shops are nowhere near the cupcake standards from Plain Vanilla.

Anyways, to give an idea of how low their cupcakes are... 

Red Velvet from Twelve Cupcakes

A red velvet mini cupcake from Twelve Cupcake. Lots of cake sponge and a little frosting, which is fine with me because I hate cream cheese frosting.

Mango Cupcake from OCD Cupcakes

That's quite sad looking for a cupcake base, not that I'm missing out much because the cake base was horrible, but as I have said, the butterceam is nice.

Bake Bake Bake

Been baking in bigger batches this week, no where near a professional bakery level of production, but enough to make me question my judgement.

First thing I baked this week was macarons. I haven't baked them in a while, the last time I did was when I was still working in the bakery and decided to bake some for my friends, that and also because I was using the bakery's supplies so no monetary losses on my part. 

Raspberry Macarons.

Since I had some Raspberry Puree left over from my previous baking attempt, I thought it would be good to use them and make a Raspberry flavored macaron. 

The last time I tried to make a raspberry something, I didn't really go over so well, but I am glad to say, this time, the final product did not meet it's end in the rubbish bin.

The shells aren't really in the right shade of pink because I over baked them a little and they started browning, so it became more beige than pink, which was really quite ugly because it looked like skin, a very smooth skin. 

No hollow shells!

But look... an interior that doesn't have a giant air pocket, an issue I always had with macarons in the past and probably will have again in the future, but for now, no hollow shells!  These ones were actually pretty good if I do say so myself because I used real raspberry and none of that artificial flavoring nonsense which are really disgusting in taste... using artificial flavoring is the same as eating mock meat... it's not the real deal.

Oh, and I bought a whole liter of whipping cream just to make the ganache which only called for 150g, so now i have 850g of whipping cream left in the fridge waiting to get moldy.... should probably start making some creme brulee soon and let my little blow torch shine.

Whole box of Raspberry Macaron

I really did bake a lot, normally I will half the recipe, but after owning a stand mixer, trying to whip up just 25g of egg whites is pretty much impossible, so now I have quite a fair bit of raspberry macarons stashed in the freezer for moments when I crave for a raspberry macaron, which doesn't happen very often because that's a very specific craving to have.

Today, I baked Brownies. Doubled the batch so I could do 2 flavors.

Brownie Batter

This is my favorite brownie recipe because it produces a brownie that's more cake than fudge, which I like and really, all the other brownies recipe I have gotten online so far always end up tasting like burnt chocolate, which is really nasty.


The brownie batter is really thick so it's really nice to just run my spatula through and create brownie batter swirl, looking at those swirls is oddly calming for me.

Hazelnut Brownie Batter

Before baking, first pump some Nutella into the batter and then scatter a shitload of toasted crushed hazelnuts and chopped up white chocolate. I was actually a bit worried that the toppings were a little too much, but decided to fuck all and just pile it on.

Hazelnut Brownie with a shitload of stuff on top.

 And pile on I did because look at the brownie, nuts were falling off from the brownie as I was removing it from the baking pan. I ate the nuts that fell off so no wastage there.

Tray of Peanut Butter Brownies and Hazelnut Brownies

I'm too lazy to take a separate picture of the peanut butter brownie, which is the other flavour I made, so instead, here's a tray of both flavors.



For the peanut butter brownies, I replaced Nutella with Peanut Butter and scattered a generous amount of chopped up Dark and White Chocolate on it. Personally, I prefer the Hazelnut version for it's crunch.



There were actually a lot more slices of brownie on the tray, but my Mother decided to give some to her friends since I am hardly meetup up with any of my own friends.




The brownies will probably be finished soon because my family actually eats the brownies, the macarons on the other hand, only I eat them so I am not sure I can finish, guess I can always give some of it to my neighbor.


Update on my Driving Lesson.


Failed my Final Theory Evaluation on Saturday because I didn't study and because I don't see why I should be sitting a test that's asking me questions that aren't related to me.  Mainly questions that are meant for Manual Car drivers..


For example, they would ask a question like...

"You are driving up a hill and your vehicle stalls, what should you do..."

....and as someone who's taking lessons to drive an Automatic Car, my answer would probably be "Step on the brakes, put the vehicle to Park and pull down the parking brake."



But no, instead the answer is...


"Press the brakes and depress the clutch pedal, change your gears to Neutral and apply the handbrakes." (not accurate because I don't actually know what I should do in such a scenario)



...I don't deal with clutch pedals or have to worry about which gear I should use when I am driving up a slope, the whole reason I am learning how to drive an Automatic Car is so I can avoud all that Manual Car crap, and now I am expected to learn them for my theory test even though it won't even remotely be applicable to me in the future. So fucking stupid.




I will be having my 2nd practical lesson on Tuesday though, looking forward to that, but just the thought of having to go for my Final Theory Evaluation again is just a huge bummer... maybe I should just brush up on my skills and learn how to study again.... something I haven't done in a very very long time.

Short Update on Driving

Had my first driving practical lesson today.



It was actually really fun, none of that theory crap where I have to sit in a classroom for 1.5 hours at a time listening to mind numbingly boring stuff my brain can't absorb and watching car accident videos that would have been banned had someone upload it on Youtube.




I think the practical lessons would actually be able to motivate me to go for lessons more regularly. Driving around the circuit today at a relatively comfortable speed and not getting into an accident was pretty awesome.



Apparently I can't blog anymore about my driving experience without losing my blogging flow so that's all. This length for a bog post feels like it should on Tumblr.

Happy Halloween

Made a raspberry cake today, it didn't go so well.

Look at this unsightly mess.

Once in a while I get a really bad bake, yesterday was one of them. An accidental Halloween cake, or as I would like to call it, the Menstrualberries Cake, and like menstrual blood, it does not taste good.



Just look at that mess, that ugly cake crumb with the weird moldy yellow colored crumbs, horrible French Buttercream that tasted like straight up butter and raspberry jam that was too thin to even be considered a jam.


The first mistake I made was not thinning out the frozen raspberries long enough in the pot. It got thick until I strained it and got left with a concentrated raspberry juice, which tasted great but was just not thick enough. $10 worth of frozen raspberries gone just like that.




The second mistake I made was trying to incorporate the "jam" into the cake batter, thinking it would create nice ripples through the cake, obviously it didn't do the job because the whole thing just merged with the cake and I ended up getting that odd color, it's like trying to create a marble cake using vanilla cake batter and a cup of hot cocoa.



And the recipe for the cake never really did produce very nice crumbs, even when I made it in the bakery, it never really look fluffy when I cut it open, it was moist and soft but the interior never looked fluffy.




Third mistake and the biggest one I think was my choice of buttercream. French buttercream taste amazing when I made it in the bakery, it was light, not too sweet and surprisingly did not have an over powering taste of butter to it, because the boss was trying to cut cost and got the cheapest brand of butter available, French buttercream also always had a very smooth and shiny finish. The ones I made at home on the other hand always reeked of butter because I always got good French butter that taste like butter should and really that's the whole issue I have with this butter cream, it was shiny and smooth but the butter smell and taste was just too much for me to ignore when I was having a bite of the cake.



I felt like I was eating cake spread with whipped up butter, it's gross and maybe there was some miscalculation on my part as well because it left an oily feel in my mouth afterwards, it really wasn't a good day to bake that day.



In the end, I deemed the cake to be a complete failure and did what I would have done in the bakery, turn them into cake pops. In the past I would have thrown the whole thing away or leave it in the fridge until someone else but I have learnt my mistakes... and the 2 sticks of butter I used to make the buttercream is fucking expensive.

Ta-Dah~! Minimalist Chocolate Cakepops
...because I don't have sprinkles, otherwise I would have blinged this shit right up and turn it into a disco ball 

I would have preferred to use Candy Melts to coat the cake pops, but because I had a bad experience with Wilton's Candy Melts, I decided to just melt some chocolate instead, and it's also very unfortunate that I do not have a microwave to make my life easier, so I had to melt the chocolate using a double boiler.

It came out well, nothing fancy but once again, would have preferred with candy melts simply for the vanilla taste because I'm not a huge fan of dark chocolate. I have the taste bud of a child, it simply doesn't understand the flavor complexity nor is it able to enjoy the smoothness of the dark chocolate in the mouth... I just want my chocolate to be sweet and creamy like White and Milk.

The cake pops definitely taste better than the failed raspberry cake though that's for sure.

So now, I won't be doing anymore french butter cream, fuck that, now I'm going to stick with American Buttercream and maybe give the Swiss Meringue Buttercream a chance as well. French Buttercream holds up horribly in Singapore weather as well, the last time I brought home cakes from the bakery, the buttercream started melting on my way home, it tasted great but it was really sad looking.