Cake Post

I decided to bake some carrot cake cupcakes yesterday, it was meant to be baked the day before out of sheer boredom from doing absolutely nothing at home, but I was out of cinnamon powder, so I had to postpone the baking to yesterday after I was able to obtain a few scoops of the orange spice from my Aunt.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes.

And it was a good thing I did, omitting the cinnamon powder in the recipe would have been catastrophic and the amazing recipe I found would have probably just went into the shit bin in my head, where all the other horrible and useless recipes I found online resides. This cupcakes were amazing, I could taste the cinnamon in every bite, very subtle but very necessary. 

I never was a fan of the carrot cake in the past because all the ones I had were always the really dense and hard variation, filled with raisins and walnuts and then covered with a tad too much cream cheese frosting, which were always never sweet enough for me, the kind you are able to get from places like coffee shops like Coffee Bean or Starbucks, places that sells cakes but they just aren't very good.

And then I had the mini carrot cake loaf from my old bakery and they were amazing, soft and moist on the inside, always warm when I had them because there were freshly baked out of the oven and I never had the cream cheese squirted on them because most of the time, the ones I had were from the reject pile that either had too little batter and were way too low to sell or had too much batter it started to overflow out of it's case during the baking process, sometimes my friend would be really nice and just leave one or two aside for me so I could bring them home to consume. 

The other carrot cake I had that I really enjoyed was the one from Plain Vanilla Bakery. Also like the one from my old bakery, soft and moist, but this time frosted with their always amazing butter cream. I actually felt joy when I started eating the cupcake, like this sense of euphoria starting rushing through me, it was really weird, but as long as it's not an erection, that's fine.

So when my carrot cupcakes came out from the oven, I decided to break open a piece to see how it looked like on the inside, did it rise properly, is it soft, does it taste good, because I've got to be honest, I wasn't really expecting much from the recipe, because all the other recipes I have tried from this particular Youtuber has been really disappointing, but this recipe actually worked, and it exceeded my expectations.

When I ate the cupcake on it's own, it really reminded me of the one I had from Plain Vanilla, and initially I was contemplating which buttercream to make, should I stick with the Swiss Meringue Buttercream or American Buttercream.... make the latter and have a dozen (minus one I broke apart to taste test) cupcakes that were on par with the one from Plain Vanilla Bakery, the choice here was pretty obvious.

I made some cakes a few weeks back, not regular cupcakes but whole cakes and I used Swiss Meringue Buttercream for both of them, and the main reason I made SMBC was so my parents could enjoy them, they aren't fans of the super sweet American Buttercream so I had to compromise because I'm not a huge fan of SMBC for it's lack of sweetness and it's inability to crust.

Milo Dinosaur

It's a Milo sponge with Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream, and Milo Dinosaur because I sprinkled a lot of Milo powder in between the layers, it was like an overload of Milo powder.

My Dad ate a small slice of it and said it was too sweet, my Mum said she wanted to try but never did, my siblings didn't even touch it, I had no choice but to try and finish the entire cake, but I could only eat half of it before it started drying out in the fridge.

A few days later I decided to bake again, this time a Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake.

Salted Caramel Chocolate

Once again, using Swiss Merignue buttercream because I thought my parents would maybe want to have a slice of it.


In between each sponge layer is Caramel Buttercream and a generous spread of homemade caramel sauce, sounds really good, looks really good and it got me 32 likes on Instagram, the most amount of likes I have ever gotten on my Instagram account.


No one in my family ate the cake, not one person, I was the only one who ate the cake and like the Milo cake, I had no choice but to throw it away after it started to dry out in the fridge, I managed to consume like 80% of the cake.


The main reason why I didn't eat the entire cake was because I just didn't like the SMBC, it wasn't sweet enough for me, which in the end just tasted like slightly sweetened whipped up butter, and it left this really greasy feel in my mouth after every bite.



So for the carrot cake, I decided to just go for the buttercream I would actually enjoy, and that was the American Buttercream, just butter with a lot of icing sugar and like a little bit of cream cheese for authenticity, I couldn't even taste the cream cheese but because there's actually cream cheese inside the recipe, it's technically a cream cheese frosting.


I just didn't see the point in compromising the sweetness level of the buttercream if the people I am compromising the sweetness level for isn't even going to eat the cake.

Awesome Cream Cheese Buttercream

And I went ahead and made a Vanilla Cream Cheese (American) Buttercream, and it was so good, tasted like the one I had from Plain Vanilla, and because the frosting will crust, I didn't have to put it in the fridge, which allowed the cakes to remain soft and moist, it was awesome.



I've already eaten probably like 6 of it, and it's not to quickly get rid of  them "before they all dry out in the fridge" like all my other cakes, I'm eating it because it's actually really good.



From now on, whenever I am baking at home, I'm just going to stick to American Buttercream because that's how I like the frosting on my cakes, super sweet and soft, albeit a little grainy, but that's better than taking it out from the fridge, cold, hard and really just not sweet enough for this cavity laden individual.

Updates on life

Update on life so far....



Driving.



I have finally reached stage 3 of my driving lessons, the stage I have officially deemed to be the most horrible stage.



Stage 1 and 2, the lessons are pretty straightforward, start the car, go a few rounds around the circuit and off to the main road, and depending on my instructor will either be a fun chatty session or one that's silent and uncomfortable with some reprimanding thrown in.



Stage 3 on the other hand requires me to actually learn how to reverse a car, how to go through very sharp bends and S bends and also how to park a car, which I have yet to fully experience.



I've also been getting a string of really unfriendly instructors lately so that kind of contributed to why I'm having difficulty finding joy in the lessons anymore.




Movies I watched.


Went to watch 2 movies in the past 2 weeks with my friend, the first one was Kingsman The Secret Service.

You'd think they would at least put Taron Egerton's name on the poster considering he's playing the main character. But look, it's Alfred from Batman.

It's directed by the same guy who directed X-Men First Class, the last movie I watched before I enlisted into the army and a movie I thoroughly enjoyed, mainly because of Emma Frost even though the actress who portrayed her made her character feel a little stiff compared to the comic counterpart, but seeing a female shaped diamond is quite a sight to behold compared to that disgusting looking one in X Men Origins which just triggered my trypophobia.... seeing a picture of it now actually makes my insides feel extremely uncomfortable.



Kingsman was a great film, the story line was great, the acting was great, everything felt very posh thanks to the British accent and the suits, but mainly it's the British accent. This is the kind of movie I watch and still think about when I leave the theater, which means it's really good, which also means I will probably watch it again when it's available, through other means.




Today, I watched Ah Boys to Men 3 with the same friend. (because I really don't have a lot who ask me out)

Ah Boys to Men 3 : Frogman

After watching Kingsman last week, the benchmark I had for movies was set really high and sadly, ABTM3 did not hit that benchmark, nor did it go anywhere near it.




The whole show is very predictable filled with a lot of lowbrow humor that send the entire audience laughing (really?) and the thing that really turned me off the most was how painfully obvious the product placements were in the movie.




Normally in movies, when they are doing product placement, it's all very subtle, for example, if the movie was doing a product placement for a mobile phone, simply showing the brand name by having the character use the particular Nokia mobile phone to contact her parents that there was a killer in the house would be enough, but in ABTM3, their level of product placement subtlety is equivalent having the character say something like...



"Well I better take out my latest Nokia Lumia phone to call my parents to warn them about the possible dangers they might face should they get home, with lighting speed connectivity, I will be sure to get through to them in no time."


....or maybe a particular brand of sports drink, simply showing the characters drinking a bottle of it would suffice, but with ABTM3, there's nothing subtle about their product placement for the facial cleanser they were plugging, even Youtubers do a better job at plugging a endorsed product without making it sound too much like an advertisment than ABTM did.





There's this scene that was probably 2 minutes long, showing this one character taking out the facial cleanser, sharing the benefits of it with his section mates, followed by him showing them how to apply it, literally step by step...



"First we pump, then put apply on our face, after that we take  a bit of water and wash our face with it, see, now the cleanser is all foamy, and then we clean it off, now I am so handsome, here, let's all use some" *proceeds to pump the product generously into his co-stars hands*




It was so ridiculous I actually turned to my friend and went "What the fuck?", he didn't really respond though, I guess I was the only one who was taken aback by the lack of subtlety in the plugging of the product.




The whole movie was only mildly entertaining because of how predictable the plot was made less enjoyable by the fact that my bladder was bursting not even halfway through the movie. Had I watched the movie before Kingsman, I might not have been so harshed on it, but sadly, it really is  a forgettable movie.



This shows that the difference between a mainstream local production and a Hollywood movie production is gargantuan because sadly, all the good local ones that have won awards overseas are the less popular movies majority of the Singaporean population have no interest in.





After the movie




I went to have Milk Cow at Cathay, that was my main goal of the day.


So much better than Llao Llao, and with a queue that's much shorter, I'm bias against Llao Llao because I hate frozen yoghurt.



I was expecting the ice cream to taste similar to a McDonald softee, but it didn't taste anything like that, the ice cream itself is milk flavoured so it wasn't very sweet but it was really creamy, I got the one that's drizzled with a chocolate hazelnut sauce called Gianduja which I initially thought was Guanaja from Valrhona, at the bottom of the cup of ice cream were a small handful of Milo Nuggets which added a nice crunch, but I would have preferred to have it maybe at the top so I can actually have with my the ice cream rather than only a few pieces of it with the ice cream and the remaining bulk of it drowning in the melted ice cream.



My friend got the honeycomb one, which was also quite nice and because the ice cream itself wasn't very sweet, the honey wasn't an overkill. I did not however had a piece of his honeycomb so no comment on that, but I'm sure my teeth wouldn't approve, would probably get stuck somewhere and I would probably be spending half the day trying to dig it out with my tongue.




Next one I really want to try is Honey Creme because they are a lot more generous with their ice cream, but sadly, the shop is located in Somerset 313 and I rarely visit that place, mainly because I really don't like visiting the Somerset area due to the constant crowds, here's hoping they open another store in the west next time.






New Mouse.


2 days ago, my Razer Abyssus died on me, or more specifically, the left mouse button died on me. It has served me well for the last 4 years, that was $60 well spend on a good mouse.


So I got myself a new non-gaming mouse which was almost as expensive as my previous mouse called the Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse, which I thought looked really nice...

The right one... because I got the right one! Geddit?

My friend didn't think so and just said "disgusting" or something similar when I pointed out the mouse I wanted to get to him, which is always a great response to hear from someone about something you are interested in, he kept insisting I get a Razer, reason being that I played games quite regularly, which is true, but I wasn't really up for the idea of spending a hundred dollars on a mouse, plus I haven't really been playing any MMOs lately, so the need to get the Razer, more specifically the Naga, wasn't there. 

Had I followed his advice, I am sure to be hit with buyer's remorse the next day because he was asking me to get all the expensive mouses I could afford but didn't want to. It's like the keitai I bought, instantly hit with buyer's remorse the week after realizing I payed $700 for an android lag fest.

As of now, I'm really liking my new moue, it looks good and it feels good, plus it's wireless so that's another plus point. But the mouse has been disconnecting a few times, so that's getting a bit irritating.

SIMGe

I have also finally submitted my University Application.

Had to head down to the school admission office to do it, I'm really questioning whether applying for that course is the right decision though, or to be exact, whether applying to that school is the right choice.