Not really in love with "Cupcakes with Love"

Today, I was at Clementi Mall having dinner with my family when I came across this cupcake shop called Cupcakes With Love.

I have passed by the shop many times on my way to work, but I have never really had the desire to make any purchase from them, I almost did a few days back, but no one was manning the counter at that time, probably because they were at the back baking and frosting the cupcakes, so I gave it a miss.

Today, I decided it was time to give this bakery a shot and I have to say, the service was great, I had a very good first impression, so when the lady told me to get 4 cupcakes instead of 2, I agreed and got 4 instead so I could get them in a box.

Flavors I got.

 Mint                            Red Velvet

Adult Chocolate                   Milo  

It's very cute looking, not the best presentation but that's their style, sadly, the cupcakes themselves weren't exactly fantastic. So far I have tried Mint and Red Velvet and both of them just aren't really very good and with very good reasons.




The Mint cupcake has a good chocolate sponge base, taste very much like the chocolate cake recipe I use at home, but the frosting was pretty terrible, not because there's very little frosting on it or because it's too sweet, it was terrible because it tasted like chemicals, not just an aftertaste, it tasted very bitter when I was eating it,  probably either from too much peppermint extract, too much food coloring, or maybe a combination of both that made it taste that way. The little fondant ball was nice though but the frosting was just inedible, which is ironic because I ate the whole thing anyway, bite by bitter bite.



Makes me wonder if the person who actually made the frosting did give it a try first before slapping it on their cupcakes because it's just straight up bitter.... or maybe they used creme de menthe for flavoring, if that's the case then it explain the bitterness. I don't drink liqueur so I wouldn't know if it will make the buttercream bitter.





The Red Velvet was recommended to me by the shop assistant, I wasn't really interested at first because I don't care much for cream cheese frosting, but since she was so friendly, I decided to follow her recommendation and got the Red Velvet. First thing I noticed about the Red Velvet was that it was relatively lower than the other cakes, when I gave it a squeeze test to see how soft the cake sponge was, I found it to be pretty hard, like if I were to throw it at someone really hard, it would probably hurt.



Initially I thought that the texture would be similar to a pound cake since it was so dense, but after having a bite, I found out it's nothing like a pound cake, it was honestly a little bit tough bordering towards doughy, might stem from the fact that it was either not  creamed long enough, that's why it's so dense or maybe too much flour and not enough rising agent in the cake batter I don't know, but the cake wasn't good, the frosting on the other hand was nice, I like myself a sweet sugary frosting, so this cream cheese frosting was great, but nothing beats Plain Vanilla's cream cheese frosting that taste nothing like cream cheese, probably why I like it so much. The little ball on this cake was a Malteser and Maltesers are always yummy.


Update After trying out all the flavors



Milo wasn't very Milo-y, it's really just a normal vanilla cake topped with vanilla buttercream and dusted with Milo powder, that's the only Milo in the cupcake, the dusting of Milo Powder.  In their defense, the cupcake wasn't just called "Milo", it was a longer name I couldn't remember, but I was expecting the cupcake to at least have some Milo ganache in the core or something so that was disappointing.



The cake base itself was a little sub-par, it looks like the vanilla cupcakes I made using recipes I found online before I started working professionally at the bakery, recipes that aren't very good to be honest.



Frosting was just regular Vanilla American Buttercream dusted with Milo powder and topped with a Malteser, Pale and sugary like how an American Buttercream should be, nothing to scream about. I mean if I can replicate the recipes at home, then it's really not that impressive to me.




The one I probably enjoyed the most was the Adult Chocolate cupcake, the same chocolate cupcake base but spiked with rum. The chocolate ganache I'm assuming also has a bit of rum added in it. I normally don't pick ganache topped cupcake as my favorite because I really like buttercream frosting, but honestly, the other cupcakes were pretty sub-par for me to pick as a favorite.


The Mint buttercream was straight up bitter.
The Red Velvet cake had a dry and hard cake base that I am not a fan of. I like my sponge cake light and fluffy, not tough, I mean the whole point of a sponge cake is for it to be light and fluffy.
The Milo was just false advertising, it's just Vanilla Cupcake with Milo Powder.


So the only one that was above average was the Adult Chocolate.



I really want to like the cupcakes from this shop because the sales assistant was very nice and friendly, but sadly, the cakes just weren't up to standard, I've read reviews from other blogs as well about the shop and surprisingly, they have only good things to say about it, so maybe it was a bad day for the baking team that day or maybe the bloggers don't really have a mind of their own and just followed what everyone else was saying because there is NO WAY the red velvet cupcake I tasted could be deem "Hands down best red velvet ever", that being said, I will probably be giving Cupcakes With Love the benefit of the doubt and will give it another shot next time. For now, I will probably go back to getting my regular cupcake fix from Twelve Cupcakes because that shop is sprouting out every where, that  or bake them myself when I am feeling up for it, because honestly, I think the cupcake I make using recipes I have gotten from the bakery have a much better taste and texture than those from Cupcakes With Love.




The last time I heard someone I know comparing her own homemade cupcakes to a professorial cupcake bakery like Twelve Cupcakes, saying how hers was so much better, I couldn't help but find her to be a bit cocky, she's the same person who said her greatest weakness was her perfectionism...

 ..... both are pretty bold statements to make, she was blabbering on about how she thinks her cupcakes are way better whilst I was eating a red velvet cupcake from Twelve Cupcakes... really hated the cream cheese frosting though so I was having difficulty enjoying it but anyways, she actually brought her own that day and I did try it, and being the civil person that I am, I just went...

"Mmmm, it's not bad." 

.....because it's really not that good, and while I was eating her cupcake, I kept wondering in my head why she would assume that this cupcake of hers would be considered better than Twelve Cupcakes. The flavor was alright, but the sponge cake was horrible because it was hard. I didn't really want to say it in her face because it was a little bit rude , but it was not better than Twelve Cupcakes.




My friend who was seated beside me who also had a cupcake from Twelve Cupcakes earlier leaned in to me while he was having her cupcake and went...

"Better than Twelve Cucpakes meh?"

I mean I really do appreciate her effort in baking for us, but those kind of praises are best left for others to say.... even the perfectionism part.




Speaking of baking cupcakes at home...

 Rose Cupcake with Rose Buttercream Pipped Rosette Style.

I made some Rose Cupcakes today paired with Rose flavored Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I really didn't like the cupcakes though because I am not a huge fan of the Rose flavoring on cupcakes, love it in a macaron but cupcakes, I think I will stick with the traditional flavours.



The original idea was to make an Ispahan inspired Cupcake, that means a rose flavoured cupcake with raspberry swirl topped with lychee buttercream. Sadly, I didn't have raspberry jam, so I opted for the strawberry jam I had at home. The jam was so thick I couldn't swirl it properly, so I gave up after the first spoonful and just squirted the jam into the cupcake after it baked, it didn't really taste good with strawberry jam.



The buttercream was a disaster, flavour wise because my flavouring was suppose to be coming from the lychee martini my Mum got from Mauritius. The lychee flavour  from the Martini was unfortunately not strong enough to be imparted into the buttercream,  so I gave up on that and just made rose buttercream.


In the end, I got a pumped up rose cupcake.... and I didn't enjoy eating it. So now they are all in the freezer, awaiting to be eaten by my Mum's friend next Friday. 

A Keitai to stay.

About 2 days ago, my urge to get a new phone finally kicked in.



This is a phase I always go through, and it normally happens because I have commitment issues with my mobile phones, when I am stuck with a phone for too long, it starts to bore me and I have to go get a new one. In the past, during my secondary school days, the desire to get a new phone was a lot frequent because phones during that time all looked very different, there were many form factors to choose from and the form factor I always ended up getting enticed by were the flip phones.





Nowadays, all the phones in the market are all the same boring candy bar form, huge screen with a single button on the front. I used to be able to tell phones apart from far away, only needed the smallest detail to distinguish if it was a Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson or a Samsung etc, if it was the latest model or an old one, that was how obsess I was with phones in the past, I looked at phone reviews when I was bored, I knew my friends phone models and specification more than they themselves knew, I even did a presentation about mobile phones when I was in Poly for my English class because I am a phone junkie. In my defense, the presentation was a lot more interesting than it sounds.... probably because of my nervous laughing fits which I was having under controlled relatively well at that time.




Anyways, I decided since all the phones in the market currently are so shit ass boring, it would be a great idea to go look at some Japanese Phones on the internet instead, that was 2 days ago and because they have the most awesome flip phones in the world, that was when that urge became an obsession.




I have gotten Japanese Phones in the past before, or keitais as they are known in Japan, in Sim Lim Square and I did not have a good experience.




The shop I patronized was called Tiffian, I remember calling the shop up and talking to the boss, asked him about the phones and was told that the phones were brand new, but I went there, I found out the phones were NOT actually brand new, when I made my purchase, instead of getting me a sealed unopened box like any other mobile shop would, the boss just took the one I was playing with from the display case and said that was the phone he was selling, I was baffled, so I asked him if that was brand new, he insisted that it was and so I then went on to enquire where the original packaging was, where was the box as well as the accessories that comes with it like the original charger, because he didn't give me an original charger but a third party one that probably cost less than 10 bucks, he, being the scammer that he is, said I had to pay extra for it and by "it" I meant the box, like the bloody box with the instructions manuals and warranty, and apparently if I wanted to get the other accessories,I had to purchase them separately, at this point, I feel obligated to point out that I was extremely fucking stupid and gullible at that time, so I just took his word for it and got it anyway because I was desperate to own a keitai of my own.... the cost was $280 or thereabouts.

THIS IS NOT MY PICTURE. I don't even have half of what was in this box.

I bought the SO905i model from him and this was what a "BRAND NEW" SO905i should have.

Check List
The Phone - Check
The Charger - Half Check (mine wasn't the original one)
Charging Dock - NiL
Earphone Adaptor (one of the white box) - NiL
Data Cable (one of the white box)- NiL
Instruction Manauls and Warranty - NiL
The Box - NiL


This is a secondhand phone that was being sold on the Yahoo Auction and it has even more things in it than the supposed "Brand New" set I was getting from the Tiffian guy. 

Went home and found out the phone had some issues with outgoing call, so I called up the boss with my home phone that very night and he said I could go back the next day and he could either give me a full refund or I had the option of exchanging it with another model, with a top up fee... being the desperate whore for a keitai I was at that time, I went with the latter and topped up to get an even nicer looking one, and I'm sure if I had asked for a full refund instead, he would probably have tried to find fault with the device and not give me the full refund. So I topped up about an additional $80, I think, to get a nicer model. I remember going there with a friend of mine, and he was not pleased with my decision to not get the full refund, thinking back, I should have listened to him, but at that time, it was actually a little annoying.

NOT MY PICTURE

Got a Black SH906i cost me around $360 or thereabouts.

Once again, no box, just the phone he took out from the display case at the corner of his shop, and he didn't even exchange the charger, he said they were the same type so I could just keep the charger I was holding on to and just keep using that.

Obviously not original because those 2 phones were made from by different companies, the first one was Sony Ericsson and this beauty of a flip phone was from Sharp.

The new phone worked fine and it was around 2 days later when the initial excitement of getting a new phone died down, I got a bit suspicious about the "new phone" and decided to do some research on the shop, because I'm really slow like that, stumbled across the hardwarezone forums and found out that the shop had a very bad reputation, to the point users were actually finding the picture of the boss and pasting it all over the forums to make a mockery out of him.



 Apparently all the pictures of the phones that were shown on his website, pictures which shows the handsets still in their original packaging, were stolen from another keitai seller, who was a lot more reputable, and as if that wasn't bad enough,  he kept insinuating on the forum post that he was working with the other seller...


"You can contact me (contact no.) , reputable seller, or Jane or whatever the fuck her name was (contact no.) for all your keitai needs."



 ....like they were working under the same company, which was of course not true at all, he was working with that Jane chick because I have seen her at the store itself, but he was obviously not working with the other seller and the forum users know that and outed him for it, it was only then did  I actually realize I have been duped into believing the phone he sold to me was "Brand New" when in actuality, it was probably stolen from somewhere, allegedly, I mean got no box, no original charger, no accessories, all he had for display and to sell were just the phones on their own.




So I decided I didn't want to keep the phone if I don't even know how it was obtained in the first place and thus I sold the phone back to the guy. I called the boss the following day and told him I wanted to sell back the phone, I wasn't about to go and confront him about lying to me, most of the time they will make a huge scene or something to that caliber, so I just said I wasn't used to the OS and want to stick with my old phone, he was all friendly about it and said he will buy back the phone yada yada, but with a hundred dollar reduction... went back the next day and I pass him the phone , he takes it, looks at it and goes...

"I have to minus another $100 because you take off the screen protector. No screen protector very hard to sell as first hand."

Complete bullshit, the moment you took it out from it's original box packaging, it's no longer first hand, it's called a display unit and display units should never be sold as "brand new", but apparently, to him, first hand meant with screen protector and used by someone for less than 3 days, disgusting, but because I really didn't want to hold on to that phone anymore and also didn't want to deal with him, I just agreed and sold the phone back to him with a $200 loss. It was a very expensive lesson learnt.



That's why now I hardly ever shop at Sim Lim Square... unless they have that STARetailer logo on their sign.

Gave up the idea of getting a Japanese Phone for a while, for like 5 years, until 2 days ago when I decided to take a look at the reputable seller's webpage, sgkeitai.  I know he can be trusted because I have seen a lot of positive feedback about him in the hardwarezone forum and I did try getting a keitai from him once, but his prices were a little too steep for the non-working student I was at that time compared to that Sim Lim Square shop, with very good reasoning.... but now that I have an income, I decided if I was gonna get a keitai, I was going to get it from him.

Whats-app him about the phone yesterday, and my interest in getting it,had a bit of back and forth before finally making a decision this morning and ended up making my purchase today at Marina Square.

This time, the phone came in the original packaging, there was the charger, the charging dock, the usb cable, the phone, memory card and really anything that's suppose to come with the phone came with the phone.

 Sharp Softbank 007SH. 

The amount I paid for that phone, I could have gotten a PS4 and still have some cash leftover. It was crazy expensive at $650, it's not even the latest model, in fact, the model was released back in 2011, the reason for the steep price was because it was the first android flip phone in the market in Japan and apparently the only one that's software unlocked, which means any SIM card will work on it. Plus this was the last 2 sets he had that came in white, a model that has discontinued production in Japan

I was very excited when I first got my hands on it, but after 2 hours in, I got over it because it was the laggiest android I have ever used.  It's running on Gingerbread, the last time Gingerbread was considered "UPDATED" was 4 years ago when I first got my hands on the Xperia X10, which I lost in the bus on my way home, 2 weeks after I bought it, what a fucking idiot, the phone was huge and I didn't even realize it had slipped out of my pocket it in the bus until like 2 days later because that's how often I use my phone in the past.




Anyways, the amount of RAM the 007SH has is abysmal, the internal memory is less than 300mb and really, it's so unbearably slow compared to my iPhone because of all the bullshit third party software the company has decided to install in it, plus the pathetic amount of RAM it has.... I can't root it because it's a Japanese handset and also because I am not sure how to, that's why I had no choice but to return back to my iPhone.

Swivel Screen is always nice, although I do worry one day the hinge will just break when I suddenly get OCD and have to swivel that screen a hundred times before I can feel go back to my regular schedule of doing nothing productive.

I still have another SIM card, so I just stick it inside and let the phone have the ability to switch on and be the fucking awesome flip phone it is, but because of the pathetic RAM and very sad 256mb of internal memory, my initial attempts at trying to install all my social networking apps just ends up bring the whole system to a crawl. 

Whenever I try to open the facebook app, it will load for a few second and then crash like it's fucking teasing me. Good thing I am not addicted to Facebook, sadly, I am addicted to Youtube and if this phone can't even run Facebook, I highly doubt Youtube works, probably just explodes japanese confetti in my face when I try to load a video.

When swiveld and closed, it just becomes the thickest and most sluggish android phone I have ever used. I always thought my Huawei phone was laggy, but I found something else to take that title and to think it's a Japanese Product, losing to a China product. Both are released in the same year, the Huawei in the latter quaeter.

I can install Whatsapp and this SMS Go app, apparently the Japanese don't SMS but instead sends emails to each other, so no built in SMS application, which is a little odd. 

The phone is now essentially just a very sluggish android device without the capabilities of a phone, sucks that I paid so much for it. I have since done a factory reset and only install WhatsApp, an SMS app, 9GAG and Opera Browser because Chrome only runs on Android Jellybean and Firefox slows the phone down way too much.

The other phone I was actually eyeing was the Android Flip phone from Samsung that's running on Jelly Bean, and only available in China and Korea, I think, sgkeitai was also selling it, but unfortunately, it was $999, and I wasn't about to go and spend $1000 on a phone that I won't be able to trade in in the future. I really wanted that model though, if I had gotten that and it was as "smooth" as my old HTC Butterfly, I would probably have sold my iPhone away to recover some of the damage from my bank savings account. But that is a Korean flip phone and no one does flip phones netter than the Japanese, another reason why I went for the Keitai, plus it looks nicer than the Samsung one..

I wouldn't say I heavily regretted buying the phone because it's ultimately a flip phone keitai, a thing of beauty in my eyes, but it's just too underwhelming for me. I would have loved it if I had bought it like 4 to 5 years ago, when Facebook, Twitter and Youtube was done solely on the computer.... but now that I require surfing them before I actually decide to try and get some sleep, it's just not going to work out. 

Oh, and the battery is pretty bad, like really fucking horrible, it apparently hardly last a day on full charge , when I asked the seller about it, he  laughed and then acknowledged that the battery was indeed pretty bad. I wasn't even using it and within 5 minutes the battery dropped 2%, it was on freaking standby mode and it dropped 2% in 5 minutes, that's bloody ridiculous.  But I'm probably going to keep it, as a spare phone when my iPhone suddenly dies on me, because that's the only valid excuse I will have for using it as my main phone.

A little too much negativity in a row

The last 2 post sounded pretty negative, this blog is really now just an outlet for me to let out my pent up frustration so do excuse the negativity, I'm really not that much of a joy kill in real life... I'm writing out this post like there are people actually reading this blog, pfft.


After reading through the recipe book I bought,  the one with the recipes that don't work, I kinda did a bit of tweaking to make it work with the recipes I had gotten from the bakery I worked at.



As a professional baker, or as someone who has worked at a professional bakery before, I feel like I should point out that the items I bake in the bakery always taste different from when I bake them at home, so maybe her recipes do work for her and some people, and they probably taste good when made in the right environment with the proper ingredients and proper equipment... but for me, none of the recipes work and that's why I had to do some tweaking to make them work for me.



So the first thing I made was the chocolate salted caramel cupcakes, the only thing here that's from the book is the butter cream, which I made and accidentally mixed in doubled the amount of caramel sauce that was required, once again, it's because the instructions weren't very clear.



The recipe was.

For the Buttercream Icing

300g unsalted butter, softened.
535g icing sugar
1 x salted caramel recipe.




I don't read the instructions, so I poured the entire 1 x salted caramel recipe into the mix, only to realize I needed just half of it and the other half was meant for filling. I mean reading it straight from the ingredient list, it's only natural for me to assume she meant that the entire caramel sauce was meant for the buttercream because it's as she stated... "FOR THE BUTTERCREAM ICING".... not "For the buttercream icing & CUPCAKE FILLING"

Salted Caramel Chocolate Cupcake
Drizzled with Chocolate with A Pinch of Sea Salt

It didn't really make much difference though, I guess, it just didn't crust like I thought it would, probably because of the extra dosage of caramel sauce I introduced into the butter cream mixture. The cupcake base itself was made using the recipe I got from my bakery and it was a good cake base, taste very much like the chocolate cake sponge from Awfully Chocolate, sprinkled a bit of sea salt on the top.

When I made this salted caramel buttercream, I was hoping to achieve a buttercream that was similar to the one at Plain Vanilla in both flavor and taste, but sadly it didn't work out that way. The buttercream was just sweet, that was it, couldn't really taste the salted caramel part of it.

Yesterday night, I did some actual tweaking to the oreo cupcake recipe and changed the vanilla cupcake recipe from my bakery to one that was close to the oreo cupcake recipe in the book and it came out really well.

Cookies and Cream Cupcake

Was originally planning to make Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but I didn't have any sugar left, only had icing sugar so just followed the recipe in the book and made their cookies and cream buttercream. It was alright, I guess because american buttercream is so sickly sweet, the oreo cookie taste couldn't really cut through that whole sugary diabetes taste as opposed to whipped cream with bits of oreos folded in. I can taste the cookies and cream in the buttercream, but not as much as I would have liked to.

So the cake recipes themselves don't really work for me, but the buttercream icing I guess are usable.



Went to Wheelers Yard a few days ago with my ex-colleagues from the bakery to do some catching up, like proper catching up and not a 5 minute small talk session.

Lunch at Wheeler's Yard

I am close with one of them, the other two I wasn't very close with, but they were really friendly so the lunch meet up wasn't awkward at all like I had imagined it would be. The food itself was alright, I decided to have the breakfast platter for lunch because who doesn't love eating breakfast for lunch? Apparently everyone else I was with.

The food was definitely better than the place I visited at Yong Siak Street where all I was served was 3 type of sausages with scrambled eggs and a sad pile of salad on the side, at Wheeler's Yard, there was more variety in the platter, I had bacon, mushroom, eggs, baby potatoes and a slice of bread with SCS Butter served on the side, the brand of butter I loath the most because it smells really really bad, although there were more stuff on the plate, I still found it a bit expensive.... almost $20.  

I wasn't feeling much for coffee so I ordered Elderflower Soda, which was really dumb because when people go to Wheelers Yard, they go for the coffee, but sadly because I already had a Double Chocolate Frappe earlier at McDonalds that day, decided to have something lighter to drink. I'm not even sure if there's coffee in Frappe but for the sake of having a reason not to get a coffee that day, I'm gonna assume there is coffee in it. (I really don't think there is any coffee in it but it was rich and i needed something lighter)

After lunch, we went to take a look at the bicycles, was pretty interesting to see all the different types they had, from mountain bike types to the the hipster looking ones to those that didn't even have a handbrake. 

Took a cab afterwards to Creamier for ice cream, place was packed to the brim but we managed to get some seats outside and ordered individual ice creams as well as a waffle with ice cream to share. I really wanted to try out some weird flavours like Chocolate Peppercorn, but the only non-traditional flavour I could find was Orange and Cranberry Vodka, so I got that instead. Nothing too fancy, guess because I ordered  a flavor I didn't really liked and then we headed home.

It was a nice meet up. I enjoy meet up with a small group of friends, that's why the only time I enjoy meeting up with my secondary school friends is when majority of them can't make it... and probably because I am not very close to the people who can't make it.

Oh and update on my working life.

Now I am working for my Dad, the other companies did not work out,I also assume SFIC, the institute that was helping me look for jobs has given up on me after successfully finding me 2 shitty job positions. 

The architect firm got back to me about a week ago, 2 weeks after my first interview, asking me to go for a second round of interview, decided it wasn't going to work out so I turned them down because the location was too far away and also because after seeing how everyone there was doing AutoCAD, I kinda got reminded why I left the industry in the first place. It's like a desk bound job but instead of crunching numbers, you are doing AutoCAD forever. 

Took a 3 years course in Interior Design so I can end up working in a desk bound job that has nothing to do with design. I mean it has to do with Interior Design, but there's really no designing for me to do as an individual, all the "conceptualization of ideas" I learned in school, I can throw them out the window because all the designing is done by the higher ups, all I will end up doing is following their instructions and do the boring part of the process, the drafting part.

And so, instead of sticking with Interior Design, I will use that diploma and look for a degree course that's design related, but in another field. Get out of the Interior Design Industry for good, an industry that's pretty horrible in Singapore to be honest. You either find a established interior design or architect firm and work as a drafter or 3d redener forever OR you become a sales designer and mingle around with your sales designer colleague everyday, colleagues who will remind you of the 3 years you wasted getting your diploma because they don't have one and they are still able to get the same job as you and even worse, be able to earn more money than you.

I am NOT a social person.

Was invited by my friend today to head down to her studio to view some of her art pieces she has done.  I should also point out at this point that my friend is actually quite advanced in years, she's probably the same age as my grandmother.



I am not someone who's interested in art, I enjoy design but fine arts isn't something I am interested in, asking me to walk into a museum to view a collection of art pieces and appreciate them is akin to asking me to watch paint dry, or watch dry paint on a piece of canvas, that's the only thing I will experience and learn from the exhibition, that I am really just looking at dry paint on a piece of canvas, BUT, I decided to drop by her exhibition anyway because I haven't seen her in a while and thought it would be a great time to catch up with her.

When I walked into her little exhibition space located on the first story of a HDB flat, I was met with many curious eyes, people wondering who I was and me wondering the same about them. I knew who they were, and they knew each other because they were her friends and students from her art class, but none of them knew who I was, I was the odd one out and that made me extremely uncomfortable. I had thought maybe she would have a few people over to help her out with the exhibition and when I arrived, she will show me around the space a little, talk to me about the art pieces she has done before bringing me to a small table where we could sit down alone and do some catching up, that unfortunately didn't happen.

The first thing she did was introduced me some of her students / friends, which was nice of her, but really, if it's someone I'm not going to remember a week from now, I would rather the introductions end there, I really don't want to be sitting with them and having any conversations, I came here to catch up with an old friend, not make new ones, but my friend proceeds to seat me down with her friends around a small table and heads into the kitchen to grab some drinks and food for us because one of her student's kid, who was a little girl, decided she wanted to have "tea time"... I really don't like interacting with kids so when I realize that the kid was not going to leave anytime soon, I got even more uncomfortable. 

The little girl was the more active type so all my friends' friends were very friendly with her, asking her how she was doing, if she was hungry or not and laughing at her little antics, while I was just sitting at the table, sipping my cup of tap water, looking at the little girl stuffing a whole doughnut up her mouth before grabbing another snack and trying to shove that in, the adults were all asking her to slow down and all I could think about was the horrifying possibility that the girl might shove her face full of food and look at me to try and grab my attention.

The whole time I was there, my friend came up to me a few times for like the first 10 minutes when I just arrived and asked me how I was doing before she actually decided to sit down and do some proper catching up,she tried to start a conversation with me about baking, because she knew me through baking, asked me where I was working and how was working life like as a professional baker, but then her other friend, probably bored out of her mind because she couldn't participate in the conversation, decided to switch to subject to "fine arts".....

"When I saw you (me), I got reminded of this artist daughter I met the other day because she also really loves to cook, she was very sophisticated looking and I was at her mother's art exhibition the other day, she brought me around to see all the art pieces and they were all so detailed...blah blah blah.... " 

....and they ended up talking about fine arts, their trip to Rome to see the museums and I was just sitting there pretending I knew what they were talking about, not saying anything and every time the other lady who was seated with us looked at me and tried to include me in the conversation,  I just smiled and nodded my head, agreeing with her blindly, secretly hoping they would just stop talking about the fine arts and boring my brains out... they never did and I was stuck there hearing them go on and on about it, it was horrible, every time I thought the lady was gonna stop having anything to talk about, she manages to reignite the conversation again, it was like sitting through a bloody lecture on her personal life experience with the fine arts that never ends, everyone around the table was interested in it except me because I didn't know who she was and didn't really give a shit about her travel in Rome, but it did come to an end when the little girl came by to the table, sat on the empty seat beside me and started wrapping the hanging table cloth around her head before she went ahead and bite the table in an attempt to get some attention, and it was only then did they finally stop talking about the fine arts and focus their attention on the little girl by bringing her around the exhibition space to see the works for like the hundredth time while she goes around pointing at the pieces she wants to bring home.

My friend went along with the little girl and just left me alone at the table, I had thought she would stay back and talk to me while her friends took care of the little girl, but that wasn't the case, she kinda just left me there by myself and left me alone to nurse on my cup of tap water, the entire time I kept looking at the clock wondering when the people will leave so I will finally have time to catch up with my friend because my plan was to leave at 4 pm to avoid the peak hour crowd. It was probably about 20 minutes later did two of them leave, and I was actually hopeful because that only leaves the little kid and another lady to get the fuck out... sadly, 10 minutes later, 2 more women that I don't know came by the door and invited themselves in, one was a student and the other was a fellow art teacher, and at that point, it's like my head was gonna explode from disbelief...




I had thought that after the "Story of My Trip to Rome" woman had left with her friend, that would be the end of any conversation regarding art, I would finally be able to talk to my friend about baking because that's all I'm interested in and know about her, that she also enjoys baking, but No~, another girl has to come in and start talking about her pottery experience...  Fuck!



 Really, at that point, I got very annoyed with the whole situation because I have traveled an hour just to see my friend, hoping to do some catching up, something I don't do very often with friends, and all I am getting is tap water to drink and a table to sit so I can look at the same art pieces I have been staring at for the past 30 minutes, join a group conversation about "fine art" that I wasn't really a part of because I didn't really give a shit and then just see more and more of her art students and friends come in and talk about art and how it excites them and gives them a fuzzy and tingly feeling down in their lady parts.

So after seeing another 2 friends of hers coming in, I realized that she has already done her catching up with me, that short 5 minutes small talk was the catching up she was talking about and really after that, she just became really disinterested in entertaining me anymore, seeing how she completely ignored my presence for the entire latter half of the time I was there, I was literally just sitting at the table alone for the next 40 minutes or so just looking around aimlessly, I got up once and walked around to look at the pieces, but after that I was just sitting at the table alone, seeing my friend busy entertaining her other friends and that was when I decided .... Fuck it, this has been a huge waste of my time, so I got up and told her I was going to make a move.




I actually thought when I told her I was going to go, she will realize that we haven't really done any catching up, but nope, instead she just thanked me for dropping by and ask me to come by again another time. I smiled politely and said I will call again if I do decide to come by, but I won't and probably will never call again.




She just left me a text message, once again thanking me for dropping by and also said she was glad we could do some catching up.



In my eyes, there was no catching up of any sort, just a huge waste of my time because even though I may appear to look like someone who doesn't talk a lot, I actually really appreciate it when someone strikes up a long and meaningful conversation with me. 5 minutes is not catching up, that's just small talk and I don't enjoy coming out of my way to pay you a visit after a year of not seeing each other, only for you to have 5 minutes worth of small talk with me.

Needless to say, I was NOT happy when I left the place. I don't always meet up friends I haven't contacted in a long time, but when I do, I expect there to be lots of catching up and reminiscing about the good times we have had together in the past. I am not someone who agrees to just meet up with any friend, I only meet up with people I consider close friends, so when someone I consider a close friend presents me with such a pathetic excuse for catching up... well, it sucks.





Recently, I met an old army friend whom I haven't contacted in a very long time and that meet up was fantastic because we talked about our lives and how we have been doing, just 2 days ago, I met up with 3 of my ex-colleagues from the bakery, 2 of whom I was not even close to and we had a great lunch followed by ice cream afterwards, so when I met this old friend of mine today, I was expecting all that awesome to happen and well, it was a lot worst than what I had originally anticipated, because I like painting plausible worse cast scenarios in my mind that could happen and being left alone for almost the entirety of my time there was not something I had thought would happen.




I never replied back to her message though, because if I do, it wouldn't be what I really feel and she probably won't want to know how I really felt about the supposed "catching up" that we did.

Unhappy Baker

I recently got myself a recipe book online called The Cake Book and I am gonna review it base of my experiences with the recipes I have tested and the book in general.

The Cake Book!

It was quite a cheap buy, only $13 or thereabouts at Book Depository which was really cheap because had I chosen to buy it from the main website itself, shipping the book from London, or where ever this book originated from, all the way to Singapore would cost me close to $40, bloody ridiculous, and even more so because none of the recipes I have tried in it worked. 

Well, I would say it didn't work, they came out looking like how they did in the photos in the recipe book, but they tasted anything but tasty, which was extremely disappointing because I have never bought recipe books EVER because I really never did see the point when I could find recipes online, but I decided to give this one a chance because I have watched the videos made by the writer and it always ends up looking really good, so I decided to show her a bit of support and get one. Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations at all or got even anywhere close to it.... and to think I waited 3 weeks for the book to arrive at my door steps, 3 weeks I spend using old recipes from my own bakery to try to tide myself over until I manage to get new "yummy recipes" from this book, only to realize I was going to end up wasting a ton of baking ingredients and money when I actually do attempt the recipes.

I have gone to the videos the writer films and uploads on her Youtube page and read the comments people are leaving on her channel, saying how they have made the cakes and it came out delicious... I can't help but think those people probably never did make the cakes and are just trying to kiss ass or maybe they did but they just have extremely low expectations of how a decent cake should taste like, normally when someone bakes for the first time and the bakes come out looking fine, even if it taste like flour and is hard as rocks, they are not gonna deem it as a failure because as long as it looks fine, it's a success for them as a first try, I'm pretty sure I was like that when I first started as well, and then I actually recovered from my delusion and ended up focusing on the taste and texture, and decided that it would be alright to start throwing things away when they don't live up to my taste bud's expectation without sparing a thought for the poor starving kids in Africa.

So far I have made the salted caramel sauce recipe, which I found a bit odd when I first watched the video of her making it because she doesn't add any butter into the caramel, normally salted caramel sauce has butter added into it but she doesn't. It came out fine but it was a little lacking, probably because there's no butter. I went to check the comments to see if anyone would ask about the lack of butter, no one did.

Made chocolate ganache, that one was fine, but for some reason it kept splitting after I leave it out at room temperature, probably my own fault and the fact that Singapore has such an atrociously warm weather. So it's really only fine if it's not out of the fridge for more than 10 minutes, otherwise it just becomes a splitting chocolate mess of a ganache.

And now on to the cupcake recipes themselves, the star recipes of the book, it's called The Cake Book after all.  I had made 2 flavours prior to getting the book by watching the Youtube videos and made another 2 flavours after getting the book.... all using expensive french butter as she recommended in her videos. She uses Lescure but since Singapore didn't sell any, I went ahead and got President Brand, the next best thing because it's fucking expensive.

The only flavour that actually worked sadly was the vanilla cupcakes, wouldn't go as far as to say it's the best vanilla cupcake I have ever made, it's decent, taste like the ones I made using the recipe from Magnolia Bakery, but I won't be making them again, just gonna stick to the one I have been baking at work for 5 months at the bakery.

The flavours I tried that didn't come out so well. Chocolate, Red Velvet and Cookies And Cream.

The chocolate cupcakes just reeked of vegetable oil when I tasted it, it didn't really rise the first time I made it, the inside was literally a solid blob of chocolate batter, had to almost double the amount of baking soda to get the cake to rise when I made it the second time, thinking I messed something up the first time I did it, and it did rise, but even then, the texture was extremely doughy... probably because there's only half a teaspoon of baking soda in there, the only rising agent in the whole recipe, for a batter that's enough to make 12 cupcakes. The oil tasting part I can't really blame the recipe though because every time I make a recipe that calls for oil instead of butter, it always taste like vegetable oil, which is why I will never ever use vegetable oil for baking again. 

Red Velvet was the real disappointment. It came out looking exactly as it did in the picture, flat top and the texture looked the same. The taste was horrible though, it tasted nothing like a red velvet, I couldn't taste any vanilla, there was no hint of cocoa at all, the cake texture itself was extremely weird, it's like the cake was made of a cleaning sponge because that's how it felt in my mouth, it was like eating a cleaning sponge. It was very soft though, which was the only redeeming factor about it, but the taste was just horrible, so really, that redemption is invalid. 

Before I actually got her book, I did try making one of her recipes called the Oreo Cupcake, that one was disappointing as well, so I probably should have gotten the hint then... and I ended up getting a stomachache after eating it. I know that because I had it twice on 2 different occasion and had 2 trips to the toilet with a horrible stomachache afterwards. Probably something expired, but the taste was very generic, the buttercream did not taste like oreo buttercream, the cupcake just tasted like the vanilla cupcake recipe even though there's malt and cocoa in it, couldn't taste those.

For presentation, this book gets an B+.  It's has a lot of nice pictures of cupcakes and overall a very nice book to own, but the instructions inside could have been better. Instead of having step by step instructions like a regular recipe book would...

Step 1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees

Step 2. Beat Sugar and Butter until light and fluffy.

Step 3. Add in your eggs and beat after each addition.

Step 4. When mixture is well combined, pour in milk and mix well....

....this one has the instructions written in paragraphs, so it goes like...

Before you begin, you will want to heat up your oven to 200 degree celcius, and in a large mixing bowl, throw in your butter and sugar, make sure to mix the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy. Grab your eggs and pop it into the butter and sugar mixture one at a time until fully incorporated. Oh, so it seems you can't absorb that much information at once and have to go cream your butter and sugar, well go ahead, I will still be here when you are done... oh so you are back? Can't find the line you last read?  Well that's too bad, guess you are gonna have to start from the beginning to find it.

For the recipe itself, the cupcakes obviously didn't work for me so I'm gonna have to give it a D-. The buttercream recipe works and the vanilla cake recipe works, salted caramel came out as it was intended and it did taste like salted caramel, but without the buttery flavor. So there are recipes that do work, but majority of them just don't work for me and as such, I can't give it a passing mark.

So overall I would rate this book C, if that's how the average works out.

....because most of the recipes I have tried don't really work and even if they do work, it really doesn't taste good, her instructions are very confusing, she list her ingredients without stating which is wet and which is dry, and ask you to mix all the dry ingredients together without specifying which are the wet ones and which are the dry ones, the main problem I have with that is most bakers see sugar as a wet ingredient, but she sees it as a dry ingredient, and she doesn't put salt as part of the ingredient list in the book and only states it in the instruction, so much for having a proper mise en place.  

I don't normally refer to the instructions when I bake because roughly have an idea how to prepare a cake, so when I made the chocolate cupcake the first time round, I actually double checked all the ingredients with the ingredient list, only to realize after mixing everything, portioning the batter and baking it in the oven that I have missed out the salt that was never listed in the ingredients list in the first place but only stated in the preparation instructions section.

So only buy this book if you want to look at fancy pictures, or stay in London because for all I know, it might be something in London that makes those recipes work, you could also buy this book for some ideas and inspirations with cupcake flavors. 

It's because of this damn book, I actually got into a bad mood. Failed 3 to 4 baking recipes in a row within 2 days and wasted so much money buying the ingredients, now every time I watch her Youtube video, I feel a bit of resentment,  I trusted her and her recipes and they failed me so miserably. 

Great looking book, not so great recipes.

CheenaTown

My job interviewed happened on Friday.

As expected, the weather was insanely hot that day and the bus ride to the location was long, I had thought the design company I had went for to be interviewed at prior to my job at the bakery was far, but this location was twice as far, or even further.

When I first found out the firm was a Shophouse at Chinatown, I was picturing the environment where the office was located at to look a bit like the image above. Somewhere with very little human traffic, a very quiet part of Chinatown with the only traffic being from the cars and a random guy on a bicycle, like a very quiet and relaxing place to work in...

But dreams don't always come true...

Because the office was located somewhere in this mess of a place, like right smack in the middle of the busiest part of Chinatown. The only thing I knew about the architect firm was that the office was a red shophouse, that was it, I couldn't check their website because it was down, their facebook didn't really have much information regarding the exact location except it was a red shophouse with a photo of the shophouse that looked like every other shophouse in Chinatown.

I was there at around lunchtime and the whole place was filled, not just with working adults who were out for their lunch break, but with Aunties who were doing their shopping, queuing up to buy moon cakes, tourist just aimlessly walking around taking a picture of anything that catches their fancy, children following their parents tightly lest they get lost, and then there was me, very lost and confused, clutching on to my iPhone and staring at Google Maps as I was navigating through the crowd.

I might have walked pass the "red shophouse" many times without realizing because everytime I looked at my Google Maps GPS navigation, I would have walked pass the place, so I had to make a turn and walk back, check my phone and then realize I just u-turned the wrong way and repeat that a few times, the architect firm was NOT EASY TO FIND AT ALL.

Turns out the architect firm wasn't a shophouse, but it was located in a shophouse under like some Chinese herbal medicine shop, and the entrance into the shophouse wasn't even obvious. Since the first level was a Chinese herbal medicine shop, the only way to get to the higher level where the architect firm was located was through the side entrance of the shophouse where the stairs was located, it looked fucking dubious, it looked like the entrance to some illegal child prostitution den where pedophiles will go to book their place in hell... because the whole side entrance was very run down looking, a little bit dirty, like the very first place the police will raid for a drug den or something.

Got up to the third level and finally, cold air from the air conditioning. First thing I noticed when I walked into the office was how different it looked compared to the exterior shophouse, it was very clean, modern looking and also very small. I thought that I would be ushered to a conference room to fill up a form, turns out their conference room wasn't really a room but just a huge long table at the other end of the office, because the other end was where all the computer magic happens, all the cadding and drafting stuff that happens in every architect firm... like really boring shit that I will probably not be able to withstand for an hour straight without taking a break by going to the toilet to just sit down and think about the direction I am going with my life. Haven't even get the job yet an I'm already being so negative, well that's not a good sign.

That being said, the office felt very cosy because of it's size, which I really liked, but the last time I said that about a company, I ended up quitting 3 weeks later because that cozy environment was infested with senior colleagues who had the worst attitude in general.  So anyways, I filled up my form and waited for the interview to start, must say though that I appreciate the lady passing me a gel pen instead of those shitty company ball point pens to fill out the form. The last few interviews I went to, I had to fill up my interview form with lousy ball point pens that made my handwriting look so much more atrocious than they really are, but I digress.  

So I didn't really have to wait long for the interview to start though, was interviewed by 2 people, one I think was the boss himself and the other probably someone of a high senior position. The interview went well, one of them was very friendly and asked a lot of questions, the boss, wasn't as talkative, just gave me a general rundown of the company and what I was expected of as an employee should I get the position, asked me about my computer software skills blah blah blah. 

And then at the end, they asked me if I had any question. Being the fucking idiot that I was, I thought when interviewers asked you if you had any question, it would be questions regarding the company, because those were the questions that I asked... 

"How old is this company ?"

"This company is quite small huh, so how many people are there here ?"

" Oh so little people, so do you handle multiple projects at once or one at a time..."

Dumb questions I shouldn't be asking because I didn't really care about them, the boss knows I don't care about them and they are really because the only reason I should be asking them those questions would be when I am planning to hire them for their services, which I wasn't and never will. I went online to check afterwards about the questions I should have asked and realized I should have been asking questions regarding my job position, not about the history of the company. I feel so stupid thinking about it now and all the other times I was asked if I had questions and asked those questions.

The interview took around 15 to 20 minutes, which was long enough and I honestly have no idea how the whole thing went. It didn't go bad but it also didn't go too well like when I was interviewed at the bakery, so at this point, it could go either way. I did tell my Father I will start working for him soon though, so I have already made the mental preparation to not get contacted back by the company because at the end of the day, they are an architect firm and I have a Interior Design diploma, it's kinda the same, but not really. And it's located in Chinatown, extremely far away, the bus ride was very long, and the bus ride there was generally quite smooth with minimal traffic, when I imagine having to go there everyday  during the morning peak hour and coming home during the evening peak hour, I can't really see myself lasting very long there.

Plus apparently when they saw my portfolio, they thought the reference images I had on some of my work were interior design projects done by me when they are really just pictures I got from pinterest. It's like when you see someone's profile picture online and think she's really pretty, only to realize that she's really a dog disguised as a human on Facebook when you meet that bitch in real life.





When the hell are all the interior design companies in the west gonna hire new employees. 

Bad Feeling

Will be having my final job interview tomorrow, the deciding interview on whether or not I will actually be working for someone else or work for my father.



I have gone through 3 interviews and they have all been huge disappointments, the first one was just horrible from start to finish because of an interviewer who couldn't give a shit, the second and third ones were just disappointing at the end when I found out they weren't offering me the position I was applying for, the bosses interviewed me themselves so I give them props for that but it still pretty upsetting at the end of the day when I realize I have traveled an average of 1.5 hours just to go for an interview that never had any chance of ending well.




My interview tomorrow will be for an Architect firm, so that's reassuring because it's probably a lot harder to do sales for architecture work, which means very low chance of it actually being a sales position because fuck those positions,  although I can't help but have this feeling that they are just gonna ask me to go there for an interview just for the sake of interviewing me.




I will be the "practice interview" for their employees which sucks, but seriously, to bosses who do that to the candidates, you can go fuck yourself with a plate ruler lubed with krazy glue. We may have a lot of time because we are jobless, but that doesn't mean we want to spend that time going to interviews at companies that never had the intention of hiring us in the first place.





Speaking of a lot of time and putting the job interview topic aside, I have made a lot of cake pops lately it's a bit sick, it's like the new macaron obsession. In my fridge right now, I probably have around 30 cake pops waiting to be coated.



I have never wanted a microwave so badly, melting the coating chocolate over hot water takes forever and it's also extremely inconvenient to store the excess melted chocolate. I am actually following the recipe from the bakery, but they always taste different from when I make them at the bakery, so that's very disappointing, tried making chocolate cake yesterday and it just tasted like vegetable oil, it was pretty gross. I'm not sure if it's because of the oven or the brand of the ingredients I am using, but replicating the same flavors and even the texture is impossible with the ingredients and baking appliances I have at home.