My New Baby's Tricks

Well, so far I have to say, the new baby hasn't been as exciting as I thought it would be. Firstly, I am not used to to the settings, ie, control not every good yet. Secondly, it is a royal pain to screw, unscrew, lodge, dislodge, the bowl. Thirdly, it's mainly good for one bowl mixes, ie, you don't require something ELSE that mixed from another bowl, eg, say if you needed to beat some egg white, and incorporate it into your cake batter......how??? You still have to fall back onto your trusty hand held mixer, because, you'd need to scrape the bowl clean, wash it, wash the beaters, and start all over again. Whereas with the handheld beaters, all you need is different mixing bowls, and move the beater from bowl to bowl. (and just wash the beaters).

On Sunday, the day after Deepavali, I had to make 3 carrot cakes, 2 brownies, and 2 tiramisus. So, I had to do it in the following sequence. The brownies first, coz they're basically one bowl mix. It was my first time making brownies with the baby, and the texture looked fine, initially. It wasn't until I was pouring the batter into the pans that I realised a lot of gunk at the bottom wasn't mixed properly. I made a feeble attempt to restir the gunk back into the remaining batter, but that might not have worked, because, the most awful thing happened while the brownies were baking. There appeared on the surface of the brownie a gurgling, boiling oil kinda texture. Which really alarmed me. Miraculously, it disappeared the minute I took it out of the oven. However, the brownie looked darker and harder than I was used to, so I honestly don't know if they were dry and hard as rock. For the next brownie order on Tuesday, I stuck with the old handbeater, and it was perfect.

For the 3 carrot cakes, I used the Kenwood to mix the cake batter, but had to mix the carrots, walnuts and raisins in another bowl. I guess that was coz of the sheer volume of it. Whipping of cream was easy enough, but I reckon it would be QUITE easy to overbeat cream in this baby. But again, I had to mix the mascarporne in another bowl, WITH another mixer. The cream cheese frosting for the carrot cakes, and buttercream for daughter's birthday cake, were done in the kenwood, and yes, it is great for that.

I am sooo exhausted, in addition to having been sick since Sunday. I want a refund on my public holiday.

One of the many Raya carrot cakes. Okay, granted, the Deepavali colors may have rendered it a bit gaudy, but hey, I was in a chirpy mood.

I ran out of steam halfway, for these freebies, and only managed to slap on some cream cheese frosting onto the cupcakes as a background for the lettering. As you can see, the yellow letters can't be seen clearly coz of the frosting. Next time I might just try an icing sugar glaze.

More sugarpaste letters....No prizes for guessing what they spell.

Tiramisu torte, with almonds and cocoa as opposed to caramelised nuts.

Another new item I tried was a Walnut Coffee Sour Cream Cake, fulfilling a last minute order by Mr Cambridge, who told me to "surprise" him.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this sms I received from No1 in Tianjin yesterday.