Carrot cake for NY2012

I was sitting on my couch reading when the smell of fresh orange juice wafted through the air, and strummed my cake nerves in advance. Hours later, the batches of carrot cake graced our dining table, ready to be dished out for our new years party with the kids tomorrow in the garden lounge.

Roasted crunchy walnuts disguised like rocks in an edible zen stone garden, or a pastry martian landscape, embedded gently onto zesty whips of orange flavored cream cheese.

Floor Christmas party bake

This year, level 3 of BlK 84 Lakeholmz had a floor party, utilizing the common corridor shared by 4 units, 4 nationalities, coming together to have a nice Christmas gathering, over a fusion potluck feast.

Conceived with the intention of neighborliness, friendly warmth and festive feelings, it was a superb night everybody had.

Adeline baked a tasty chocolate cake with a nice homely cottage sitting on it. Extends the comfortable, fuzzy feeling of home out to the common corridor.

She also whipped up a multi- tierm tray of cup cakes, splashed with candied multi color sugariness embedded into dollops of nutella, altogether an all-star Christmassy topping over chocolate cupcake bases. Wow, whets my appetite just reminiscing on them as I write.

Special day

Today is a special day.

Bryans 3

Bryan celebrated his 3rd birthday in school this year on 10th November. The cake above is made by Ade. Underneath the colorful creamy exterior depiction of a child's dream, is the tastiest chocolate cake with Oreo cream layer filings.

Ade researched, planned, sweat, scrambled, whipped and crafted rehearsals for this cake months before this occasion. Here's another close up. Bryan loves Thomas the train, and this cake is it's backdrop.




From this you can tell that even at close range before you shovel a forkful into your impatient mouth, the intricate piping patterns make this cake such a thing of beauty. It cost maybe over $200 to buy a cake like this from a professional, but it is priceless if mummy made this.

Bryan, when you read this next time, go give mummy another hug for it.





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Adeline made a beautiful black forest cake for me and my dad for our birthday celebration.  Usually, it does not matter if the cake tasted good or not, but it is the thought that counts. This cake however, was so good, i had a really special feeling eating it. My dad who is usually very careful about his diet went for second helpings. Decked a 3 storey pastry penthouse, sandwiching 2 layers of a mish mash of cream and fruit fillings, so good that one wouldn't know where to start eating the cake slice. Love you dear, for making the super cake.

Closure

Today Ade and myself discovered that our unborn child's heartbeat had stopped at about 8.5 weeks. It is heartwrenching, but somehow with the experience of a blighted ovum before (refer to early posts) and the gift of our now only son, we feel comforted and prepared for this.

Nothing of course prepares anyone for a whisper of life so delicate yet to be snuffed out so quickly. I wouldn't say this was unexpected. At 6.5 weeks, we found that the amniotic sac was small compared to the yolk sac, and our gynae raised concerns on the health of this pregnancy.

Back then, despite clinical advice that it wouldn't do much, and reading several reports online that it does help, ade started drinking at least 1.5 times as much water as she normally would, averaging 14 glasses/day.

Just last Saturday, our scan at 8 weeks 2 days showed not just a small foetus, but a vaguely unclear form compared to what should have been. Amniotic fluid didn't restore to normal levels, but it looked to us to have improved a teeny bit. However, the strong sounding heartbeat gave us the false psychological affirmation that our little one could have been a fighter and pushed through Our gynae pointed to 3 factors that suggested the contrary.

1 - absolute size was small (at 8wks 2d should have been about 15mm instead of 11mm)
2 - rate of growth was slowing, suggesting eventual stop
3 - shape wasn't distinct as it should be, suggesting complications should baby have survived this phase.

All Life is precious. We are reminded once again, that we are all lucky survivors, and should treasure the one/ones that we already have.


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8weeks 2days

This pregnancy, Ade has rolled into a good starting solid list of cravings already:-

Chicken satay
Swiss roll (must be polar ones without icing)
Indomee instant mee goreng

I managed 2 out of 3 so far!


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6 weeks 2 days

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Tummy at 4 weeks 2 days

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..*breathe* ....... Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

They say a picture says a thousand words, this picture above says everything that we felt this morning when we first saw it, indescribable even with a million words.

It's been a long enough wait, we were in fact numbed by the number of times our hearts sank by the arrival of the first signs of spotting, or worse still sometimes the slight delay of it.

Last night before we found out, we suddenly had an impulse to have durian, an unimaginable thing ever since we started controlling our diets. Maybe it was instinctively a pre celebration, this morning at 4.30I got woken by the stick waved in front of me, followed by 10 minutes of suppressed squeals,, in case we woke Bryan.

Cheers all, we begin a new chapter to the story of our family.


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Marina bay sands staycation

Bryan intercepted my welcome cocktail drink of pink guava juice, and drank like a seasoned champagne connoisseur. We bunked in at MBS to celebrate mummy's bday. On the following morning, we all soaked at the highly acclaimed infinity pool, but the novelty wore off before we even warmed up.



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Farm visit

This Vesak day, we went on a playdate to the bollywood veggies farm. It was a refreshing drive down lim Chu kang road, going past farmland which I didn't know still exist in Singapore. There was an air-conditioned cafe near the entrance where we had chilled fig tea and nasi lemak. The trip was nice and enlightening with a huge variety of tree types.


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Mr Man at jp

Bryan mimicked the mr man outfit with 2 pails.



Ever since Bryan saw the vivocity drummers, he had been asking me to show him the video I took of them every night, and this had been going on for coming half a year.

Yesterday, Bryan spotted a toy drum at kiddy palace Jurong point, and it was like love at first sight. After the purchase, I had to tear open the packaging and Bryan became 'Mr Man' as was the name he gave to the Vivo drummers, beating to the ambient Chinese new year songs for a good one hour, much to the envy of the other kids who saw him.

To us all, it may just be hitting away at a plastic noise making toy, but to little Bryan, he was a proud performer living out the dream he had always imagined himself to be one day, to be like Mr Man, marching down the mall alley, and one just had to notice how serious he was at his job to see that!

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