happy halloween

we've never celebrated halloween until this year and by "celebrate", i mean putting boo in a halloween costume to join in the festivity. i don't know how long he kept the hat and the cape on at daycare but i thought i'd snap some pictures before we head off to daycare this morning. boo seems pretty happy with the outfit daddy bought for him. 

boo came home from daycare with some face painting done so i couldn't help but get Jim to take more photos for him. maybe when he's older we'll take him trick or treating around the neighbourhood.

weekend baking \\ pandan chiffon cake

last Sunday, Myfanwy came over to help me with the sugar fondant figurines for boo's cake. in return, i promised her i'd make her afternoon tea. 

pandan chiffon cake is a Malaysian version of the light and spongy angel food cake. the recipe requires no butter but yet it is very aromatic and it tastes like south east Asia because of the coconut milk and pandan juice. i remember mum used to always make it for us when we were young but she hasn't made it in decades. when i was interested to make it and tried to get the recipe from her, she can't remember where she's put it. this recipe was given to me by a family friend and it has worked every single time. 

i thought this would be something different for Myfanwy but turns out i already made it for her once. it may have been approximately a year ago when i went over to her place to make the top tier of boo's first birthday cake. yes, she's my cake decorating master. 

she loved it so much, she asked for the recipe. so i took the opportunity to introduce her to the blog. 

ingredients \\

8 eggs, separated

1 tsp cream of tartar

200g caster sugar

60ml vegetable oil

150ml coconut milk

185g self raising flour, triple sifted

50ml pandan juice (50ml of water with few drops of pandan extract) 

method \\

pre-heat oven to 170 degrees c.

beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar and sugar until firm (soft peak) but not dry.

in another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the coconut milk, pandan juice and oil together until smooth. 

fold in the self raising flour until the batter is smooth with no lumps. 

gradually fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture with a spatula adding 1/4 of the egg white at a time. 

pour the batter into the cake tin and bake at 170 degrees c for 55 minutes.  do not line or grease the cake tin. 

once the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven and invert the tin immediately. this will help the shape to hold. 

leave the cake to cool completely then loosen the sides of the cake with a knife to remove the cake from  the tin. 

super daddy

i've had to work overtime the past two Saturdays. before i left for work yesterday morning, i told Jim when i get home from work, we'll need to go to the shops to run a few errands. i wish him luck and i left. we've had a rough night the night before, boo vomited twice so we had to change his cot sheets, sleeping bag and pjs twice.

i finished work slightly later than planned and was exhausted so all i want to do when i get home is to lay down. but i know when i get home, we'll probably have to head out as soon as boo is up from his afternoon nap. i was really worried as i was driving home. i was worried that Jim would be too tired after minding boo the entire morning and most of the afternoon and he would be cranky at me. 

as i got home, jim told me he took boo to the shops, sort out his second birthday party booking, bought the birthday presents i asked him to and he also bought a halloween costume for boo to wear to daycare on Thursday for halloween.

i was very impressed. Jim rarely takes boo to the shops on his own and when he does, he generally takes him to the toys section, not to run errands for me. i don't know why but it's totally normal when a woman goes to the shops to run a few errands with a toddler. but when a man does it, it's like WOAH...impressive. so yes, yesterday, i thought Jim was a super daddy. 

//photos credit: super daddy//

hello new lawn

there's only one word word to describe our backyard right now. green, green and very green. it took four days for the pool to be demolished, filled and covered. no more pool to splish splash but a big piece of lawn for boo to run around. for the past few days, when boo comes home from daycare, he would check out the backyard and he'd say to us "no water". 

while we're still getting over the sadness of not having a pool anymore, we're slowly getting used to the new look of our backyard. i'm thinking picnic in the backyard and maybe "camping" too?!? 

bye bye pool

we have a love hate relationship with our backyard pool. we love it on those very very hot summer's days when boo gets to have a dip in it.the sound of his laughs and the joy on his face when he is in the pool make the year round maintenance worth it. on the other hand, we hate it because it requires so much work and maintenance throughout the year and the most we get to enjoy it is five days. for the rest of the three hundred of sixty days, the pool does nothing except for adding to our list of chores to do around the house. we were lucky last summer when we had few consecutive warm days and the water temperature is more bearable and boo could go in for a splash. 

with new pool regulations introduced, we had to register the pool and declare to the council that it meets all safety requirements. at its current state, it doesn't meet any safety requirements. not to the council's standard or our parental standard. with the pool in our backyard, i'm always worried that boo might wander out to the backyard without our knowledge.  knowing his curious nature and how much he loves playing by the pool. i dare not imagine the worst if he does wander out to the backyard by himself. that would be my worst nightmare. 

we had two options, put a fence around it or get rid of it altogether. after much discussion, we decided to get rid of if. we felt quite sad about our decision knowing how much boo enjoys playing by the pool, helping Jim cleans the pool by scooping up leaves with his little net but at the same time, it also gives me a great level of comfort knowing the biggest danger to boo's safety in the backyard is now gone. 

the tradies came around this morning and started work. pool water drained and parts of the pool hacked away with the jackhammer. the pool will be filled by Thursday with new lawn laid over it. i can't imagine how the backyard would look without the pool but i know with time, we will get used to the new lawn and in a couple of months we might even forget the pool used to be there. 

now, if we do get a heat wave this summer, we'll have to get a little fill up portable splash pool for boo. that would have to do. 

my little veggie patch

one of the things i love about daylight savings is there is still daylight when i get home from work and because of this, i have more time to tend to my veggie patch. with the combination of warmer temperature, longer daylight and my working worm farm, my little veggie patch is striving. 

i found some out of date tomato seeds at the beginning of the year so i liberally sprinkled them on the veggie patch at the end of autumn knowing full well that they will never germinate. out of my surprise, these seeds started germinating at the beginning of spring. i had no intention of growing tomatoes in our backyard anymore because i know we'll never get to eat them. the resident possum will probably get to them before us. but i started watering them a little bit more, giving them a weekly dose of worm tea, they started growing taller and taller. then i started putting a stake next to each plant and tied them to the stakes. this week they started flowering. 

apart from tomatoes, i'm also growing chillies, coriander, thyme, rhubarb, kale, english spinach and silver beet in my little veggie patch. veggies and plants mr possum doesn't like. they are all safe. the father in law planted a persimmon tree few years ago and we've never seen it flower but this spring, they started flowering and we now have some little persimmon fruits hanging on the tree too. i wonder if they'll survive mr possum?

i'm wrecking my brain trying to think of a way to protect my precious tomatoes from our resident possum with no luck. now all i can do is to compete with them and harvest the tomatoes before mr possum gets to them. bring it on mr possum! 

testing...testing...1..2..3 \\ cake balls in a cake

with eight weeks to go till boo’s second birthday, i finally decided to work on his birthday cake.

the idea of putting little cake balls in a cake came from a link a friend shared on facebook. it seems feasible after reading about it so i decided to do something similar. different bloggers have blogged about this but i only found one blog with enough details on the concept. i didn’t follow her recipe for the cake balls or the cake but the cake worked out ok. except i need to work on the arrangements of the balls in the cake batter and in terms of taste, the cake balls were not dry at all even though they’ve been baked twice.

for the cake balls, i used a cupcake recipe i found on an old issue of Donna Hay’s magazine, tweaking it a little with less sugar and shorter baking time.

ingredients \\

125g butter, softened

3/4 cup caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp honey

2 eggs

1 1/4 cups (185g) plain flour, sifted

1/2 cup (125ml) milk

food colouring

method \\

preheat the oven to 150 degrees celcius. place the butter, sugar, vanilla and honey in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. gradually add the eggs and eat until well combined. add the flour, baking powder and milk and beat until just combined. 

divide the batter equally into 3 bowls. add a few drops of food colouring into each bowl and mix until well combined trying not to overmix the batter to avoid a tough cake ball. 

spoon the coloured batter into the cake balls tin making sure sufficient batter is placed into each mould so that the end results will be perfectly round balls. 

bake the cake balls for 15 minutes. leave the cake balls to cool in the tin before removing them. 

\\ makes about 25 balls (i didn't put enough batter into some of the cake balls mould so i ended up with more than 25 balls but some of them are not perfectly round) 

as for the cake itself, i used the chocolate mudcake recipe from the Planet Cake by Paris Cutler book. i made this cake once for Brendan’s birthday at the beginning of the year and it tasted really good. chocolatety and moist.  i made slight changes to this recipe too, using a little with less sugar, omitting the coffee granules and reducing the baking time because i divided the cake batter into two baking tins.  

ingredients \\

220g butter

220g dark chocolate, chopped

160ml water

125g plain flour, sifted

125g self-raising flour, sifted

50g cocoa powder, sifted

1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda

400gm sugar

4 eggs

7 tsp vegetable oil

100ml buttermilk

method \\

preheat the oven to 160 degrees celsius. grease and line the sides and the base of two 20cm round cake tin. 

put the butter, chocolate and water into a saucepan and stir over low heat until melted, then remove from the heat. 

sift the flours, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl. stir in the sugar and make a well in the centre. add the combined eggs, oil and buttermilk and the chocolate mixture, stirring with a large spoon until completely combined. 

pour approximately one cup of cake batter into each of the prepared cake tin so that the batter covers the bottom of the tin. place six balls into each cake tin. divide the remainder of the batter between the two cake tins making sure all the cake balls are covered with batter.   bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. leave the cake to cool before removing from the tin. 

some tips i picked up from this round of testing \\

_ always fill the cake ball batter to the brim. it’s better to have the batter overflowing out of the vent hole like a volcano rather than a “not completely round” cake balls due to lack of cake batter to fill the space

_ always grease the cake ball pan beforehand to make it easier when removing the balls  from the tin

_ arrange the cake balls closer to the side of the pan as they will move closer to the middle as the cake bakes

_ make sure there is enough cake batter to cover the cake balls, otherwise, the top of the cake will be lumpy with the cake ball lumps poking out (like what i get in my cakes)

pottering around the house

we had a long weekend last weekend. after going out on Saturday and Sunday, Jim wanted to stay in on Monday to relax and enjoy the extra day off work. Jim's way of relaxing is by playing pc games, playing with boo, laze about and take a nap. as for me, i get bored easily and can't stand sitting still. i also think that if i don't do something, i'm wasting time. so in between playing with boo, i made corn fritters and bacon for lunch, baked some macarons, tend to my little veggie patch and harvested some spinach from the garden to supplement the bunch of spinach we bought from the shops for our stir fry. i was pretty tired by the end of the day but i also felt satisfied and content.

long weekend picnic at Cockatoo Island

last weekend, we visited Cockatoo Island for the first time and had a picnic brunch with the Chaus and the Chans. Cockatoo Island has been on my mind for awhile because of its name. i always thought the only way to get there is by catching a ferry from Circular Quay. turns out, we could catch a ferry from Woolwich (which is 30 minutes away) and Cockatoo Island is only 5 minutes away from there. 

there are streets parking within walking distance to Woolwich wharf and we managed to find a good parking spot too. it was a really sunny day last Sunday. lucky there is a huge shaded area facing the water where we could set up our picnic rugs. i was hoping to take a walk with boo to check out the rest of the island but it was way too sunny. we settled with just a walk around the camp sites next to the picnic area. 

boo had a chance to play with 'Nach Nach' - Lachlan, who is 5 months older than him. they've seen each other many times but they are both too shy. i wish they wouldn't take so long to warm up to each other because by the time they warmed up to each other, it was time to go home. 

we spent about 3 hours on the island, watching the boys play together (i.e. in parallel to each other), we blew bubbles, we watched boats, yachts and ferry go past and boo also spotted a family of ducks with six little ducklings. he was very fascinated by them. as we were catching the ferry back to Woolwich wharf, i said to Jim that we should go back again one day for a family day out to check out the rest of the island. maybe next winter, on a sunny day.