Daring Bakers - Challenge TWO!

Edit: Thanks for all the comments DaringBaker guys/gals! ;D

And the challenge for month of June is ... *drum roll* ... Danish Braid !!

Logged onto the DaringBakers site and WHAM got hit by this big big big ugly momma. Laminated dough! No! I suck at breads! And this is a hard one! Ah. What the hell. I gotta do what I gotta do.

A Danish braid is a bread made from a laminated dough. Laminated doughs are doughs formed by alternating layers of dough and butter that puff up during baking (like croissants). Super tasty. And super hard.

And so began my laborious task of making a pretty Danish braid without burning the kitchen down. I knew attempting to bake bread (or ANYTHING for that matter) in my moody hormonal uneven pizzetta faux-oven was sure to end in disaster, but yet again, I ignored the Baking God and was struck down in shame.

A baker is meaningless without his oven. Sigh! Anyway, let's once again, go through my sad baking adventures. Onward! To healing!

Started to form the dough. Very interesting ingredients used, such as the orange rind you can clearly see above. Smelt wonderful. So far.

Another aromatic ingredient used was cardamom! One of my favourite spices because it gives ghulab jamuns their delicious taste. I thought, "Hey! I'm pretty hardcore! I make my own cardamom powder!"

Too bad modern technology could not penetrate the tough husks of dried cardamom. Food processor FAIL. What am I going to do now?? I know!

Edit (26/7/08) : Aparna kindly pointed out that you're not supposed to grind the husks of the cardamom, but remove them and just grind up the seeds in the pods. Thanks Aparna!

Reach under the sink and wake the beast from its slumber! The mighty giant mortar and pestle, long retired by my mother once she bought a blender, still as tough as ever. Let's see what I could do with it...

*Pound, BASH, crush*. No wonder my mum's punches hurt so much. This crap takes serious muscle! My arms ache and my fingers are numb but hey presto! Cardamom powder! HARDCORE STYLE!!

Wonderful isn't it? Totally not worth the effort. LUL.

And so I rolled out my dough for the first time...

...covered 2/3 of it with butter...

...and folded it up! First finger-dent.

Rested it for a while in the fridge, then repeated the folding process. Two finger dents for two folds! So far 9 layers!

Third fold. Clearly not so excited anymore. Very tired. No more happy finger dents for you Mr Laminated Dough. Hmph.

At this point, the dough warped into something much more than gluten, developed the capacity to think for itself, and decided to start the First Dough-laponic War. Bread rebelled against humans for the first time! "NO!" it cried, "I REFUSE TO ROLL OUT TO 1/4 inch THICKNESS!" and the dough continuously pulled back into a fat blob no matter how much it was rolled out seriously annoying its unhappy creator.

And so I gave up! Baking time!

Mistake No. 1 - dough too thick. Mistake No. 2 - number of cuts on the left should equal number of cuts on the right. DAH. STUPID ME. God. Anyway. Filled it with jam. Should have stopped there, but I stuffed it with custard too. Greedy me.

Ok. Leaking. Bad sign. Abort abort. Clearly an omen that something bad was about to happen. Even the braid was unravelling (due to uneven number of braid-thingies).

Lifted braid onto baking sheet. GAH. Braid totally unravelling already! I told myself, never fear! Something magical will happen and it will cook beautifully!

Well guess what? Something magical did happen...

MY DOUGH EXPLODED LIKE A DEMON RIBCAGE.
SPILL FORTH OH MINIONS OF HELL! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Well, total disaster number one. Dough didn't even cook on the inside and it exploded everywhere. Note to self: make tighter braids, and don't use shonky wet fillings. Sigh.

I had some leftover dough, so I tried again. Lucky it rolled out a bit thinner this time, but I didn't have quite enough to make a tight braid.

And so it exploded again. Into a demon millipede.

Fail number 2. Looks quite cool if you ask me LOL.

Anyway, then Baking Spirit pitied me and told me, "Oh foolish child! Do try one more time! Surely happiness awaits!" to which I said, "HAHA WTF ARE YOU?" and threw pixie dust at it.

Yet, I tried again, using what little dough I had left, to try and make something, some sort of evidence that I was worthy of being a Daring Baker, and then, magically out of the oven emerged...

...a thing of beauty.

HUMP ME OH DARK LORD!!

!! BREAKING-EFFING-NEWS !!


At approximately 12:18 p.m. on June 28th at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris DIABLO 3 WAS OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCED!!

YES. DIABLO III IS COMING.

FOR REAL.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

I AM SO EXCITED IT'S CRAZY.

LINK!

Wall-E

So so so so SO excited about this movie! CAN'T WAIT. Hopefully it will be another Pixar stroke of genius like Finding Nemo (now THAT was brilliance) and not some dumb retarded show like Cars.


Watch the trailer here!

[via AppleTrailers]

Unrequited Love...

I officially dump Maths as my one true undying love that has continuously given me A++ marks in every single exam even though I am the ultimate lazy ass that has never properly studied for it in my entire life.

BECAUSE UNI MATHS IS JUST F*CKING CRACK!

Great way to end my first semester. With my (almost COMPLETELY guaranteed) first ever fail in a maths exam in my life. Thanks Math1151. You make my belly tingle.

Worst feeling ever. Just sitting there, looking at all these familiar symbols but not having a single clue what to do with them. BLANK ANSWER BOOKLETS! Oh the shame, the shame.

Ah well. Uni/life/everything is dick anyway so let's fly away and make happy tasty cakes.

Yum yum.

Edit: I didn't fail~! 3 cheers for results scaling!!

Cousin's GONE!!

[WARNING! LOOONG POST!!]

Awww. My cousin, uncle and auntie flew back to Singapore on Thursday. *Sob*. Now life's gonna go back to boringness again. It was much fun having them here. All we did all day was run out catch the train and have fun. It was so awesome.

The first day they came was the day of my finance finals (L-O-L) so I was all too happy to run away from uni and go hang out. I think they really wanted to see all the weird Aussie animals so they went to the zoo. Taronga Zoo. Haven't been there since like Year 4! Haha!

My cousin had this AMAZING camera (digital SLR or something funky that cost $1500+) that takes the most amazing photos. It was so much fun!

Uncle and auntie. Nice shot!

Family on the ferry to the zoo!

Gratuitous tourist-y shot!

Amazingly contrived shot of ME!

Scary komodo dragon. Eats people. Srz! Google it!

Depressed bear. Looked like it needed some loving. Or food.

Compulsory shot with giant koala.

See! I did it too ^_^

And random mountain goats. Who started humping. Seriously.

Then later that day we went to have Chinese food at Neptune's Palace (which, btw, had the best service I've ever had at a restaurant. To the point that I felt awkward. Like there was an actual maƮtre de and everything who pulled out the chair for you and put the napkin on your lap. I'm so ghetto. *Fail*) but the food wasn't that great.

City posing!

Over the course of their stay we ate Chinese, Indian, Thai, Turkish and Lebanese food OMG it was so amazing. You can have quite a gastronomical adventure in Sydney. Win for multiculturalism. Fail for bogans. KEKE.

Anyway!

The next day me, my little sister and my older sister (we're really close. Youngest 3 out of family of 6 kids. A little happy gang!) went to the city and stole our cousin from the hotel and dragged her to Max Brenner chocolate Cafe (which you might remember from this post) and PUMPED her with goodness!

Sigh! Filled my heart with happiness! And robbed my wallet too mind you. We spent like AU$70 on this stuff. HAHA.

Little sister posing with chocs. She sure looks happy. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that she's not paying. KEKE.

Another shot of the chocs I never buy.

Am I not teh SEX?

Then we started ordering:

Banana-praline crepes! GOSH. AMAZING.

The staple waffles! As amazing as ever!

Fondue-for-two. Drool....

Choc PIZZA. Not so great. Novelty wears off quick.

To nom or not to nom; that is the question.

"SCREW YOU ALL! NOM NOM NOM!!" said the greedy girl.

Sipping hot chocolate...

We went to a Turkish restaurant "New Star" @ Auburn (Sydney's Turkish central) and indulged in adanna kebab and all other sorts of joyful expensive meats. Gosh it was so tasty. Food is magical. We talked about random things like how Malays really aren't that bad and how our other cousins are doing. Fun.

Look!

"Meh! I'm not related to you freak!" - says nice brother.

Check out the meat! It's delicious. Poor vegetarians.

They can feast on salads! Really good as well!

Muslim version of "saying grace". Dua!

Haha nutcases.

Anyway, then we left the restaurant and went to the local Krispy Kreme! They don't have one in Singapore so we thought we'd let them have a try of this American devil trap of ultimate sugar seduction. NU!

Cam-whoring on the way there. Duh.

Funny bopples posing outside. Retards LOL!

NU. DOUGHNUT CONTAMINATION!!

Mum and her brother. Cute!

The next day we went bowling and had Thai food but I didn't manage to get hold of the photos of that so I can't post any up. Bowling was heaps fun though! I got crap score and came last out of the boys but ah well. I suck at sport anyway!

Then we had to send them off to the airport the next morning. D: I was so sad. We don't have any family here so seeing them is really rare. We try to make the most of these happy times, and take lots and lots of photos. Hopefully we'll keep all these happy relationships, and all our joyful friendships with everyone, family and friends, even all the "busy-ness" takes over and life threatens to just pass us by....

Hopefully we'll stay friends.