mb's first Easter Egg

Ok ok.... it's way past Easter but we were recently the grateful beneficiary of a Kinder egg. A Kinder egg means imported chocolate and imported chocolate is either expensive or hard to find. In Kinder's case, it's not found in Chengdu and so you can understand what I mean by "grateful".

minibeanie was hesitant at first (typical toddler!) but after a tiny piece of chocolate was put into his mouth, he finished the entire egg in a matter of minutes :D The toy in the egg (casing) within the egg was also nice. I think he's not going to say no to a Kinder egg in future.


Recently, we also celebrated the-day-we-first-met anniversary of more than a decade. Yes, I'm being deliberately evasive. ...Suffice to say, it does make me feel a little geriatric ;) We went for an early dinner at a fantastic Szechuan restaurant so that we could make it home for dessert, a sinful chocolate cake layered with ganache and iced with fresh cream, strawberries and toasted almonds.


A small inner voice made me bring half a cake and a million calories to the playgroup the next day. After all, what are friends for? ;)


minibeanie is 1 year, 9 months & 4 days old

Kitchen (mis)adventure

2 days ago, it was 10 years to the day I 'met' DH :) See how far we've come.

To celebrate our anniversary, I turned to Mdm Crocker's trusty brownie mix. (Ok, do I hear sniggering?) Then I thought I'd do a little experiment and see if it'd turn out well as a muffin. I also decided to give the Double choc brownie a twist by adding a few spoonfuls of marmelade - sweet chocolate & tangy orange being a classic combination. With the extra liquid, I thought I'd tweak the recipe a little. Extra flour, baking powder, oil & milk went into the batter. Then, I filled 2 muffin cups with the batter and poured the rest into a pan for the brownie.

Some 30min later, I decided to check if the muffins were done since muffins typically take about 20-25min. They were a little wobbly. I guess that should be the biggest clue of all but I thought I'd still stick a toothpick in to check for doneness. I picked the first one up precariously from the oven with a pair of chopsticks, my tongs having gone missing. And as I was picking up the second muffin, I thought, yikes I'm not going to make it...and sure enough, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy (or the power of self doubt?), the wobbly muffin overturned and went splat against the hinge of my oven door. Unmentionable expletives followed as I looked in disbelief at the gooey mess I'd just made. Arrrrrgggghh. This was my worst baking disaster ever. I mean, I count myself as a pretty good cook having made cheesecakes, bread, cinnamon buns & cream cakes successfully in the past so I was doubly humbled by the gross misjudgment of baking time & consistency. Obviously, the muffins were no where near done and the batter was too heavy & runny for the muffin to rise and bake by 30min.

In my defense, the new oven was also questionable. The Electrolux oven I had in Helsinki worked perfectly without fail. The current one is a Chinese brand called Nardi. And having already determined that its timer is crap, I'm wondering if its thermostat is accurate. There are hot spots within the oven as I found out last night when I was grilling some vegetables for Pasta con verdure grigliate.

Thankfully, all ends well. The orange brownie turned out decent - I guess I just proved beyond reasonable doubt that Mdm Crocker's brownie mix was idiotproof ;) But what saved the day was the vanilla & green tea Haagen Dazs ice cream cake I'd ordered earlier in the day. Double indulgence for a special day :)


minibeanie is 8 months & 4 weeks old

ps. yes, that's the Philips baby monitor in the background! We finally got it after a colleague visited from Finland.