Wake Up and Smell the Cake

There are a few stages to missing someone. One, extreme sadness. This is where you'll cry buckets and not care how horribly puffy your eyes and nose are. You'll cry even more when others ask how you are doing. Two, angry. You get angry at him for leaving you, for upsetting your routine which you really love. You get angry cos you feel he doesn't have to go, and you might feel like his job is more important that you. Three, impatient. You're not angry anymore, but you can't wait for him to come back and you count the days and hours everyday, few times a day in fact. Four, what's pasrah in English? Give up? Well yeah something to that effect. Since the days pass by so slowly, you can't be bothered to check anymore and you're tired to feel any sort of emotion. Five, I don't know. Haven't reached stage five yet. Or maybe there's only 4 stages haha. Okay till five! I am tired I'm going to bed. Good night!

Ever since the blueberry pancake attempt last Saturday, I've been hooked on pancakes. They're actually like muffins only thing cooked on a pan. I wonder if they're healthier. Hmm. Need to check that. So here's some pancake ideas I might wanna try this weekend! Red velvet pancakes Blueberry & oat pancakes Orange yoghurt pancakes Cinnamon apple carrot pancakes Smashed raspberries and chocolate chunk pancakes So exciting! Or. Maybe I should go back to muffins. Junior can help me mix the batter. We'll see how it goes. I wanna buy a carton of oranges too. One thing I love about CNY is the abundance of yummy juicy mandarin oranges! I have a carton in office already hurhur. Countdown check: 19 days 4 hours. Well at least it's now in the teens.

Friday night my brother stayed over at our house so on Saturday morning I made blueberry pancakes! If Husband were around I'm not sure if he'll eat these pancakes, maybe one day I should try. I got this recipe from bbcgoodfood and you can always trust BBC to get wonderful recipes for you. I find that British and Australians have yummy desserts and it's always a safe bet when you get recipes from BBC, or Women's Weekly, or some other bakers from those countries. Even their supermarkets sell wonderful cakes and cookies at such low prices, just goes to show that quality is priority and these people know how to eat their cakes. Here's the recipe! 200g self-raising flour (I used 200g normal flour + 1 tsp baking powder) 1 tsp baking powder 1 egg (I used 2 eggs) 300ml milk knob butter 150g pack blueberries (I used my canned blueberries) sunflower oil or a little butter for cooking golden or maple syrup (I bought golden syrup) Mix together the flour ...

Yesterday was my brother's 26th birthday and he requested for a strawberry shortcake. Not strawberry cheesecake or some other cake, but strawberry shortcake. The Japanese one, to be precise. So I hunted for recipes and decided on this recipe by La Fuji Mama because it has pictures to follow. I was a bit skeptical and scared to try because it's a cake without artificial leavening agent and I haven't done any cake that uses whisked egg whites. What if the cake doesn't rise!! The cake did rise, but not enough cos the bottom fell flat. Maybe I should have baked in 2 tins instead of 1 cos the top was fluffy enough. I had another problem as well. The whipped cream frosting that totally failed. Maybe I didn't do the gelatin properly? It's my first time handling gelatin as well! Omg so many firsts! Here's the recipe: For Noriko’s sponge cake: 4 large eggs, white and yolks separated 4.2 ounces (120 grams, 9.5 tablespoons) granulated sugar, sifted once...

Junior & I have been Tango-ing with Husband these past few days. Thank God for technology. Junior is pretty clingy lately. He feels like his routine is out of place, and we have to get him accustomed to the new routine. And we've made a big achievement - Junior can sit by himself in his car seat without crying big YAY!! Now it's easier for me to move around with him thank god! Countdown check: 24 more days to go. It breaks my heart when I see Junior looking for his abah, like last Sunday he searched all rooms then told me "don't have", and yesterday he climbed onto our bed, leaned against Abah's pillows and complained. He's like saying, why isn't abah here? :( Sad rite! Sigh hopefully Junior won't be so affected by it and may the days pass by quickly.

Yesterday night, Junior pointed to the door when I asked him if he wanted to sleep. He wanted to go back home and sleep. He misses our home. Aww my little angel, mama misses our home too. This morning, he didn't want me to leave for work. It's not his usual routine being left at home without a short drive to his grandparents'. Our boy's a big boy now, he knows his routine and who's missing. I hope it gets better for him, we have 27 more days to go sweetie before we reunite with abah.

Today I brought Junior home for the first time since his Abah flew off. The first thing he did was to search all the rooms looking for Abah. Aww. My poor little boy. He looked at me, and shook his hands in the air indicating that Abah's not here. The past few days at Nyai's didn't feel that bad but here in his own home which he was so eager to go back to by the way, he was expecting Abah to be around. We had lunch, then he wanted milk and he fell asleep after that so I let him sleep on Abah's side of the bed with Abah's pillows. When he woke up, he rolled around in bed, not wanting to do anything else. I tried to interest him in painting but he wasn't amused. Maybe after my chores are done we'll go back to Nyai's so you won't feel as sad. This is the first time my little boy really notices that his daddy is away, worse still he will be away for a month. I hope he will feel better, babies shouldn't have to be sad.

Feeling all emotional thinking about the send off tomorrow. One month is long. 32 days to be exact. That's actually more than a month. 5 weekends. Brings me back to 2009/2010 during those London-Singapore shuttling days. That was worse though, 8 to 10 weeks apart each time. But I thought days like those would be long gone, but here I'm facing one really soon. I'm really trying hard not to cry, although I have already teared but thankfully I have my flu to mask my runny nose. To make things worse, I was listening to a playlist of songs with the word "home". Great song choice, Far. Have switched to noisy rock music, but it doesn't seem to make me feel better. Tomorrow will be the send off, I'll expect that I'll be crying till my eyes are puffy. Oh wells. But on the bright side, I have things to look forward to. A confirm pecah perut lunch with colleagues after that, Junior's play group trial on Saturday morning, and an ex-classmate's wed...

I'm in the taxi now on the way to court. Court hearings aren't as exciting as I thought it would be, certainly not to the level of The Pupil and far from court sessions as shown in US tv shows. But it has been a good experience for me, this is the first time I sat through hearings, and I'm glad I'm not the one testifying as a witness. In other news, I have yet to talk about Lombok or post photos, and I haven't been baking either. Hmm I need to do a spring cleaning of the larder and see what I can whip up. Husband will be going for a month long trip and I'm dreading it a lot. Why does he have to travel so much. A month is just too long. It's like London all over again only thing there's a baby now. A friend told me to pester him everyday to come back and even fly back early! Haha. I don't think it's possible though sadly. Junior is getting more adorable by the day! He know prays, he'll takbir, rukuk and sujud, then takbir again when he...

The feeling of guilt is back again. Not the ate-too-much guilt, but the guilt of not teaching or exposing my child enough. I am still refusing to send him to school because I need to force myself to teach him. I haven't repeated finger painting with him, and I haven't been introducing much things to him. How bad a mother I have been :( Tomorrow lunch time I shall forgo exercise, and I shall head down to Popular to get some sticky board, blue tack, vanguard sheets and glue. And I need to make some busy bags for the weekend trip too. Hope I can get creative enough!

For the first time I halved a recipe. I need to start reducing my cake recipes or spread the fats so it won't all end up at my butt. The weekend was filled with weddings, began on Friday night, went home late, whole day Saturday and two weddings on Sunday. Despite that I still managed to squeeze time to bake yesterday morning with my little boy. I let him mix the butter, which he gladly touched and spread on the floor (!!), and he refused to give me back the ladle when he was having fun 'creaming' the butter and sugar together. I decided to make them in cupcake form rather than a 7 inch cake pan so that it'll be more interesting for Junior. This recipe makes exactly 12 cupcakes, just nice. Instead of the normal butter cake, I used ground almonds too so that I can reduce my stock and at the same time get a nuttier cake. Ingredients 125g butter 50g ground almonds 100g flour 1 tsp baking powder 100g sugar 1 tsp vanilla paste 3 eggs 12 tsp nutella Cream butter ...