here comes the pineapple tart monster...

when i heard that my elder sis was coming for a visit i gave a list of food items i would like for her to bring over. on that list was pineapple tarts. i know it's not CNY yet but i dun need a festival to eat pineapple tarts. i can eat them all year round...i think i might actually like them more than chocolate cakes. hmmmm....

but now, i dun need her to bring them for me anymore! i can bake them myself (go to shewhobakes.blogspot.com for the recipe) and they are just as yummy as those i pop into my mouth every min during CNY!

the boy and i have been popping these since last night, before dinner, after dinner and this morning! however, the next time i make these, i must make sure i have a food processor (manually chopping and mashing the pineapples took me 45 mins), use brown sugar to turn the filling dark brown and stuff the tarts fat with more filling. i cant wait to bake these again, more to eat!!!!

what i'm reading now

a memoir by gesine bullock, (yup, she's related to sandra bullock) who transformed her life from a hollywood exec surrounded by all things glam and glitzy to a country baker in vermont. a book after my heart. reading this book just gives me a lil bit of hope tt perhaps, maybe, who knows, someday....

Brand New!!!

look who came to town less than 48 hours ago???!!!!

it's my god daughter, emilia. i was actually expecting her to look a lil more ang mo since her dad is one, but she looks very asian! cutey!

i wish i was there to see her....

Pancakes!!!

special request from the boy on saturday night - hence the pancakes. i woke up earlier to brew coffee and make pancakes...which is very nice way to start the morning! of cos, for the boy, having pancakes and coffee all ready the moment you open your eyes is another good way to start the morning, hahaha! go over to shewhobakes.blogspot.com for the recipe.

Note to self: have blueberries or strawberries or bananas on hand the next time it's pancake day!

Yellow Cupcakes

One of my baker's dream is to bake for a children's party. So i can do the cheesiest and cutest cookies and cupcakes! So that's what I did with my yellow cupcakes this afternoon. The yellow cupcakes are moist and rich in flavour with a yummy chocolate fudge frosting topped with colored sprinkles. Get the recipe at shewhobakes.blogspot.com!

No kids to feed though, these are gonna be chomped down by grown men at the boy's agency tomorrow. However, creative boys are children, NO? *evil laughter*

the kitchen's open again!

for 2-3 weeks now, we've been on this stupid salad diet (where we cheated many nights and ate out instead), hence the kitchen was closed. this week, i told the boy that i wanna cook again and i want us to eat properly again. so here's what we had this week:

Stir fry green beans with carrots and red chili

Beef, broccoli and chinese mushroom (i changed the original recipe to include 2 other sauces and it was tasty tasty!)


Pork Lo Mein (also added sauces to this and it's tastier!)

Broccoli and portobello mushrooms (i made up this recipe myself, played with sauces, hahahaha, thank god it turned out yummy)

Kung pao chicken (much better than the previous kung pao recipe, it tasted and looked more like the real kung pao chicken that i love so much)

hmmmmm, my fav has gotta be the pork noodles, i can eat that for days!!!!

What do you do with stale bread?

Bake it of cos! With Italian bread lying around, I decided to try a Bread Pudding. But in the form of muffins instead. I must say the recipe was easy and quick, took less than an hour! check it out at shewhobakes.blogspot.com for the quickie! hur hur!

And this concludes I'm not a fan of bread pudding. The boy liked it and had 2 of them after dinner but for me personally, if it wasnt for the apples and raisins in there, I prob would never choose bread pudding as my choice of pastry. But here's for all of you who love bread pudding!

Saturday's highlight!

It's gotta be the cupcakes I debated over for 2 hours at Harvard Square. The boy got sick of the debate to have or not to have that he dragged me into Sweet and bought 4 cupcakes instead of my initial conservative plan to have just 1. Yikes!

We had a carrot cupcake, a dark chocolate cupcake, a vanilla cupcake and finally my fav - the boston cream pie cupcake. super yummy!!!

One thing I promised myself is I will learn how to bake a boston cream pie cake before we leave boston. It's probably my fav thing about boston. hahahaha!

Apple Streusel cake

Here's my baked good of the week! Slices of sweet red apples on top of a moist yellow butter cake topped with hazelnuts streusel. I had a scoffed down a slice before yoga yest afternoon and another this morning for breakfast. I wished I had vanilla ice cream...a scoop of ice cream with this cake would be yummy for dessert! Go over to shewhobakes.blogspot.com for the recipe!

easy peasy beef stew

if you ever need to whip up something for dinner or for guests and dun wanna make something complicated, make a stew! it's super easy. chop up carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, beef (pls only buy the cubed beef meant for stew so that the meat dun get too tough) and put them all in a pot, dump in beef broth and if you like some instant beef stew gravy mix, like them all boil for 1-2 hours and it's done!!! if you like it a lil spicy, throw in some chopped chilli.

this was our sunday night dinner. with rice or bread it was super yummy...huge tummies right after dinner!!! hahahaha!

i want a rocking chair!

i know, someone of you will say a rocking chair is so me - ya know, the aunty in me. but it's not just any rocking chair, i want the eames rocking chair!!!!

i've never been into furniture (maybe cos i never had a place of my own), and i admit that even after so many trips to all these furniture places and watching the boy drool over furniture online for hours and months, i still dont really know my furniture. i can recognise key famous pieces but i cant quite remember the names. the boy threw too many names at me in such a short time that i am all mixed up.

also, we have rather different taste in furniture and home furnishing. but this rocking chair is the one thing we agreed on immediately. no....we didnt buy it....it's not something that we need so it can wait but i can picture it in the house! and when we are ready to buy one, i duno if i can decide on the color, black or white?

Buy H&M Online!

thru me of cos. :o)

since i moved to the states, i have fallen in love with H&M. the brand that is probably still known for basic cheap stuff has changed alot in the past few yrs. not only have they teamed up with many luxury designers like karl lagerfeld, matthew williamson and jimmy choo, etc, but their usual fashion pieces are looking chic-er.

so i have decided to erm....earn some money selling H&M to singapore chicks since u girls have no H&M and cant buy it online as well.

but now u can! thru me! if you visit chicwithinreach.blogspot.com - i have chosen some pieces that i really like (and some that i have bought for myself) and if you like them too, i will be the lil person buying and shipping it to you.

i duno how this will turn out and how far this will go but we'll see...maybe you'll love H&M as much as i do?

New York: my boy!

my 2 fav photos of the boy from the trip! let me explain.

at the disney shop, we saw the mickey mouse apron and i made him put it on. i thot it'll be quite funny if he wore tt when he cooks. this apron over boxers quite sexy what, no? hur hur hur!

and then we saw this stupid funny peanut and look at what it says! so true about how we felt that day cos it was disney store, then to m&m store and finally toys r us, we felt we went nuts!

i am very thankful and happy that the boy took me to new york for a holiday. i loved every min of it. from the bus ride at 730am till the very min we arrived back home. LOVE LOVE!

New York: Goodbye...

on the last day of new york, though we didnt plan for it, but we both kinda geared towards a much tamer day than the previous 4 days. we had breakfast at a quiet organic cafe, a late lunch a quaint n zen japanese restaurant and ended the day at a quiet park where you take a ferry to the statue of liberty. i have no idea the name of the place.

with a starbucks, i rested my feet and relaxed with the boy...oddly enuf, we found ourselves feeling quite tired from the madness.

and off we go making stupid faces for the camera!

this photo is our fav....we still have an empty photo frame so i hope i get my ass to some photo printing place to have this photo done up.

goodbye new york....oh but wait, see you again in late oct! my elder sis is coming to visit and it's new york again!!!!! WHEEEEEE......

New York: MoMA

this is the museum of modern art. no cameras allowed in there of cos but we have photos of the exterior. hur hur!

and we bought 2 herman miller posters from the MoMA store at 25 each. the boy saw them n picked them out cos they are.....FRUITS!!!!! so sweet la...and they have brighten the house a lil and for such a cheap price!

the living room looks really good n cosy now....love!