Monday, April 30, 2012

Sawadikkap... and happy wedding.

these two boarded the bus on 27th night. they almost didn't make it on the bus because of the 'street' demonstration  scheduled to held the following day. Fortunately, the bus company finally  agreed to take them.They had been very good to me ever since I first started using their services.thank you Kak Min and Pancaran Matahari

"zue, your cake was a big hit.Nasib baik my mum suggested d cake. pengantin pun lupa nak order.Other than the pengantin, the cake was d most photographed item yesterday.The bride was touched cos she too forgot to order. It was a beautiful and sweet looking cake. it was delicious too. my mum told me that"
text message from my friend.

marble cheese brownies especially made for Mum's mother who came from Brunei to visit the latest addition to the family, her new grandchild, Mum's niece or nephew?It was 28 years ago since I last met her when I visited her in her home in Bandar Seri Begawan.We, Mum and I had finished our important exam, SPM, that year since it would be a while before we got our results, she invited me to visit her parents in Brunei.I jumped at the opportunity. I have never been out of Malaysia before , the furthest that i was away from my family was to go to johor, my school, and this would be my first experience, not just going oversea but also, my first time on a plane!!!It was a truly wonderful and enjoyable experience. Perhaps i will talk more about it if i can find the photos, after all, a picture says a thousand words.
mso, back to this cake. why the writing in thailand or siamese? I don't speak that language, and nor do i write them but when Mum mentioned that the bride is from thailand, i told her that i could try to write the message iin her language ( if i can ask Mr google to help me ). Thailand, the other foreign country that i had the opportunity to visit ( besides UK where I did my Degree) . I guess that is one of the advantages of staying in kedah  since we are very near to Thailand, just cross the border at Bukit Kayu hitam, and we are  already on a foreign soil. Haadyai, was the first destination, it was an office trip. Since then, i had been to other famous tourist destinations, Phuket and Bangkok.i went to both places before the Tsunami.  
sort of new design on this marble cheese brownies, a special design for a special person. 
written on a piece of lightly coloured fondant. with simple deco using the colour theme of purple and pink.underneath this white coloured fondant was a red velvet cake layered with cream cheese frosting.
"This was a rather short notice order, i received the call from her the previous 24 hours and fortunately I managed to complete it on time, safely delivered via the express bus to Kuala Lumpur where my friend picked them up at the wee hours in the morning.
thank you Mum, and your Mum too for trusting me with this cake despite our distance.hope your Mum arrives safely back in brunei and i wish her good health always.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

From angry birds to chinese and Thai wishes on a cake



HAPPY BIRTHDAY in Chinese.

If I were this lady, sure am very happy with my son's gesture. He ordered this cake for his mum's birthday.
sweet , ain't it? His thoughtfulness would melt any woman's heart and I am just happy that I am part of it, in a very small way. thank you .

MCb and BWW


inside this package is brownies with walnut, for a friend.
a "Get well" wish to my friend Sham in Putrajaya.a birthday marble cheese brownies. thank you zira

purple and white lovebirds


She wanted to keep it simple, but nice and sweet, just the two lovebirds on the cake,with wordings and tied with a simple ribbon.in a transparent box with yet another simple deco. thank you Miza and Selamat Bertunang.

FROM ALOR STAR TO SHAH ALAM AND TO KUALA TRENGGANU

She, is in Seremban, her Mother inlaw is in Bandar Kinrara, and me, I am in alor Star,

the reunion would be held in trengganu
and so was the wedding,but everything is possible , remember the saying, " Where there's a will, there's a way".
 She heard about me from a friend, my friend and her Srikandi senior, and so she called.to place the order.she wanted them delivered to her MIL's house in Puchong, where she will then pick them up, the MCBs and her inlaw too, to go to Trengganu for the wedding and the reunion. but she is in Seremban and would not be able to collect them from the bus station.
Fortunately I have a brother in KL, in fact I have three brothers in KL but one of them volunteered to help me pick up and delivered my cakes in KL, so I contacted him. thank you Pi. .
Alhamdulillah, all were safely delivered, via a "Pancaran Matahari" bus. thank you Kak Min and thank you Abang drivers.
These two MCBS really travelled, from Alor Star to shah alam bus station, then transit in sungai Buloh before being delivered to Bandar Kinrara, Puchong, and later that night, travelled to Kuala Trengganu.
thank you  Arini SK85, my Srikandi junior.thank you Adeeb too, for introducing zue's Oven to her.

hello kitty....

Do you think you can draw the same on my MCB? i suppose i could, only to add the birthday wish on the MCB.
hello kitty on cupcakes

love the ribbons, no wonder kids love this character, she is soooo adorable, 

two packs of macaroni au gratin ( meat with seafood) for the children.
two boxes of chocolate cupcakes with ganache and Hello Kitty deco, two packs of MAG, to be shared with her daughter's friend at her school, to celebrate her daughter's 4th birthday.

She chose white pink and red, as in hello kitty colours.

two different designs for the birthday girl. Happy 4th birthday Nurakmar, may you always be a bundle of joy to your parents.thank you Azlina for trusting me, for making me part of this special day. hope your daughter had a wonderful time with her friends at school, and your friend, niza enjoyed her MCB at your office.


Monday, April 23, 2012

simple yet scrumptious dinner

my dinner for the last few nights or was it weeks? i can't remember cos it's been a while since I last cooked a proper meal, wait a minute, last night i did, with ikan termenung masak asam pedas, but no picture for that unfortunately.
What can be seen in this picture are: 

terung goreng cabai and bawang, very simple dish, as simple as can be, frankly i don't eat 'terung' but hubby does, so I made this specially for him.


dinner is incomplete without sambal belacan and the easiest and simplest, and almost available ulam anytime in the fridge is cucumber.if i want to use other types of 'ulam', I would have to plan in advance and go to the market to get the fresh ones like, pucuk daun ketereh or ulam raja, etc.
d
this meat curry is a modified version from the leftover gravy of the 'kari tulang rusuk' from yesterday's dinner. It was so delicious and i still have some gravy left and why throw away something that can still be consumed and so i cut my 'daging batang pinang' into thin slices and boil them before mixing it with this gravy and i got myself a new dish, still as delicious and can also eat this with roti canai.
sambal udang, or if i am bored with udang, i just change it with squids, using the same recipe.
this fish, i am not sure what its actual name is but we call it 'bawal emas' probably because of its 'stiff' price per kg or perhaps because of its goodness. This fish is a favourite among us, best fried when you are about to serve the rice, eat it when it is still hot, within minutes, you can see just the bones, we eat like piranhas, eating their meals.......one minute its there, the next, gone.......so delicious......


last but not least, the steamy, hot white rice, nothing beats a home cooked meal, eat among your family in the comfort of your own home. bon appetit!

Saturday, April 21, 2012

A friend from Saudi and another from Perak.

She is in saudi, but we do keep in touch with one another almost daily, via facebook. Me, her, and about 80 other mothers, teachers, doctors, surgeons, lecturers, architects, accountants, managers, lawyers, hotelier, bankers, entrepeneurs, etc, who reside locally here in Malaysia:- in Trengganu, negeri Sembilan, Johor, sarawak, KL, Perak, Penang, kedah, ( yours truly ), and globally :-Saudi, Kuwait, India, London, who went to the same school as me, way back in the 80s, late 70s and early 80s exchange news daily, happy or sad, bitter sweet, anything that comes to mind, within this group, we are free to express everything and anything under the sun, sometimes we just post a few lines to say "hai" to one another,all thanks to facebook.

Thank you Ti for remembering me though we are far, oceans apart....
she came back for just a brief visit, visited her MIL in alor Setar.
one MCB for the family and the chocolate cupcakes to bring back for your daughters back in Saudi.
thank you too for the ole ole from Saudi, the dates, the pistachios and the sweet treats.This was one sweet memory, a visit from an old friend.

however, yesterday, we received a very sad news , a friend posted about the passing of our old classmate, I first heard the news from my friend in KL who called me to inform the news. it was sudden, yes, death waits for no one, not one second more or one second less.She was not in the chat group, for a reason only she knew.The group is open to everyone from our batch and we invited everyone to be in but a few choose not be involved and we respect their decisions.

We did not even know that she's been suffering from breast cancer. I had not met her for a long time, since we last left our school, but i still remember her as that sweet, innocent and very nice young girl, whom we always like to tease ( tease, not bully ) the kind of tease that would make her blush. we teased her with the new teacher, and we knew that she liked him.

I will always have that image of her in my mind, still sweet seventeen, straight short hair, just above the shoulder, round rim glasses and wearing the school pinafore. Zahorin Nordin or Yen as we used to call her, semoga Allah mencucuri rahmat keatas beliau dan menempatkan arwah bersama sama orang orang yang beriman. AlFatihah.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Volvo three tiered

vroom.....vrooooommmm.....vroooommmm....
naaahh, I don't think it sounded like this, well, that is mostly the sound made by kids during their playtime if we asked them to imitate driving a car with the imaginary steering wheel in their hand ,turning left and right , ( without giving any signal, i presume...hehe..... )
But, if this is a Volks, i would definitely know how it sounded like, or an Alfa Romeo, would recognise the sound from afar.
This mission was very daunting, ever since I agreed to their request, i had been asking myself, can i do it? Can i really do it? what if it didn't turn out the way I had wanted it, or worse still it didn't look anywhere near the real thing.
But I am not about to run away from challenge, in fact i quite look forward to it.As the day, 7th April drew closer i was beginning to feel anxious, I had been planning to make it earlier using the cakes that I kept in the chiller, as a trial run but something always came up and i never got around to doing it until the very last minute.

besides the Volvo cake, they also requested me to make them their hantaran cupcakes
and 100 pieces of blueberry cheesetarts , individually packed.
with the day drawing near, ( i had coloured the white fondant with the forest green colour and made the tyres too), i started baking the vanila cake, cut into half, put one half on top of the other and started carving ( after leaving it a few hours in the fridge)
This was how it looked like underneath the forest green coloured fondant,
meanwhile I prepared the bottom tier too, a 10inch Devil's food cake with chocolate ganache filling, covered with forest green fondant too with very simple and minimal deco with black blossoms.
plus the middle tier, six carrot walnut cupackes with the same colour theme, forest green and white ( without the black) but i did wrap the cake board with black ribbon.
from another angle, it di look a bit like the car in the picture ( their car ) a V40 Volvo, in a cute kind of way.....hehe.....it had its tail light, rear mirrors, tyres with rims, registration number, edible from top to bottom.........
waiting for the owner to collect their V40 volvo......
Aimie and shukri, may you both be happily married, be blessed with cute children. it had been my pleasure making these cakes for you, thank you for trusting me to make these special cakes for your special day. by the way, the lauk kenduri was delicious, and thank you too for the lovely comments from your fellow Volvo gang too.... I am glad they 'approved'

part of the text message:
"geng2 Volvo club kedah ckp cake volvo 2 superb".....