Oh yes, I'm alive, half alive to be exact.
October.. I mean, Octopusberries has been a... Fairly crazy month, feel pretty drained (Drained as I just feel like hibernating kind of drained only I can't seem to fall asleep... Oh gushes! Am I suffering from insomnia, Doctor?!) right now
.
It feels pretty strange to be blogging again, haven't blogged in a month (Excuse me, this post is picture less.).. And a couple of days, I don't know why but I just feel as though I have too many thoughts (Both good and bad I suppose, funny.. Had this strange feeling that writing down a happy thought about some people may well make them rather unhappy. Shrug*) clogged up in my head because I am too afraid to write down down just in case they hurt anyone, the last thing I would want to do is hurt someone just because of MY thoughts, so yeah.. Am on this blog or not to blog about kinda "thang" (Sorry, new favorite word.) so maybe I should start writing in a diary or something again and usually when I do, I abandon my blog, like I did with my previous one, and the one before that and the one before that, hahaha! And if I blog I abandon my diary, I'm such a horrible multi-tasker!
October (As in after the wedding cake competition, October.) at a glace-
1. Baked mint and basil chicken pie.
A so called invention of mine I suppose, just plucked mint and basil from our herb garden and threw it into the pie filling!
Somehow managed to lose my pie recipe (Haven't baked pie in a long time because I kinda put too much sugar in the filling the last time I made it! So that's why I didn't bother looking for the recipe all this while!), both the filling and the pastry, HEY! That rhymes!
And apparently a huge chuck off the middle of my recipe book as well, I don't recall doing any ripping... I think the poor batter splattered, gravy dripped, torn book is trying to say it needs replacing some time soon!
So I found a new pastry and filling recipe, decided to give it a go and of course, do what I do best..
NEVER FOLLOW THE RECIPE!
I just somehow enjoy seeing what turns out if I use white pepper instead of black, water instead of white wine, refrigerating the dough an hour less or just freezing it, adding strange ingredients (At least now you get how it became mint and basil pie!) into it instead of being a slave to the recipe...
Planned to make it a tutorial but I only got pictures till the end of making the filling, the putting-the-pastry-into-the-pie part was the part I was supposed to make a tutorial off, not the filling part because.. How WRONG can you get with chicken pie filling?!
Well until I make a proper tutorial (Found a picture of this typa pie somewhere and decided to give it a go!)- Roll out pastry, cut into 3 1/2"x 3 1/2" squares or however big you want your pies to be, I like mine small and cute!, scoop and put a blob of filling into the center, take all corners, one at a time and fold it into the center, you may need to pinch them together a bit to keep the pastry from flooping out or letting the filling ooze out while baking so absolutely NO holes, please!, roll out more dough, Cut out four leafs with some random leaf cutter, (This is pretty darn optional...) use a cocktail stick and make an indentation from one tip of the leaf to the other, use some pie glaze AKA egg yolk to stick them down on the lines, roll and cut out a flower, place in the middle, TADAH.
That was pretty much the funnest pie I ever made! ... Even though I still preferred my "old" (Funny.. Whenever I use ", I see little bunnies.. Must.be.seeing.things.) filling better but the new crust was better, Papa says at least the pastry is EDIBLE (I omitted the yogurt this time, I guess it made the pastry.. Crunchier?) this time... Well, I don't remember it being all THAT bad, sobas (KCC language for, sob! And I absolutarlee LOVE soba! Okay, moving on..).
Hmm, I think they are pretty perfect for Christmas! Nice, square little edible presents!
Too bad they were all munched up (Or the boys stole all the flowers and left the plain-usglyish pie alone..) by the time I whipped out the camera which was after I had ONE, yes just ONE pie!
Funny how when you get too little you always want it again... IWANTMOREPIES, too bad I'm too lazy. Hah.
Umm... What happened after that again? Karen Cuppy Cake = Person with a short term memory. Takes an hour to recall and goes AH-HAH!*
2. Cuppy cake camp-
Oh pooh, that went by with a blink of an eye... And all that's left in my head is a blur memory of..
Scratches head, pouts and thinks extra hard*
A huge, when I mean huge, I actually mean HUGE, crowd of human beings (We are a bunch of aliens, trust me.. You may not want to invade our house.) entered our house, a crowd so huge I could barely move around the house!
Thank goodness for cakeries. Cakeries = My own perfect world away from the chaotic house.. Which was soon packed with human beings too, NOOO!
Alright, I guessed I lied when I said this post was going to be picture less, I guess it's pretty hard telling a "story" with out pictures...
ANYWAYS (Oh what can I do without that wonderful word?), early that morning I was up preparing for my tiny cupcake decorating session with a group of little kiddies and.. Ahem. I had some elves helping me, THANK GOODNESS!
Funny, after the ICCA competition I was planning to stay away from my cakery for about a month before I step foot in again but that month turned into 1/3 a month... Oh well, better than nothing!
Was pretty excited since it was going to be my first time teaching KIDS!
It was pretty funny because they (Well most of them at least!) kept daydreaming and going "Mooooooommmmmiieeee..?", I guess I'm not too good with little kids, huh? Grr.
I taught them the first two figurines I well, self taught myself, a teddy bear and a bumble bee!
While I was teaching the "older" kids the "little-er" ones were busy making oat cookies which I then let them play with some fondant and cutters once they were baked and cooled!
Above:
Not my very first (Speaking about firsts... Look at my FIRST turntable! Yeah, that pink thing right there! Points and jumps around*) teddy (Can't find a picture of my very first one and I am too lazy to re-save it again from my FaceBook album so pooh, unlucky you.) but they all look about the same-ish anyways, the only different thing is probably the color of the bear.. And the clothes!
Made this cake just for fun (I think.. Can't really remember. Completely utter random memory that just popped up out of nowhere= Baked a "chocolate cake" one day with our well, used to be over and it turned out rather dry and crumbly and I made some very icing sugar grainy chocolate butter cream and iced the cake while it was still warm, took it to the dojo and called it a "chocolate brownie"! To my surprise it was all gone in barely 5 minutes! I make fabulous brownies, doncha think?!) and took it to my aikido dojo.
Below:
Bumble bees (Ahem, did I just lie again? Learnt how to make these from Mayen, one of my very favorite caking YouTube gurus! I was pretty fond of them since they were so easy to make, SUPER CUTE and I could basically paint any face I wanted on them! My favorite was the bumble bee with a pirate eye-patch!)! I just realize the cake had polka dots as well! I guess I really liked "piping tip" (I cut them out with the back of the piping tip!) polka dots then...
Above: The "After mess", didn't manage to take any pictures while teaching! If I did my camera would probably be coated with cornflour and fondant by the end of the session!
Hmm... What happened after this remains blurry...
I remember being err, very hungry? Okay, I'm always hungry but I was actually REALLY hungry, smelling disgusting (I personally can't stand the smell of fondant, gum paste, polymer clay, play-doh and cold porcelain but I DO enjoy playing with it so I have to put up with the smell I suppose..) fondant makes me... Hungry, hmm... That sounded strange indeed, oh well.. You are reading a strange person's blog, if you didn't already know.
Anyhoo (New favorite made up-ish word! I was getting a bit sick of "anyways" so I made up a new word for it!), I went back into the extremely bustling house, full of chitterchatter and SPAGHETTI!
Everyone brought a single ingredient for the spaghetti, so it was basically.. Stone soup (I'm sure you've heard the story, right?) spaghetti! And it tasted.. Pretty good!
It was indeed strange to see a HUMONGOUS pot of bolognese (Wow! Apparently bolognese isn't a "proper" word..) sauce and spaghetti and what was even stranger was that I couldn't even have a second helping!
After some slouching on my favorite couch it was time to hit the.. No, not hay (I wish!)! BEACH.
And.. Doing some tents-a-pitching for tonight's a-camping.
Okay, I feel kinda mean not being able to continue because I can't exactly remember, ahem.. *Excusesexcuses*
Anyhoo, another camp, actually another two, I mean 1 and a half (In the middle of one right now.) just passed.. And my brain didn't have much memory left so I had to start deleting!
Okie, a quickie about the "one" camp not the "half" one, I wonder if anyone who reads this got that..
It was our 2nd camping trip and this time instead of the beach we went to the highlands, Genting highlands, I mean "Gunung Ulu Kali" to be exact.
If I were to describe it in a SUPER quickie, all I would write down would probably be.. "COLD!", Or shiveringish or... Something like that!
I give up with this post, it's horrible not being able to mention any names (Because I don't want to.) and it's getting hard recalling things since I have been dragging this post for such a long time.. And not to mention it's already December!
- Karen Kannot blog Kake
But I shall post it anyway since I wrote a jumble lot of words!
