Welcome to my office September 6, 2010

This is my new office. I started work a few weeks ago and it’s definitely not what I’m used to. While my previous employer was a monopolistic juggernaut that had thousands of drones chugging away at its engines every day, my new company is a tiny set-up — and its smallness hit me hard on my first day.

Like every no-name outfit out there with limited start-up capital, there is a helluva lot of Ikea furniture around here. There is only one cleaning lady, no IT support, no 24-hour phone assistance, not even air-con. In fact, I can bet you I’m gonna get paid in hand-written cheques.

The company is in the confectionery services sector, and I am one of only two employees. I am, in the grand Singaporean do-it-all tradition of bau geh liao, cover everything from design, production, marketing, promotions to delivery. The other employee goes by the name of Z, one of those irritating, bossy types who thinks he’s the smartest, funniest, best-looking one around — not unlike Ricky Gervais in The Office. But he only comes in in the evenings and on weekends so he’s got nothing on me.

The real bosses here are, of course, the company’s owners — a pair of sisters who are known throughout the industry as hard task-masters. Rumour has it that they have a huge appetite for success and will stop at nothing until they get a giant slice of the pie. They’ve been pretty cordial to me so far, full of smiles and good mornings when I walk pass their rooms every day. But I am not blindsided by such superficial pleasantries. I know that once shit hits the fan, I’m gonna be busy.

Let me tell you about the older one. She’s the sort of boss who gets excited over the slightest idea and needs to be briefed and debriefed all the time. But thankfully, she goes for self-improvement classes every morning, so that gives me time to deal with the real terror of the territory, the younger sister.

This fat, waddly one hasn’t said a word to me since Day 1. From outside her room, I often hear her screaming at the cleaning lady to do things faster, better, now, now, now. Seated on her high pedestal, she bangs her fists and demands up-to-the-minute updates on wet-market movements. Very soon, she’ll probably want me — as if I haven’t got enough to do already — to pick up her laundry. And then what? Wipe her butt?

Then, while everyone is slaving over her targets and deadlines, she slips off and takes long afternoon naps — right there in her room and in full view of everyone!

But I am soldiering on. There are several plus points about this job, such as the short commute and the 24-hour pantry that’s stocked with many things I like. And, if worse comes to worst, I will adopt this mantra that I have observed from working 15 years in a big company — which I believe applies to workplaces both big and small: There’s nothing that a bit of ass-kissing can’t fix.

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Personal aside to readers: Of course, my home doesn’t really look like this. The total-unglam bottle sterilizer, milk formula tins, unsightly trash can, aprons and clearance-sale mugs were all shoved behind the counter before the shoot. The baby though, at least to me, is gorgeousness confirmed 🙂

Re-introducing… Crummb! August 17, 2010

SINGAPORE (August 17): In a formidable show of people power, Crummb is elected as the official name of TPL’s bakery.

Crummb, the name of the former journalist’s baking blog of three years, steamrolled its arch-rival Crumb with a huge margin by grabbing 35 votes. The latter name, leaner but not meaner, managed to capture a paltry 2 nods.

In a motherhood statement released to the press, Crummb said it is honoured to be the name of this finest of new cake establisments.

“I would like to thank all 35 people who made their mandate clear by voting for me.  I will work my best, so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for TPL,” it said.

To cement its appointment, TPL has created a business page on Facebook under “Crummb”. All readers of her blog are cordially invited to the page and click Like to bloat her already obese ego.

“But it is also for me to know the names and faces of my readers, what,” she defends, downplaying her pathological need for praise and affirmation. She adds that whoever Likes her page will henceforth be christened “Crummbot” for his/her unwavering support and obedience.

As for the also-ran Crumb, it was recently spotted endorsing some two-bit musician on Facebook, as well as countless other unimaginative bakeries whose names are so similar you don’t know which is which.

“See? It pays to be different,” said Crummb, adding that TPL’s readers are as wise as they have good taste.

“So quick go to the Facebook page now and make yourselves known. Crummbots of the world unite!”

Saying goodbye to my junkyard August 5, 2010

My last day at the newspaper is two weeks away, so I’ve been slowly clearing out my desk. And boy, do I have a lot of junk.

I have Time and Newsweek magazines dating back to 2002. There are candy, teabags, and wine bottles that are so old they are probably radioactive. Stacks and stacks of press releases, interview notes and business cards stand neglected at various corners.

But there are other junk that aren’t so easy to throw away. Like this empty bottle of San Pellegrino that Lionel brought back for me from a movie junket in London. Its content was imbibed by one Brad Pitt, and Lionel, knowing how I had lusted after the actor for years, sneaked it into his bag at the end of the interview when no one was looking. My shrieks of joy upon receiving it almost rocked the building. But now, I may just junk the thing. I still haven’t forgiven Brad for what he did to Jen.

My pinboard has many other things I will definitely keep. They are cards and notes from colleagues and newsmakers over the years, two of which remind me that I had grazed the culinary big-time — thank-you letters from French celebrity chefs Alain Ducasse and Alain Passard. But my pride and joy is a note scrawled in rather childish handwriting: “Believe In Dreams & Work Hard!” It was written to me by Taufik Batisah, who is, in my opinion, the only Singapore Idol and whom I voted for 30 times at the final. When he visited the office soon after his win, he caused a mini stampede among the women on our floor — me included. His signature has two dots over the ‘u’ and a heart at the end. Awww.

Then, there are the two booklets I brought back from a lunch tasting that Lisa and I attended at the Ritz-Carlton. It was one of those chi-chi affairs where the flower arrangements reached the ceiling, a different wine was served with each course, and you wore your best shoes and minded your posture. But Lisa and I were there for some fun. We were all given wine booklets to jot down things about the vintages. But while everyone was dutifully recording their scholastic observations (so they could take home and archive in their million-dollar walk-in wine cellars), we wrote down numbers — on the scale of 1 to 10 — for how drunk we were with each successive wine. By dessert, we were pouncing on each other’s booklets and scribbling lopsided, barely decipherable declarations. My favourite line from Lisa was that I was Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein’s love-child, because “You are da BOMB!!!!!”

Needless to say, we went back to work very late that day because we had to sit in our cars for a very long time to wear out the booze.

But the oldest thing on my desk is my Collins’ thesaurus, which I bought in the early 1990s while still in university. On my first day of work in 1995, I stood it next to my desk phone as the first of many tools in a journalist’s arsenal that I was to amass (the others, as I was soon to find out, were things like namecard holder, coffee, Panadol, and a thick skin).

The thesaurus took me through the more than 1,800 stories I was to write over 15 years. It was always on hand to offer a clever word or a witty turn of phrase. Fifteen years and 1,800 stories is a long time and a lot of words. So which stories were the most memorable? Interviews with celebrities come to mind. Chow Yun-Fat was the ultimate charmer; Shu Qi had the prettiest nose; Gong Li was ice-cold and impenetrable, until you ask about her dogs; and Pierce Brosnan — whom I wanted to marry at 13 and met face-to-face at 29 — was most disappointingly an incorrigible vainpot.

What about the piece I’m proudest of writing? I’m tempted to say the profile I did of the very bizarre Jacintha Abisheganadan, or a travel series on emerging China that had me traipse across five cities in two weeks. But actually, it is this little weekly column I wrote for several years which I utterly hated. It is called Cheap & Good, and it recommends hawker stalls for their good food at dirt-cheap prices.

I hated it because I always had to ask my relatives, contacts, old school friends — pretty much anyone who crossed my path — for leads to a good, undiscovered hawker. They weren’t easy to come by. And when I did get one and managed to hunt it down in some farflung corner in Woodlands or Bedok, either his food was not very good, he was closed for the day, or he refused to be interviewed because his business was already so good he couldn’t handle any more customers. And so off I went to scramble for another lead.

But for all this trouble, there were rewards. It is no exaggeration when I say the articles changed some hawkers’ lives. The sudden burst of business gave them the recognition they so longed for and deserved. Many of them went on to be featured in TV shows, websites and blogs. I like to think that the hawkers’ lives, and those of their children, improved at least by a little bit.

Now, I look at my thesaurus, the one that has accompanied me through all these stories and characters, and ask:  Shall I or shan’t I throw you away? I rarely use it now, not when thesaurus.com is just a click away. With its tea-coloured pages and withered spine, it stands on my desk as a ‘brown’ elephant.

But if I take it home, it will — along with all the other knick knacks salvaged from my desk — be kept in a shoe-box and shoved high up in my closet. The next time I take it down for a look will probably be when I move house, whenever that will be.

My thesaurus, I realise, belongs next to my phone right here on my desk. Even all the other junk that I will soon throw away — they hold meaning here, randomly placed and woefully neglected, as fragments of the past that are all at one place and within arm’s reach.

I will be one sad woman on my last day when my desk is empty and shorn of every last memory. So with two weeks more to go, I am leaving everything the way it is. Let me enjoy this for just a while longer.

Introducing… Crumb! July 20, 2010

It’s safe to announce it now: I’ve handed in my letter, hung up my poison pen, polished my KitchenAid, and am finally going into business! YES!

Three years ago, I — and practically half of the baking fraternity around the globe — dreamt of opening a home bakery selling cupcakes, because they’re easy to do and oh-so trendy. But a friend urged me to aim higher. So thanks, Jenny, for putting the idea in my head. I am now a bona fide wedding cake maker!

I don’t just do weddings though. Birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, proposals — any occasion that calls for a special cake with hand-made sugarpaste work. I’ll work from home as a one-woman show (two-women if you include my maid who will help with the washing) so even though I can’t stand the word, this makes me an ‘artisan’. Ahem.

I’m now serving one month’s notice (three weeks left!) before I quit the newspaper for good. If you’ve been wondering why I’ve suddenly gone all silent over the past few months, it’s because I’ve been busy preparing my cake portfolio for my business website. It’s still a work in progress but you can see some of my work here. Oh, the bakery is called Crumb with a single ‘m’ now. The double ‘m’ was cute for a blog, but I reckon proper spelling is essential if I wanna be taken seriously. Would you spend $700 bucks on a birthday cake made by a bakery that couldn’t spell? Ah don’t think so.

It’s been one helluva ride getting here so thank-yous are in order:

Jenny Tan, for planting the seed

Christopher Tan, for being a 24-hour helpline when I was (and still am) navigating the mysterious seas of baking

Lynn Ng, Jessica Tan, Charmayne Yap and Clarissa Oon for having sheer courage in letting this total novice make your wedding cakes

Suzanne Sng, Charmayne Yap (again!), Linda Jim, Tan Hsueh Yun, Weylin Liew for not laughing

My husband Z, for surviving on delivery pizza and showing unquestioning support while I baked, even though you were motivated by the money I’m gonna make so you can quit your job and hang out with skaters full-time.

I love you all! And now it’s time to bake.

bakeware giveaway! April 28, 2010

Back when I first started this blog and my daily readership was in the low 2-digits, my husband Z would jokingly suggest that I hold lucky draws to jack up the hits. Don’t be silly, I’d say. Slowly but surely, hordes of people will read me because they will find it impossible to resist my melodious writing, insightful musings and sparkling wit.

Well, today, I am eating my words. I am offering to give away my bakeware absolutely FREE because times are hard. Maybe it’s because Singapore just opened two casinos and everyone’s gone gambling. But suddenly, nobody’s reading my blog — my readership stats has dropped back to my early BC (Before Cupcake) days. My ego is getting deflated faster than my worst sponge cake.

And besides, I really need to make room on my baking shelf for my steadily increasing collection of cake decorating tools. You’d be happy to know that the following items are all in tip-top condition. Drop a comment or email me if you’re interested. Can come collect at my place.

(Clockwise from left; daughter not for sale:)

Item #1: Red and pink polka dotted cupcake cases. Original price: $9.90 per tube. I pounced on them the second I saw them at Kitchen Capers because they were the most adorable cases I’ve ever seen. But in my haste, I failed to notice that they were only 1cm high, which would make cupcakes that are thinner than I like. Grab them if you’re into making madeleines or thin cupcakes. The pink one is not even opened.

Item #2: Loaf pan (Original price: Can’t remember… It wasn’t cheap. From Phoon Huat). I have two of these and I bought them BEFORE I realised their dimensions weren’t right for most of my pound cakes.

Item #3: Cookbook stand (Original price: Don’t know, it was a gift from Z). In my naive early days of baking, I thought having a cookbook stand would solve all my problems – no more yucky stains and bits of flour on my precious books! But it has since become obsolete. Most of my cookbooks are thick, hulky tomes that cannot fit into this svelte gadget. Z is aghast that I’m giving his gift away, but my rationale is: sentimental white elephant or neat, sleek baking shelf? Case closed.

Item #4: Dark metal 12-hole muffin pan (Original price: Can’t remember. From Phoon Huat). Nothing wrong with this, I’ve been using it for three years. But lately I am on a cakezilla mission to use only aluminium pans in all my baking. These pans work just fine if you turn down your oven temperature by 10 deg C from what’s stated in the recipe. Therefore I am not giving away a dud.

Item #5: Aluminium 12-hole cupcake pan (Original price: about $7). In my search for aluminium cupcake pans, I got this even though the holes are shallower than normal muffin pans. I thought they’d still be able to hold up the cases, but no, the cupcakes spread out a little too much for me. Good for madeleines though.

Item #6: Three-sided jagged scraper (Original price: about $3). Why am I giving this away? Cos I already had one at home when I bought this. Duh.

Item #7: Bundt pan (Original price: Can’t remember, not cheap). Same reason why I’m giving away the muffin pan.

So there you have it. Call me call me call me. I really need to offload these extras so that my baking shelf can be neat and trim like a showroom centrepiece. Me and my inner Martha thank you.

Abstract sugarflowers April 1, 2010

The last time I lost sleep over homework, Bill Clinton was still president, Jamiroquai was the It band, and I could fit into UK size 10 jeans — which is to say, it was a very long time ago.

But there I was, last Friday night, sprawled out in bed with my eyes wide open and thinking, “The teacher is gonna HATE it!” I had just put together the final project for my 5-week course in sugarflowers, and to put it delicately, it didn’t turn out the way I had envisioned it. It plain sucked.

We had to decorate a 2-tier cake any way we liked. And, with grand plans to impress, I covered not 2, but 3 tiers of styrofoam cake rounds with avocado-coloured fondant. Then, I stuck on leaves of three different shades of green in a swag formation, held up by white carnations. The bright idea was to create thick flower and leaf cut-outs so they look like felt appliques. But the cake ended up looking like a bloody Lego tower put together by a 6-year-old.

Aghast and unable to sleep, I plucked out the leaves and started scrambling for plan B. Out of sheer desperation, I took out my round cutters the next morning and created these abstract flowers in pink, the only colour that could perk up the vomitous avocado shade. They turned out surprisingly well, but with just hours to go before I was to head off to class, I only had enough flowers to form one row.

At class, the teacher was neither horrified nor impressed. “Not bad for something done out of desperation,” she said. But back home, my husband Z was a lot more blunt. Eyeing the pukey-green and uneven, embattled fondant, he said after taking these pictures: “My photos make your cake look good.” Wow, thanks.

In a moment of abject self-doubt, I asked him, Am I a better writer than a baker? Should I forget about this cake-making business and just stick with journalism?

He must have felt bad, because his turnaround was swift. He raised an arm skyward a la Hamlet. “No,” he pronounced. “The literary world has lost its brightest star, because the baking world has discovered…” and pauses for dramatic effect, “a  supernova!”

Right, thanks. Anyway I’ve kept the flowers and am thinking of how to re-use them on another cake. The puke fondant? I trashed them the second these photos were shot. Adios.

Sugar Flowers March 23, 2010

For the past two days, my husband Z and I have been walking around looking like we could conquer the world.

Me, because I’m about to finish a 5-week course in sugar flowers, which has taught me to make – among other things – the pretty posy above. Now, when I look at all the wedding cake cuttings I’ve amassed, I go “I can do that, that, and that.” As for Z, he just bought a new camera lens which has enabled him to take the photo above. “Should’ve bought it a looong time ago,” he said.

I don’t know who is more smug: Me, who is having serious illusions of grandeur about becoming a wedding cake maker, or Z, who cannot wait to take photos for my business website. When everyone clicks on the opening page and is greeted by his photo, he says, they will freeze in awe, collapse in delirium, and exhibit other such worshipful reactions.

We’ll see about that. In the meantime, I wanna show off what else I made.

A carnation…

A daisy…

But I’m proudest of my posy, which I think bears revisiting…

In fact, I believe a close-up is in order…

Alright, enough gloating. Back to the laundry.

Dad’s 80th birthday cake October 8, 2009

I made a two-tier cake for my dad’s 80th birthday last month. But this post isn’t about how much he loved it (which I’m sure he did, even though crusty, conservative Teochew men like him don’t often express their feelings), or how much my relatives loved it, or how my 23-month-old daughter E wolfed down an entire slice all by herself, this being her very first taste of her mother’s baking (we decided that we’ve deprived her the sinful joys of fat and sugar for long enough).

No, this post is about the miracle of how I even managed to make the cake in the first place.

You’ve been fooled if you think that I stopped baking over the past five months because I’m pregnant and that my apartment was under renovation. Friends, there was actually a more sinister, diabolical force at work – my husband Z.

Let me put it this way. I am married to a man who has turned my pregnancy into an oppressive in-house military camp. Much like how life in the army barracks is governed by an inexplicable set of rules that makes sense only to the sergeant who created them, so is my life ever since Z knocked me up.

Here is Z the Pregnancy Nazi’s edict:

I cannot eat instant noodles or canned soup. Zero nutrition.

I cannot eat sausages. You don’t know what goes into them.

I cannot stand near the microwave oven, let alone eat anything that has been microwaved. He gave me the reason but it was so deep it slid right over my head.

I cannot carry my 11-kg daughter. Too taxing.

I cannot reach my arms up to take anything that is taller than me. I could overstretch.

I must flee at the slightest whiff of cigarette smoke, paint, detergent or fumigation (but strangely, his noxious farts are okay).

I cannot shower in the bathtub. I could slip and fall.

Every other day, he will check if I have been faithfully taking my dietary supplements. Every time I eat an apple, or any produce that may have come in contact with pesticides, he asks sternly: “Did you wash it?”

A few weeks ago, in a haze of renovation fever, I returned to my apartment with our maid so she could glue on a piece of laminate in the kitchen. I only supervised; I didn’t do any of the work. But when Z found out that I was actually within sniffing distance of glue for 15 minutes, he refused to talk to me for one full day.

So go ahead, ask me if I’ve been baking. And I’ll roll my eyes and tell you: “And incur the wrath of Lord Z?” No, I have not been baking. Because I don’t want to whisk an egg and have him scold me for potentially breaking my hip, thereby making childbirth more difficult. I have not been baking. Because I don’t want to sift flour only to have him accuse me of triggering premature labour.

But I had a rare reprieve last month as my dad’s birthday approached. He was turning 80, a grand, celebratory milestone by any standard, and I wanted to bake him a cake, something I had never done before. It was a proposition that even Z, a complete softie when it comes to parents and family, could not turn down.

So I baked the butter cakes in my spanking new 90-cm Ariston oven back in my apartment (more about my wonder oven in another post), then completed the frosting (whipped cream with mascarpone cheese) and decorations (strawberries, raspberries and blueberries) at my parents’, where a party for 30 relatives was to be held.

The cake was a hit. Dad’s four grandchildren helped him blow out the candles, and a photo of that moment now serves as wallpaper in his iPod, our birthday gift to him. I’m just glad that Z the Nazi didn’t deny me the pride I now feel for making the cake. Because if he did, I would summon some of this watermelon belly and heavy-artillery papaya boobs to unleash some major Allied forces on him. Ker-pow!

The Worst TV Host On Earth September 9, 2009

When I watch TV these days, I am confronted with a slew of urgent, sobering questions: ‘When will the economy pick up?’, ‘Why so many natural disasters?’, ‘Can climate change be stopped?’.

But perhaps the most disturbing of all, ‘Why the heck is Bobby Chinn hosting a TV show?’

Every time I see his trailer on Discovery Channel, I ask myself: What have we, the TV viewers in Asia, done to deserve such a narcissistic, uncharismatic, and thoroughly insufferable brat thrust upon our consciousness?

Nigella Lawson shows you how you can eat a horse and still be drop-dead gorgeous. Jamie Oliver makes you want to cook. Ian Wright makes you laugh. Anthony Bourdain shows you how to travel the world with a deadpan swagger.

But Bobby Chinn? The only qualification he brings to the lifestyle TV landscape is that he has a pulse and a full head of hair. (I can’t even bear to put his face on my blog, therefore the above picture).

First of all, as a clear case of ill judgment by Discovery Channel, it has decided to put its name behind a show that has zero culinary or entertainment value. In Chinn’s first series, World Cafe Asia, he goes around Asia in search of street food. But do we really want to watch yet another angmoh demonstrate to us the wonders of food that we ourselves had grown up on? You could excuse Kylie Kwong (who cooks just about everything with gin-jah and Shaoxing wine “for depth of flay-vah and charac-tar“) for doing the same, because her faux-Chinese recipes are aimed at Western audiences who don’t know any better. But I was flabbergasted to learn that Chinn’s shows aren’t even aired in the West – they were made for Asia. To me, it’s the equivalent of going to Bologna and showing the people there how to cook spaghetti bolognaise. 

Then, there are his recipes. I’ve never been to his modern Vietnamese restaurant in Hanoi, but from watching one episode of his latest series, Bobby Chinn Cooks Asia, I’m not expecting to hear angels sing if I eat his food. His recipes are neither inventive, enticing nor authentic. Methinks that he is only using the ‘fusion cuisine’ card to get away with slapping together incongruous ingredients and calling it ‘new’.

Still, it is not all grave that his show has poor content and that he is a terrible cook. What’s really unpardonable is that Chinn just seems so obnoxious as a person. In an old episode shot in a Thai wet market, he points to an old plastic container used at a fish stall then says to the fish-seller (who obviously didn’t understand English and was defenceless): “You know we use that for toilets in the States?” In a more recent episode shot in India, he is standing by a chef who was cooking a popular dish. As she poured some oil into the wok, he asks a question that could spark an international incident: “Why do you guys use so much oil?”

Somebody burn his effigy in front of a US embassy already!

In my previous incarnation as a newspaper writer, I interviewed some of the best food/travel hosts on Discovery and found that they all had one thing in common: They have a solid, unwavering respect for people from different cultures and walks of life.

I once made the mistake of asking Ian Wright if bushwomen in Africa had ever proposed to him. “Bushwomen?” he gasped, sounding quite alarmed, and continued to answer my question using a more respectable term for women from primitive cultures. Even Anthony Bourdain, with his famous bad-boy gruffness reeking from his intimidating 1.9m frame, was remarkably polite and thoughtful in person. In one episode of his show shot in Vietnam, he was so formal and genuine in his thanks to his Vietnamese hosts that he risked looking totally uncool.

So the bottom line is, if you want to be a good lifestyle TV host, you gotta love people.

Bobby Chinn doesn’t appear to love people. Instead, he stamps his condescending, unfunny frat-boy witticisms all over them as he scratches his way to celebrity chefdom. 

He just wants to be famous. And I just want to punch his face in.

The Best Show On TV August 27, 2009

As it is with many foodies, Discovery’s Travel & Living is the centre of my universe.

It’s pretty much the only channel I watch, and I only hop out of it for cursory glimpses of the outside world during commercial breaks (or when that nauseating Bobby Chinn comes on).

Recently, I kept seeing this trailer for a new show called Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory, which looks like a cheap cooking programme fronted by this sweaty, straggly-haired Brit on how to make different types of chocolate desserts.

But just 10 minutes into watching the first episode last Sunday, I turned to my husband Z (who works at Discovery) and firmly chastised him: “Your trailer people did a very lousy job of selling this show.”

Because, instead of some throwaway food programme about chocolate , Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory turned out to be equal-parts documentary, tension-filled reality TV, and delicious cookshow shot to the same degree of gorgeousness as Jamie At Home.

It tells the story of Willie Harcourt-Cooze, a chocolate-obsessed bohemian who sells his house in England in order to buy a plantation in Venezuela to grow his own cacao beans and make his own brand of chocolate (“the best chocolate in the world”). So he transplants his young family to the grimy plantations of Venezuela, and spends 12 (12!) years cultivating his crop.

Thrown into the main narrative are yummy vignettes of Willie cooking a mind-boggling array of dishes using his very own 100% cacao — roasted pepper gazpacho, mushroom risotto, stewed fish in coconut milk, apricot injected roast pig, and a chocolate cake that promises to buckle any woman at the knees.

But his journey from plantation to the glitzy food halls of Selfridges is fraught with peril. In Venezuela, he has to contend with capricious weather, weird insect infestations, poor crop yields and a troop of workers waiting to be paid. Back home in Devonshire, he has three young children to feed, a worried wife to placate, barely enough money to keep the heaters running, and a constant stream of creditors beating down his door. This show is absolutely riveting.

I came out of it with this big question: Is there anything that I’m so passionate about that I’d sell my house for and live on mere subsistence for 12 years to fulfill a dream?

Sigh, no. Not even the pursuit of the world’s most divine strawberry shortcake. I’m the sort who can only sleep at night when I know there’s a nice pile of savings in my bank account, fat enough to cushion me against sudden unemployment or a Morakot-sized typhoon.

Which explains why I’m no headlining star of a totally awesome TV show. Damn.

 

The Mummy Returns July 24, 2009

Look who’s baaaaaaaaaack…

I’ve gone AWOL for a very long three months but it’s not without good reason, folks.

1. I was renovating! Yup. Changed the floors, hacked a wall, relined a bathroom, overhauled my entire kitchen and installed a brand spankin’ new oven which is bigger and meaner! But…

2. I lost my camera. So I can’t take photos of my lean-and-mean oven to show y’all yet. But soon.

3. Last but not least, I have not been blogging because, haha, I have a bun baking in my other oven! Details of that coming up soon, but suffice it to say that I am all pickled and sng-buayed out 🙂

Not sure when I’m gonna resume writing. But since there’s maintenance works coming up at my apartment block and the maid is going home for a month, I’m gonna stay put at my parents’ for at least two more months. Which means no baking. By October, though, I’ll be back with a vengeance. See ya then.

Pear Tart March 4, 2009

Something very disturbing is happening. The other day, I had nothing to blog about and mused aloud to my husband Z that I might stop blogging altogether.

He didn’t toss back his usual tart reply, which used to always sound something like, “Wow? Really? And I get back my wife?”.  Instead, his eyes were the size of saucers. A look of genuine alarm spread across his face as he gasped: “Har? Why?”

“Cos I’ve run out of things to say,” I said.

Then, with lips almost a-quivering, he launched into a list of reasons why I shouldn’t quit this blog, because he had spent $X buying the reflector, the flash, the zoom lens and whatever else to shoot my cakes.

“But you can use them for your other photography stuff what,” I retorted, unmoved.

Then he blurted out the REAL reason why I shouldn’t end this blog. “Because your blog is my blog!” he cried.

Oh really. Is that so?  No wonder he’s been so annoying lately. Every time he’s shot my cakes, he would sit in front of his computer for absolute ages, tweaking the resolution, the tone, the contrast and what-have-you (for example, this so-so-tasting pear tart, taken from Young Mo Kim’s A Fine Collection Of Baking). Then, when I am already half-way into dreamland in bed, he’d suddenly shout, “How about this?” And I would have to pry open my eyes, wrench myself out of bed and look at his photo.

“No difference to the other one what,” I’d say, bleary-eyed, and plonk myself back to bed.

Right when I’m just inches away from re-entering snooze-topia, he’d suddenly command again, “How about this?” And this could go on several times a night.

He doesn’t leave me alone in the day either. He would call me from work just to find out if my latest post received any comments — about his photos. On other days, he would announce quite brazenly that he intends to spend the afternoon checking out the competition in other food blogs. And by the time he’s through, “they’re toast”.

My husband, whom I married because he is one cool, laid-back, peace-loving dude, has suddenly turned into a competitive, pixel-picking monster. I started having terrifying visions that very soon, I’ll be hand-cuffed to my kitchen counter as he forces me to bake every day so that he’d have something to shoot and post on my blog.

The horror!

But this morning, as he drove me to work, he came up with a new reason why I shouldn’t stop this blog.

“Because it’s your hobby, it makes you happy, and it has given you new friends,” he said.

He’s probably just sayin’ it. But I’m sold 🙂

25 Random Things About Food February 19, 2009

For four long years, I asked this question every week for a Sunday food column I used to write: What would your last meal be? Invariably, the personalities I interviewed would give some blah answer, like Teochew porridge or their mother’s steamed egg or some such boring throwaway.

If I were asked this question, oh-ho-ho, I would say: A ginormous strawberry shortcake that I could jump into and eat from the inside out. When I’m done, I’d throw myself into a bath-tub filled with Thai chilli-and-lemon dried cuttlefish, Kettle’s honey and dijon potato chips, honey cashew nuts and sticky barbecue fish sticks. Then, I would lock myself up in a Nonya buffet.

I could go on and on. Which is why I’ve always secretly wished that someone, anyone, would ask me this question for a change, so I could unleash my long pent-up list.

Well, since we’re in the season for lists (you know,  the pandemic spread of self-love in Facebook known as “25”) , I thought I’d just help myself and publish it for all to peruse.

Here is my “25 Random Things About Food”.

1. The best strawberry shortcake in the world can be found in Tampopo Deli in Liang Court.

2. The best French fries in the world can be found in your neighbourhood McDonald’s.

3. Nothing, nothing, is worse than undercooked red beans in ice kacang.

4. I can eat raw oysters, raw fish, raw prawns and raw beef, but never raw beansprouts.

5. If my house were on fire, the first thing I’ll grab (other than husband Z and baby E) is my Ruffles cakestand, which Z ordered from the States as my Christmas present last year. (See photos – ain’t it pwetty?)

6. If I were the Prime Minister of Singapore, I would decree that the annoyingly floppy thick noodles in laksa be replaced by beehoon. No more stains!

7. In an ideal world, all grapes and watermelons are seedless.

8. Cornflakes are best eaten at night.

9. If I were stranded on an island, I could live on canned sweet corn alone – yummy, fibrous, and no need to cook. 

10. I bear no shame for cooking with Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce. It really does make everything taste better.

11. Yes, there is something even better than Maggi chilli sauce. Its name is Lingham’s.

12. If I could choose which country I could be born in to enjoy the national cuisine, it would be Thailand, Indonesia or Japan (in this order).

13. If I can have only one accompaniment to rice, it would be sambal fishcake.

14. The Japanese do everything better – the best ribeye steak (Angus Steakhouse), the best curry rice (Tampopo), the best pasta (mentaiko spaghetti), and the ultimate best salad dressing (sesame flavour by We Love Salad! brand).

15. But if there’s one thing the Koreans do better than the Japanese, it is instant noodles (spicy mushroom flavour).

16. I have a secret weapon when it comes to stir-frying kangkong. It is called Cantonese XO sauce.

17. Three things I must always have in my fridge: Eggs, cold water, Nestle’s mango lassi drink.

18. Things I eat because of the dipping sauce: chicken rice, oh luak (oyster omelette), yong tau foo.

19. When I was on a 7-day detox fast a few years ago, the first thing I hallucinated about was nasi padang.

20. To me, the holy trinity of fruits is Mountain King durians, ‘harumanis’ mangoes from Indonesia, and ‘lor mai chee’ lychees from China.

21. Of the tiresome appetiser platter that’s served at ALL Chinese wedding banquets, I actually quite like the prawns in mayo sauce.

22. If the secret to good skin is not water, but Ribena, I could run for Miss Universe.

23. I’ve taken the dump in the toilet of Phoon Huat (bakery supplies store) in Holland Village four times – more than in any retail shop on earth – because I’m always very excited when I’m there.

24. Bovril in rice porridge is totally underrated.

25. I always wanted to marry someone who can cook. Z can’t cook. But he can dance. So that makes up for it.

PS: Okay, now it’s your turn. I’ve always wondered who you people jacking up my hit counter are. So drop a comment about your last meal (or anything at all). Just don’t say it’s Teochew porridge.

The Ultimate Butter Cake February 4, 2009

Some people eat lots of bread. Some people load up on rice. Yet others just stuff themselves full and hope something sticks. What am I talking about? I’m talking about what food to eat prior to a night of drinking so you won’t get so drunk that you wake up the next morning with your kidneys missing.

But I’ve discovered something that’s 100% resistant to the effects of alcohol and it tastes way better than rice or bread – Amy Scherber’s Simply Delicious Yellow Cake. It is buttery, eggy, moist and fluffy, easily the best butter cake I’ve ever made.

Apart from some leftover rice and steamed egg, this cake was the only thing I ate last Saturday before I went out on the town with 5 of my girlfriends.

Ostensibly, it was to celebrate 3 of our birthdays. It was also for us to catch up, now that new jobs/marriage/children have set us on different paths over the past few years.

But seriously, we just wanted to get sloshed.

We wanted to dump our husbands/boyfriends for just one night, and relive the same stupid antics we were up to years ago – you know, the kind of foggy revelry that makes dancing the conga thoroughly fashionable.

And boy did we max out our night. We started off at Overeasy, walked over to One On The Bund, popped by Bellini Grande and revisited our old haunt, Zouk. It was non-stop partying action from 9pm to 3am.

I was expected to be the first to succumb. After all, even in my partying prime 5 years ago, I was a self-proclaimed “cheap date”. I was proud of it too, because I was cost-efficient – just buy me two lychee martinis and I’ll be thinking I’m Beyonce.

And now that two years of abstinence has reduced my alcohol tolerance to almost zero, I was positively a “free date”. I could probably attempt her Single Ladies dance routine on the strength of one whiff of champagne.

So this is what I drank that night:

3 Sex On The Beach shots, 1 sundried tomato and raspberry margerita, 1 Bellini, 2 apple vodka shots, part of a Flaming Lamborghini, 2 Cowboy S*** D*** shots, and 1 Tequila shot.

How drunk was I? Let’s put it this way. I was even more sober than Obama’s bodyguards on Inauguration Day when he and Michelle were walking unshielded down the parade path.

My girlfriends? Oh, they drifted onto a higher realm. They were bear-hugging each other, happily doing the bitch-slap atop the podium in Velvet, and making up a new hybrid dance move that’s part-Vogue and part-Walk Like An Egyptian.

And what was I doing? I was doing what losers always do at parties: I was guarding the bags.

All because I ate a big slice of that cake.

Mini layer cakes December 31, 2008

Phoon Huat & Company (Pte) Ltd
231A Pandan Loop
Singapore 128419

Dear Sir,

Re: Urgent enrolment into the Wilton Method Cake Decorating Course

I am writing to make an urgent request. Can I be slotted into your Discover Cake Decorating (Course 1) class scheduled in March?

I was very disappointed to learn from your staff that the class is fully booked, and I have to wait to be informed about the next class. But I cannot afford to wait. I need to take the class AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Let me explain.

I am an avid baker who writes a cake blog at crummb.wordpress.com. As you will see on the site, I have not made any cakes with elaborate piping work because, frankly, I don’t know how to. Whenever a cake called for buttercream decoration, I always adopted the “dab-and-fake-it” method. This involves using a spatula and dabbing on buttercream in a random manner to achieve a casual, free-flowing effect.

It is a look that is popularised by many cookbooks today, and it has even earned me a few nice comments from my readers. But deep down in my heart of hearts, I know I am a fake. I can’t do the basketweave or the fleur de lis. I don’t even know how to pipe a ruffle. Not even a damn leaf.

To illustrate my predicament, I have attached a photo of three mini layer cakes I made recently. For the first, I utilised the ‘dab-and-fake-it’ method which, as you can see, I’ve perfected to an artform. For the second, I attempted a more complicated style that required greater upper-arm dexterity – by pulling the spatula upwards to create even, vertical stripes. The result was okay, though not spectacular.

For the third, I decided to bravely confront my demons. I took out my piping tip #16 and created a shell border on top of the cake. But instead of looking like neatly graduating swirls, they resembled the rounded behinds of a bunch of gorillas bending over side by side.

It was such an eye-sore that my husband, who takes the photographs on my blog, relegated the cake right to the back of the picture, where the circle of shiny posteriors could be obscured by soft focus.

As you can see, my piping skills are in URGENT need of improvement. Only you, by immediately putting me in your class, can take me out of this deep, dark abyss. My reputation, my conscience, my very sanity!, are now in your hands.

I await your good news.

Yours most sincerely,

Crummb

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P/S: Happy new year, everyone! Thanks for dropping by this past year 🙂