A Photo Canvas

It's the time of the year again to celebrate the Mid Autumn Festival, as the Boy and I decided to get our hands dirty once again by making our very own mooncakes!

Carrying on the craze from work, I borrowed some of the mooncake moulds home as we got started in the early afternoon. Even the Boy’s mom joined us in the making =)

After 2 long hours, we finally got our mooncakes done! Green, sky blue, purple and white, it was actually pretty nice to see the multi-colours all nicely done!

And something new and special for this year was that we tried making mini mooncakes using Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse moulds. With special thanks to E’s Joie, I managed to purchase these cute moulds, bringing some variety and difference to the usual round/square shaped moulds =)

Such cuteness... Happy Mid Autumn Festival!

Being the runner enthusiast Raphel is, it was no surprise when he made his way down all the way to Sengkang for an 8km marathon run that was for charity.

Thankfully, the rain stopped when he was due to run. But it sure got the grounds wet and muddy still.



So what else can the girl do besides braving the mud and making her way down early in the morning just to support her Boy?? =)

Being a cheese lover, I've always wanted to try different kinds of cheesecake. Some time back, I found out that Nahele had a cheesecake recipe and that she has made one before! Not to mention that she had promised to make me one too but has yet to for a long time! Coupled with the recent book reading bonding sessions, it prompted us to get into a cheesecake-making session =D


With the lack of several equipments at my place, I popped by Nahele's place on an early Saturday morning to help out in the preparation of making cake (edible cake please). So far, we have enjoyed our activities and time spent together. And now that we got the chance to make different things, it was so much fun! I was so excited on getting started as it has been quite some time since I have tasted cheesecake. And now I got the chance to make one myself with her! =D Heh, I was prancing around in the kitchen and Nahele could see that I was all hyped up. All smiles on my face! Ahaha... =D

So first up was making the base. Being a guy, I offered my service in pounding the biscuits into powder form using my bare hands! (Clap clap) It was nothing... Haha. While I was 'contributing' my strength, Nahele got started with the other ingredients. (Obviously, Nahele was impressed with my contribution as one can see from the picture that I was so focused in doing my work!)

But Nahele was pretty worried that it wouldn't turn out nice as it had been some time she last made cheesecake. Plus this time she added a bit of white wine to the recipe. Surprisingly, it turned out to be pretty good, only that the base was a bit too thick.


Nevertheless, I was so proud of her and myself... (hee) that our combined effort turned out pretty good. I had so much fun stepping into the kitchen with her I'm very sure that we will end up trying out other food-making sessions. I can't blame her for helping me to put on weight right? =P

(I am beginning to feel that she'll make a great wife =P)

Mid-Autumn Festival is just around the corner, which meant that my snow skin mooncake cravings would be on the rise. So much so that I just had to get my hands on some, as my mother refused to buy any due to its exorbitant pricing during recent times.

So, what's Nahele got to do when she really would love to sink her teeth into some snow skin mooncake when there aren't any at home?
Make some of course!

Thankfully, I went for a mooncake making workshop last year with Phoon Huat, as I got my butt down to the shop, bought all the ingredients that I needed, and carried all of them to Raphel's home since he kindly offered to help. Besides, it also served to be some form of couple bonding as we got our hands dirty together =)

Do not be mistaken that I wasn't wearing anything underneath!! Raphel's tee was just too big for me, as I had no intentions to turn my original black tee into a white one =P

Despite my training, or also partly because I was misled by the potency of the red dye, we miscalculated the amount that we should add into the water. That resulted in a miserable pale-ish white dough colour instead of a nice shade of pastel pink. But a headstrong me was not willing to give in to an ugly mooncake colour, as we started experimenting on how to make the dough pink.

Trial No. #1
We tried first by adding the dye directly to the dough.
Result: Bad mistake! It turned out more to be like raspberry ice-cream swirls!

Trial No. #2
Add in some more water bit by bit, of which was concentrated with red dye.
Result: It became better. But with some strong kneading required, Raphel took over as I got pretty tired. And while we finally managed to get a nice shade of pink, I guess the overflow of water made the dough a little too sticky!

So there I was, trying my darnest to mould the dough into shape, when it was stuck pretty much to my palm and the mould. Thankfully through Raphel's actions as he tried to get the mooncakes out of the mould, I managed to find a way to get past its stickiness.

For that:

And of course, that gave us a chance for some food photography, as I went on to the extent of getting utensils/props to try out some artistic shots.


Bon appetit! =D