Since we’d invested in a stand mixer, Daddy expects more frequent baking in the house, he was also hoping not to have to purchase another loaf of bread from the bakery, but have all bread baked at home. Over the 2 weeks, I’d baked hot cross bun twice; a loaf of bread, chocolate chip cookies and green tea butter cake once. The latter tasted rather awful, probably due to the macha powder which came from ‘aged’ leaves (which was very expensive but probably not suitable for baking) we used.

Here are some of the baking done in the last 2 weeks.

My 1st attempt on bread baking.
Forgot to ‘proof’ it and used a pan too small, it came out like a loaf. Tasty but rather dense.

Tried out a breadmix which cost RM12.9, just add water, oil, the yeast sachet, knead, bake and voila, the loaf turned out wonderful.
But to me, this is cheating.

My 2nd attempt on the same recipe for hot cross buns.

I followed the recipe closely (well, except it asked for sultanas and I used raisin), remember to ‘proof’ it and used 2 pans so the buns have room to expand.

This time they turned out buns-like, but it’s still very dry and the crust hard. Any tip from anyone?
I think I’ll lower the oven temperature next time, and give it a milk wash right after I take them out from the oven. Not giving up yet. I’ll share the recipe once I get it right.

This is a recipe given to me by my best friend’s Father-In-Law. I’d tried it many times, and they are easy to make and extremely delicious.

Recipe for this :
150g butter
1/4 cup soft brown sugar
1/3 cup castor sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup choc chip
1/2 cup pecan nut (you can replace it with white chocolate chip or any other nuts, but I prefer nuts as it’ll be sweeter if more choc chips are used)

Heat up oven to 190 degrees
Cream butter and sugar
Add yolk and vanilla essence and beat further
Mix chips and nuts with wooden spoon
Spoon batter onto baking sheet and bake for 10~15mins.

The cookies will come out very ‘soong’. Enjoy.

I don’t know where she learnt all these, or where she got the talent from (maybe from me? I used to draw manga when I was in school you know. Haha), but this girl has started coming out with different font styles as part of her drawing.

A few are captured here.

She calls this the Curly Whirly Letters

Another take on the Curly Whirly Letters

I don’t now what it’s called. She used this when she was drawing something more ‘manly’. Masculine font?

And yesterday, she cut a piece of paper into 4 strips, stapled them together, did some drawing and came out with this.

She actually wanted to create a book, and the title of the book is The Story Of A Girl, in her phonic spelling.

♥Food Intake♥
1) She’s taking whatever we’re eating except spicy stuff. She’s more adventurous with food then Zara, and willing to try new food.
2) She loves parmesan cheese, nuts, beans (green, red)
3) The amount of food she takes is as much as Zara ~ about 1/3 bowl of rice (my girls eat very little). When we go out, the girls will share a kid’s meal, or a bowl of noodle (and still, there’s left over).
4) Drinks 3 times and 24ozs of milk a day, but sometimes she will refuse a milk feed.
5) Supplements that she takes : Kawai, Nordic Naturals DHA pill.

♥Emotional Development♥
1) She’s shy compared to Zara. Quiet in others’ presence but very chatty with us.
2) Even after 8mths in school, when we send her to school, she still clings on to us, and takes a while to let go.
3) Always bully Daddy. When she falls down, she beats Daddy. When I scold her, she beats Daddy. It’s like she blames Daddy for anything unpleasant that she experiences.
4) Very loving to me, when I’m upset with Zara, she’ll come and kiss me, “It’s ok mummy. I love you.” She’ll give me kisses very often, but very stingy with Daddy.
5) When she doesn’t get her way, she will throw tantrums, especially when Daddy is the one who doesn’t give in.
6) When she’s angry, she likes to fold her arms and announce loudly, “I’m very angry with you.”
7) Gets angry easily but also cool down very quickly.
8 ) High pain tolerance, but very emotional. Rarely cries because of pain, but will cry because we speak too loud to her, we scold her, or punish her.

Once, Daddy punished her for some naughty things she’s done, and she told him, “I don’t like you. You are not my daddy any more.” When I explained to her Daddy loves her so much, always brings her to Giant shopping, always bring her to the beach, she started sobbing and then gave Daddy a big hug feeling really sorry for what she’d said.
9) She always has this cool, arrogant look on her face especially when she’s not smiling; but she’s actually quite soft inside, and very cheeky and smiley at home.

She’s very witty and funny.
Once we went to the park, and I told her not to run on uneven ground, she didn’t listen and fell down. When I went to pick her up, she folded her arms and said, “I’m very angry. I don’t want to friend..” before she finished, I added, “Oh, You don’t want to friend mummy? Mummy told you not to run right? Or else you’ll fall down. Mummy told you nicely you don’t want to friend me?” She quickly said, “I don’t want to friend the grass only. I friend you, mummy.”

♥Others♥ :
This is a girl who loves to mess things up.
~ She loves to see where the water goes when she pours it on the table.
~ She likes to step on dirty puddle to see what will get dirty.
~ She loves to pour all toys out from their containers to hear their clanking sound.
~ Not attached to any particular soft toy. Likes my belly button, but I won’t say she’s attached to it. Loves books, and can spend a long time flipping through her books.
~ She’s selective with what TV show to watch, and only pay attention to those she likes (unlike Zara who will stare at the TV no matter what show is on).
~ Started to understand that when she’s not behaving, she’ll have to stay in the naughty corner, or get a smacking.
~ She has a love hate relationship with Zara. They play well together, but sometimes for the slightest thing they fight, or argue. Most common argument that they have is when one found something (which has been ignored all these while) to play with, the other insisted on wanting to play with the same item, and then there’ll be snatching, argument, shouting, and finally crying (from the one who lost the battle).

I created an album each for the girls for their 1st year. Last night, Zaria wanted to look at hers, so we flipped through hers together. Some of the photos that stirred them emotionally.

Zara : *pointed to the above photo* What’s this?
Me : That’s Zaria. The photo is taken when she was still in mummy’s stomach
Zara : Why is she brown?
Me : (aiyo, what to say?) Err. It’s just how the photo turned out. Maybe b’cos she’s surrounded by water in my stomach.
Zaria : That’s me? I’m a brown baby?
Me : Ya, that’s you.
Zaria : *lips curled downwards* I don’t want to be a brown baby!
Me : Ok ok.. we look at other photos. Don’t look at this one.

*flip flip*

Zara : *pointed to the photo* Oh.. look at Zaria, she’s so cute!! So chubby. Oh… now she’s so big *full of affection*

*flip flip*

Me : *pointed to the photo* Hey, Zaria, look. Last time you were so brave, you dare to swim in the pool yourself. How come now you need to hold on to mummy?
Zaria looked at the photo, her lips started to curl down, then tears started falling.
Me : Hey, what’s wrong?
Zaria : *pointing at the bottom middle photo* I’m drowning. I’m drowning. Waaaaaaaa..
Me : (surprised why it made her so emotional) You were not drowning.
Zaria : *tears still flowing* You see or not, I’m crying. I’m drowing. Look.
Me : (quick! Find an excuse) You were not drowning. We wanted to go home already but you still wanted to swim, so you cried.
Zaria seemed to be thinking about my answer, and stopped crying until she saw this..

Zaria : *her mouth curled further down, and big drops of tears flowed down* “WAAAAAAAAA!!! I want my daddy. I want my daddy.
(Daddy has been out on work trip whole of this week)
Me : (aiyo) You missed your Daddy?
Zaria : *nodded and continued to cry and sob* “Uhgh..Huh huh”
Me : I call Daddy then?
Zaria : *shook her head* “I don’t want. WAAAAAAAAAAA”
Me : *quickly called Daddy* “Eh, your daughter miss you very much la, saw your photo then started crying. You talk to her. *passed the phone to Zaria*
Zaria : *took the phone and listened* “sob sob”
Daddy : ….. (don’t know what he said)
Zaria : *nodded her head* “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.”
Daddy : …..
Zaria : *nodded her head some more, then gave me the phone* “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. I don’t want to talk any more.”
Me : *took back the phone* Aiyo, never mind. See you tomorrow, let me calm her down first.
Zara : *sadly* I also miss my daddy you know. He’s so fun. (ok, ok, I know, I’m not as fun as Daddy).
Zaria : *looked at Zara* “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.”
Me : Never mind, never mind. Tomorrow Daddy coming back already. (Alleluia!)
Me : We sleep now, tomorrow wake up, go to school, come home, take nap, then Daddy is home. Ok? Come lets go to bed now.

The End.

I feel extremely guilty for not providing any development update on Zaria like what I did for Zara. Here is one which I will try to capture her development this year in 2 parts (too overdue, too much to update). And for the records, she’s 2 years 7 months when I wrote this.

♥Academic Development♥
1) She’s the youngest in her class but doing very well. The teachers said she’s quiet in class, but always have the answers for questions which other children can’t answer.
2) She can count and recognise 1 to 10 (counting objects, and not just memorising the number sequence). She can also put out her fingers 1 by 1 to indicate number 1 to 10.
3) She can recognise alphabets from A to U (capital and small letter), and of course Z, and know the sound they make. (Thanks to Letter Factory and Letterland)
4) She knows quite a lot of Mandarin, and Bahasa Malaysia vocab; sometimes, when Zara doesn’t remember how to say something in Mandarin or BM, Zaria will be helping her.
5) She got awarded, best improved in Mandarin for her age group, on her 100th day in school (June ’09).
6) She can sing a lot of songs taught in school, although sometimes I can’t make out the words (especially BM and Mandarin songs), her tune is pretty accurate.
7) She’s very interested to learn, and always asking me questions like, “How many swings is (are) there” “What is bench in Chinese?” “What is sing in Malay?” and the best is, she likes to ask “Sky starts with letter what?” “Grass starts with letter what?” Normally, I’ll ask her to give me the answer, and she’ll start with the sound first, e.g. “S-S-Sky, Samy Snake! (Letterland character for S). Letter S!!” “G-g-g-Grass, Golden Girl! Letter G!” etc etc

Zaria doing colouring in May, she’s already doing within lines. Then last month, she started ‘drawing’ by drawing circles, and then colouring the circles to create her picture.

♥Language Development♥
I think she’s doing very well in this area, able to express herself like a little adult, using some complex words, and her extensive vocabulary. Sometimes for a not-commonly used word, she may make mistake, but she’s quick to correct herself. E.g. When she wanted to do painting, she said, “I want omelette.” When I asked, “Did you say omelette?” She thought for a while and corrected herself, “I want the palatte.”
For her age, her pronunciation is very good, she could pronounce most words accurately. The only regular mistakes she makes is leaving out the S sound for S-blending sound, e.g. Sweet; Swim, School, but when we repeat her wrong pronounciation after her, she’ll quickly self correct.

♥Other Skills♥
1) Can draw circles and colour within the lines.
2) Loves to cut paper with scissors and mess up the house
3) She can work on the todler sewing card, stringing them without supervision.
4) She likes working on jigsaw puzzles, and figuring out how to buckle things or button up.
5) She can take off and put on her own clothes, but sometimes still put 2 legs into one trousers hole.
6) She can now reach for the door knobs, so she’s getting in and out of closed rooms freely.
7) She can feed herself very well, but Jelly still prefers to feed her. When she’s out with us, I normally let her eat on her own.
8 ) She stopped wearing diaper in the night since Feb, ’09 (2 years 2 months). And since then, she’s wet the bed 4 times (and we found out it’s becasue she didn’t go to the toilet before she went to bed). She normally has her last pee before going to bed, and she’ll sleep through until the following morning without another toilet going.
9) When she needs to go to the toilet (be it small or big business), she’ll remove her own pants and climb up the (adult) toilet seat on her own; and will shout out when she’s done. Sometimes, Zara will go and help her ‘clean’ up.

At home, we got the girls to wash their hands as frequent as possible. When we’re out, we warned them not to touch railings, lift buttons, actually just about anything. We also got them to use the hand sanitizer if they’d touched anything we thought might have germs. In school, their temparature is taken before they are allowed in the school compound.

Naturally, they asked us what is all this fuss about. We told them there’s a virus called H1N1, and the ways one can contract it. After a while, they started forming ideas themselves.

Zara being a bit paranoid will came out questions like, “How do you know if you have H1N1?”
“Mummy, I have a bit of a sore throat, do I have H1N1?
“Mummy, I just touched the XXX (which could be anything), will I get H1N1?”

And she said, “H1N1 is the king of virus. All the other germs listen to him, and they will attack you. So you’ll be very sick.”

Over dinner, the little one said, “I got H1N1.” pointed to her wound from her fall yesterday, “See my H1N1.” o.O”

I can make them soup they would never drink, ask them to eat vege they would normally give it a pass, all I have to say is, “It’s good for you, help your body to be strong, to fight H1N1” And they would cringe and gulp.

When I was giving them their dose of DHA pill (which they love btw, no coaxing required) just now, Zaria said, “I eat fish pill (which is what they called) already, then can squash the H1N1.”

On Saturday after work, we attended my cousin’s daughter, Monique, 1st birthday. It was held in a hall of a club.

When we arrived, the girls were immediately invited to join the crowd at the stage with other children for some entertainment by a hired clown. Both didn’t even complain and just sat down among strangers and watched; while Daddy and I joined my other family members at a table.

Girls were taking care of each other, and I was very glad to see Zaria participating in games and dance without any of us adults coaxing.

Here are the photos of the day.

Zaria watched the clown intently when he was doing some magic tricks (the stern look stayed on the face for a long time).

Zara and Zaria were watched over by Sam or Ally.

Girls joined in action dance with the clown leading, and also went on stage to dance together with the other children.

The clown actually caught hold of a few people to dance on stage alone, and even put a mask on them. Zara was one of them, and she got the Whoopi Goldberg’s mask, and without hessitation, she danced away. (Gosh, she’s a brave one)

Zaria loves the toy that Zara got for going on stage.

Monique, the birthday girl, waiting to cut her cake.

The entertaining clown.

My cousin’s girl friend.

And Zaria, finally smiled and laughed, when she made a mess with her cup cake.

Saturday was a busy day for us all. Besides working (yes, it was a working weekend for me), we attended the girls’ sports day in the morning and my cousin’s baby’s birthday party in the evening.

The girls have been practicing for the sports day events in school daily in the morning for a month. Daddy, who’s the one who sends the girls to school told me our girls can really run and do all the sporty stunt. I was looking forward to see for myself.

We arrived at the rented hall and met with a good crowd, had some breakfast and waited for the event to start.

Zaria all prep-ed for the event. And you can tell that she’s in Red Team (and so was Zara)

The sporting events started after some speech giving, and good that they kept that short.

1st event, the kids have to run a short distant, crawl under a bench, run another distant, u-turn back and run to the same bench, crawl under it and run back to the team.

2nd event, the kids have to hold a bean bag with their chin, run a distant, u-turn back and run back to their team.

3rd event, the kids have to hold a ball, run a distant, u-turn back, and run back to their team.

4th event, the kids have to use a hoop to drag a ball a distant, u-turn back, and then drag the ball bag to their teams.

I have to say I was very impressed with both girls. Both could really run, and have good coordination. When Zaria returned from the crawling-under-the-bench event, her teacher and some parents came to tell me, “Your girl is really good, and she’s so fast”. Some other kids needed the teachers’ help and guidence, while Zaria did that on her own, and she’s the youngest in school. *beaming with pride*

And Zara runs like the wind (actually I call her Dash, after the boy in The Incredibles). All our daily trip to the park, and getting them to race in the park for exercise does help.

My only regret, our lousy camera couldn’t get good photos with the girls in motion. (Just see how crappy the photos look like).

(Luckily these came out ok, but that’s also because they were going slower)

After the 4 events, they have a short break.

They had so much fun when the principal asked “Do you want more”. Zaria replied loudly, “YESSSS!”

The parents then joined in the fun.

Mummies formed a human chain, and passed rubber bands with straws. See in 5 minutes, who passed the most rubber bands.

Parents joined in baloon fight, see which team remained with unburst baloons.

And then there was also family drawing competetion.

Although Red Team came third place overall, everybody got their prizes, and everybody had a fun day. Well done, school! And Bravo Girls!

I made soy milk or soya bean again on Monday. The amount of soy milk I’m consuming will probably give me nice skin even without using any expensive night cream, and so I hope.

I thought I’ll share the recipe, so that those who are interested, especially Malaika’s Mummy, can try it out.

Soak Soy Bean overnight.

Put soaked beans into blender, and add water. Ratio : 1 cup soaked soy bean : 3.5 cup waters

Blend the bean and water mixture until smooth (~1 min high speed). Put the mixture into a sieve (I used a cloth one as it’s quicker to sieve, but you can also use the normal wire sieve), and squeeze out all the milky liquid into a pot.

What is left behind on the sieve is Okara. Keep it for making homemade burger, or other dishes or just use it as fertiliser.

Add screw pine or pandan leave for added flavour (I heard you can also add black sesame or vanila) and put on stove to boil, stirring occasionally. Add sugar (or you can also make sugar syrup separately). Turn off the fire immediately once the soy milk starts to boil, and it’s done!

A bowl of hot soy milk. It looks a bit darkish yellow here because I used brown sugar instead of white.

The girls prefer it chilled of course.

Btw, I tried it with black bean (and I skinned it so that the soy milk didn’t appear greyish), and I find it’s creamier and tastier compared to the normal soy bean (which I didn’t skin).

Notes (added 8th Aug) – Pei Sze left a comment to say the soy milk must be boiled for 25mins at least and have the beans skinned. I’m not sure about skinning the beans, I guess that’s your preference. However I googled boiling and this came back, “The cooking time is important, as raw soybeans contain a factor known as a tripsin inhibitor. Essentially, this means that the protein contained in the beans cannot be properly assimilated by the body unless the beans are well cooked. Soy milk should be cooked for at least 25 minutes from the first boiling time. “
So take note. And I’d been feeding the family something that they cannot digest.. baaah.

Last year, my RM99 cake mixer broke down on me half way creaming icing for the cupcakes I made for Zara’s birthday celebration. Since then, I’d been asking myself the question, should I get another RM99 cake mixer? Or should I go for a good one?

I’d been looking at the Kenwood models, wanting to get one which is made in Italy or England, but I found the RM2xxx ones are all Made in China. No way I’m going to pay so much for a China made machine.

I asked around those baking gurus, most of them are using KitchenAid, and if they were not, they planned to get one in future. Then I saw the KitchenAid Artisan mixer in Tropicana City, and that’s it, my search for a mixer is over. KitchenAid it is! Fully Made in USA (except the bowl which is from Korea), it’s beautiful, and comes in various colours.

We didn’t get it immediately because Singaore is selling almost RM700 cheaper, and we were wondering if we should make a trip down south to get the mixer.

We made about another 4 trips to the same shop in Tropicana City looking and touching the machine, waiting for a price reduction (and contemplating at the same time); even Zara started questioning, “Why do we keep coming back to this shop?” and she even learnt, “Not everything I want, I should get. You like the cake mixer so much, you also didn’t buy, right?” 🙂

Anyway, last weekend, I told Daddy, enough of waiting, I want to get it!! And we did! So happened there was some promo running, and we got another RM100 reduction on top of the promo price.

And here is my new toy…… (oh by the way, Zara insisted that I should get the pink one, but we didn’t listen to her, and chose a colour that matched our Oak-coloured kitchen).

What a beauty, don’t you think?

I tried it out yesterday, and baked a butter cake using a simple recipe from Donna Hay.

Put all ingredient into the bowl and mix it.

So easy, so quiet, so smooth…

Baked it for an hour +, and viola.

Daddy is expecting some bread to be baked soon. o.O”
Tell me if you have a good and easy country bread recipe to share.