Crazy me! Baking Chocolate Chip Muffins...

Counting down to Joel's coming.... My actual delivery date is on 21st of Jan 09, Wednesday, which means 2 more days to go... My gynae said if he still refuse to come out after the actual date, then he'll need to do something about it... I pray that, Joel will come naturally.

BUT I still feel like baking... Some of my friends said I'm crazy... but just couldn't help it... The night before, I bought 2 cakes of butter from NTUC and my husband was giving me that look 'ARE YOU SURE?'.. Managed to convince him that the butters can be kept for future use and it's on promotion (Buy 2 @ S$3 something)... 

So, yesterday, I've baked Chocolate Chips Muffins!!! I got the recipe from Rei's Double Chocolate Chips Muffins. You can find the recipe here.

I don't have cocoa powder at home, so I replaced it with 2 tablespoons of MILO.... Taste great!

It's really easy to make... Took me less than half an hour to prepare the batter... All done in one single mixing bowl.... ;)

Give it a try!

Our Baby Room

Guess what! Our baby room is double the size of our master bedroom!! Lucky Joel! What you see here is only 1/4 of the room.

The wall is originally red. The Chinese believes that you are not suppose to use the paint during pregnancy, otherwise baby will have birthmark on his face. Well, I don't really believe it but I believe that paint has lethal chemicals and it's not safe for pregnant women. So, it's better to paint after delivery. :) Hence, we decided not to paint the room until baby is born. And I will like the wall to be in blue.

In order to decorate the room, we have wall decal across a portion of the room. We changed the curtain that bought from Ikea. Besides that, pasted some cute wall stickers. Simple but I like it. :)

Oh, that froggie is a laundry basket that I got from 'pasar malam' (night market). :)

"Dear baby Joel, this is what mama and papa can do for you for the time being... Hope you'll like it... "

Baby Project No.4 - Hot Air Balloon

My fingers are numb and very swollen since few days ago... :( Crafting has became a challenge to me cos I can't hold needles & scissors for very long....

So, took me awhile to complete this project. And think this will be my last project before going for my delivery and confinement.

Tea Break - Apple Cinnamon Muffins

What's for tea break today?

I had an early lunch and was hungry around 2 plus. Suddenly thought of baking muffins. Rei told me that baking muffins is the easiest and less washing because just throw all ingredients into one big ball & mix them all together. Besides that, I was trying to use whatever that available in my kitchen.

Let see, I had left-over butter (around 70g) and self-raising flour. All I need was to find a recipe to bake muffins.

I found this recipe sometimes back, but I couldn't remember where I got it from. :( It's Apple Cinnamon Muffins. I massaged the recipe a bit so that I could use the 'left-over'. Here goes the my recipe:

Ingredients (that makes 7 muffins):

• 200ml of water
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 apple (skinned and sliced into cube)
• 1 cup of raisins (you can reduce or add more)
• 1 egg
• 70g butter
• 50g corn oil
• 1 tbls cinnamon
• 280g of self-raising flour

Methods:

• Combine water, sugar, apple, raisins, butter, oil, cinnamon powder in a pan to boil.
• Cool completely
• Preheat oven to 180 deg
• Then, in one large bowl, sift flour
• Add egg into flour and whisk well
• Then, add in the mixture and stir
• Transfer the batter into muffin moulds that are lightly greased (I'm using aluminum foil mould)
• Bake for 20mins

Thanks to Rei for helping me too. Actually the recipe requires all-purpose-flour and baking soda but I ran out of flour but it can be replaced by self-raising flour. And what she said was true.. Baking muffins is indeed easier than cake... Thank GOD!

A hot muffin goes well with a hot cup of tea. Can't have Earl Grey, so choose Lemongrass & Ginger tea instead. =P

What for Breakfast?

Most of the morning, I'll have bread with butter & kaya... Cos that's the easiest and most economical way to feed myself every morning... However, last Saturday, we ran out of bread. Dear Hub didn't buy the night before. So, no bread... =P I was so lazy to go down. So, I've decided to make pan cake.

When I was young, pan cake was always the solutions to feed our hunger... Cos, it's easy to do. My brother is very good in making pan cake. During our exam period and while stayed up late, he would be the one making pan cake for our supper... Yummy!

Here goes the recipe of the pancake:

Ingredients:

100g of flour

100ml of fresh milk/water

1 egg

Sugar to taste

Method:

Mix the egg and milk/water evenly. And add the flour and mix thoroughly. Lastly, add sugar. Drop ladle of batter onto the preheated and lightly greased pan. Use low fire. Until you'll see bubble, then flip to the other side.

For Serving... We love to put kaya & butter or if you have peanut butter, better still. Then, roll the pancake... Wah! YUMMY!!

 

 

And I FINISHED ALL... =P

Seraphina Hand Carved Stamp

I've asked Magda from Craft Pudding to hand-carve Seraphina stamp for me few weeks back... :)

Note: Seraphina icon was created by my brother. Thanks Bro!

She did a good job and I'm loving it. Will be using it for all my handmade stuff as trademark....

I've bought the stamp ink from Daiso and stamped it on a piece of fabric... Very nice... :)

Baby Project No. 3: Baby Crib Bumper

Baby crib bumper is a very common baby product, where it is put around the the baby cot to avoid baby's legs, hands or head trap in between the cot slats.

Well, initially I wanted to get one set of the bumper but was like S$100+ for one set (without bed sheet). It's so expensive. So, I've decided to make one. Thought it would be easy...

I wanted to get a cute material to make the bumper and it has to be like more than 2m long... Cos, normal baby crib bumper is around 2m long. Went to Chinatown and Spotlight but just couldn't find suitable fabric. UNTIL, I went to IKEA last Friday!

I saw this cute fabric from Ikea, but it was a quilt set for children. My hubby said, can buy one set and dismantle it, since it costs around S$12. Not very expensive. So, we bought and I started to dismantle it that afternoon. WOW!! True enough, the fabric was measured around 2.5m by 1.5m. It's big enough to MAKE TWO SETS of BUMPERS!! Besides that, the fabric is thick and the cartoons are so cute.

So, I've completed the first set of bumper which I did it for the first time yesterday afternoon. Pretty tedious.... Especially sewing the pad. :( I've put two layers of pad so that it's thick enough. If you look carefully, the sewing was badly done.... But hub said, it's OK, baby won't notice... hehehehe

Gonna make the 2nd set today. Hopefully 2nd set is easier than the 1st set... :)

A Small Little Hat for Baby Rachel

Finally, I can blog about this... I've made this little hat for a friend's, YL, daughter.

This is my first attempt. I got the pattern from one of the Japanese Cotton books that I've bought couple of months back. Never had a chance to try, cos I always thought it would be difficult to make, plus I'm very bad in using machine to sew... =P

Phew! Got it right for the first time.

I'm glad that YL also likes it very much. :)