Posts by Dominique:

April 25, 2013

Hokkaido Chiffon Cake on a Friday

Dominique Parenting and Kids, Thoughts Food Trip Friday, Foodie Friday, Photo Heart Friday

Hokkaido Chiffon Cake

This week I attended the 2nd activity that we had to commemorate SMB‘s 1st birthday bash. It was a Hokkaido Chiffon Cake baking workshop held by Munch Ministry. The trainers Pauline and Louisa were on hand to show us how this delectable treat was made.

The trainers

Held in the newly renovated kitchen at the Civil Service Club at Tessensohn Clubhouse. The 12 participants were paired up as there were six workstations in the classroom.

The kitchen we used

Pauline showed gave us the ingredient/instruction list and started off the session with a demonstration on all the steps involved.

There were three parts to the creation of the cake.

1) The Egg Yolk Mixture

2) Meringue

3) Filling for the cake.

Mixing in all the ingredients

After watching the demo it was time to get moving and whip up our own cakes. Sandra of Sanes shared out the baking of the cakes. She made the Egg Yolk Mixture while I worked on the Meringue. When both of us completed our portions we combined the ingredients together. The batter was later poured out into cupcakes and put into the oven to bake.

Read for the oven

We filled 18 cupcake containers in all with the mixture and was eagerly waiting for it to be baked in the oven. The oven had been preheated to 170 degrees so we didn’t have to wait for the oven to heat up.

The baked goods

The cakes smelled lovely emerging from the oven. We had to wait till they were cooled before we could pipe in the fillings and decorate them.

Showing how to pipe into the cake

While waiting for the cakes to cool down, Louisa demonstrated to the class how we are to pipe the filling into the cake using a nozzle and piping bag. It seemed quite easy and I was keen to see how my cakes would turn out with the fillings.

The completed product- fully decorated cake

How do you find it? It was as tasty as it looked and something which the kids and I really enjoy eating. We will be making more of these Hokkaido Chiffon Cakes next week for the whole family to try.

Do you want some cake too?

The Happy Bakers

PhotoStory Friday

April 24, 2013

Writer’s Workshop: Why Not Mummy?

Dominique Parenting and Kids, Thoughts mama kat's writers workshop, two questions

Tiger girl looking puzzled

Being a mom of a two year old girl can be very trying at times. She can be as different as night and day in a split second. Any single thing which she feels slighted about will send her screaming with tears. It’s really difficult to pinpoint what is the trigger and what causes the sudden outburst.

Some days she can wake up bright and cheery while on other days it seems that everything that would go wrong does go wrong. It can be extremely frustrating and stressful dealing with Tiger girl on such a morning. Every single thing which you do to try to get her to be ready for school backfires. Nothing that you do can please and satisfy her and only throws her further off the edge.

Tears stream down her cheeks and her nose starts to fill up with sniffles. It seems to her like the whole world is crumbling around her and she is collapsing due to the heavy weight.

The situation can be really trying and I am often at a lost on how to calm her down and make her think rationally. It is hard to reason with a two year old who is still at the ” It’s Mine!!” and ” No!! I don’t want” stage. The terrible twos are some would say where they are trying to exert their own authority and at the same time learn about the boundaries that have been set around them.

It is certainly a trying situation and I’m hanging on by a thin thread. It doesn’t get any easier the third time around. Girls are more whiny then boys and certainly harder to coax. The normal tricks of switching on the television for her to watch, having popcorn for breakfast or even getting to wear outing clothes instead of her school uniform to Nursery school all failed badly. I’m still thinking of new methods and ways to deal with this.

This morning I had to let her slowly cool down on her own till she was ready to talk and reason. 30 minutes. That is the time that was needed for Tiger child to revert back to her normal self. I’m lucky that we did have to rush off to school or we would certainly be very late!!