The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Tomorrow will be Christmas Day! Merry X'mas to all the bakers and foodies! ^o^ I believe most of you are in the festive mood of this special occasion! For me, though, I might admit Christmas day was only considered another 'date' in my childhood. My family never celebrated it and I grew up knowing Santa Claus does not exist. But maybe because I don't have much impression or any opinions towards Christmas, I actually don't feel that 'I have missed out a damn lot of things' either! Hey, I suspect I haven't even eaten a roasted/baked turkey before. LOL.

Until I celebrated my first Christmas Countdown with my basketball teammates (I was already 14 by the way), I realised that Christmas is a beautiful and extremely lively festival. (a bit slow right) That was certainly a wonderful experience for me but if you ask me, I think I'd still prefer to avoid every area that is heavy in human-traffic. Haha. I believe I am somebody who treasure peace a lot!

Staying at home to bake or just drinking under the tree with my small group of buddies suit me more :) We can still have our christmas countdown happily! You know, the extent of my displeasure for noise includes the noise sound of my mixer at speed 10! That is also why I decided that my husband-to-be should not be over-ly talkative....! LOL

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Fruit Tartlets. So purty and cute.

& very gorgeous colours. Mmm..

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The name says it all!

I had so much fun with this recipe. I swear! It was incredibly moist and soft. Plus point: everybody in my family loves bananas and they're readily available in the supermarket.

I hadn't done a great job though, there's supposed to be two distinct coloured layers (yellow cake on the brown cocoa cake, you can click on the original link to see the cake). I admit I don't know my Malaysia oven as well I know my Singapore's one, the temperature tends to be higher although it is a bigger oven and my pastries/cakes often brown quickly. 

Wait, you might be curious why I've been travelling between these two countries and even bake in Malaysia? My dad is a Malaysian and manages his business in Malaysia! :) My mum, on the other hand is a Singaporean. As for me, I'm born in Singapore and is also a Singapore citizen, but since I'm always in Malaysia during the school holidays, I concluded that if one day I'm going to record down my biography, I'd be doing it with the help of a passport. LOL! :D In fact I'm likely to be one of the students with the most pages of my passport stamped because of this frequent travel haha!

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Looks like I hadn't got enough of strawberry treats. Actually there weren't many (fruit) options at the supermarket for me either, but I love strawberries, so that's okay! Bringing its flavour into desserts is way easier than other lighter/mildy flavoured fruits :) Besides, I'm deeply in love with their bright, red colour!! It's extremely attractive and since they taste really sweet, it's a bonus :D

So.., did you guess what I made correctly? I'd call it Berries IceCream Cake. IceCream! That's right. I LOVE ICECREAMS. I wouldn't mind living on them for a week =P It consists of an oreo cookie base, strawberries, raspberry swirled icecream and a little blueberries for garnish. If you try it out once, I promise you'll do it again! It's incredibly easy, it can be done within 30minutes (plus a few hours for the freezing time) and quite importantly, it can be made ahead :D (this dessert is a keeper!)

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Classic, homely, sweet. My Strawberry Shortcake with Creme Chantilly.

It's summer in Singapore everyday!

This is probably my 15th time making a layer cake (or even more). But each and  every time I bake a layer cake, there is nothing I worry more than the sponge. Intially, I intended to layer it with chiffon but my yolk mixture was extremely rubbery and doughy! Thinking that it might have been me instead of the recipe, I decided to try again - and still failed T_T I was quite upset because I don't like wastage. Sighs.

So the third time I made, I used a basic sponge cake (cause I thought it was stupid it do again and waste more ingredients if I hadn't any idea what went wrong) and *PHEW* nice, soft and light cake. Just what I was looking for =) (that's why you should never give up!)

And I finish them off with apricot glaze :D It makes them shinee~~

(look at my cream T.T I really don't know why this happened, so I covered them with some raisins? It's good to have raisins at home. They're sooo great even in yogurt -LAUGHS-)

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