Wow, it's been (almost) 2 years. Time flies.

That's two mentally long but physically short years I've spent in Singapore. For sure I've slowed down on the baking - both by choice and not. Restrained by the head and humidity, outrageous ingredient prices on this tiny island and the small corner in my little condo that it called a 'kitchen'. I have bemoaned the fact that I don't have a 'real' oven for 2 years yet despite this, I've managed a few goodies. Take a look at what I've been up to when I haven't been collecting stamps on my passport!

I've had another extremely busy weekend (and week building up to it)! With a wedding in the Blue Mountains followed directly by a Kitchen Tea back in the Sydney CBD, it was always going to be a logistical challenge.

I did have an amazing (and rather cold) time away outside of Sydney on Friday evening and Saturday before hastily fitting in a morning bushwalk on Sunday morning before the drive back to Sydney. I was exhausted. The wedding was beautiful and very much what the bride wanted.

So was the Kitchen Tea - the cake, which I had completed by Friday morning, turned out well too! We were supposed to have a cake topper as well but my dear friend forgot it. No matter, flowers to the rescue and as she had already prepped everything, it was really easy! The cake was delicious just in case you were wondering! Very happy with how it all turned out.

It was a great afternoon (despite the dreary wet weather storming outside) at Doltone House opposite Hyde Park. Lots of laughs, competitiveness and general fun. Really enjoyed myself and was quite impressed by the service.

I'm at a point in my life ("career"; the day one) where I'm not quite sure if I'm staying or if I'm going so this lucky girl (and boy) were extremely fortunate to be able to catch me in town to do their wedding cake. It was a case of 'maybe' for a long time!

4 mega tiers of Vanilla Coconut, Chocolate Peppermint and Mocha Caramel cake sandwiched with lashings of buttercream (a request from the bride.. she really really LOVES buttercream). The waiter who took the cake off to the kitchen where they promptly butchered it (I was livid) carried the cake as though it weighed nothing... hats off to him because I'm pretty sure the whole thing was a good 20 odd kg?!?!

And the flowers, oh they were so pretty: blushing brides with yellow chrysanthemums, billy buttons, baby breaths, lavender and roses. It made having to get up at 5 AM with minimal sleep so worth it!

There have been a few things I've come to a realization with in the past few months. It's probably been simmering on the back burner for a long time but it's kind of come to fruition with my time away from home and not having baked it so long. And the main one that stands out is: I would not want to do this full time and for a living. As much as I love baking and doing it in small doses, I don't think I'd enjoy it if it was anything more.

So this cake was a lot of fun and it made me realize that I still had it in me to pull something out of the proverbial hat. And I still loved (almost) every minute of it. But I was so stressed that the cake would fall over or something would go wrong and I just don't ever want to be responsible for something bad happening to the cake!

In short: time permitting (and that's not a lot of time), I would love to do more but here and now, I have other things I also want to do with my time...

Hello Friends!

It certainly has been a long time. This one feels like a practice cake as you can see the drips are well not really drips... more like blobs. I knew I'd be busy back home but not entirely sure how busy!

This was a small chocolate cake with vanilla bean buttercream and random lindt balls, kit kats, salted caramel popcorn and walnuts on the top for a last minute birthday bash.

Make sure you tune in to the cake that comes next!

Ohayo from Tokyo!

This has got to be one of my most the most crazy things I thought I could pull off: limited space, limited resources, no electronic equipment (I did buy a set of cheap egg beaters, they literally died after 5 minutes), NO OVEN!

But world had gotten around the Tokyo office that I baked for fun and as a leisure thing (I wonder how that happened?) and so a challenge was set that I should bake a cake for our boss' birthday. I am always up for a challenge so over 3 nights in my tiny apartment where my 'kitchen' was made up of a sink, one induction burner, a bar fridge, about 50 cm x 50cm of bench space and a tiny microwave oven, I set to work.

I love their 100 yen shops - got my spatula, whisk and cake board and box there so at least some things were easy! My sister had shipped over some plain flour, Cadbury chocolate, cocoa and sugar for me - if you lived in Japan for a few months and tried to buy these items, you will quickly understand why I had them shipped over... $$$

So this was it...! Had to cake the layers individually three times due to the size of the oven. All these constraints really tested my patience :) But we got there in the end, three yummy looking, still moist layers of chocolate cake. Then came the buttercream and butter is about 4x the price in Australia and without electric beaters, I was beating for a l-o-n-g time. Again, excellent patience practice training.

Assembling the cake... another wonder how I managed with such limited space and using the butter knife that I had in the apartment, it kind of came together. I wasn't going to come up with any fancy design and again, the abundance of confectionery and snack items in Japanese shops is a wonder because it literally made the cake look beautiful - just by throwing on as much chocolate, biscuits, sugar, pocky sticks and wafers on the cake as I could and trying to get some 'height'.

Anyway, I called it a success... and it was definitely a yummy cake. But it also encouraged me not to attempt it again in my time in Japan. Thankfully, there was lots to do anyway so I was more that okay not to bake but to sight see. An experience of a lifetime in this little kitchen and I would not have changed any part of it.