All about cake

Since the beginning of this year, I became addicted to cake baking. During Chinese New Year, instead of making those traditional cookies like "kuih-kapit", green pea cookies, pineapple tarts ... etc, I made Sugee Cake as Chinese New Year "cookies" to give people.

After presenting the Sugee Cake to various people, only I learned that not many "new-age" people know how to appreciate this cake.

I presented it to a 20-ish young man, he asked me why was the cake so crunchy and not moist like the usual cake that he has been eating.

I presented it to another female friend, she didn't know what is "Sugee" cake. Her boyfriend is an Italian and good in cooking. He bit just one mouth, and he could tell it's "Sugee". From there he told me about how to judge a good Sugee Cake. I was so excited and happy that finally someone could tell me more about "Sugee" cake.

It has another name called "Semolina Butter Cake". It should be crunchy, because one of the ingredients is almond. You will be biting the almond with the aromatic butter and Sugee smell spreading in your mouth... Woah, heaven! And it should be bake without using any flour, just "sugee" powder.

That was exactly how I baked it.

Of course many other people love my Sugee Cake, especially children. It is appetizing to me and one will really get addicted to it after a few bites.

So far I knew two persons who are really crazy over Sugee Cake. One of them is my cousin-in-law..... She never expected me to bake her Sugee Cake for Chinese New Year this year. She ordered one from somebody else by paying RM300!!!

Another friend loves Sugee Cake very much and he used to eat the cake baked by his mother. Now that his mother has gone and he really missed the cake. He ordered the cake from somebody else too, and he threw away the whole cake after one bit. Until he tasted my Sugee Cake, he raised his thumb and said my Sugee Cake was the right and yummy one... (hehe... self-shiok for a while).

I must thank my mother-in-law for sharing her secret recipe with me, otherwise, I won't be able to retain the original recipe and bake such a yummy cake.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is, the traditional good quality cakes are fading away...

People started to eat fancy cakes: cake with lots of cream, baked by using flour, by using different fruits, and different chemical ingredients. It is good as we need to evolve all the time...... But good values should be retained too.

My knowledgeable hubby told me that during the 70's, Sugee Cake was being used as wedding cake. People would bake two to three tiers of Sugee Cake for the cake-cutting ceremony. After that it was being replaced with fruit cake... and now, it was just a dummy cake on the stage for "show" purpose.

My hubby told me about another traditional cake, which one can hardly see in the market - Zebra Cake:

It looks like marble cake, but they are two different types of cake, different way of baking too.

Personally I love Carrot Cake and Tiramisu Cake (only Su-Chan version and not any other version). After knowing my husband, I fell in love with Sugee Cake. I went to attend baking class to improve my baking skills. There are so many subtle skills which you can never find in any cook book.

I joined the baking class taught by a young lady, who really share all the skills with the students. I was happy with the class and learned a few types of cake, including moist chocolate cake, carrot cake, green tea cake ... and the most shocking one is red velvet cake.

Why I was shocked? Because it is just a colouring cake!! I was so disappointed... I first tasted it in my friend's Chinese New Year open house, and since then I had been admiring the cake... and now, it is just a cake that one putting red dye to the batter to me.

Last Saturday I went around to look for "purple" cake from various well-known cake shops, but couldn't get any. And if I were to order a custom-made version, I could only collect it on Wednesday... But I need the cake on Monday, for a terminally-ill patient's birthday.

In the end I baked it together with my husband, and decorated the cake with our own style.

You must be laughing at our decoration now, I myself find the design was so amateur too ... Well, we are on our way to improve our cake decoration skills... wait for us!

The patient loved the cake very much and had a really happy birthday celebration... This has motivated me so much until I have decided to sponsor and personally bake birthday cake for Hospis Malaysia's patients, cause I really enjoy doing it and find it meditative...

I found another old recipe from my mother-in-law's recipe book.... Have you heard of KEK NASIB BAIK?!!

I was laughing away with the name and I am going to bake and see how lucky is the cake... haha!

Do you have any cake history story to tell me? I like to hear them and has been begging my husband to tell me more about his cake experiences from small... ...

Scrapbook fever

I only came to know about "Scrapbook" recently! Such a shame for not knowing such an art at this age of mine *-.-* ... haha!

Sample from "Google"

My professor asked us to do a survey about a person. This person could be someone living in any country, having any religion, and practising any culture. She gave my group the research on a female who was living in Istanbul, Turkey. This girl came from a middle-upper class Orthodox Jewish family and the father was a jewelry businessman. We have to do a research on this person's country, religion, culture, lifestyle and any other details we wanted to add in from the day she was born until she passed away at the age of 80. Of course this person is just a fiction, but the facts about her culture, religion, lifestyle and country had to be non-fiction. The fun part was, we had to present to the class about this person in a "SCRAPBOOK" format!

Sample from "Google"

At first I only glanced through my seniors' work to get some ideas on how to do the layout. Later on, because of we needed to buy some materials like ribbons or symbols to decorate our pages, I went to Craft Heaven in 1Utama, and saw a scrapbook sample there. I was so amazed that scrapbook could be done in such a detail way!

Sample from "Google"

After my assignment was over, my mind still stuck to the idea of making "scrapbook"... And then the fever of making it kept attacking me. So, I planned to make my very own personal scrapbook for my husband as his birthday "card" ... Instead of an ordinary birthday card, I wanted to make something special for his special birthday. I compiled all the photos we took in 2013, and I'm going to make a scrapbook of what we did in 2013 to present to him ...

Sample from "Google"

I have so much ideas on how to decorate the pages, but to learn more, I "Google" and "Youtube" a lot on how to improve the design of a scrapbook, and got more shocked to know that it was a norm to the westerners to make scrapbook since young! Many of the westerners even have a "scrapbook room" in their house, just for them to make scrapbook!! They also have specialized stores just to sell scrapbook materials... Alamak, I'm so out-dated la!!

I have done two pages so far for my husband's "birthday-card" project, but still not very sure how to design the pages and find my pages quite bare as compared to the scrapbook sample on "Google" ... I hope I can improve my art-sense from doing this and improve my design to a better one... Well, I think it's "ok" that my designs are bare now, at least I started doing it and I believe practise make perfect. I find it a good therapy to focus my mind too. Maybe I could go into meditation while doing the art one day... haha! I will post my finished work here when I'm done, and hopefully it is nice enough to show to the world...

Sample from "Google"

Body Work - to unleash and dissolve the memory of body cells

I have always been interested in improving my mind and my spiritual knowledge, especially in the recent years, I was almost going all out to attend seminars, courses and done lots of reading to understand more about human mind and the invisible force around us.

One of the thing amazed me was the memory of body cells. Thanks to my "Practitional Clinical Hypnotherapy" lecturer, I came to an understanding that body cells do keep memory of every incident that is meaningful to us. And all these memories are working at the unconscious level, affecting our conscious behaviours all the time.

Here's an interesting article tells more about the memory of body cells.

What I wanted to share, or make it as a record of my life journey here was my bodywork experience yesterday.

(Photo source: http://www.thumbtack.com/tn/nashville/massage/transformational-therapeutic-massage-bodywork)

I have a friend who does bodywork for people, that will trigger and unleash the memory of body cells, and thus achieve a therapeutic effect.

If you "Google" about bodywork, you will find lots of website explaining about what is bodywork. I think to the westerner, bodywork is equivalent to "massage". In the definition found on Google, bodywork has many types, including yoga, Reiki, QiGong, and all sorts of massage technique.

(Photo source: http://www.zazzle.co.nz/bodywork+businesscards)

I'm not sure whether there is a specific name to the bodywork that my friend offers. Let's just use the term "bodywork" for the specific meaning here, which is, a massage technique that can unleashes and dissolves the memory of body cells.

I decided to go for bodywork is because of I have been having the same nightmare throughout the years. I wanted to release the memory and turn it to a positive one.

It was an amazing and beautiful experience. Of course different person will have different experience. One of my friend tried the bodywork and she cried when certain part of the body was being pressed. She flashed back lots of memory of a certain incident when she felt the pain on that part of the body. She cried, and therefore the negative emotion was released.

(Photo source: http://www.relaxyoudeserveit.com/)

As for me, I didn't cry or have any memory flashback. Instead, I gained lots of insights on matters about life. I felt so light and like a new born baby after the massage, with zero negative emotion. The emotion that fills up my body cells is "happiness". I realized I could be a happy person easily. I don't need to hold on to any negative emotion.

I am glad that I knew someone who can do this type of bodywork. Thank you, Joyce! Really appreciate your effort.