The Red Velvet experiment

One of my friends recently mentioned that she was into baking cupcakes. Now, call me stupid or something, but it’d never occurred to me that you could do these things. Sure, I like cupcakes, but seldom buy them because they were so expensive. Those lovely little cups of cakes with icing on top, colourful and delicate. And so very expensive.

At about £3.50 per cupcake (my favourite being the Red Velvet from Hummingbird), it was one of those little luxuries which, once I bought one, meant I couldn’t have dinner that day (slight exaggeration).

When said friend mentioned that she could BAKE Red Velvets, I was astonished, mouth open with half chewed pizza (how uncouth, I know) as I quizzed her on how she achieved this unimaginable feat.

So, a week later, I decided that I too, shall try to do this crazy thing called baking. And so it was, the bf and I decided to bake some cupcakes to take along to a friend’s BBQ as we were tasked with bringing something sweet. Something sweet it was gonna be.

A bit of Googling, a bit of common sense, and alot of not so good cupcakes later (all lovingly eaten, of course), we had the final product.

Here is, ladies and gentlemen, the home-baked, not so stylish, somewhat pitiful looking, complete opposite of Hummingbird version of the Red Velvet.

We took it to a party the next day, in some containers, and someone actually said to us, ‘I thought you’d bought it from the store, and then put it in the container to pretend that you baked it.’

That was pretty much the best compliment anyone could have given, aside from the fact that the person who said it said it before actually eating the thing. She looked kinda worried after eating it, not sure what that says about our baking.

Could we have used incorrect measurements? Maybe. Could we have beat the mixture too much, resulting in too much / too little air? Possibly. Could we just be really bad at baking? Most probably.

Pre-CNY gathering

A friend of mine kindly invited us to a party with about 15 or so other people on Saturday, sort of like a pre Chinese New Year party. As it was a pot-luck party, I brought along the closest thing I could find to a pot – a bucket of KFC, seen here in the picture.

Everyone else didn’t seem to have understood the concept of the pot thing.

(Joke)

This was the vegetarian curry, cooked by one of the guests. Obviously there are no prices listed on these dishes. It would have been slightly impolite (but probably expected) of me to have asked them how much their dish costs.

Siew yoke, or roast pork brought by another guest. As we arrived about an hour after the party, most of the food had gone cold, but this pork was still very crunchy despite being cold. The meat was flavoursome, and just salty enough for the taste to come through.

Green beans stir-fried in something. Again, didn’t do the whole interview thing with the chef, just kinda had a taste and tried to figure out what it was made with. I reckon something along the lines of yellow bean paste or similar.

Grilled pork marinated in spices, done by the host of the part. This was very flavoursome, and had been marinating for a while prior to cooking. Although it was slightly cold by the time I tasted it, it was still nice.

Curry chicken, again cooked by the host of the party. He said that he’d made this with a Malaysian curry spice powder, brand A1.

Grilled lamb (with some mint?) marinated in spices and once again, cooked by the host of the party. It does kind of seem as though he did most of the cooking.

Stir fried okra (ladies fingers) in sambal, prepared by a guest who’d somehow managed to get ready for the party, cook this dish x 2, and get to the party by train in slightly over an hour. I had lots of this, done really well in terms of texture, and the taste was authentic too.

Sweet and sour fish, prepared by surprise surprise, the host of the party. Perhaps this was not a pot luck after all and we misunderstood the invitation. This was one of my favourite dishes that day, the fish was very crunchy and the sauce was just nice to balance out the crunchiness of the fish.

Our contribution to the pot-luck party, this bucket of fried chicken. All in all, we had a great time, meeting people we’d never met before, and just having lots of food.