All About The Mousse

Yesterday I kept my promise to someone as I have owed her chocolate mousse for a long long time. I remember her bugging me to make her mousse since last year?!?! :p So yesterday was spent making chocolate mousse cupcakes! :) :)

Lih Yein came as well, so had 2 extra pair of hands to help out. And the mousse required a candy thermometer to take the temperature, so in the end Selina bought me one from Chang Tung on mon :p thanx!! but i wan anohter pressie next year!!

Most mousse recipes require the use of egg whites, RAW egg whites to be precise. In order to get the light and fluffy texture of the mousse, the egg whites need to be beaten with sugar til it turns white and well aerated. For those who doesn't know, this is called meringue (pronounced as MER-RANG).

As the mousse uses raw eggs (no baking is required to make the mouse, just chilling time) it is recommended to use pasturized eggs instead of normal eggs. Pasturised eggs can be bought at Jusco at Rm8.00 per box of 10s. This is because raw un-pasturized eggs may contain bacteria called Salmonella which can cause blindness or even death (I think). So, seriously, if there are any recipes that require the use of raw eggs, be very very cautious. Try finding an alternative recipe, or just get pasturised eggs to be safe. Or dun use the recipe at all if u r not sure!!

Pasturization is a process whereby heat is applied on food products for the purpose of reducing or destroying harmful bacteria or virusesfound on the food product. The characteristic of a pasturized egg would be a cloudy appearance in the egg white.

For those who's interested in making some, here is a recipe for Chocolate Mousse that does not require any eggs.

Ingredients: (Serves 2)
1 cup Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips
3 Tablespoons butter
2 Teaspoons Nescafe Instant Coffee Powder
1 Tablespoons hot water
1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Method:
1. Melt butter and choc chips in a sauce pan. Dissolve coffee in hot water and stir into choc. Add in vanilla extract.

2. Whip cream on high speed until stiff peaks form. Fold cream into chocolate mixture. Spoon into tall glasses, chill for 1 hour or until firm.

3. Serve with whipped cream or strawberries or chocolates even :p


Here are some pics taken on the day we made mousse :p




this looks very wrong. I know :p but in the end it was all smooth & light. Very yummy.



the meringue



caught slacking... lol


too yummy to resist..




the woman... by Ms. selina chew LOL

Oh, if u wan the mousse to be accompanied by cake, u can purchase chocolate sponge mix from any baking supply shop, follow the instructions and add in the mousse. Then u will get choc mousse cake! :)

The mousse we made had a little something extra, to give the X-factor.. LOL it turned out YUMMY. Sorry la, cannot tell wat izzit :p hehehe

Happy baking!!!

Still Tired

I baked again today. Really very sick of looking at mooncakes -_- I didnt touch any since 2 weeks and I don't plan to.. lol today i baked the final batch of mooncakes that r supose to be sold. So... NO MORE BAKING MOONCAKES!!!!!!! :D :D :D

I got "full" just by looking at them. I think this week will be the last week (hopefully) for me to bake mooncakes. NO MORE! I still wanna bake, but wanna bake other stuff. Or better yet, cook something nice for once :p

I just realised that I totally forgot to blog about graduation.. -_- So congrats to randall and myself for finally finishing our studies!!! :p a little slower than the others, but heck, we DID IT!!!


randall & i in the regalia together with our graduation pressies. I made his present, it was in one piece when i gave him, but a day after it looked really ugly cos SOMEONE didn't take good care of it =( It had ferrero rocher chocs on them, and they were all missing!!!!!


graduation bouquet from my parents. I have no gotten so much flowers, that time was the first. *ahem* and it's not even from randy.

Bryan and Aunjian came to see us after the ceremony, cos monash is so dem kiam siap, they only gave each graduants 3 tickets, no extras... -_- And we waited so freaking long just to take our graduation portraits cos there wasnt really a line, and we stood at the end of the imaginary line. Every ah chu ah kau cut que so we were among the last to take our pics... bloody hell. -_- Anywayz, that was graduation. Nothing much, cos most of our friends graduated last yr. So we were pretty lonely.. haha

Moving on, weihan just came back from langkawi a few weeks back. I told him to help me get liquor chocs for me.. omg i love the chocs so so so much..

Anthon Berg's Liquor Chocs:

Ignore randall in the background :p


This is of course my fav.. :p There is liquor in the center of the bottled shapped choc. and it's DARK choc.. dark choc + liquor = satisfaction. lol i love both :p

There r various diff liquor in the whole box of chocs, but the best would be the whiskey ones. I didnt like the malibu.. coconut rum.. yuck -_-

And one month back, ailin, lihyein and I went for the estee lauder warehouse sale in a hotel in kl. can't recall the name.. let me tell u, women can get pretty crazy when it comes to sales, and even crazier when it comes to branded goods sale. The sale was suppose to start at 8am, and ailin told me that her collegues would que at 6am oustdie just to get in early to get the things.

I thought she was kidding, so i said nvm, we will just reach there at 8 or slightly after 8. So, upon reaching the hotel, i got a shock of my life cos the freaking que was already outside the hotel ad there were ppl leaving wif smiles on their faces carrying big big bags of cosmetics. We rushed to get a parking and we lined up for about an hour b4 we get into the ballroom.. -_- By the time we went in, it was already 9am, and many things were already sold out... But things were cheap compared to their normal retail prices. DKNY B delicious was only rm120, but the women's one were all GONE. All left were the guys one. Estee Lauder perfume sets were at rm100 to 120 if im not mistaken. The foundation was sold at rm60 for 2 jars. There were Clinique products, as well as Bobbi Brown, MAC and Origins.

And this were all the things we bought, combined. Guess who shopped the most? :p Ai lin of course!! hahaha

The Madness Is Over.. RIGHT.

I thought that the mooncake-making-craze will be over since today is the exact day of The Mid Autumn Festival. Usually ppl will not buy mooncakes anymore.. Well, not really la, cos we all know that bakeries will slash prices down by giving ridiculous discounts, 30% and if later tonite there are still mooncakes left, they will cut the price down by 40% or even 50%, as I was told.

Oh, Happy Mid Autumn Festival!! :p I forgot to wish all of u.. Hahaha

Well, i can't stop baking just yet. There are still orders for the mooncakes and I was only able to rest TODAY. Tomorrow, I'll be back in the kitchen baking.. AGAIN -_- I have not sold so much of one kind of baked goods before.... It's madness..


This is the snow skin mooncakes I sold. All my mooncakes are individually packed for a more "professional" look.. yea rite :p Actually pack it so cleaner la, not so gross.. And it's given in a nice mooncake box.

This customer may wanna place orders after mooncakes festival, for her husband to take to Indonesia as a business gift. And selina told me mooncakes in Indonesia is dem expensive.

Ok, I think i managed to sell roughly about 80 - 90 mooncakes this time around. An achievement :) Thanx to my mum and selina for helping out.

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This morning was brandy's training. I have missed 2weeks of training. First was becos my fellow trainers were at ipoh for Agility Trials. Think they did very well, so congrats to them! Brandy did fairly well today, she would usually pull & tuck me into the shade as she hates the sun. When it gets too hot, she would be reluctant to do anything, which makes me pretty pissed. But, i cant do anything cos she refuses to comply.. spoilt dog -_-

But it was different today, she did the course many times, although not in sequence and I was all over the place giving her wrong body language :p LOL She can be off leash for a short while, but I don't trust her a 100% percent!! She's like a loose canon.. dunno when it'll explode.. or run away!! Noob dog.

And it's one of her fellow doggie fren's bday today. So their boss (aka owners) baked and brought a cake for her. And i brought mooncakes since it's mooncake festival. So dogs had cakes and humans had mooncakes ahaha.


Happy Bday to Cami! She's with the agility cake.. LOL

And did the doggies enjoyed the cake.. It's a carrot cake, with cream frosting and bacon bits! How yummy!! All doggies were so so so so so attentive after they got a taste of the cake. SO they called it the AGILITY CAKE. Cos many dogs were very obedient and ran the course like pros just to get another bite. hahah

So tonite we had a small thing planned. A fondue party together with some mooncakes and lanterns :p LOL Will post pics of the event next time.

Have a wonderful and pleasant Mid Autumn Festival tonite :) Eat more mooncakes!!!!

MIA

Ok... I KNOW. The blog has once again been neglected.. I'm not doing in on purpose.. I have not ran outta stuff to write.

I AM JUST SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO busy right now i can't find the time to sit down and write out a good post -_-

Orders of mooncakes have came in these few weeks and I only have a pair of hands. My schedule for the pass week has been:

Wake up, brush teeth, bake, bake, bake, bake, lunch, relax 2 hours, go out, come back, sleep.

this is my routine everyday.

I haf no time to sit down & haf a nice lunch. And last week was my convocation. I didn't have time to try on make up, no time to pick out wat i wanted to wear, no time to paint my nails. I only shopped for randy's gift on fri nite when the convo was on sat morning, and made it on fri nite itself -_- I've nvr felt so busy b4... I think working won't be this hectic!!! Omg..

But i am happy, cos Im doing wat I like, that is BAKING. After this sun, no more baking mooncakes. Ppl are ordering 6 boxes at a go... i have already baked 50 mooncakes to date, it is still not enufffffff. There are still orders I have yet to fill.. -_-

Oh, and miss Selina is back!!! =) i have an extra pair of hands to help me out... *hint hint*