I was trying to think what kind of muffins I should make this week. I wanted to do something asian - without being it too complicated. And I've also always loved the taste of Gula Melaka, especially in Onde Onde and Chendol. And since I like using brown sugars in my muffins I thouhgt it might be sweet idea to use Gula Melaka instead. Gula Melaka or Coconut sugar originally from Malacca is one of the most wonderful ingredients in my book. It has a wonderful aroma and a sweetness that is slightly savoury and subtler than the cane sugars. The texture of the sugar is highly dense and slightly tricky to handle, it's abit like corn flour mixed with water. It's best to melt it down first or dissolve it with any other liquid substance rather than using it as a dry ingredient.

You can forget about that diet, I know you WANT this. Super Super Choco High (with an extra chocolate surprise center!) with buttercream and chocolate rice. I had one and I needed a day to recover from the über rich, moist, cocoa abundant cupcakes. Your eyeballs will pop! This is an adaptation from the Warm Lava cake. This is also for Sugar High Friday!

I made Birthday Cupcakes for 2 of the boys at work - Leong & Fong. But honestly it was an excuse to try out the buttercream (yes it was a success!). Fong mentioned (or maybe hinted) that he preferred creamy cakes to the regular chocolate ones, so that was when I decided that 2 different cupcakes may be fun for the occasion - I had to take into consideration the chocolate lovers. So it was Vanilla Dream & Super Super Choco High Cupcakes!! As you can see, I need to work on the frosting part - but other wise I was quite pleased at my attempts.

Thank GOD for electronic mixers. To the people who made Buttercream (the Italian way) before electronic mixers - Respect! Buttercream is best to prepare in advance - because it takes a long time to prepare. It's a science and this one is complicated. You will be required to multi-task - but it is manageable.

I recently bought the biggest bar of chocolate in my life. 1 kilogram of Valrhona (56%). Just looking at it makes my heart race. It felt like gold in my hands - without even tasting it my endorphins started to rush.

I've just entered into a new world. Why does buttercream need to be soooooooooo sweet?!!

Mum was given a pasta machine a few years ago by a friend and it's been sitting in the cupboard since. So I decided perhaps it was time to attempt making my own fresh pasta. Whole Wheat Tomato Fettucini. It actually wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be actually. I added Tomato pesto to the dough - which wasn't a smart idea because there were pieces of little chopped sun-dried tomatoes and that caused tears in the flattened dough. I should've probably used tomato paste. And because I've used Whole Wheat flour the texture is heavier and coarser too.

It's now hanging out to dry - on a clothes hanger!

I am lucky and spoilt - I work for a boss who LOVES buying the latest toys for the office. About two months ago, I was given a 21" Wacom Cintiq21UX to "test and evaluate" for a couple of days. Also that week, I got to work with the well known and well admired Design Guru, Stefan Sagmeister who was in the house and he and his team were so very impressed - and envious ;).

The Cintiq 21UX combines a 21" LCD screen and a pressure sensitive tablet to create a surface you can paint on directly using a Wacom pen. It's a wonderful tool for drawing, painting and rotoscoping. Digital drawing has long been a different world from the traditional pencil and paper. The pencil and paper way is more intuitive and organic. You turn your canvas around, adjust the angle, you feel the lead press against the paper - a highly artistic process. Digital drawing on the other hand is upright, emotionally boring and un-ergonomic. I just completed a DI job and using the Cintiq made it truly pixel perfect! Touching up, erasing, stamping, and painting were literally at the tip of my pen. The ExpressKeys on both sides of the panel are great in replacing spacebar, shift, option controls - the side Touch Strips make zooming in and out a breeze. There is a slight delay especially for super large stills but it's nothing to moan too much about - if you're RAM abundant it's not a problem.

However, I don't use it much for my other work applications simply because of the design of the interface. Menus drop from the top and using the Cintiq is not practical because your hand is blocking everything. For other apps I stick to my Intous3.

After my glowing and gushing promotion of this wonderful technology he immediately went out and bought 2!

How cool am I? *Haha!*

It's Desmond's Birthday! One of the very loyal and supportive tummies I feed every Monday with my weekend baking experiments. So especially just for him (and the benefit of many others) I rushed home to make Applesauce Allspice Muffins for his very special day. This recipe is an adaptation from the one from Epicurious.com. The Applesauce I used is from the Applesauce I made last week - so if you are using this recipe with the Applesauce I would suggest you half the sugar. Otherwise if you are using canned Applesauce keep the the sugar indicated. I've lowered the fat and sugar portions, and added raisins for texture. The lovely crunchy tops are a delight when you take the first bite into it - then comes the moist and spicy flavors that come after... *slurp!*

I a mac user and I only just started blogging.

A good blogging software in OSX was not easy to find - it was either too limiting in layout and configuration, or it was too complicated requiring me to use linux. Web based blogging was great but I wanted to use my own domain - which they supported but somehow it didn't work out. I tried iWeb, it had attractive templates and it made creating a website incredibly easy - BUT when it's published it gives you strange names for your urls and it flattens everything including texts - which is not desirable especially for a food blogger who shares her recipes. Makes copy and paste impossible. Also, if you are not publishing on the .mac website - less features are available. I was left disappointed.

So finally after clicking on every possible link that turn up in my google search of "Blog OSX", RapidWeaver by RealMac Software turned up. It appears slightly complicated at first but after a few trials it actually is uncomplicated to use. There are also third-party template creators that provide other template alternatives should you prefer something else beside the default versions. It does help to have some HTML knowledge and basic ones are easy to learn and help is easily found all over the internet. Just copy and paste.

I am grateful to RapidWeaver :)

What was I THINKING?!

Bran Muffins..... I was worried that they would taste like cardboard shreds. But they turned out quite tasty and moist!