Mirror Glaze

i need an eating buddy. my breaks don't match friends' who like to go food adventuring. i spent a good portion of last night looking at good/cheap/well known food. should i go to something which has bad servicing, not good quality food just to try it out?

there's actually heaps of places in the city where you can get a meal for less than $10, excluding maccas, subway etc. would it be weird to go eat by myself...? then again, i should just not eat since i would like to save that five bucks towards something higher class.... wow, all these thoughts contradict each other.

when i go to england, heston blumenthal's The Fat Duck is definitely on my to-go list! every time he comes on Masterchef, it is always something spectacular and filled with liquid nitrogen. i've probs blogged about this, but i want to go to Noma, Denmark, which was top restaurant in the world for a few years. about $300pp. heaps of top restaurants you need to book/reserve like a year in advance, so i shall save some money in my retirement plan for those restaurants, when i have time (lol, a year), to wait for a table and a meal.

the zumbo choc mud cake we made at Dandelion's house a few weeks ago was actually supurb in itself. the water bath and that packet mix was so good! the cake was moist and it rose evernly and turned out super flat. if you haven't realised, most of the cakes you bake at home are domed.

i decided to use the mirror glaze (the icing) which we didn't use last time on the cake. it would have looked nice since that cake had a smooth, no holes surface, but then it would've been super sweet. made a cupcake recipe and just put it into a loaf pan today. i don't have any deep roasting pans to create a water bath, but i used wet towels...didn't turn out that flat, so had to cut a bit of the top off...it was a very small cake since 12 cupcakes does not equal one normals cake...

sooo shiny! if this cake had a smoother base, it wouldn't refract light in different directions and it would be such a nice reflection.

"thumbs up"

that icing dripping

i never cream my butter and sugar properly. today (after ten years), i finally read the instructions on my hand mixer. (just about a month ago, i realised there was an eject button for the whisks things..), but today i read something like this "Use for 10 minutes, and if it heats up, rest for 10 minutes before using". wow, the manual actually said that. stupid weak hand mixer. last time i couldn't even make macarons properly because the machine kept on overheating to the point i had to stop, and by that time, the batter changed a bit. so i don't bother to beat my butter till perfection, as it "pulls" on the mixer and really over heats the machine as it takes a long time to do it properly. so many factors just affecting a super duper simple cake. watching those mixmasters on masterchef...if only i had the money/space...i found an old sifter and measuring spoons though! so sifting stuff took literally 10 seconds compared to over 10mins. (: