never winked back at fireflies

Look what we saw at Pak Wai's sendoff dinner! Mac's has Fancy Ketchup! Fancy that, haha. Did they always have this? I don't remember ever seeing this. But well! Guess some places are just too high class for me, haha.


Outside Chee's office. This was where we started our little exploration of Singapore. It doesn't really feel like Singapore here I think, it seems too pretty.


A very typical shophouse at Haji Lane, this feels very like Singapore, haha. Haji Lane was very disappointing! All the online articles and blogs made it sound so cool and arty farty, but it's really very secluded. Along the whole lane, there were only a few shops open? The rest were all empty shops. And we kept bumping into these 2 girls, because well, there were only those few shops to browse through. They even had bad graffiti!! Someone spray-painted 'Pigeon' on the wall -____- so much for angry rebellion.

Another picture of Pluck, the boutique-cum-ice cream parlour. They had cute wallpaper, you can see it behind Maddy. But later we went to another store that had the same wallpaper. Guess it comes with the place?

You can see the transparent glass cups they had at Emperor Cafe. Never really seen these before. Transparent teapots are still quite normal, the cha guans they brought us to in primary school always had them. But I thought transparent cups were pretty cool. The highlight of the place really, haha, considering how the shopkeeper kinda spoilt the experience a little.

Parkview Square was really very cool! Never imagined we would find all these sculptures and everything! It reminded me a little of Finland. Very very cool! A little odd to hide all these here though, where only the office people can see it? My mom told me that this building's very picky when it comes to tenants. Only very famous and rich companies are allowed to rent office space here. Here you can see Sun Yat-Sen, Churchill, Lincoln and Plato.

Beethoven doing his thing on the roof.

They had these on all 4 corner pillars. Quite interesting.

Dante and Dali on the other side of the square, together with Chopin and someone else I can't remember, who got cut out of the photo.

Not-quite-Atlases, also on the roof of the building.

Oh! And here's a picture from the corride of the cafe that cheated our feelings! It looked so pretty and nice from the outside, like the perfect place to make our usual hangout. It was tucked away in a corner of the square, away from everything else and quite hidden from the world. You'd have missed it at a quick glance. It even had a pretty okay name, Spice Tea & Coffee, everything seemed perfect. But when we stepped in, the tv was switched to channel Suria, no music, the waiter was speaking in Malay (not even mat english! That's still better right?) and the menu was very lousy! Why?!?! It seemed such a waste, and at very contrasting odds with the rest of the place. They even have half price off cakes and pastries after 4pm, it's such a pity the atmosphere is so wrong, haha. We must take over their cafe next time kay! They don't even need a revamp, the decor is quite nice, just the menu needs an overhaul.



Okay, onto another subject, here's the week-late fruitcake. It was surprisingly easy and fast actually (if you don't include the week-long soak in brandy and the 2 hour baking time), and tasted quite nice. Just the right amount of moistness and denseness. Quite hard to screw up actually, considering there isn't much cake in it, haha. It's not too sweet, unlike most fruitcakes, and if you like to booze up the cake a lil more like me, you can feed the cake brandy for a few days before starting on it. Well, the recipe actually said to feed the cake brandy every 2-3 weeks for 2-3 months, but that's just crazy -__- we couldn't resist that long.

We actually halved the recipe in case it didn't turn out nice, but we still ended up with a pretty large cake. And it was chockful of fruits too, despite cutting down on the fruits slightly. There's no real need to find all the different types of fruits if you can't, feel free to substitute. We left out the dried figs and prunes and substituted the macadamia nuts for almonds cos we couldn't be bothered to search outside the bake store for them. Worked out fine to me. We didn't make the icing either, and changed the baking time to 2hours.

Traditional Christmas Cake
Ingredients (for cake):
500g sultanas
200g glace cherries, halved
110g cut mixed peel
110g ready-to-eat dried figs, roughly chopped
110g ready-to-eat dried apricots, roughly chopped
110g ready-to-eat dried pitted prunes, roughly chopped
1 small orange, grated zest and juice
255g unsalted butter, at room temperature
255g lexia raisins
110g currants
150ml brandy
5 medium eggs
300g plain flour
200g macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
200g dark muscovado sugar

To Make
Put dried fruits in a large bowl and pour over the brandy, orange zest and juice. Mix well, cover and leave to stand overnight. (We left it for a week just to make sure, aha)

Line the base of a 9" cake tin with a double thickness of parchment paper. Line the sides of the tin with a double thickness of parchment paper so that it comes 2" above the edge of the tin. Wrap a sheet of folded newspaper around the outside of the tin and secure with string. Stand the prepared tin on a folded sheet of newspaper. Preheat the oven to 150C

In a large bowl, eat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, adding a little of the flour if the mixture starts to curdle.

Add the fruit, its soaking liquid and the nuts and mix well.

Stir in the flour, taking care not to over mix it. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface with the back of a spoon.

Bake for 3-4 hours or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. If the top of the cake starts to get too brown, cover with a sheet of baking parchment.

When the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin. Store the cake in an airtight tin, wrapped in greaseproof paper and foil for between 2-3 months. Feed the cake with brandy every 2-3 weeks until you are ready to decorate it.