vanilla vanilla + sprinkles!

on tuesday, in a stroke of inspiration and sugar-craving, i decided to make cupcakes for a friend's birthday. ariff and i are extreme fans of baked goods, and i have tried my hand at making quite a number of cakes, breads and other desserts in the past. my go-to recipe has always been my mother's pound cake recipe because of its reliable results. about 5 years ago, however, i discovered that there are a number of quite reliable recipes to choose from on the internet, some of which i've tried and turned out extremely well. from then on, i've put aside the pound cake recipe in favour of adventure in the sea of delicious desserts and melt-in-the-mouth morsels! (but i still go back to the pound cake recipe when i screw a new recipe up. my umbrella on a rainy day!)

cupcakes baking in my oven. i always feel an indescribable feeling of achievement 

when i see them rising like this 

my little helper frosting the chocolate cupcakes and bikini people

in my rather limited experience of baking, i've realized that baking really IS chemistry. it's an orchestration of ingredients and their measurements, temperature, technique and passion. you cannot rely on just a good recipe to get good results. you have to cream the butter and sugar the right way, remember not to dump in all of the flour at once, make sure the eggs are beat in well and, afterwards, not to overbeat the mixture. all these steps ensure that there will be enough air in the butter and sugar mixture to lift the cake while its baking, that the gluten in the flour is not so overdeveloped that it produces a tough cake, and that the eggs emulsify in the batter as the protein coagulates while baking and helps to hold the shape of the cake. though cooking is also a chemical process that produces flavour in food, i find that baking hinges on more precise and complex use of chemical reactions to produce yummy treats. and this is precisely why sometimes i fail, quite miserably so too. 


however, on tuesday, i wanted to make sure that i didn't repeat any of my past mistakes that resulted in gritty cupcakes (because i didn't cream the butter and sugar enough, there were sugar crystals that didn't melt into the batter) or sunken cupcakes (because i was too curious. i opened the oven door too many times so the oven's temperature dropped and affected the 'baking' process of the cake batter). i diligently followed the tips provided on baking websites such as baking911 and the cupcake bakeshop, and voila! i am happy to report that they turned out rather well!

Magnolia Cupcakes (picture taken from here) 

are they not the prettiest things you've ever seen in your life?

i decided that i wanted to make the famous Magnolia Vanilla Vanilla cupcakes as i was feeling rather nostalgic about my time in new york a few years ago. magnolia bakery is famous for its cupcakes, most remembered for its reference on the tv show 'sex and the city'. i found the recipe on food network:


Ingredients for cupcakes:


1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract


the steps for making the cupcakes were so easy: sift flours together, cream butter and sugar, add eggs, alternately add flour and liquids in three parts, bake. easy! i used an electric mixer (wedding gift from my dear debate friends!) and followed the tips from the websites i referred to earlier. i made sure that the butter (not really at room temperature, but still a little firm because the electric mixer warms everything up anyway) and sugar were creamed till light and fluffy but not till the point of being oily, and that i beat the eggs well after each addition. from my past baking missions, i find that these two steps are where i screw up the most and end up with grainy or eggy cake. 

the recipe is supposed to yield 24 cupcakes, but i used a mixture of muffin and cupcake liners and ended up with about 30. they bake for 20-25 minutes at 180d celsius. a note though: i decided to use muffin liners at first because mine are a cute light blue and white polka dot pattern, but i soon discovered that baking cupcakes in muffin liners, no matter how cute they are, is not worth it because it can be rather messy. the cake shrinks away from the structured paper liner and leaves a great moat of nothingness between liner and cake, and the edges of the paper liner are usually crumb-y. all this made the icing process quite a tediously messy affair. 

get set, ready, bake!

the frosting for the cakes is actually an old-fashioned butter and icing sugar mixture:

Ingredients for frosting:


1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
6-8 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract

method: cream half of the sugar with everything, then add the remaining sugar until you achieve the desired consistency.


i only made half a batch as i am always skeptical about frosting recipes. but even with just 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of sugar, the frosting turned out to be extremely sweet! i had already expected this because icing sugar frostings do tend to be on the toothachingly sweet side because it relies on large amounts of sugar to achieve spreadable consistencies. basically, it's just a pile of sugar with a little butter and flavour. *yuck*. i was not at all happy with it, so i added a little lemon juice and zest which adds a little acid to cut down on the sweetness. it turned out alright, but i decided not to ice the cupcakes as i usually would i.e. piping a blob on top of it. instead i spread some with a palette knife, just enough to stick sprinkles on.


oh yes! sprinkles! i learnt that if you put some sprinkles on a plate or bowl and dip the iced tops of the cupcakes, it produces a heavenly crunchy crust! it's a colourful way to add some texture. how fun!

at the end of it though, i was very pleased with the results of the cake. the tiny smidge of frosting on top was just enough to make it, to use a friend's description, dreamy. 

vanilla vanilla + sprinkles!

i make dream cupcakes, so please, call me the sandman :) (with compliments to Magnolia Bakery of course).

when does one actually start living?

i have a job interview tomorrow, something that i'm hopeful about. just this morning as i was pottering around the house, waiting for a client to call, and wondering if i could be satisfied with what i have now, a nice man called to ask whether i'd like to work for his university.

i don't know if i'd like to teach his students at his university.

but i'd like to try :)

good luck to me!

A GIRL YOU SHOULD DATE

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

– Rosemarie Urquico –

To kick start the years reading list, i decided to pick up Richard Koch's book that highlighted Pareto's 80/20 Principle. What i found intriguing about his writing was the following:

-"Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least"

-10 golden rules for career success:

1) Specialise in a very small niche; develop a core skill

2) Choose a niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming an acknowledged leader

3) Realise that knowledge is power

4) Identify your market and your core customers and serve them best

5) Identify where 20of effort gives 80%% of returns

6) Learn from the best; observe, learn, practice

7) Become self-employed early in your career

8) Employ as many net value creators as possible

9) Use outside contractors for everything but your core skill

10) Exploit capital leverage

In summary, rewards increasingly demonstrate the 80/20 Principle: the winners take all. Those who are truly ambitious must aim for the top in their field. Choose your field narrowly. Specialise. Choose the niche that is made for you. You will not excel unless you also enjoy what you are doing. Success requires knowledge. But success also requires into what delivers the greatest customer satisfaction with the least use of resources. Identify where 20% of resources can be made to deliver 80% of returns. Early in your career, learn all there is to be learned. You can only do this by working for the best firms and the best individuals within them, “best” being defined with reference to your own narrow niche. Obtain the four forms of labour leverage. First, leverage your own time. Second, capture 100% of its value by becoming self-employed. Third, employ as many net value creators as possible. Fourth, contract out everything that you and your colleagues are not several times better at doing. If you do all this, you will have built your career into a firm, your own firm. At this stage, use capital leverage to multiply its wealth.

-Two ways to be happier:

i) Identify the times when you are happiest and expand them as much as possible

ii) Identify the times when you are least happy and reduce them as much as possible

MAKING OURSELVES HAPPY BY STRENGTHENING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Daniel Goleman and other writers have contrasted academic intelligence or IQ with emotional intelligence: “abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and delay gratification; toregulate one’s moods and to keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to emphasise and to hope.” EQ is more crucial for happiness than intellectual intelligence, yet our society places little emphasis on the development of EQ. As Goleman aptly remarks:

Even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige, or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on academic abilities, ignoring EQ, as set of traits—some might call it character—that also matters immensely for our personal destiny.

The good news is that EQ can be cultivated and learned: certainly as a child, but also at any stage in life. In Goleman’s wonderful phrase, “Temperament is not destiny”: we can change our destiny by changing our temperament. Psychologist Martin Seligman points out that “moods like anxiety, sadness and anger don’t just descend on you without your having any control over them…you can change the way you feel by what you think.” There are proven techniques for exiting feelings of incipient sadness and depression before they become damaging to your health and happiness. Moreover, by cultivating habits of optimism you can help to prevent disease as well as have a happier life. Again, Goleman shows that happiness is related to neurological processes in the brain:

Among the main biological changes in happiness is an increased activity in a brain center that inhibits negative feelings and fosters an increase in available energy, and a quieting of those that generate worrisome thought…there is…a quiescence, which makes the body recover more quickly from the biological arousal of upsetting emotions.

Identify personal levers that can magnify positive thoughts and cut off negative ones. In what circumstances are you at your most positive and most negative? Where are you? Who are you with? What are you doing? What is the weather like? Everyone has a wide range of EQ, depending on the circumstances. You can start to build up your EQ by giving yourself a break, by skewing the odds in your favour, by doing the things where you feel most in control and most benevolent. You can also avoid or minimise the circumstances where you are at your most emotionally stupid!

MEDIUM-TERM STRATEGEMS FOR HAPPINESS

Seven shortcuts to a happy life:

i) Maximise your control

ii) Set attainable goals

iii) Be flexible

iv) Have a close relationship with your partner

v) Have a few happy friends

vi) Have a few close professional alliances

vii) Evolve your ideal lifestyle

Conclusion

Happiness is a duty. We should choose to be happy. We should work at happiness. And in doing so, we should help those closest to us, and even those who just stumble across us, to share our happiness.

promises oh promises

tomorrow will be the last day of 2011. i know i made a lot of promises at the start of the year, but now that we're here, i really can't remember any of them!

oh promises and new year resolutions. pfft.

i want to read, to write, to kickbox, to run, to swim, to love, to appreciate and cherish more. i want to learn about myself and others, learn to be satisfied, learn to think for myself, learn to decide for myself and learn that being afraid is ok, as long as you try to conquer it. that's what i want to do for the rest of my life.

remembering the wonderful things that have already happened too. i want to keep everything alive!

oooh, and i'd love to have bangkok again :)

lovely!

Time To Take Back Control: 2012

As I write this on the eve of 20 December 2011 =), I contemplate on how much has changed in the pass year and probably the only regret was not to pen my thoughts down as much as I should (most probably due to the DPA & DID courses). Though I remember clearly big events like our wedding, graduations, family passing, and short getaway trips; I still wished that I penned down those moments. Well, better now than never I say.

The next one (1) year is going to be an interesting year indeed. This year I would be turning 28 and I am taking this as a significant year for self-development in total after neglecting myself and my self development in the previous years. This list has been 3 years in the making but I have to say that 2012 is the year I finally will be setting my focus in achieving these goals insyallah. My goals for 2012 are as follows and I intend to do a monthly tracker on these goals. Till then, below are my focuses for the coming year:

ARIFF ’s HEARTS DESIRES FOR 2012

Work

- To acquire knowledge/learn as much as I can in a day relating to my work at WP

- “Everything you’re experiencing now is training you to be a diplomat later”

-To have a work journal that focuses on “Lessons Learned”; to be more observant

-To be more thorough in overall task given

Weight

- To lose 20kg by 20/12/2012 (105kg>85kg)

- To incorporate at least 20 minutes a day to exercise/3x a week

- To be very aware of my food intake every meal

Foreign Language

-Depending on the posting, I intend to be proficient in the language in the country I’m posted in

Relationships

-To focus on the moments we share: Family, Fea, Friends

- To remember people by their names first and not just their faces

-To be friendlier and firmer in decision / > desicive

Knowledge

- Read at least 12 books for 2012

-To have at least a weekly post for our blog for the year 2012

My Fathers Stereo

MY FATHERS STEREO

By: Mohamed Ariff Bin Mohamed Ali

“To abah; for always being there even when you are not”

The Wikipedia defines stereophonic sound, commonly called stereo, as ‘the reproduction of sound using two or more independent audio channels through a symmetrical configuration of loudspeakers in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing. It is often contrasted with monophonic, or "mono" sound, where audio is in the form of one channel, often centered in the sound field’. Ask a stereo junky and probably he/she would say that a stereo is not merely the above but probably also an instrument to escape the hustle and bustle that is life. My father is or would I say was that sort of person.

All my life, it has been ingrained in my head that my father is a disciplined, no nonsense kind of character. He is someone who has a penchant for collecting almost everything, from old school dhobi irons to Malaysian first day covers. On top of all that, he is also very meticulous and never leaves any stone unturned thus preventing my siblings and I to get away with any nonsense. Hence, it really puzzles me when I see a softer side to him, like when he gardens at home or the way he acts around babies. Up to this point of my writing, I bet you might wonder what this has to do with my father’s stereo.

Patience is a virtue my friend and with that the story begins. My father came from humble beginnings. Growing up (and to my recent knowledge), I know that my father (as my mother would put it) “cannot dance nor sing but the man appreciates good music”. So that was probably his justification of getting his very own stereo set which cost approximately RM 1200, known back then as “the works”. I wished I was there to see him own it. I could swear I saw a glow on his face when he recalled the memories of his stereo. The story continued with my father having to part ways with his prized possession to help finance his hantaran perkahwinan.

My father’s story was one of the most important life lessons I’ve picked up. This is because it became clear to me that at times of great importance, we have to forgo or sacrifice the things that we hold dear for something bigger that we love. Whether that ‘thing’ is an offer to pursue studies abroad versus a government job that you have always dreamt of getting, or whether it be a choice to go to your parents house or your in-laws for the first day of Raya, or even if that choice is between selling your favourite stereo to finance your wedding to the woman of your dreams. This was an important revelation for me because I understood then that whatever the crossroads we face in life, it is always advisable to take a moment and see the bigger picture of the choices we are about to take and the outcomes we are about to live with for the rest of our lives.

At the end of DPA, I too would be taking the plunge into the world of marriage. Like my father 27 years ago before me once sold his dear stereo to finance what he says today is probably his ‘best collection’ of memories that he could ever have, it is my turn to follow suit to part with my own version of a ‘stereo’. Nevertheless, I would like to look back, just like my father did 27 years down the line at my wife and (hopefully fingers crossed) our four children and say with a sense of pride that it was worth the journey and that there are no regrets whatsoever.

There are moments when I ask to myself why my father never got another stereo. I realise then that it is because my mother does not appreciate loud music (especially blaring from stereos). This only reveals strength of character in my father: compromise. But I will keep that story for another day. For now, I am just glad he gave me a good guiding light to follow and a story that I will remember him by.