Home Bakes - Cocoa Almond Muffin Cupcakes

My daughter was in the mood to bake cupcakes.  After baking the mini carrot cupcakes on last Sunday, she wanted to try out another cake with different flavour, I was a bit lazy but she promised to help out, she started to randomly flipped through a cake recipe book in the kitchen and found a coffee & walnut cake but I do not have instant coffee power nor walnut.  I do have coco powder and almond flakes which I have not been able to use them for anything yet, thus we have a twist on the ingredients and we had Cocoa Almond Muffin cupcakes instead.

It was supposed to be a cake as per the recipe book, since I have got plenty of unused muffin cupcake cases in stock might as well use them up.  We only made 7 medium size muffin cupcakes using this recipe, using smaller size cupcake cases will yield more. 

I included the ingredients in my youtube video description box for record.

My Little poet

Exam is over.  Lessons has slow down a lot in school, teachers are busy marking and compiling the results.  1st semester is almost come to an end in a few days time.  My girls are bringing back a new batch of text books and work books from school.

Having a free time during her computer class lesson yesterday,  Crystal lets her inspiration flow and became a little poet, sketches of drawings and poems for Pearl, Mummy and Daddy.  She showed her works to me last night, instead of giving her complements, I questioned her instead. Questioning her where did she copy the poems from.   Because the poems are too nice for me to believe that they were written by her at this age.  Her poems go like this:

[To Pearl]
When I am down,
and maybe frown,
You always help me before dawn,
You have the crown,
The crown of love,
and may the Holy Spirit come to you as a dove.


[To Mummy]
You really love to cook,
Take your apron from the hook,
You know how to read cook book,
But I only know how to read a story book.

[To Daddy]
Please do not give up,
I'll help you fill your cup,
With the help of a job,
we can finally not mob.  
{not mob??  what does it mean?? She said she was trying to figure out the last sentence, but couldn't make any sense out of it, hahahaa...]

I especially like the one for Pearl,  it shows how appreciative she is towards her little sister,  when she is down Pearl is always there to cheer her up,  it shows the closeness between the two of them.  How sweet!! Keep up the good work my little Poet!!

  

Angry Birds Dressing up

With all the Angry Birds waves in town, I couldn't help but to buy 2 pretty angry Birds' dresses for my 2 little princesses. In fact, they never asked for any Angry Birds' goodies, not a big fan of Angry Birds as they do to Barbie and Bratz.

Though they are not a big fans of Angry Birds, because of the waves are so strong that they have received many birthday presents and gifts featuring Angry Birds.

in a hypermarket with their new Angry Birds dresses

A surprise for me

Crystal came home from school with a bunch of Taiwanese Pak Choy in a plastic bag. The Daddy was surprise and started to question her. She told her Daddy that she bought it from school to surprise me. Not that she likes to eat vegetable but she knows I always buy vegetable and must have a dish of vegetable in every meals if possible.

I heard with disbelief when Clet told me about it after fetching Crystal from school this afternoon. I was very touched with her act and the thoughtfulness that she possesses at her tender age. She spent her little pocket money to buy me vegetable from an elderly lady who is selling vegetable in her school. She said she is the only student patronising while the rests were all parents.

We cooked the vegetable that she bought for dinner but she only ate a bit. It is just meant for me, she said.

To avoid her from buying vegetable from school again which is not practical for her. I keep reminding her that mummy has got plenty of vegetable in the fridge so please do not buy for me. She just smiled.

Reward For Good Results

To reward for her good academic result, Clet bought Crystal a cookery set as gift, she chose it herself. She attained a 2nd place in the class in her first year of kindergarten, which is not bad at all considering she never had any tuitions and playing computer games at her free time most of her time.

The school awarded her a medal for her good achievement

A cookery set was given by Daddy as a reward for job well done.
Crystal was playing

and Pearl joined in

As usual, they disagree with each other while playing the cookery set, Pearl went off and grabbed a book to read by herself; As big sister, Crystal came round and pujuk her :D

Mooncake Festival celebration at school

This is a late entry for Mooncake festival which was celebrated 2 weeks ago at Crystal's school. The programmes for that night among others were performances, Tang Lung competitions. Light dinner and mooncakes were served on that evening too..Each class made their own tang lung as their entries to the contest, here they are:

Teachers and students are getting ready to carry their tang lungs into the performance hall.

Crystal in her class before dinner.

Took the opportunity to show her colouring in school
She got a consolation prize for this piece of Merdeka Day's colouring competition in school.

My Little Sunshine

Crystal was selected to be one of the contestants in the school's singing competition last month. Her competition song was "You are My Sunshine", coincidently this was the song the daddy always singing to her while I was pregnant to her. She practised at home weeks before the competition, unfortunately she was not selected into the final, she claimed that due to cough & flu she was unable to perform well in the selecting process, we knew very well that she had done her best.

Know what?? Much to our surprise that at the age of less than 3 years, Pearl has actually picked up the song after listening to Crystal practising at home. Now, let's me present our little sunshine with her song "You are My Sunshine".

Wordless Wednesday - Belated Father's Day Celebration

As Clet was away on Father's Day sunday, we only managed to wish him over the phone. Besides a Father's Day card she made in school, Crystal requested me to bake a cake and she wanted to decorate it for the daddy yesterday. How sweet and thoughtful of her!!

Daddy and daughters join hands cutting the cake.

Photo Hunters - Emotions

The children had a wonderful time welcoming a brand new year 2008. As you can see Crystal is truly happy and enjoyed the occasion.

SETTING A LIMIT

Eversince I started printing some colouring pages out from the web for Crystal to practice colouring during her school holiday, she had soon discovered more interesting stuff in the web than only colouring pages. She was so excited to learn so much fun stuff that she took over my computer spending hours and hours surfing around Disney Playhouse webpages and other similar webpages, playing games and online colouring; skipping her nap times as a result. She looked pretty exhausted after that which I strongly think it would not be healthy for her if this practice were to continue. So I decided to limit her computer time to only one hour a day after the second day. In order to show to her that I am serious in setting a limit and keeping my promise, I have to make sure that the one hour of computer time is all hers and I will be there to guide her whenever she needs me.

By setting a limit will benefit her in such a way that she will not be deprived from attaining computer knowledge and also in a healthy manner. She is glad and happy with the arrangement so far. At the same time, she has also learned to read the time on the bottom left corner to mark her allocated computer time when is due to stop.

TUESDAY TOOT - SHE'S GOT IT !!

My girls like to climb and sit on my lab when I am doing my work at the computer, they know there are so much to see from the screen. Crystal in particular would request to go on her colouring pages website to choose and print some pages to colour, and it takes ages for her to choose the one she likes (in actual fact she just having fun viewing all the pages). Since she is on the computer I wouldn't have the chance to work, it also takes up my time waiting for her to decide so the best way is to teach her how to print and let her take her own sweet time. Luckily she is a pretty fast learner, after guiding her for a few times, she is able to print the colouring page all by herself now. A big TOOT for Crystal !!

CRYSTAL'S SCHOOL RESULT

Parents of Crystal's kindergarten will be collecting their children's report cards on Saturday, that tomorrow, 24th May 2008. Since we were early in picking Crystal up today, I managed to collect from her form teacher this morning saving us a trip to the school again tomorrow. According to her teacher, her results are good but her interest in Bahasa Malaysia is lacking. She refused to pay attention in her BM classes; she was either walking around or purposely finding something else to do during the classes, like taking her sweet time to the washroom or excuse herself to drink water; teacher has attempted to get her to sit in the front row so that she can concentrate. After hearing the teacher's comment, I interviewed Crystal a bit, she admitted what she did in the BM classes because she does not like BM, erhrrr.. (sounded serious too..we as parents have to take this seriously too before it's too late!!!). In order to change her mentalilty on her dislike, we have to explain why she mustn't have this kind of thought. She sounded convinced with our explanations hopefully she will improve in the coming semester.

Crystal's school results for the 1st semester of 2008

COLOURING COMPETITION

Crystal went for a colouring competition in Wawasan Plaza on 10th May 2008, the theme was Happy Mother's Day. She only managed to grab hold of a consolation prize this time as the standard of colouring by other contestants are very high especially those attending private colouring classes. They deserved to win as they have put their time and effort into learning the skills of colouring and put them into practice. I had actually visited a number of private art schools some months ago planning to enrol Crystal to one of the school in order for her to sharpen her skills, due to the money constraint and time factor we have put this idea on hold for the time being. Will definitely set a budget for her tuition fees since she has shown so much interest in colouring that I would love to see her excel in this area.

CRYSTAL'S FLOWER ARRANGEMENT

Don't you think girls just love flowers? Crystal is being very adventurous nowadays by digging and searching for things that I have been keeping away in the drawers, boxes or containers. And that day she found these "treasures" in my flowers containers and start playing around with them after obtaining my permission. Those are the loose artificial flowers that I have been keeping from my previous flower arrangements hoping that I could make use of them later. She was having a great time and looked pretty determine in getting the arrangement done :D This is her second attempts in arranging flowers, her first attempt was a fresh flower arrangement which was not bad too..

look how serious she is..!!

Progressing well..It's done...An arrangement by little Crystal now being display on the coffee table. :)

CRYSTAL SHOWING HER TALENT :)

Crystal's first flower arrangement, not bad at all :D

On Thursday, we sent Pearl to her baby sitter anticipating that we are going to have a busy day arranging and delivering 3 orders of condolence flower arrangements ordered by a friend to be sent on 3pm the day itself. Crystal felt so bored and restless being alone at home that she was all over my messy work place for a while picking up some flowers from the table and on the floor, little that I knew what she was up to (so long as she doesn't disturb me or play with the cutter). Not long after that she was proudly showing her flower arrangement and trying to find ribbons to decorate it. Finally she found the princesses' cellotape that I had been keeping in my tool's box. This is her first piece of flower arrangement using a plastic tissue box as pot, and I must say I am amazed with her talent :)