Cup cake and movie for Spring...

Spring is a poetic season after the most poetic season of Autumn, ...other than commonly understood, Spring is the time for fresh start, everything is renewed again. Spring is time to fall in love, animal kingdom have proven so, the flower kingdom have proven so, I guess also for human kingdom. Everything is blossoming and growing again so beautifully. To celebrate Spring, I'd like to share with you "prince n princess cup cake" and two movies recently added to my favorite list. "Everything is Illuminated"and "Okuribito" or "Departures" in english.

Prince and Princess cup cake receipe:

Cup cake ingredient:

1.)200gm butter
2.)200gm fine granulate sugar
3.)200gm flour
4.)4 large eggs
5.) Vanilla essence 1 tsp
6.) 4 tbsp milk
7.) 1.5 tsp baking powder

Icing:
1.) 450 gm icing sugar
2.) blue color(wilton icing color is a good choice)
3.) pink color(wilton icing color is a good choice)
4.) warm water
5.) glycerin(optional)
6.) 1 tbsp butter
7.) any flovour of your choice, suggestion:blue berry for blue icing or rasberry for pink


1. beat butter and sugar until fluffy, add in the eggs one by one, beat well at intervals of each egg added, after all eggs are added in you should have a combination of icing alike texture, fluffy but emulsfying. (to avoid curdling of the combination, I advice using a metal mixing bowl, a plastic bowl will melt butter too fast if the weather is hot)
2. add vanilla essence
3. add baking power into flour, mix well, and divide flour into 4 portions, fold in each portion of flour until all 4 portions are folded in.
4. fold in milk
5. fill the paper cup up to 75% full 6. bake in preheat oven of 180 degrees Celsius until golden in colour
7. cool cup cakes on a wire rack

icing Method:
Icing: shift icing sugar into bowl, add warm water bit by bit until you obtain a spreadable consistency, add in butter and glycerin, mix well; divide into two portions, color each portion with its individual flavour and color. Spread the icing on the cup cake and serve... hmmm enjoy the cake and imagine you are in a whimsical land of fairy..Prince..and Princess, enjoy..

" Everything is Illuminated"

Tale of a young man's quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather in a small Ukrainian town that was wiped off the map by the Nazi invasion. What starts out as a journey to piece together one family story under the most absurd circumstances turns into a surprisingly meaningful journey with a powerful series of revelations-- a movie about a journey of searching for family roots, a funny and meaningful drama that touched my heart. "Everything is Illuminted" is a 2005 adventure drama, written and directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz. It was adapted from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, and was the debut film of Liev Schreiber...

Elijah Wood plays Jonathan, a collector of "things"often left by a deceased family member. He wears large glasses on this nose, the lens is so huge it magnifies his eyes... he has a room where he keeps collected "things" such as a photo, a denture....and used condom!.... With his granmother who just passed away and left him her dentures, a photo of a couple and an amber locket with a grasshopper crystalised in it.. he started to wonder who was the couple in the photo and the story of the antique amber locket, follow him as he embark on the remarkable and funny journey to search for his roots as far as Ukraine...beautiful country side, unique culture, strange and funny english as he encounter with the local tour guide consisting of a grandfather and grandson and a "all sight seeing" dog. As the story enfolds, it is a journey of self discovery and reconciliation of the bitter past that touches the heart...despite the touching story-line, the funny dialogues, beautiful secenery, I must mention also the art direction... it is a two-thumbs up "premium" work!

"Okuribito" or "Departures"

- profound and sometimes a comical journey with death as the protagonist uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living... a movie about an unemployed cellist who finds work with a company that prepares corpses for cremation. Life from cellist to undertaker in a japanese society.

Award- this film won the best foreign language category at the academy award 2009

Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. Inspired by Japanese author Shinmon Aoki's mortician memoir, Coffinman, the pic's best parts reveal the meticulous and stylized casketing of bodies for cremation. Performed -- for that's precisely the word to describe it -- in front of family members in various stages of grief, the ritual involves washing, dressing and grooming the body; the trick is to do it while exposing a minimum of skin. While his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living.

My Very First Of Everything...

Welcome to the Apple Blog! Hello there! I believe you have seen some of my works already, thanks for seeing really, as everything is "so first" to me... my first web-shop, first blog, first time struggling to complete and to put up this web-site, my first collection on the web! If there is any area on my site that is not so user friendly to you, please do drop me a line or two so that I can improve on it, thanks in advance...

Let me introduced my self, my name is Jacquelyn, I'm formally trained in fashion design, and have been in the fashion industry for very long now....I love God, my husband, my daughter, arts, movie, food....and many more...so, even though I'm writing this, i'm very glad to my Abba Father in heaven that I'm able to come this far; He inspired, guide, provided courage, strength, wisdom and blessed all elements I ever needed to make all this happen; against all odds if I must say...so thank you my Lord my God, in return I pray that whoever reads this blog, visits my site, or makes any purchase will be blessed abundantly too.

I will share with you in my blog featuring on a regular basis..em...dessert receipy, art work, my movie review, style and beauty tips....and more. Why style but not trend you may ask? if you build up your style, you will never need to worry about being out of trend.. its the 7:3 ratio thing, of course, style is on the ratio of 7. Are you guessing my age? me too...well humans are curious creatures...my daughter Elina, will be in her first year reading law coming January 2009. Ok, I also teach at the children bible school in my church...

My husband, Jason is my pillar of strength to me and my daughter all this while... he is my blanket when I'm cold, a listener when I whine.....

For my very first blog I'd like to share with you a delicious cookie recipe, as the holiday season is near, you could try baking this cookie and sharing it with your loved ones, its not only nice to look at but it also tastes yummy!

Autumn-Moon Horse Cookie

Tools:

1. Horse-shaped cookie cutter ( I bought this horse shape cookie cutter at Ikea, but can use any animal cookie cutter, really, just change the name "horse" to suit the cutter shape *u*)

2. Cookie tray ( non stick or spray non-stick on the normal tray )

3. Rolling pin

4. Ceramic mixing bowl

5. brush for eggs wash and hot syrup ( avoid plastic type )

( Prepare the thick golden syrup 2 days ahead in advance, we will use a portion of it and store the rest for making the same cookie next time or you can use it to mix cocktail drinks....the syrup keeps well in airtight containers for a long time)

* to make thick golden syrup: 1 KG of sugar + 750 ML water + 4 slices lemon; mix this 3 items together in the pot; cook on high flame and bring it to boil and make sure all sugar grain has dissolved at this point, turn to small flame and let it simmer, constantly brush down inner side of pot with cold water to prevent sugar from crystallized, continue cooking the syrup until thick and deep golden color, turn off the flame; the syrup is ready. Let it cool down before storing.*

*pre-mixed the base of this cookie 1 night ahead to let it set for next day.

Ingredients group A

1. 300 gram of the thick golden syrup (see instructions for syrup making above)

2. 120 gram oil ( any cooking oil of your choice )

3. 1 teaspoon alkaline water (you can either buy this or make it yourself. to buy, it is easily available at the chinese/asian market, it is called " kan shui" in chinese which literally means alkaline water or lye water; or, if you have sodium bicarbonate , mix 1 tablespoon sodium bicarbonate with 2 tablespoon water, mix till dissolve; the solution is lye solution or alkaline water. We will need 1 teaspoon of this water.

4. 2 tablespoon low protein flour ( or any flour which is suitable to make cake and cookie but not for making bread )

Method:

mix thick golden syrup + oil + alkaline water in a ceramic bowl and gave it a good mix, you will see that it begins to turn thicker, then you are on the right track; next step, you add in the 2 tablespoon of flour and give it a good mix; cover, and put aside.

the next day:

Ingredients group B:

1. 600 gram low protein flour

2. Have some extra flour for dusting table top and cookie cutter

3. 1 egg + pinch of salt + 1 tablespoon of milk or cream; mix well, this is for glazing the cookie top.

Method:

measure 600 gram of low protein flour and make a well in the middle, pour in the preset syrup mixture, slowly fold in all the flour with spatula until it becomes a well combined cookie dough; next, you dust the table top with some flour and turn the dough on to table top, use the rolling pin to roll out the dough to about half centimeter thick, dust dough top a little if it sticks, then dip the cookie cutter in the flour and then press on the dough as close to each other as possible, ( this is to prevent the dough from over kneading, we want the cookies to be crispy not tough) lightly gather all the left out crust dough and roll out and repeat the cutting process untill all the dough is used up. Preheat the oven 15 min at 170 degrees Celsius. Bake the cookie in the preheated oven for around 5 min than take out to cool for 5 min, while you wait for this tray to cool down ( this is to prevent the egg glaze from being cooked on the hot cookie top) you can alternate this with baking the second tray of cookie. Brush the top of the first tray of cookie with the egg glaze when it cools and return to continue baking it for another 10 min or untill golden brown.

You can decorate this cookie or just leave it plain like the picture above; Without decorations, this cookie can store well up to 2 week. It is lovely and delicious....hmmm..

*gift idea: stack-up 2, 3 or 6 of these cookie, tie a ribbon around and make a bow...you will put a smile on the person who receive this.....*u*

ok, all of you take care now, do come back soon, I hope I got time to write every other day, but if not I do hope it would be a weekly up-date, keep your fingers crossed, reason being I don't have help yet and all the detailed work I need to tend to it myself, well Elina and Jason has chipped in much help already in the area of admin/shipping and editing.

All the merchandise displayed in this web site- from the idea conceived, to designs sketched to finished products are very exclusively hand-made and are produced in very small quantity, so I can only sell on first come first serve basis, and each designs will carry the label " Salmon & Seaweed", a brand label I developed to house all my works. So, you know now its really a precious work of mine for you. Well, I think I have said enough for this time....see you soon....

Love, Jacquelyn *u*