Timbre+

Have you guys heard of the new Timbre+ at One North?

Quoting from their website, it is an upgraded urban food hall offering a diversity of restaurant-graded food and casual eats at affordable prices. Well, I went there for the first time after my interview nearby and the most distinct difference between this and other typical hawker centers is the lively decoration of the entire place. 

When I entered the place, I could see some bars and a stage for live band performances which I told will be opened at night. It was around 1100 when I reached there and there were not a lot of shops that are open, so the variety of food is rather limited. I walked past a few stores and the price range is quite affordable - ranging from $2.50 to $5, and I feel that it's relatively cheaper than food courts. So, lucky for those who are working nearby hurhur.

I wasn't very hungry so I ordered my favorite fried carrot cake (white) from the stall right next to the tray return area. It was $2.50 and I felt that it was a bit oily... but the taste was alright. 

4/5. Not bad.

Speaking of the tray return area, if you need a tray to carry your food, you have to pay and extra $1 on top of your bill. So when you finished your food, to redeem that $1, you will have to return the tray at this area - I don't really know how it works (we didn't have the tray) but apparently there was a conveyor belt and you can place your tray or plates/bowls on it, and then somehow you can collect your $1 at the compartment just right above. 

I will definitely come back again when more stalls are open, and if there's a chance I wanna come here at night to see the live band performance!

Cheers!

I Tried to Bake

I was craving for Red Velvet cake hence I decided to bake one myself since a slice of it is really costly outside. And my oven has been rotting at a corner for quite some time, so I guess it's time to utilize it. 

Headed to NTUC and bought the ingredients that I lacked: salted butter and Philadelphia cream cheese. I was really happy because there was some discount going on and I could save a bit; usually the butter costs like $3.35 but now it's 2 for $5.25 and the cream cheese is $4.55 instead of $5.75 - something like that I don't really remember the exact prices, but yeah the auntie side of me only buys stuff that are cheap/on discount hurhur. 

And then I realized that I do not have a pan to bake a legit cake. Like those aluminum flat based kind. So I went to dig around the whole house and finally found a steel pan that I thought could be used. But I wasn't sure whether it is safe to be put into the oven so I ended up googling stuff like "Types of metal for baking in an oven" and of course I was still unsecured so I took a picture to show my expert baker aunt and she told me yes this could be used and no it won't explode HAHAHA.

Okay sorry for the long story. Basically I just used my usual cupcake recipe which I adapted from the YouTube channel "Jemma Cupcakes". She bakes like really awesome stuff and I am positive that I will never be able to achieve that. You guys should check it out. But instead of pouring the batter into cupcake holders, I poured it into the pan. Like duh.

To be honest I was really happy about how the colour turned out cause the last time I made Red Velvet cupcakes it was just so pinkish no matter how much colouring I had added. Sobbles. 

But yays for now.

There was too much batter and luckily for me I found another smaller pan/bowl to contain the rest of the batter.

Baking at 180°C.

All was well until there are water droplets forming on the surface of the cake in the oven. I was pretty worried because this has never happened before. I had to take it out a few times but every time I poked the cake using a toothpick, it was either moist or stained. (They say that it has to be perfectly clean to prove that the cake is done).

In the end, a supposedly 20 minutes baking-in-the-oven session became more like an hour or so. Till the end I still could not get a clean toothpick out after I poked it into the cake. I gave up after a few more tries and decided to just leave the cake to cool.

An guess what, SURPRISE the cake was done and not too soft/hard. It was just nice. So I immediately forgot about the water droplets.

If you're wondering why there is only 1 cake when there were 2 batters, the smaller cake turned out really ugly so I gave it to my boyfriend to bring it home. (Please don't say I am evil).

I felt more confident after seeing how my cake turned out and then I moved on to make my icing. My goal was to lay the whole cake with icing like those on YouTube tutorials - apparently they did it so easily and I thought I could do it too.

So.....

Presenting to you: the ugliest cake in the world.

Yes, I failed terribly.

At this point in time, my heartfelt thanks to those who actually didn't get turned off by the image of the ugly cake at the top and instead continue to read my blogpost.

Thank you for giving me confidence HAHAHA.

So here's an ugly slice for you!