dad.

Celebrated dad's birthday earlier on. well, i trained til nine, but they were nice enough to wait for me to blow the candle on the carrot cake muffin i made, topped with a generous amount of orange cream cheese frosting made by my sister (oh yeah, a collaboration).
i woke up especially early (0730) to bake those muffins, but this is the first time i baked a cake on my own. So it wasnt exactly fantastic - there wasnt enough carrot, so i added orange zest. and i added five spice powder instead of normal spice. and i overbaked the muffins such that they had the consistency of a really soft rock.

my mom was like "not bad... i love the flavour. what did you add?"
"Err... something called five spice powder i found in the drawer.."
-my parents stopped eating and stared at the muffins, then at me-
"you added five spice?"
"yeah...i think i might have added a pinch of cinnamon along..."
"Five spice is for chinese cooking."

But hey, my mom is pretty hard to please, and she was quite sastisfied with the muffins. turns out that the carrot cake recipie i got was supposed to be slightly hard. Dad's pretty pleased as well - his daughters never put in so much effort to bake for him. It was always the usual "Hey dad, here's something i got from blah blah..." My sis went all the way to northpoint cold storage to get cream cheese when she realised the one we had in the fridge expired. and she's the sort who would never budge once she stepped into the house.

and the dinner was fabulous - started off with a sweet creamy pumpkin soup with toast spreaded with mentaiko, followed by grilled salmon with boiled fresh florets of white and greens. Healthy enough for us to end off with the carrot cake with the heavenly orange cream cheese frosting. =)

happy birthday daddy. you are such a dear, even though you spent quite sometime trying to finish one large, rock muffin. love ya.