Happy Two!

It was Baby's 2nd birthday.

For some reason, I always have some grand plan of sourcing for her ultimate birthday cake months ahead, but never got any confirmed. In the end, I rushed to order a cake just 3 or 4 days in advance. How ironical, yet typical of me!

My beloved mother brought me the ingredients for cooking Baby's mee sua - a Hokkien tradition for a loved one's birthday.

Ingredients: garlic, shallot, two hardboiled eggs, slices of Chinese mushrooms, pork and mee sua (In case I forget how to prepare the mee sua in future)

The Minnie-theme cake I sourced on the web with our once-a-year shot
The sister lit the candles The pretty cake

An excited Baby
"Blow the candles!"

Isn't she an angel with that smile?

Yum Cha Express delivery. They were piping hot when they arrived!

Pine Garden's Citrus Drop (top tier) and Hazelnut Chocolate Crunch (bottom tier)

The birthday girl is tired

My kids' birthday celebration is always another reason for the adults to gather and the kid-cousins to play together.

Very exhausting I must admit, but the end results are almost always satisfying, especially when you see that everybody is happy with the food, and the amount of it.

Baby seemed to know that everybody was singing the birthday song to her. She responded really excitedly - she kicked her legs in excitement and laughed aloud while in my sister's arms. It was cute to see.

Happy Two, my baby!

Verdict on the cake:

Citrus Drop - The commercial description is definitely superior to its actual taste. It is quite sour. More sour than sweet. I'll definitely skip it the next time.

Hazelnut Chocolate Crunch - I wouldn't scream over it. It is okay. The chocolate sponge is ... well ... chocolatey, with layers of pale chocolate cream and chocolate chips for that crunchy bite. Not phenomenal though. I'd much prefer the other chocolate cake ie. Bailey's chocolate crunch, which I'd skipped due to its equally superior price.

As usual, the cream is thick for the purpose of decoration. I like the colours and the fact that Pine Garden was able to meet my demands of the cake. I emailed them pictures and explained in details how I wanted the cake to be like.

But I appreciate Pine Garden's step of faith in trusting its customers by delivering the cake to their doorstep without the need for them to go down to the shop to place a deposit first.

I thought it'd be perfect if Pine Garden is not so sticky over copyright issue. I'd wanted a Minnie Mouse's pair of ears on the cake, behind the ribbon, but they'd insisted that it would be tantamount to an infringement of copyright should they emulate it. Quite a damper there.

Yum Cha Dim Sum - Despite the mistake of substituting another dim sum I could not tell what it was for glutinuous rice with chicken, I have to give credit to Yum Cha for arriving steaming hot. The dim sum spread was more than sufficient for 12 adults and 4 kids. In fact, we could not finish them. Because of the massive amount of food, I suspect I ate myself silly and did not entirely enjoy the taste of the food. Not much different from the ones we have at the restaurant itself I felt. Besides, it was rather cold when we started tucking in. The food arrived a little over 7pm but the guests only fully arrived at after 8pm

But I must say the delivery guy was not all pleasant. He looked miffed (over what I don't know) and heaved a sigh of ... unhappy relief as he placed the load of dim sum on the floor before he laid the table.