Manga! Anime! All teh things I love

and of course, mooncakes ^^

*status: still at home & unemployed. going deaf from mum's nagging zz*

But anyways, I'm currently reading Black Cat, a gunslinging/thriller/supernatural manga. Shades of the underworld, yeah. It's really good, but I'm only up to chapter 78. This one stretches all the way to 185, I've a long way to go. Waiting for updates for Wolf And Spice, Midnight Secretary (I hate cliffhangers), Hanatsuki Hime. Anime wise .. Bleach 186 was scary. Pomg, if Amagai taicho turns out to be Aizen #2 .. GG us. But it looks likes the filler episodes are ending, hurray! Back to Hueco Mundo already, I'm dying for action and I'm sure I'm not the only one. And on D.Gray-man .. whee, 4th Akuma's might in episode 100 coming soon. Even though the manga chapter was good, can't wait to see how they'll do it in the anime.

Last Friday, I went for an outing, meant for Legends SG members. Runex, FrozenFate, SimWorms, me, Jas, Erik and Clement headed for steamboat dinner at Bugis. The food was okay, arrived at 7 plus and ate all the way til 9 plus. After that we adjourned to TCC at Bugis Square for a bit of chit chat and drinks (I love hot chocolate~ but not the whipped cream) and we had to run for the last train hehe. Imagine if we missed it .. all sit at MRT station emo =x

Saturday was spent at Aljunied buying ingredients for making mooncake from Kwong Chong Thye. This year, mum decided to make them again, so I was roped in to help her carry all the stuff back home. We went overboard with the paste, spending $100+ on all that stuff.

From top left: Green tea, lotus paste, mango, white lotus paste. (it should be horizontal but it keeps coming out as vertical)




















As for the other materials, from top-left clockwise: Crisco (in chinese its 板油) very essential for snowskin mooncakes, which is what we made; melon seeds, glutinous rice flours and icing sugar.
















Ok, here's the recipe if you guys wanna do this on your own (set aside a day for this .. backbreaking work tho its easy!)

You need: 225 gm glutinous rice flour, 75 gm Crisco, 200 gm icing sugar, 360 gm ice water (don't go by ml), colouring (we pounded pandan leaves and mixed a bit of water to make the mooncake skin green) and extra cooked glutinous rice flour for dusting. [this portion makes approx 20 mini snowskin mooncakes]

1) Choose the paste of your choice and weigh them at 24gm each (subject to preference, but at least 20gm)
2) Sieve the glutinous rice flour first.
3) Mix the rice flour, crisco and icing sugar evenly. I don't mean pour them together in a lump, do the rice flour and crisco slowly bit by bit, then the icing sugar.
4) When done, make a well in the center of the mixture (think volcano) and pour the ice water slowly, kneading into a dough.
5) Weigh the dough at 20gm each (or more if you want a thicker skin) then wrap with beanpaste.

After that, put the mixture into moulds like so:
















See the dusting of rice flour in the mould? That's so the mixture doesn't stick. Rub some on your hands too, so its easier. Then with the cheek of your palm, press the ball of mixture down firmly, then coat the bottom with a bit of rice flour. Hit the mould on both sides once, then the top, turn it on the side and knock it out onto your palm.

Pics below i) our dining table turned into a war zone ii) the finished "product" - we bought boxes too































Hope you guys enjoyed Mooncake Festival. I certainly did ^^