on the wishlist

I wish hubs can have time to re-do my blog lay-out. 

Ube macapuno cake in the house

Being away from your home country takes you to this different level of yearning which makes you find ways to get a feel and have a taste of home.

I was craving for ube cake. But Filipino stores here sell their ube cakes quite over the top. So, what a better way to put the cake mixer into a very good use -- I made an ube macapuno cake!

I was browsing through the net to find that best ube cake recipe and I was quite lucky to land on a very helpful Pinay from Oz blog with it.

And here's the masterpiece tada!

First birthday of little fairy princess

Oh dear! I seem to have put aside blogging for a wee bit of time.

Perhaps, to get on a good start this year, I'm sharing one great milestone in our family. Our daughter turned one on September last year. Yes, time flies so quickly. She's now out and about, jumping and dancing just like any toddler's daily grinding days will be.

But this entry is all about another milestone -- that's for myself. What's more special with her birthday is her birthday cake. I baked and decorated her cake all from scratch. So proud of myself right now. hmmm...

Her birthday theme is fairy garden. I tried my best to come up with a cake that will copy a garden setting.

The cake is made up of two layers of chocolate cake and a vanilla cake layer in the middle. I used almond-flavoured buttercream. The decorations are mostly dried icing and fondant.

I have my fingers crossed to bake more. =)

My first decorated cake

I was so elated last week for finishing my first ever decorated cake!


I was quite surprised that icing a cake is not that easy. Those Youtube vids are making them easy peezy…but they’re not. It took me one hour just putting the icing on and trying to level everything in as much perfection as I can, given the restrained time.

What I am most proud of is that everything is made from scratch. From the cake, the frosting and the decorations. I have used three layers of chocolate cake for this.

My cake is iced with almond-flavoured buttercream frosting. I’ve used a tinge of rose-coloured Wilton gel. The gels are really strong, I only dipped each sides of a toothpick into the gel container. Not really a lot. I was hoping that the icing will come out as a a touch of soft pink. Nonetheless, I think the icing colour is perfect!

The decorations were made from scratch. The rose buds and butterflies were made from royal icing. It’s supposed to have roses and leaves as well but time constraint is my number one enemy. Very unrelenting indeed.

Just plainly beaming with joy after this. =)

my travel bucket list

Still dreaming of my Europe tour. Haiz.

So, to start the ball rolling, listed are the places I want to visit:

1.  Venice, Italy
2.  Paris, France
3.  Rome, Italy 
4.  Prague, Czech Republic
5.  Berlin, Germany
6.  Vienna, Austria
7.  Dubrovnik, Croatia
8.  Amsterdam, The Netherlands
9.  Florence, Italy
10. London, Great Britain

All about home loan

This blog entry might be a bit too boring for some. Since I can’t talk about anything else, I’ll just write about what’s keeping me busy for the past month. I mean the unusual busyness.

Due to the low Official Cash Rate (OCR) NZ has been experiencing since last year, home loan interest rates have been their lowest since the 80s according to news. And because of this, NZ is in the unusual era of “mortgage war” as what followers have dubbed about the ongoing tug of war among banks in their ways to attract home owners to switch their mortgage to their business.

The low OCR has finally made its impact on banks to lower their floating and fixed rates to the lowest they can be without compromising healthy margin. And because of this, borrowers are in their power to negotiate the lowest home loan interest rate including other monetary perks you can milk from these giants.

That’s what’s keeping me busy. I’ve been asking around on what they can offer me. Home loan borrowing has never been this pleasing.

After several weeks of going to and fro, I was able to get a good deal with WestpacTrust. I was able to get a floating rate of 5.5% per annum and given $2,000 money to go to my costs associated with the switching process (ie, lawyer’s fee, other bank’s loan closing fee, etc.). I had a colleague who was able to get a floating rate of 5% p.a. and had the bank pay for the break-free cost. How cool is that? Fixed rates are even being offered as low as 4.99% p.a for 1 year.

Due to the Christchurch earthquake and the Euro financial crisis, there are speculations that OCR will remain unchanged for the next couple of years. This is the main reason why we’re sticking in a floating mortgage. There’s no way the OCR will go further down. I think it’s reached its plateau. We'll keep tab on what's happening and if it's financially more beneficial, then we might decide to switch to fixed mortgage. But then again, this will all depend upon the situation by then.

For now, switching to Westpac will save us around 18% from our usual amortization. But because we have opted for an offset /revolving credit type of mortgage, our mortgage will potentially be paid earlier.

I’ll talk about that next time but for now I’m glad to reap some benefits from the current global economic downturn.

Our version of bahay kubo

Loving our own little veggie patch. Little kiddo is excited whenever we harvest some vegetables to cook for dinner or lunch. Mostly dinners. 


He doesn't really eat vegetables. Engaging him in the whole vegetable garden tending has somehow helped us cultivate awareness of what he eats. When he was still in daycare, I was told that he loves to water the veggie garden. The kids would then help in harvesting the crops in season and they do some cooking using the vegetables.

Our garden

We started off in autumn planting broccoli, cauliflower, celery, bokchoy, and lettuce. Just to get a feel if we really can manage to grow and maintain a small patch of vegetables. Several weeks later, we've added spinach, leek, spring onion, parsley, and more lettuce but different variety.


I was so giddy when I saw how broccoli looks like as a plant.

The broccoli's head! Wow!

I think the experience has been very welcoming. It has positively affected us. We're now eating organic vegetables. Our budget has slightly improved since having some vegetables within our reach free of charge. And little kiddo is enjoying the whole experience.

Ready for nilagang baka.