Gooood Morning! I am not suppose to be up this early on a Saturday but oh well.

So I attended the launch of Strongbow's three new variants of their cider on Tuesday. (Heeeey, I am on a roll with attending events, woohoo!) The launch was held 31 Square, Sunway Damansara. If I am not mistaken they have a cafe in there too!

I thought the set up of the place was really nice. I don't know, to me it felt like some posh event, everyone's dressed up and stuff. Luckily I did too! The weather wasn't too bad as well, yeah it did rain but at least it stopped after a while. 

A glass of the Strongbow  in a chilly evening..yum! I just really love ciders because it's sweet and it doesn't have that strong alcohol taste.

I got there pretty early, so they were still setting up the place because of the rain and they closed the door to the studio. Well I managed to peek through while I was walking around, and it looked like something fantastic was about to happen.

OH! The food was pretty good too! They had a Mason Salad Bar, Cheese platters and the meat station. I called it the meat station because they had Tuscan Style Chicken, Lamb Skewers (it was my favourite of the night) and some beef sandwich. Okay, while Samantha was busy doing some stuff, I just ate and ate some more. 

It was all good, the food went well with the Strongbow.

Meet Carrie a blogger! and Kai Xin on my right :) I had fun talking with these two. Yeah, my face was red after the first glass of Strongbow. Kai Xin kept saying "Ophelia, you're like a tomato" I wasn't drunk, I just get red really fast :( 

Remember that closed door? They opened it about 630pm and everyone was invited/asked to enter the studio. Luckily for being 150cm, I got pushed in front. Hehe, the perks of being short you know? Get to stand in front of concerts when I say I can't see a thing and I get to buy clothes from the Kids Department! Which I don't well not yet! Because I'm shy la! 

Okay, I side tracked a little bit. 

They introduce the three new variants of the cider by performances. The dancers danced according to the theme of the cider. It was really cool! 

Ta dah! Introducing the three variants of the cider: Honey, Gold and Elderflower. I loved everything from the cider, the performance and the set up of the whole thing.

After that, we were all taking pictures and walking around the studio to try out the new flavours. Sam got the Strongbow Apple Cider Honey, I had the Strongbow Apple Cider Elderflower and Kai Xin had the Strongbow Apple Cider Gold . Most of them loved the Apple Cider Honey but I really like the Apple Cider Elderflower. It has this nice sweet fragrant to it and it was smooth. Oh I would want one right now but it's 9:35am.

Strongbow Apple Cider Honey. This was really good as well, it's sweet and it has a really nice flavour to it.

Meet Yu Tson! 

The lights were shining from below, I thought it will make her look ghostly. Nope! 

My favourite cider of the night! Strongbow Apple Cider Elderflower! Flower power yo.

P/s: I should really invest in a camera. I don't which camera is good tho, I really like the NX Mini because of the effects and all or should I get a Sony? Gah.

xoxo,

Ophelia

WTF xoxo. 

09:50

I was looking forward towards Saturday the whole week because it's the day I usually bake. This whole week has been tiring for me with insufficient amount of sleep, it was a torture. Anyhoo, Leslie came down for a visit! So yeah, I took Leslie and Aimi for breakfast then we went for a short grocery trip to get ingredients for my Spiced Rum Apple Hand Pies.  

Initially, I wanted to make Peach Bourbon Hand Pies (recipe from smitten kitchen) but peaches are out of season right now. So I thought hey why not apple pie instead? I couldn't find the base of my tart mould so I decided to make it into hand pies instead.

I was at Tesco and there were different kinds of red apples. Leslie was telling which apple was the gritty, sandy feeling. I HATE THOSE KIND OF APPLES by the way because it feels like I'm taking a bite into dried up sponge. So I decided to buy 2 kinds of red apples for my pie, Fuji & Royal Gala.

Leslie and Aimi helped me cut the red apples, it was so great to catch up with them. It's been a year since I've last seen these two ever since Leslie went back to Sabah.

All peeled and ready to be sliced! I used a mixture of both apples because I don't want my apple hand pies to be just a sweet dessert. I always think it is better if there's like a mixture of a little bit of sour apples in this. 

I bought normal rum, so I spiced it up with some cloves, ground nutmeg and some ground cinnamon. A little bit of spice won't hurt no body ;) I sliced some apples to make compote, only this time my compote wasn't savoury. The last time I made savoury compote to accompany my pork burgers. 

I mixed fresh diced apples to my compote as my filling so there's a little bit of crunch to it.

I browned my butter so give it a little nutty flavour, I guess it my head it all goes well together. The rum, the spices, the apples and the brown butter. Oh yum! After I browned my butter I added in the cloves then apples! 

While my compote was simmering, Leslie and Aimi helped me with dicing of the apples. They marinated it in rum and some orange peel. Oh, it smells good!

We just realise we added rum everywhere! And no you won't get drunk having this. Don't worry. I had a few and I am still fine hahah.

Compote yourself away apples!

Wished my kitchen had an air-cond because the weather was so warm that my butter melted quite fast and I didn't even use my hands to mix the butter and flour together.

Pouring in the sour cream mixture into the bowl of flour and butter. Remember to cut your finger nails short or it's just nasty to get dough under your nails. Also, it will be hard to clean it and eventually you have to cut your fingernails.

The dough! It was so soft like a sugar dough ( dough that is usually used in fruit tarts ) I thought I added too much of liquid and I was really afraid of over working the dough. So I wrapped that up in cling film and leave it in the fridge to let it rest before I start rolling it out.

Marinated diced apples + apple compote :D

I continued on today because we went out for dinner last night. So I took out the dough and rolled it out quite thin, thickness of a 20 cent coin? Well at least, I tried to get it all with that thickness. 

Roll 'em and cut 'em with a ring cutter. Alternatively, you could use a medium sized jam jar. :D

I had to work really fast with this dough because it was so soft. After rolling it, I popped it right back into the fridge for a while till it slightly hardens. 

Then spoon up some of that filling and placed it in the corner. The ones I did above had too much of filling, so I reduced it a little before I close them up. 

It's like making baked curry puffs. LOL

I think if I never told anyone what I was making, they'll assume I'm baking baked curry puffs. The spiced rum apple hand pies were baked at 190 degrees celsius. 

Oh ya, I tested the pastry. I actually had a bigger piece to cut it BUT HUN ATE IT! when I told him not to -.- So the pastry looks like this! I was so amaze, I was like wow! okay it looks like 

puff pastry! Because of the layer/hollowness? 

Test, test it wasn't a failure woohoo! I was happy with the end product, it's just that I think made way too much of filling and very little dough. I decided to make an Apple Crumble with the remaining filling because my mom was hinting me to do so and there you go, no wastage :D

Rustic apples hand pies. Cheh....rustic.

For the filling:

Green apples

Fuji Red apples

Royal Gala Red apples

Cloves (just a few)

1/8 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon

1/16 teaspoon Ground Nutmeg

4 Tablespoon of Rum

6 Tablespoon of Brown Sugar 

Butter

Honestly, I adjusted the flavours and the sweetness along the way.

For the pastry (I took it from Smitten Kitchen):

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. salt

16 tablespoons (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1/2 cup sour cream

4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup ice water 

Well, that sums up my weekend! :)

21:58

Well woohoo! I had a fun Wednesday night and it is all thanks to Nuffnang for inviting me to attend the Signature Grand Launch @ The Roof. It was my first blogger event and I was very excited! :)
Luckily, I was allowed to bring a plus one ( I am shy with people I do not know, plus it's a blogger event so who knows I might say something silly) Also, I guess I am a little bit more happening now...LOL!

Taking a selfie before we embark on to our journey... LOL it was only a 30 minutes drive. The traffic was unbelievably smooth. We reached 1 Utama earlier than scheduled so we went on to have dinner first. Oh man, I think I suffered walking with heels. I don't normally wear heels so I think I stumbled a few times while walking. They say shorter people would be more stable because we are closer to the center of gravity...absolutely FALSE, at least to me.

We had Dubu Dubu for dinner, that was my second time dining in that restaurant. I remember the first time when I dined in, I was disappointed because I didn't find it authentic enough? That was besides the point anyways.

The event started at 8pm but Samantha and I were the first few guests who arrived early at the event. We met another blogger named Laura!

I thought it was gonna be a lot of Boom, Boom,Boom at first but the songs they played were pretty decent and quite old school. It's not bad at all.

Jack Saw was the bloggers manager, so he showed us to our table. I was not really happy with where we were placed because our table was right at the corner beside the cake display like it was just awkward.

I never had this before hohoho, I did but that was because I reserved a table BUT this was completely different.

We were soon served with Kronenboug 1664, a French beer and I actually really like this beer. I was like "oh, this is awesome!" Three of us just waited for the rest of the bloggers to arrive so that we could start our Food tasting. It's like a wish come true! Getting invited to places, trying food and giving honest reviews.

So while we waited for the rest of the bloggers to arrive, Sam and I just took pictures and talked to Laura.

All four of us waiting for the rest to arrive. The ambience of the place was quite nice tho, it felt classy? Or it just feels like a place where people would hang to release some stress after working hours with music, food and drinks.

The rest of the awesome people at the event! :) We waited for the food for quite some time and we were all so hungry. Finally, when the food arrive..

It was all in small portions..umm not enough to feed all 10 of us. I know it's a food tasting BUT we could at least gotten enough, I guess. The picture above was the second dish. The first were some oysters with mango if I am not mistaken. I did not had a bite on that because the smell of the oyster was not fresh appealing to me. See, I had a really terrible food poisoning experience last year when I ate at TAO buffet. I had 2 oysters and BAM! food poisoning that lead me to have the worse gastric of the year of 2013. Then I just told myself that I will not eat any oysters unless it is shucked in front of me.Anyways, the pasta dish was actually not bad. I enjoyed the squid ink pasta, the taste of it all was balance.

The live band that played the whole night. They were pretty good! Played some classics and some up to date songs as well. woo hoo!

Look at how I tried to do a wink while I drink? It looks like I'm closing my eyes because my eyes are so small. LOL

It was a really fun night and I enjoyed myself. It's rare for me to be out for an event on a week day night but this was worth it! Thank you once again Nuffnang and The Roof for inviting me to this event. :)

10:16