Today is the last day of Year 2011. I’ve been wanting to write this post since 25 Dec 2011. It’s the day that I’ve made the decision to buy a Rowenta Oven OC7868 which cost me SGD650. To me, this is quite a big investment for an oven. I’ve never thought that I would pay more than SGD200. But I hope I’ve made the right decision cos I believe baking a good bake not only depends on skills, it also depends on the ingredients used, the methods and of course the equipment used. A little thing goes wrong, the baked goods might end up in the trash which I usually don’t allow this to happen, that’s why weight keeps going up up up… This is my Christmas pressie for 2011, something I got to make myself happy! The oven was delivered to me today!

I've been using my SHARP oven for the past 2 months for my baking. This is a multi-functional oven which had served me well in microwaving, making crispy snack and a occasional grilling since Feb 2007 when I got it as a housewarming gift from my colleagues (they are mostly ex-colleagues now, but we are still very much in touch). Regretfully, I did not lay my hands on the conventional function until 4 years later when I started on my baking journey in Oct 2011.

As a beginner with zero baking knowledge, I thought it has been doing a good job until my muffins came out with uneven browning and some how or rather my muffins just don't look good. My decision to get a new oven is set when I was baking meringue one day, only to realise my oven is way too small to accommodate all the meringue I've piped. Eventually, I've to separate into 2 batches and the 2nd batch came out totally disappointing cos my batter was left out too long while waiting to be baked. I know it has tried it's best, so I just shouldn't expect much from a multi-functional machine to do what a specialist machine should perform, should I? It has already done its duty as a good microwave oven. For the purpose of baking, uneven heating and size are my main concerns, which is why I jumped into looking for a good convection oven.

My first stop was to Toa Payoh Courts and I was introduced to ROWENTA and TEFAL. And I also got to know about DELONGHI at Tangs. With more searching of feedback online, I'm still quite torn between ROWENTA OC7868 (SGD759) and DELONGHI AOV842 (SGD599). Been scratching head for the past one week. Which can should I go for? It's now 03:43, maybe I should turn in now and see if I can dream of something later. Haha.

My interest in baking was since as young as I was about 10 years old. I could still recall there was once I made a little cup of thick chocolate drink and small-flamed it under a milk powder scoop, hoping that it will turn into a chocolate cake, but as what you might have guess, it had never turned out to be one. Haha... How naive I am.

The real start of my baking expedition only began after my first baking of pizza for my family's dinner on 13/08/11. Initially I was thinking of having fun with Ning to make pizza dough ourselves, however time doesn't allow and eventually I just got the pita bread from supermarket. Though it was not a real bake, Ning (my darling) enjoyed the process of decorating her own pizza with ingredients which finally came out from the oven looking not too bad. :p

Ning loves dessert, just like her daddy, both with sweet tooth. In order to reduce the junk within a dessert from her intake, I decided to make healthy dessert for her. Feng, don't get jealous if you ever read this. This is for you too, my darling.

From here, I started searching online for recipes and try out the easy Tofu Chocolate Mousse and move on to Flourless Brownie, various flavour of muffins, Tofu Cheesecake and latest baked was a Chilled Yakult Yogurt Cake. I made amendments to the recipe and tried out on healthier ingredients such as palm sugar, olive oil, yogurt so as to allow supreme enjoyment without much guilt, I won't say it was guilt-free though.

It is 04:16 now. Feng should be waking up for his midnight feed soon. Get ready! Hopefully I can catch some sleep later. zzzzzzz

After nearly 2 weeks of exploring, from searching a platform to registering a domain name and creating an email account I called my own, finally TwoThreeFiveNine is born. I had really learn a lot from this little journey since I absolutely know nuts about information technology. I've certainly met many downs from having glitches here and there, however I would still say the time spent and the effort of staying up into the night were all worth it. I, being an IT idiot, but with this slogan, "The easiest way to create a website", I'm rather sure Weebly is the right platform for me to journalise my baking expedition, something to leave behind for my love ones. With this, I hope I've made the right choice. Ok, it's time for me to turn in, its 00:38 now. Goodnight.