Insta-Thursty: Week 23

crepe date with jan and lou

brunch at strada with sooji

the big hike from rye to hastings!

richmond park antics with my tol tol girls

sky garden tbt

a big bunch of bright yellow tulips!

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the big hike from rye to hastings.

as a group of us from youth group will be off to uni in september, a hike was organised by our youth leaders. we met early at 9am during rush hour at london st. pancreas international to jump onto our train, and about 2 hours later we were set in rye to start our hike, not knowing what we would expect along the way...

our first view was this windmill, and all was looking good!

braving the hills weren't so bad either!

...until we got lost and were forced to walk through bushes of stinging nettles!! coincidentally, two guys decided they needed skateboards to go hiking with. it was the daftest idea ever, but turns out we needed it to battle our way out of these brambles and nettles! it was just meant to be.

back on track, walking through these beautiful poppies

our team and scout leader searching for styles to cross.

be-friending sheep

after around 8 hours of walking, talking, moaning, and hobnobs distributing, we discovered this beautiful scenery and all suddenly became worth it. isn't God's creation just so amazing??

sunset dawned on us, it was getting dark quickly, everyone was tired and hungry, and our shortest route to hastings was unfortunately closed! it didn't look too good for a while.

but as a team we pressed on to find a good kfc bucket and our accommodation for the night.

after 10 hours of hiking, we made it to hastings at around 10pm, and it was silence as we sat and devoured in some fried chicken - never had it tasted so good before. i reckoned i would have a pretty good night's sleep that evening, but card games, cards against humanity and conversations soon took me on an all-nighter. no regrets though, this is what being young is all about - living it wild and free!!! here's to more eventful days like this in uni!

lemon and cocoa chiffon cake

i had took a long break from baking since exam season and was busily immersed in my text books (or so i hope...) for two months. after exams had flown past, my baking nerve started to go a bit cray cray and so i went online and bought a new chiffon pan to kick-start my baking antics again.

after googling for a good recipe to try out my new pan, i came across a classic pandan chiffon cake recipe that i've made many times before (one reason cos my mum loves eating it so much), but also a new technique of layering cocoa powder to create a patterned cake! [link here.]

i became so addicted to this technique that i started doing it in all my chiffon cakes, including this lemon one which turned out absolutely beautiful! the cake was plump, i had a good pattern and the mix of lemon and cocoa was just right!

as an avid chiffon cake baker, i was so impressed with this bake and to jazz up patterns with such a simple technique. you can check out some of my other chiffon cakes here, but be warned, there are incredibly old posts!

lemon and cocoa chiffon cake

recipe from noms i must

Ingredients:

90g cake flour

5 egg yolks

20g caster sugar

60g canola oil

50g water

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 lemon's zest

5 egg whites

90g caster sugar

10g corn flour

cocoa powder

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Sift flour twice

2. Place egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and beat well. Add water, canola oil, lemon juice and zest and stir to incorporate. Add flour and mix well until the batter becomes sticky.

3. To make meringue, combine sugar and corn flour. Beat egg whites until foamy. Add half the sugar and continue beating for a few minutes, then add remaining sugar and beat until egg whites are glossy and stiff peaks form.

4. Add one-third of meringue into egg yolk mixture and fold in lightly, then add remaining meringue and fold to incorporate completely.

5. Pour a layer of batter into an ungreased tube pan and sift cocoa powder over it. Gently pour another layer of batter over the cocoa powder (you do not have to level it). Then sift cocoa powder over the batter. Repeat the process. Bake for 40 mins.

6. When cake is done, remove from oven and turn it over, leaving it to cool.

7. Once cake has cooled completely, carefully run a knife or spatula around the sides of the cake to loosen it before inverting onto a wire rack.

good ole richmond park

our annual tol tol reunion was due with my secondary school friends, and of course we decided to pay a visit to richmond park as we do every year. we didn't manage to spot any deer this time round, but the sun did shine incredibly bright for us.

it was a baking hot 34C that day and i swear i was going to have a heat stroke if we didn't find a shady spot fast enough!

we had such a great time chilling, picnic-ing, catching up on life and being our usual selves that i quickly got a smashing shorts and sock tan!

our next reunion may be quite a long way away now seeing as we'll be heading off to uni, but i'm so glad that we got this time to enjoy each other's company and laugh together before we do :)

skateboarding.

this is a post dedicated to my skateboarding days. after a good hike with two skateboards, i had been really addicted to this board with four wheels that can get me down a road pretty quick.

after brunch with sooji the day after, i told her i needed a skateboard in my life. so we went to the bentalls centre, took my pick and cashed in for a cute penny board with a wedgewood design engraved on it.

spontaneous much? that's basically my life.

we then left to go hyde park with my new board (who still needs a name) and tried it out, despite the tube strike making it a trek to get into central london.

and so the skateboard adventure continues. the day after i met up with jiwoo and we had a good skate and practise down hogsmill, a quiet little park with a stream. my first fall on my skateboard occurred here, but let's move on.

following that, i got a whatsapp for skating in kingston the next day and went ahead to the skateboard shop where my friend was happy to spend £125 on his before heading to the riverside for a good bit of skating in the sun.

needless to say, i'm loving this skateboard life and i'm most likely on my road to becoming a skater girl. next stop: skateboarding at uni! 

HELLO SUMMER!

to say the least, last month had been a full on whirl wind. a typhoon even if you like.
exams were crazy, i was crazy, the amount of caffeine i consumed was crazy. but i'm so glad i've made it alive, and that i'm back to blogging and updating the happier and more chilled-out side of my life!

my posts are outdated and i'll be doing some backtracking for a while, but as exams were over and done with, i went on a cute date with minnie, a friend i had not seen in probably 6 months!

we had this ingenious idea of going bus hopping as buses won't be free for us when we go into uni, and so we hopped onto the first one that stopped outside waterloo station and went on our adventure!

we stopped by at southbank, soaking in the sun and enjoy some splashes in the fountain, and then we were led to liverpool street, at which we proceeded to checking out the beautiful leadenhall market and discovering that a sushi shop i had been wanting to visit was unfortunately closed :( 

that really struck our morale and made us more determined than ever to find sushi for dinner. after visiting 2 wasabi shops and a closed eat tokyo, we finally sat down at the eat tokyo in leicester sq and enjoyed the unusually quiet atmosphere of the restaurant as it is normally quite popular and noisy.

all that walking the whole day got us hungry and for the record, it was my first time finishing up a whole bento box by myself!