Mother's Day - Mango Mousse Letdown

It is a Saturday morning at about 6 am right now.

On normal weekdays, I would probably need a bed full of nails to get me up from it...nowadays, I have the habit of pressing the snooze button on my handphone alarm every morning. Is this a sign of getting old (lack of energy)? Yet on a weekday morning like now, my mind is so active I have trouble sleeping. This is the second time it has happened. I hate it totally, aarrrrggggh!

I decided to catch up on my blogging and post some long overdue pictures, hoping that you guys out there still remember me! The past few weekends had been a little busy with family BBQ, watching numerous movies and my usual pilates classes.

Some time back, I was looking forward to this year, because I will be turning 30! The big three! You know how female magazines publish articles which make you feel like turning 30 is the greatest thing in life...a woman in her 30s is a confident, sexy woman, blah blah blah. I think that worked on me. I was looking forward to the big 3....until lately when I think I really see changes.

My skin is getting more sensitive than ever, giving me rashes everywhere, probably due to hormonal changes? I am beginning to consider "upgrading" all my skincare products to the anti-aging range. I used to like my freckles but now, but now I feel I am beginning to look like a strawberry...and I've never seen a more obvious effect of gravity in any of my science lab classes than on my body. That's not all, sometimes I feel like having a kid!

Now that is something. I do not always come across as someone who loves kids, not screaming kids especially. I used to glare (with my goldfish eyes) tell off ill-disciplined or screaming kid in public...and probably even glare at their parents for not discipling them. But I have enough incidents in my life to tell me that karma will befall me, so these days, I am more tolerant, as I am afraid I would be glared at in future hahaha. But honestly, I am beginning to realise it really isn't easy being a parent at all.

A few weeks ago, it was Mother's Day. Some cynical people would say that this day is a commercial gimmick, every day should be Mother's Day. I agree to some extent, but then again, it is a good excuse for people like me (who does not openly show my appreciation usually) to do something for the great person who has always put us in priority.

Since mangoes are in season now, I made a mango sago dessert which my family likes about 3 weeks back, and also decided on making a mango mousse cake for Mother's Day. I had planned to make it a surprise, since my sister told me not to make any cake, we will go out for a celebration meal instead.

The net came in handy and I saw a recipe on a fellow blogger's blog which received many comments how good the cake looked (on hindsight, none of the comments were on the taste)

I replaced the sponge cake recipe with my own (since hers contain some ingredients which I would prefer not to use). For the rest of the cake, I followed the recipe exactly and made the cake the night before Mother's Day.

The cake tasted so bad I almost wanted to cry. I was truly disappointed. For this cake, I was ripped off by the mango seller, bought a new cake ring and larger tin, spent many hours on it and yet the end result is probably the worst I have ever made, in terms of taste.

I could not figure out what went wrong because the ingredients and instructions were followed exactly. Perhaps it was the recipe? I'm not sure. For this reason, I will not list the recipe here, I do not want you guys to try it and turn out to be a flop as well.

My mother was happy to see the cake, but of course, no one could be so untruthful to say that it tasted good. I told everyone to scrap off the mousse, and we ended up eating the sponge cake only. 2 slices of the cake were still in my mum's fridge a week after Mother's Day (and I went to threw it away), so you can imagined how much we enjoyed it.

Our celebration meal also did not happen because my father was unwell, and we had to drive down to his office to pick him and his car. So, instead of jostling with the crowds at restaurants, dinner was a simple affair at our favourite hawker center where he can have some bland and healthy fish soup, while I chomped down a bowl of prawn noodles with huge prawns.

Nevertheless, here's how the mango mousse cake looked. The words on the candy say Happy Mother's Day in Chinese.