Working out in Pain

It's no joke. Doing pump with a body full of muscle aches. Last night was my second pump in the week after my very first pump after a two week rest (MIA from gym). I had already been nursing my muscle aches the whole day, and technically speaking, I joined my second pump class in less than 24hours. So, I think I'm entitled to some moaning here. Ouch, ouch...

Haven't done his class for so long but I've always not had any issues towards his classes - sufficient cueing and good song selections. MC seemed to be able quite okay with his class too. So I guess we will be regulars in this class.

The tracks we did last night were all familiar tracks, mostly the older all time favorites. The tracks were also tough enough and the crowd seemed to be quite sporting in responding to the "torture". So MC and me was quite motivated as well.

I could already foresee how I would suffer through the class the moment I lift my bar for overhead presses during warm up. I decided, again, to reduce my chest press weight to only 5kg. MC was doing 3.5kg and that was already a leveled up for her. Yes, we suffered. BUT survived.

I was really hesitated during the transition of chest track to back track. Wanted to only load up 6kgs, but last minutes thought, what the heck, might as well push myself a bit. Geezz... should have known better than to do that!

After burning the triceps fats with many many dips, I told MC (she couldn't remember the sequence of the tracks yet, so I needed to tell her the up coming track to facilitate her choosing of weights to load/ reduce) the next track would be lunges. See, I actually loath the next track so much that I wish for it's non existence. Of course the next track was suppose to be biceps track. Haha... Sorry about that sis.

I think the other track that was really tough was the shoulder track. It was really painful till I had to actually give up a few (more than a few) repetitions. But it was a very satisfying workout indeed.

Lets do this again!

Musical Birthday Cupcakes

I think this is the first time I took order for non relatives, friends or gym members. I've found a new "customer" and a new regular blog reader through TD.

This was what she wanted:

Colour theme: light purple and bright orange. I wouldn't have thought of such combination myself.

Additional decoration: Musical notes. And yes, I've learnt music before - piano. But I dropped out before my first exam. Hated the theory, only like playing (the piano). So I bet my piano teacher would be so glad that I remember my notes. Hehe...

Marshmallow flowers for the 3D effect.

The wordings were in pink instead of black (dark brown) because I didn't want the wordings to "fight" with the musical notes. But they do look a bit plain and didn't stand out in the picture. So I've later added some borders to the letters.

I hope you have had a great celebration!

Must not stop doing pump for too long!

While I have been very good in dessert posts, my gossip posts are lagging behind. What gossips? Okay, I won't call them gossip posts lah, just story telling kind of. So readers for dessert post can take a rest today.

I often feel that time passes too quickly. Apparently I've not joined a pump class for two weeks already. So, you can imagine how I struggled last night when I did a "come back" AND joined Carebear's class whose classes are generally classified as "tough". To add onto my workout "challenge" I had joined a combat class before pump. Wow, last night's class was packed and I got to meet some people I've not met for such a long time! Among them, my PiC who had been at TC last night for classes because she was on leave. When I finally caught up with her at the locker room after the classes, we thought we might just arrange to take leave one of these days just to go to gym together. Haha... that sounds fun and I do have a 8 and a half days of annual leave accumulated to date. Might as well clear the half day. SPK on Thursday sounds like a good idea to me. That reminded me of those days when PiC and me used to do "club hopping" from Maxis to SPK, from SPK to LM... If I remember correctly, our record was 5 classes in the same day, something like that.

Combat class was different to me last night, I've not joined PB's class except for those she'd team teach with Master C. I noticed that she must have had a regular group of combaters since there were faces which normally did not appear in this Monday class conducted by other instructors. Besides the difference in the crowd, I also found some of the tracks unfamiliar to me. Perhaps it's because I've not been doing combat that regularly. At one point, LGM was gesturing me when the music for a particular track started to play. I was wondering why at first but then I quickly realized that it was the "pijak spider" (or I would say pijak "kat zat" - cockroach) track which we were talking about last week - which I was hoping NOT to be one of the selected tracks. It's about the turning around and around, I really get very dizzy doing tracks like that.

After a good sweat out in combat, I continued with my favorite pump class. The class was equally packed. And by the way, before I forget to mention, the mats in the gym is getting very disgusting again. I still remember not long ago we were so delighted with the new mats and now... sigh. I thought this batch of mats are more prone to dirt. Perhaps I should bring my own mat (if I'm not lazy).

Okay, what was worse last night, the Phantom chest track with loads of singles, OR the biceps tracks with loads of singles. Luckily I decided to reduce my weights by 1kg for the chest track. However, with a weight of only 3.5kg, I couldn't possibility reduce weights for biceps could I? Perhaps I should the next time. Humph... Good thing teacher really didn't lie about back track being easy - which I guess was because there is no continuous clean and presses; or sets of 6 clean and presses; or sets of 7 dead rows etc. So I had maintained my 7.5kg weights. But still, after two weeks of no pump, I was already suffering during the first set of my clean and press. Shoulder track, tough. Conditioning track - I couldn't even hold my legs up during the second set. And I thought teacher caught me giving up :p.

I was also very hungry! Actually I was hungry last night even before I joined combat. Was already planning what filling to get for my sandwich dinner. Before I start to complain about the service at O'Briens, I better publish this and start work. But seriously, there were too many new staff at O'Briens and there ought to be a supervisor at least around to advise them. My hot wrappo was NOT hot. Humphhh...

Have you ever felt this way before?

Specially for SSB...

Rum Chocolate Cheesecake

A very muddy and rich dark chocolate cheesecake on chocolate biscuit base. The rum adds to and enhances the flavour of the cream cheese and chocolate. As the recipe had described, this is an "adult cake".

If you don't have a spring form baking tin, this is what you can do also. Line a normal cake tin with aluminium foil before pressing in the base and pouring in the cake mix. When the cake is done, just simply lift up the whole cake by lifting the foil.





Cheesecakes are actually very easy to handle. The imperfections can always be easily "repaired". For example the uneven surfaces can always be smoothed with running a hot metal knife (soak in hot water and wipe dry) on the surface of the cake.

Before

After

There was a crack on my cake and it was rather deep. Instead of filling that up with the chocolate glazing, I had "repaired" it before the glazing. Just need to gently push the surface together. It's quite possible because the texture of the cake is quite soft - do all these after the cake is chilled, just before decorating.

Before

After

Add chocolate cream glazing and decorate with white chocolate flowers. Since I have the moulds, I could simply melt some chocolate and cast them into whichever kinds of shape I want to use for decoration.

MFG's order

Hi... I'm so sleepy. Woke up at 4am this morning to go for a school visit. Wanted to be there during their assembly time. Story later.

Last few days was quite hectic at work, very busy. While cake orders are all welcome (more pocket money for me, why not?) I try to not overwhelm myself with too many orders. I think I should still try to get enough sleep.

One week advance notice will be good but I'm quite blessed so far with orders which came in two weeks in advance. Thanks :).

But when MFG's order comes in last minute, what do (did) I do? (As we speak, there is another "last minute" order too, you know who you are. Hehe...)

It's never too late to deliver a birthday message :)

While jelly beans are great to add colours to the cupcake, they are not a very good combination with the butter cuppies. I personally don't like jelly beans, so I thought the taste doesn't blend in with the cakes. It's ok to take them away if you get them.

One of the best ways to make the cupcakes cute is to use gummy bears. I'm ok with eating gummy bears although I'm not a big fan. But I also think that it's best to eat the candies separately from the cake. Taste combination issue again for me.

I like using "balloons" for simply party theme birthday cupcakes. No, you can't eat these at all. They will do a good job in adding some dramatic 3D effect to the box of cakes and of course adding on to more colours.

Sometimes you will just do anything when it comes to your favorite guy right?

Happy Birthday Ken!

Got an order from Cheeky Girl, with a request for "stars and cloud" theme. So my cloud making lesson came really handy.

Here it is...

It's not too cloudy is it? Haha...

Hope you've had a great celebration!