i feel extremely honored to be given the opportunity to bake for discovery travel & living and their clients this x'mas. 45 boxes of assorted bakes, 3 days of non-stop baking (minus very little rest & sleeping time), i suddenly feel very accomplished. while i'm not really a stranger to big orders, this one must be the biggest yet! very challenging indeed. planning started weeks ago and it was fun to jot down the massive amt of ingredients used (i used close to 30 blocks of butter & 200 eggs) and go shopping for packaging and ingredients.

a glimpse of what i made and here's just part of it. along the other two sides of the table are crammed filled with boxes & boxes of macha financiers, orange choc madeleines & tri-colored choc mascarpone & pistachio pound cakes, all individually packed in cellophane bags. plus dark choc raspberry tartlets & lemon meringue tartlets.

i guess the most memorable thing about this order must be how well my macarons turned out. they've got the most prominent feet & puffiest shells compared to the previous times i made them, i'm still wondering how that could happen. maybe becoz i made 6-8 batches at a go so the chances of overmixing were lessened, not sure. nevertheless, i'm elated they turned out so well.

and lemon meringue tartlets, my favorite! for a moment i couldn't decide how i wanna decorate the meringue topping. should i do swirls, or spikes? i decided in the end to just pipe a dollop on top. don't they resemble hersheys kisses? too cute.

i was extremely exhausted and worn out after the order that i even missed lunch with a friend coz i overslept (poor friend actually sat waiting in the restaurant for me). i'm truly sorry but i'm really looking forward to the nx one! to come to think of it, i'm not sure how i survived this. i worked ALONE, from sourcing for ingredients to baking and washing up to packing. its unbelievable. hubby only made sure i had food on the table, either cooked by him or bought and helped squeeze a few lemons, but that was so not counted. still, i don't think i've reached my limit yet. with some careful planning and maybe a bigger mixer, bigger oven, bigger fridge, i feel like i could accomplish even more.

last but not least, i wanna thank yixiao for this opportunity. this order wouldn't have been possible without her. and the funny thing is, she has never tried my bakes before so i feel extremely grateful and appreciative she placed order with me without any hesitation, and without even sampling. thank you yixiao, a million times :)