Tag Archives: Mouse

Too much to update for last 4 days.  There was something for everyday but I am lagging behind in putting them down.  I decided to update on a new addition to my “mouse” collection , firstly it is my passionate hobby …. secondly it happened during class today … thirdly my level 1 exam is next week if I don’t update now it will be never. 

I was born in the year of the Rat, my age is no secret.  In pastry classes, I am exactly one cycle older than Jillian and I just found out the same for Raffaela too.  Initially it was just a Chinese horoscope to me, every Rat year reminds me I am older in multiples of 12s.  Then in 1997 during my home renovation, when I started packing my stuff – while packing books onto bookshelves, I found 2 rat figurines among my mess…  these were to begin my lifelong hobby … and the bookshelves were never filled with books.  The first rat was a Selangor pewter figurine given to me by Katherine during my 15th birthday, the second was a wooden rat on wheel given to me by my high school friend XX when we passed through Czech during our Europe hols in 1995 … then the obsession, no, it should be fascination, continued.

(continued after I dozed off…)

Every country I visited the must-have souvenir I would attempt to bring back Home is a rat/mouse or more mice.  They must be made of different materials from what I already have, must have a tail and cannot look like Mickey Mouse.  In the last 3 years, I moved out of family home to a rented apartment when I got married and again this March to a home we now have, my rats and mice are still waiting patiently to get out of their plastic bound in the sealed boxes.  When I get home, it is time they get some “air time”.   I have wanted for a long while to photograph each of them, name their country of origin as well as the year I started owning them or from whom I received them as gifts, but 10 great years and more than 170 precious babes later, I really lost track of some of them.

On Tuesday when Sarah, April and I were reviewing through the Level 1 in prep for the exam next week … we had a few recipes left that we skipped through as “not done”.  I came across Bread Decorating Dough and I was thinking of having mice/rats made of bread dough.  The next day, during the Pastry Lab, Chef Sebastien asked us to prep Bread Decorating Dough and Yeastless Dough … I was so excited.  At one point, during shaping of the Bread Decorating Dough after proofing, I must have stared at the dough so hard, Chef came over and looked at what happend.  Ha, nothing happened, I was mentally visualising how my little mice will look and where they would appear on the finished product.  That night, I drew how my mice will look.  I had wanted a standing one wearing an apron, holding to a spatula and a whisk.  On Thursday, we didn’t manage to have sufficient time for it as we completed the mise en place for the Scholarship Gala on Friday and prepared tiramisu for lunch.  That night I had more ideas for the mice.  On Friday morning, I told Sarah it is our last go to have all out fun at the dough before our level 1 final.  While we prepared the petit fours for evening Gala, Chef gave us all the time we have to play our dough.   He  reminded us it must have something to do with Baking.

Time to roll, mold, shape, press, cut, pipe … and lots of serious play and four hours later, our creation was finally completed.  Everyone has a story to their dough – Jill did a cute dragon with skeleton(?), Amanda on Elvis, Jennifer on her favorite record, April with a basket of breads on a checkered table cloth, and Sarah on viola, a musical instrument she played and Elizabeth made a jewellery box.  Some of us chose to have no break during class.  We baked our dough creation and cleaned up to leave for Houston Country Club at 2.  No chance to really take a good look at the final product, I got a quick shot before I left, and will have to take pictures of my classmates’ on Monday.  The play dough session already made my day. 

Some called my creation Ratatouille, I choose to have no name for it.  None of my mouse or rat in my collection has a name, except one which is a fluff on my facebook and it is called Rattarattie-joi.  Naming them would show a different level of complex emotional connection or even favortism, and more importantly my lack of creativity in names.  I love them all equally, though some of them are associated with deeper memories and meaning as they represented the places I travelled or the friendship I have with the friends and families who fed my fascination.

With a layer of vanish to preserve the dough, the play dough “mouse” will travel with me back to Singapore and shall represent a part of my baking & pastry arts journey in Houston.