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A MERRY MID-AUTUMN: Baking instructor Lim Chee Keong and trainee Linda Foo are part of a team that churns out 2,000 piglet biscuits to stock hampers for needy households. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND LIM
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LATELY, Madam Linda Foo has been baking overtime.
Along with nine other people, she has been churning out piglet-shaped pastries over the past three weeks. These pastries are traditional to the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.
They have been wrapping balls of red bean paste in dough, pressing these into piglet-shaped moulds and then putting them in the oven at the Baking Industry Training Centre in Keppel Road.
About 1,400 of these dough porkers have been baked so far.
Their work is for a good cause: A total of 2,000 of these piglets will go into festival hampers, which will be given to 400 needy families over the next 12 days.
Madam Foo, a 46-year-old part-time clerk, said: 'It is a way to do good for others and a way to spread joy during the festive period.'
She is a beneficiary of the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC), which is putting her through a 14-month baking course.
The needy families who will get the hampers are under CDAC's Workfare programme. The programme helps them by providing utility grants or school fee subsidies, for example.
The CDAC, which plans to help 1,000 families this year, has so far reached out to 520.
One such beneficiary is Mr Tan Eng Bee, who received a hamper containing mooncakes, a pomelo and piglet pastries yesterday.
The 45-year-old widower with three children said: 'I am so happy. It is the first time we are receiving such a hamper.
'I think it is nice that people remember us during the Mid-Autumn Festival.'
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