Stress?

Pi Pi caught chicken pox from school and she's scratching like a monkey, especially in the middle of the night. Was woken at 3am by her scratching and frustrated whimpers (poor girl)... after applying bitter gourd juice on her limbs and rocking her to sleep, I gathered up some recipes faxed across by Bern's mummy and went into the kitchen to destress!!! haha...

This was the output from this morning's baking frenzy :

1. Garlic and Rosemary Focaccia Bread (play cheat.. breadmix + bread machine)

2. Chiffon cheesecake

3. Milk cookies

4. Pineapple tarts

Garlic and Rosemary Focaccia Bread
I bought a Wright's breadmix which requires water and olive oil only... how easy!! the bread turned out really soft and nice but not as herby as I would like it to be. with a dip in balsamic vinegar + olive oil and that was my breakfast! even di di loved it.... keke..

Chiffon Cheesecake
Failed!! The chiffon cheesecake didn't turn out as fluffy, maybe coz I did not beat the 4 egg whites to stiff peaks - my arm was on the verge of dropping off due to fatigue, next time will use mixed instead.. hmmmph!!

TT tasted the cake and asked "orange cake?" *FAINT*.. di di ate half a slice and pi pi ate 1 slice!!... she's the best.. first bite and she proclaimed "NICE!" it tasted more like an eggy cake (ji dan gao) to me :P

Milk Cookies
They tasted abit like Kueh Bangkit to me!! nice and super easy to make :) THanks to Bern's mummy who faxed me the recipe together with many other cookie recipes.....!!

Pineapple Tarts
still trying to tweak the new recipe to my liking.. find the crust taste abit bland despite using golden churn butter as recommended by Jonas' mummy... so sad I lost my own recipe :(

Pi Pi's kitchen adventures

It's CNY next week!!! And I have not finished my springcleaning nor made my CNY cookies... been wanting to start on my cookies this week but it's quite difficult to find a time where I can bake my stuff peacefully, i.e. no pi pi climbing up chairs/tables or crying on the other side of the child safety fence outside the kitchen.

Last night after dinner, I decided to try my hand at making almond butter cookies. I was so engrossed getting my ingredients together and it suddenly occurred to me that I had not been checking on pi pi.... fret not.. haha.. there she was... huddled in a corner of the kitchen, frowning intently at the measuring cup and cookie cutter in her hands, with all my baking utensils and baking chocolate strewn over the floor.



Haha!! Now I know how to keep her busy and the best thing is... I can start to bake in the day! So far I have been doing all my baking around midnight, after the kids sleep... and I become a zombie the following day.. :)

Pi Pi having fun with the whisk...


helping mummy pack groceries into the refrigerator...


checking on the pastries in the oven....


and... "OOOH!!"... pointing to the sea salt she had spilt while rumaging through my baking cabinet


Amazingly, pi pi sat quietly in that same corner, whisking her imaginery chocolate fudge cake, for more than an hour!! I think I will teach her to bake her own animal cookies after CNY :) :)