Gingerbread Houses - Trial Run

A few days ago, Anne (Aspirers Youth Leader) asked if I could make a gingerbread house for the Aspirers Christmas party next month. I hesitated because I haven't mastered the cement, also known as the royal icing to glue the pieces together to make it into a house.

I thought maybe I should have a trial run first, so yesterday I called Becky to see if she wanted to help and she was like YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I also asked if we could use her kitchen to set up the houses. It wasn't a problem, she said. 

So I made the house pieces and with the left overs, I made some gingerbread men.

Notice my plug? After baking, I tried to pull it out from the socket, but I couldn't. The next day, Mctc helped to pull it out and lo and behold...the plug was a goner. The socket was damaged too. We had to call an electrician to replace the socket and plug.

The next day, my sis and I arrived at Becky's house at 4pm. Liz was there too. Yay! The more the merrier. :D

I made the cement while the others set up the table and arrange the house pieces. I made 3 different houses.

My cement worked. The secret was, to beat it for at least 10 minutes!!!

The girls were having fun decorating the houses.

Here's Becky's masterpiece.

And here's Liz's.

The girls and their men. :D

Becky's doing an operation on one of the men.

Having fun mixing the colours.

It was nearly 8 pm when we were done.

We cleaned up the kitchen and and called Shaphan, another youth, to yam char with us. We passed the biggest gingerbread house to him because we don't know what to do with it. :D On the way to the shop, we called Jian to join us too.

Some random pictures of the youths at the makan shop.

It was certainly a fun evening. :D

Baking with OLD New Equipments

Two days ago, I made these - chocolate banana cake and banana muffins. Both were delicious. :D

So, I already have 2 cake mixers. The Kenwood (white) mixer is quite old, probably more than 5 years and I send it for repair once last year and it's not that good now. I bought a new Faber mixer when I had the Kenwood repaired, so now I have 2 mixers.

Guess what? A kind elderly lady in church noticed my interest in baking and decided to donate her old heavy duty Kenwood mixer to me. She bought it 2nd hand for RM280 in the 1970s. She hasn't been using it for many years now and thought of giving it away.

Well, I'm the happy recipient. :D I always wanted to own one of these heavy duty mixers but my little interest doesn't justify paying so much, plus the very fact that I already have 2 mixers. 

It's a Kenwood Chef model A.701A.

Look at all the extra stuff it can do on this mixer. Gosh!! Anyway, I only received the machine (obviously), along with the "K" beater, whisk and the jug liquidiser. It's good enough for me. :)

Oh yeah, have I ever told you about my oven?

This is my first oven. It was given to me by my dear friend, Ruth, when she bought a bigger oven. Hmm... what was the year, I can't recall, but I guess it's probably in the year 2006.

And then last year, on the 27th of March, my aunt gave me her old oven. It's probably 30 years old or something.:) I love it. It bakes very well, much better than the small oven and I am able to bake more in a shorter time. 

I also got this cooling tray recently. It's so useful because I bake a lot of cookies at a time. I first spotted it in a kitchenware type of shop and it cost about RM49. I thought it was too expensive so I didn't get it at that time. After a few weeks I saw the exact one in a DIY shop. It was only RM25.90. I grabbed it and was very pleased with how much I saved. :) 

Rum & Raisin Slice

Had the sudden urge to bake something. I had rum, I had raisin and just enough eggs to make a rum & raisin cake. :)

I also had a very short time to bake because I had a waterfall outing appointment in 1.5 hours.

I switch off the oven 10 minutes sooner than I should, but it still turned out nice and moist. I can't really taste the rum. Maybe the next try I'll put more rum, or get a better quality one.

Gonna bring it for my badminton kaki tomorrow. :) They are my guinea pigs and they won't feel guilty on putting on weight because I will offer to them only AFTER a few games of badminton. :D

Baking again

I planned to make cheesecake 2 days ago but I was too lazy. It's not that I don't have the ingredients. Just that I was plain lazy. :) Nah... I was busy cleaning the house. :)

This morning when I woke up, I asked myself, "Must I really make cheesecake today?". Yup, that lazy symptom was there again. I forced myself to get up and bring out all the stuff from the fridge and cabinet.

I dilly-dallied for 2 hours in front of the computer before actually starting to measure the ingredients. My reason was (It's a valid reason I must say), "hey the cheese takes time to soften." :D

My lazy mood kicked in full force. I took more than 1 hour preparing the cake!!

So, this is how it looks like before it's baked.

After being in the oven for more than 2 hours, it looked... err.. terrible. LOL

I used only 1 recipe but my cake tin wasn't big enough to fit in all , so I put the balance in another tin.

Fortunately I had a smaller oven. It saves me time. However, I noticed that this smaller oven didn't do justice to the cheesecake. The cake didn't rise at all. Come to think of it, it didn't work for my scones and pretzels the last time too.. hmm...

So, I had 2 cheesecakes at the end of the day. I gave 1 cake to my youth friends and brought the bigger cake to my cell meeting just now. I sorta forced everyone to eat. Thank God it tasted good. I failed in making the cake looked presentable though. I sprinkled some icing powder to cover the brown spots, but on the way to my friend's house, it started drizzling and the icing melted off.

I should have drizzled some chocolate on top, but I didn't have time.

I made green tea sponge cake, but it didn't turn out good. It was dry and not spongy at all. :(

I would definitely make the cheesecake again. Oh, I got the recipe from this website - click here.

Pale Scones

I've tried making scones but they didn't turn out good. In fact, they was hard and lousy. It took me quite some time to want to try making them again.

Today was a lazy Sunday afternoon. I was in Rach's house but I wanted to bake something. Using one of the recipes online, I asked Rach if she has all the necessary ingredients... and she did. :)

We were frantically looking for a mould to cut the dough. Rach found a plastic cup and the size was just nice for the scones.

She didn't have any eggs in the house, so we didn't get to brush egg yolks on top of the scones. They looked so pale.

The scones rose in the oven. I was so worried that they would be flat. They tasted good compared to my previous ones. I don't know when will I make scones again. Hopefully soon. :)

Hard-Like-Rock Pretzels

Thought I blog about this before continuing my Kinabalu series. Be patient ya?!

Auntie Anne's pretzels has always been my favourite snack. Whenever I go to any of the malls in KL, I will stop by at the outlet to get one or 2 pretzels. My favourites flavours are green tea and sour cream.

Last week, I googled for the recipe and to my surprise, the recipe could be found online. Not just any pretzel recipe but Auntie Anne's pretzel recipe. I printed out and bought the necessary ingredients.

I had no intention to bake until I have completed an outstanding project, but today, as I was doing my work, the sky colour changed from bright and sunny to dark and gloomy. It started to rain heavily after 3pm. I thought I better switch off my laptop because I could hear the thunder roar and lightning was flashing everywhere.

I thought of reading... but after reading a few pages, I decided that I should do something more worthwhile. And then I thought of trying out the recipe.

I must say, it's easy to make....

...but.. it's hard to shape it!!!!! Bleh..I think it took me 10 minutes just to shape the first pretzel. The big hint that was included in the recipe was "The longer and thinner you can make, the dough rope, the more like Auntie Anne's they will be".

I was like... okay.. it shouldn't be a problem. But it was, as you can see. :( Fortunately I made only half a recipe.

So, here's my pretzels, fresh out from the oven. They are hard and taste NOTHING like Auntie Anne's pretzels. I must try this again and again until I succeed. My friend Anne has volunteered to be my guinea pig. :D

What happened on My Baking Day

I finally got my portable oven back from my friend. My sister and her husband will be going to Hong Kong tomorrow and they planned to stay with Paul & Hazel. I suddenly thought of baking something for them but I realized that my oven was with Minch. So on Sunday I went over to her house to get it.

But you know, a small portable oven can only do so much (no complains though, the oven was given by Ruth and it's very good). I have to bake one small tray at a time. Feeling generous I decided to make extra for my other friends. This means more time spent on waiting. So what I did was to set up my laptop near the baking area to MSN and FB. :) And hey, I managed to help someone with his openoffice problem (with the help of another person lah) via MSN/Skype.

Half way through baking I had to go and see the dentist. My tooth was aching the night before. It was so bad that I cried. Somehow I managed to have a proper's night rest and thank God the pain was no longer there in the morning. But that doesn't mean that my tooth problem was gone.

So at almost 4pm I went to see my regular dentist. He shook his head and gave me two choices with what I wanted to do with my tooth. Either to extract it (which he strongly recommended) or to do a root canal. Being vain, I told him to try and save it. And so he did.

By 4.40pm, I was out of the clinic and I did some window shopping and then had a drink with Mctc and a close friend. By the time I reached home, it was about 7.30pm. I continued the last of my baking and started cleaning up.

So these are the shortbread cookies I made for my friends. I have some leftovers and hope it will last till my climb to Broga next week. :)

I made pineapple tarts

I insisted on helping my mom make pineapple tarts today. She was going to make them tomorrow but I told her that since Rachel and I are free today, she should make them today. She was quite reluctant but I sort of hurried her to do the dough. Just before she measured all the ingredients, I asked her to ask my Aunt Zainab for the rolled tarts recipe. This one's with butter and milk. I've tasted it before and it just melts in your mouth.

Rachel came on time and she did what she does best... pinching the sides of the tarts. Today, I multi tasked - sometimes pinch, sometimes put the jam onto the pastry.

We started at 2pm and at 3.30pm, Aunt Zainab came over to teach us how to make the rolled tarts. She even brought her tarts mould.

I measured and mix all the necessary ingredients and started making the "foundation". Tusi put the jam onto the pastry and Esther rolled it with a plastic knife.

It wasn't that difficult. We could only make less that a hundred tarts for 1 recipe. After we put the 2nd and last tray into the oven, Aunt Zainab suddenly remembered that the top of the tarts had to be brushed with egg yolk. Rachel and said we weren't that fussy and we just left it as it was. We managed to finish doing the tarts at 5.15pm and went for our evening walk at Lake Gardens. When we came back, my mom said that the 2nd tray was slightly burnt but as far as we're concerned, it tasted delicious.

This is my 2nd attempted of making rolled tarts. The first was a disaster. This time around, Aunt Zainab was here to guide me. I have a feeling that I will try this recipe again, so for those who don't mind being my guinea pigs, and if the timing's right, you'll find yourselves blessed with a bottle of rolled tarts. :)

Gingerbread House 2008

Here's the finished gingerbread house. It was already past midnight when they put up the trees and snowmen. Rachel said that they were too tired to hold the trees up and wait for the icing to harden and they fell many times.

The gingerbread house house is now in Esther's house. She has added a colourful-star-and-hearts walkway. It's all wrapped up now because we do not want any insects or lizards to have a feast.

This is how it was supposed to look like. It's from Good Food Magazine Christmas 2005 edition. I really think that they have given us the wrong measurements for the house. This house seems to be shorter.

This is my first gingerbread house. I made it in the year 2006. I just made the walls and roof and pass them to Rachel to decorate the house. We used m&m's as part of the decor. My mom, aunt Maggie helped her to decorate the house.

I think this year's house is much neater, don't you agree? I'm sure Esther would agree with this, because she did most of the piping this year. :)

Click here to see how we put up this year's gingerbread house.

Baking for Christmas-2nd day-Part 2

Sze-En waited like... forrrrreverrrrr before I allowed her to make the gingerbread cookies. The plan was to make the gingerbread dough, chilled it in the refrigerator for 3 hours and while waiting, we could do the pineapple tarts. We started at about 2pm. I made the gingerbread dough while Rachel and Minch made the tart's pastry. My father's siblings came to visit my grandmother so my mom had to entertain them.

We advised Sze-En to take a 3-hour nap so that she won't be cranky at night. She didn't want to sleep and promised not to be cranky.

After making the gingerbread dough, I started making the dough for cranberry chocolate cookies. Then I helped with the pineapple tarts.

At 6pm, I told Sze-En that we could start on cutting out the gingerbread man.We only started 1 hour after that. Poor Sze-En. Rachel helped her with the cutouts while I measured and baked the walls and roof for the gingerbread house.

I was so tired after all the baking. I had sore throat and my left eye was a bit swollen due to the heatiness (the word heaty is only used in Malaysia) of the body. At about 8.3opm I asked Rachel to help me with decorating the gingerbread house. I forgot we had to have long biscuit sticks to hold the house up. Rachel went out to look for the biscuit but couldn't find it. She made do with rectangular biscuits instead.

Rachel and I started with 2 walls first and we used royal icing (Rachel made it) to glue them together. While fixing the 3 wall, I suddenly realized that maybe Esther would like to take some pictures of the construction of the house. She just came back from a party and started decorating the gingerbread cutouts as soon as she entered the kitchen. I called her and she came .... not only to take pictures but also to help. She took over the piping almost immediately (Older sister's privilege. She probably thought that she could do better than us.. haha.. but we gladly gave her the piping thingy).

By now I was zombified. I didn't contribute much to the decoration of the house. The table was full of icing bits and what I did most of the time was to wipe them away.

Sze-En and Mae-Z (Mae-Z came at 8pm) helped with the coloured marshmallows. At 11.15pm all I wanted to do was to go home and sleep. I left my sisters to continue with the decoration of the house. By this time they were putting small marshmallows on the rooftop.

The next day Rachel called to say that my mom and Esther were cranky after I left. My mom complained of the icing bits all over the place and wasn't pleased that we intended to leave the gingerbread house at the place. Esther said that she would bring it back to her house. Then my mom said that it was okay to leave it where it was. ...well... that's the gist of the argument but I think there's more to it.

Maybe, if there's a next time, I will do it in Esther's house or my house!!. :)

I will probably post a picture of the finished gingerbread house.

Baking for Christmas-2nd day-Part 1

I missed church yesterday. Not that I want to of course. I woke up early, but someone overslept. :)

I went to my mom's house after lunch to help her bake cookies. Pineapple tarts needed many helping hands and my pair of hands helped in every way except making the jam and pressing the mould to make the tart shape.

Minch came to help too. So let's see.. there were 6 of us... Esther, Rachel, Minch, my mom, Tusi and me. Sze-En helped a little too. She was waiting for the gingerbread man dough to be thoroughly chilled (as per instructions, we had to chill it for 3 hours) and wanted to try making pineapple tarts. We allowed her to pinch the sides of the tarts.

Baking for Christmas

Saturday - 20 December 2008.

I woke up this morning feeling so tired. My leg muscles ached and my back hurt from bending too much during the stage and props cleaning up on Thursday. My plan for today was to bake as much cookies as possible.

I started today with a morning walk with RW in Lake Gardens. We met Uncle Chow, a 70+ year old man who walked past us with his quick steps and he did more rounds than us. We met Minch and Matt (they only jogged/walked 1 big round) towards the end of our two-big-round session.

RW and I spotted a tree that could hold a decent tree house. RW said it was too low for one, but I thought it was just perfect.

We saw so many "stars" in the Lake Gardens. When they planned the revamp of the Seremban Lake Gardens, someone must have given it some extra thought on adding the "stars" to beautify this place.

Matt, Minch, RW and I went for breakfast at our usual place in Rahang. We met Pastor Ben there and chit chatted. Then RW and I went to my mom's house. I started making the dough for shortbread cookies. RW bathed and went out to town for a personal matter.

I made 2 types of cookies - Shortbread and Hawaiian Nut cookies. I also made the dough for the gingerbread house but was to tired to bake it. I left it in the refrigerator.

Most of the time Tusi helped me with the baking. Rachel came for an hour and half (to check on me) to help and my mom who is lactose intolerant and hates the smell of butter, helped quite a bit by decorating the cookies and putting them in the jars as soon as the cookies were cooled.

Sze-En came at 11am and she was a blessing. I thought that this 9 year old kid would cause trouble, but she did her part by decorating the cutouts and checking on the oven (every few minutes, mind you). My mom's oven is very old.. probably older than me and it uses gas for heat. There is no timer and someone has to always check on the oven. At first she was very scared to go near the hot oven but we made her do it and now she claimed that she was an oven expert. I also taught her how to roll the dough but she was not strong enough to roll it evenly. I also taught her how to remove the baked cookies onto the wire tray to let it cool, but it was to heavy for her. She loves to decorate so most of the time she decorated the cutouts... and also checked on the oven.

By 8pm, I finished baking and was dead tired. Aunt Annie was there and she massaged my back. I felt slightly better but can still feel aches everywhere. I bathed and slept in my mom's house for 2 hours before going back to my house.

Kitchen Gadgets

Anyone can guess what these gadgets are?

I can't find these things in Malaysia. It's all bought from America or Canada.

These look like lizard's eggs but it's actually pie weights.

Thermometers . Top left is for the oven.. mainly used to check if your oven is giving out the correct amount of heat. (I think). Top right and bottom - it's to check if the meat is of the correct temperature. Just insert it into the meat to see if you want it rare, medium or well done. While I was in Los Gatos (California), I saw Eric using the top right thermometer for the coffee he made. He's a coffee drinker and is very particular on the details of making a cup of coffee. Took him like 5 or 10 minutes just to make 1 small cup.

The top gadget is.. (Been having this for q few years and I'd just found out) for curling butter. To make butter look interesting that just a rectangular slab, I suppose.

Bottom left - egg smasher, egg beater and measuring "spoon".

Bottom right - citrus zester. I always wanted one. So when I was in America back in 2006, I spotted this zester and purchased it. It's for both left and right handers, so that's a bonus for me because I'm left-handed.

Top picture - Baking nails. Just insert the nails into the potatoes to distribute the heat in the middle of the potatoes.

Bottom right - don't think you have ever seen this one before. It's for the onions. Insert the gadget into the onion and slice in between the pins. Cool eh?

Bottom right - Dough Mixer? Not sure what is it called but apparently it's for mixing the dough. I have tried it only once (or twice), but I don't find it useful. Maybe I'd used it wrongly because A.Pang said that it was a very good gadget for mixing the dough.