The time has come, today was the day. After many weeks of planning and dribbling, i have finally taken my courage to do it. Chinese new year is around the corner, and many people are doing it (more like the aunties and housewives). I too decided to join them.I am going to bake Cookies! Not any kind of cookies, but cookies that is only eaten during Chinese new year..Peanut cookies, Jam tart, butter cookies, almond cookies and finally Laska cookies...So ambitious, but yet havent actually tried baking cookies.. so i started off with the easiest, Peanut cookies....
My wonderful friend gave me this recipe which belong to her mother, and told me that nothing can go wrong with this recipe..so i gave it a try....
Im a type of person who love to bake and cook, but am always disappointed with the result..I can never seem to bake a cake or cookies( i have yet to try the cookies, cake always a failure, even if its from a instant pack, ops my secret is out.. :P)
So back to my adventure, i took out my peanut and started roasting it in my oven. I wasnt sure about the timing, so i left it in for about 40 minutes. After baking it for a long period of time, it was time to remove the skin. I wasnt sure how to remove it, but i tried.After rubbing the skin off, i was told to blow the skin outside of the house so it would fly away, where i dont know.My maid, watching me from afar, decided to input her comment. She suggested that :
* Dont use the oven tray, its too shallow to get the excess skin out , use a bigger bowl.( now i came to realised that she probably think im an idiot, using my breath to blow the skin away, and with the added effect that my saliva was contaminating the nuts
So i went back inside and continue doing it till i could no longer do( i got bored taking the skin out, i even asked her if there's a technique for doing it).
So leaving it to the expert, i started cooking my lunch. After a good 10 minutes, she took the bowl out and proceed in shaking the excess skin. It was only then i realised what she mean by using the big bowl. As she was shaking the skin out of the bowl, the skin which i thought will fly across the neighbor's floor, fell down. It was quite a sight. I felt kinda sheepish.... that shows how naive i am in cooking..
So after that event, i chucked all the peanuts in the blender, off i go... blend blend.....i started to panic a little.. ok.. so i read my hand written recipe, and took out my flour. Okay, still reading.. "1 cup of flour". Scratching my head, i was thinking.. hmm how many gram is 1 cup?So i went back to my recipe collection book, and found what i thought was right, 150gram is 1 cup. So i carefully measured my flour and blended peanut.So far so good. Next was my sugar.. erm. 3/4 cup.. hm scratching again, i estimated, 100 gram of castor sugar.. should be ok... Next comes the tricky part.. How much peanut oil? my friend told me, whatever amount to make it into a dough. Initially i wasnt keen in using peanut oil for obvious reason, so i thought of trying olive oil. So i divided my dry mixture, one for peanut oil and the other in olive oil.So off i went, i started pouring in the peanut oil into my mixture, OPS! too much, from then on, i was feeling disappointed. The mixture became too wet, so i had to steal some from my so call olive oil dry mixture into my peanut. After mixing it, i was getting really nervous.. oh no, its still too wet....so i added more flour, and more nuts.. oh oh, its still too wet. I asked my maid.. Is it normal?.. is it too wet? Then she reassured me its ok. So i thought, so she said ok should be alright right?So i proceed to take my master 1's playdough mould, and started pressing my dough into the mould. I tried to take it out, but hmm doesnt seem to want to come out. My maid started touching the dough, and she suggested maybe it is still wet, so i continue adding more flour and peanut. From that moment on, i knew i was a total failure. Even a simple cookie recipe, i could not do. So anyhow, already feeling lousy, i continue to proceed. I wanted to add more variety to my cookies, so i separated my dough into 3 bowls, nutmeg, cinnamon, and chocolate. Since i couldnt use master 1's playdough mould, i started rolling it into lime size ball.
The cookie dough is finally in the oven, i took a step back as a sign of relieve, then my maid said, "Did you put the eggs"( she didnt exactly said it in english, but that was what i heard from her after a translation was made in my head).Ahh.. i quickly took out the egg and started beating it, the final touch to my failure cookies. I jokingly told off my maid, telling her why she didnt tell me she knew how to bake cookies and cake. I felt so embarrassed, i wonder what she thought of me.
While the cookie was baking, i called piggy, pouring out my disappointment and not having the abilities to bake,he reassure me that its all a trial and error. I guess i've never been good at baking, and i wanted it so much to be able to bake. Everything is trial and error before the product is perfect right, but for me, i want it to be perfect the first time. Too much pressure..
Ding, the bell went off. Time to look at the cookies. So far it looked ok, but how good does it taste??Being me, i dont really particularly like to eat the food that i baked, not that i think my food may give off food poisoning, but i just cant eat it. Too much pressure, i want acknowledgement from my guinea pig whether its thumb up or down. I told my maid that i was scared to eat, then i offered her to try. To my surprise, she was scared as well. I asked her why she was scared of my cooking, and she felt bad and gave in. I watched her took her first bite of my cookies, and watched her reaction. I asked her, how is it, and Ta taa, it was quite nice, so i took a bite of my very first made cookies, and i was surprised. It did taste good. So there you go, my 1st successful cookies~~!!!
So now time to distribute to my eager guinea pigs. So anyone else up for tasting?? :)
