Chocolate Chip Cookies

Was in the mood for baking last night. After dinner and the washing up, i set off quietly into my "escapade" in the kitchen. Usually I try to sneak around in the kitchen when I am preparing the ingredients, if not once the Powerpuff gals storm in, it is really chaotic and difficult to get things organised. :P

Tried out this Chocolate Chip Cookie receipe from Aunty Yochana. It is definitely a keeper. DH took a bite and said that this was the one! He had been trying to tell me to bake "that" cookie that I had done last year, as he said it was really good. Finally got the cookie that he likes! This is a little crunchy yet melt in the mouth. The gals sniffed out that I was up to something in the kitchen and in no time, they took their kiddo chairs into the kitchen to join in the action. Look at Buttercup having a great time. Her smile says it all! Not bad for a 3-year old - she is an accomplished "mixer"
Today, most schools celebrate Teachers' Day. Packed some of the cookies into the goody bags for my gals' teachers. Thanks so much for being so tolerant to my gals! Esp the kind teachers at the daycare centre. Happy Teachers' Day!

More kiddo dinners - Bento #2 and #3

I am trying very hard during dinnertime to have my girls finish (sometimes even to attempt) dinner. Still a novice and learning on the job.

Here are 2 samples:
This fella looks like me after all the cooking and washing up! hahaha. Rice with tanghoon as the hair and hairygourd/melon eyes and hairclip and a weary carrot smile. They love fishballs usually so added them with slices of their favourite apples.
Here's another: Rice cubes with braised shitake mushrooms, served with carrot shapes. Then there is roasted chicken and some alphabet crackers. Grapes for dessert.

I saw this disposable bento plate that comes with lid at Daiso. It was a steal for $2 and luckily they have 3 different designs to choose from. I grabbed all 3.

Pancakes

This was a breakfast made on one of the Saturday mornings. Usually it is the only breakfast time I am at home and able to make for my family. Made some pancakes for the gals. They really loved the mickey mouse shapes best. Then the stars and the hearts. Didn't have maple syrup in the fridge, but they made do with honey and loads of butter. It is really strange, my gals love butter lots! They can scoop it and eat it on its own. Or when they think you are not looking, their fingers (instead of knifes or forks) can also do the act! I have to keep my cool when they have butter/margarine with their breakfast. If not careful, the whole tub would be "contaminated" with their saliva... :P
Here's two more in the making. Simple stuff for breakfast.

Watermelon cookies

Blossom and Bubbles did not have school yesterday. We had a beary good breakfast of ham and cheese sandwich! They were cut in the shapes of bears.

The afternoon was long, I always think so when I am home. Inspired by Pure Enjoyment's success at baking watermelon cookies, and since the two gals were restless, I promised them to make some too. They were really excited about getting to knead dough again. I was more worried about the cleaning up. Blossom can now read recipes for me, and it was a good opportunity for her to learn the different types of measurements, scales and ingredients. She was pretty good at telling me what the ingredients we have to get and the next step to do.

The making of the watermelon cookies were pretty tedious. The dough had to be divided into three portions and two portions were coloured red and green. The red ball of dough had to be wrapped in uncoloured dough, then afterwhich wrapped in green dough. It was a little difficult feat for my gals, so I ended up doing most of the wrapping. But they had fun cutting up the doughball into 6 pieces of "watermelon" and putting the "seeds" on.

Here is the result:

I thought the colour looked really lovely after the baking. The rough surfaces really made it looked like a real watermelon wedge.

Here's the tray of dough before it was sent into the oven.
Blossom and Bubbles had even more fun eating the cookies. When Buttercup came home from daycare, she was served some cookies. And she asked for seconds. And she asked for somemore even during dinnertime.

Wienner sausage

I have always been intrigued by wienner sausages and the creations mommies make out of it. Was contemplating whether to get the wienner sausage moulds from Ebay. I was home yesterday waiting for the workmen to finish their job on the toilet flooring, and I decided to take out the chicken cocktail sausages in my fridge and experiment with it. The sausages I bought from NTUC was vacuum-packed. I was a little disappointed as their shapes were not looking like the perfect sausage. Anyway, experiemented using a sharp knife to make scours and cuts on the sausage.


Here are the results:

Mini crab
Little bunny (should have cut it the other way around, bunnies should not have such big noses!)

This was my gals' dinner last night.

Rice, sausages, heart-shaped boiled egg, braised chicken wings, cucumber.

The sausages were stir-fried with cucumber and tomatoes, plus a little ketchup. For the adults, we also had fried kangkong with fermented beancurd, and the braised chicken wings.

Bento Lunch to Work - Bento #1

This was my lunchbox last week. Using my powerpuff gal's lunchbox, as you can see. They are really crazy abt this group. Anyway, had some leftovers and since food prices have been spiralling northwards, it was a good way to reduce food waste and save $$.

Some fried rice with egg and brocolli, with some lotus root slices over it. We had lotus root + peanut + pork rib soup for dinner last night. Ransacked my fridge and found a lovely mandarin orange and some blueberries. At least there was a sale of blueberries over the weekend at NTUC, it was like $3.95 for 2 boxes. Made no hesitation to grab 2 boxes. I did use some to make a batch of blueberries muffins, which my gals didn't like at all. Said it was sour. But I thought this box of blueberries were the sweetest I had tasted so far *scratch head*

Anyway, it was a lovely lunch!

Home-made Ngoh Hiang

With the help of my mom, I have been trying to cook dinner daily after work. It seems more a possibility now that we are staying closer to my workplace. After picking up Bubbles and Buttercup, we head home to prepare dinner. In between the cooking, I'll quickly run downstairs to wait for Blossom. She goes to and fro school by school bus.


Featured is DH's grandma's yummylicious ngoh hiang, which she made herself. She is in her 80s but she is still so nimble. My DH's favourite! We had some leftover mutton rendang. Quickly fried chicken nuggets, one for each gal, and that turned out to be their highlight of the meal! Was trying to tempt them to eating their red spinach, which I cooked in a soup together with fishballs and ikan bilis. I had less luck this time round, only Blossom wanted it. The previous time they were so enthusiastic in wanting to try what Popeye has been squeezing out of his cans. I thought I had been successful in getting them to eat their veges. They even showed me their "muscles" after each spoonful of the spinach.
Rice, home-made ngoh hiang, chicken nuggets, fishball soup with red spinach, papaya

Cookie Baking Class

My girls are very interested in baking too. Perhaps they treat it the same way as playdough but with an added gift at the end of it all - they get to eat their creations!


Look at them having a good time at their cookie baking class. I thought I wanted to know how messy or chaotic they would get if they played with dough (the real dough). What better way to try it out at a class rather than own kitchen :P But they did suprisingly well and were so behaved. Maybe it was because there was a instructor standing by!










It just brings me so much pleasure to see their smile of satisfaction when the final product came out of the oven!

My first post

Having been inspired by the many blogs on the internet, especially by culinary blogs, I would like to try my hand at one too!

I am a working mother to 3 beautiful (but playful) girls. They like to be known as the Powerpuff Gals - so let's call them Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup!