CMCO Day 140 ~ Tuesday, 29 October 2020

Sherilyn's CMCO Main Masak-Masak in the kitchen the past few days yielded these:

1. Orange tarts - she claimed that it's not 100% successful as the pastry cream failed. Thus, she can't sell the tarts. We all loved the tart and walloped the tarts anyways. She's just overly persnickety when it comes to all her bakes. 

2. Orange curd tarts

3. Orange frangipane tarts

4. Keto egg rolls - she made this just to finish up the egg whites used in her bakes

5. Gimbap - she made this for dinner because we ordered Yomei's purple rice yoghurt for dinner and she cringed at the thought of eating chewy rice mixed with cold yoghurt 😆

Since the CMCO is extended, we're going to be guinea pigs to more of her new recipes and creations 😁.  Oh my poor hands, having to clean up after her!! 😖

Orange tart that Sherilyn claimed failed as the pastry cream didn't turn out well.

Orange tart cake before the aesthetic works. I actually prefer this plain sans any cream or elaborate decor. 

Orange Frangipane tart, which is a smaller version of the above.

Orange curd and orange curd tart.  This is a mouthwatering bold and extremely flavorful tart, made from fresh oranges.  Free-range chicken eggs were used to prep the orange curd. 

She may deny it, but this girl secretly loves playing with pastry dough and decorating all her bakes! 

Orange tart with fresh orange slices, crushed pistachios and fresh orange fluid gel.

After days of slogging in the kitchen, our teenage chef plopped herself on the couch and KO-ed at 8pm.😆.  Her grandma, dad and I couldn't wake her up for her shower but she eventually woke up hours later and had a late shower.

 

Lunch of Mee Siam and Ayam Gulai from hubby's shop.

The Ayam Gulai is really delicious and spiciness level is just perfect for everyone at home. Alycia who can't stomach spicy food enjoyed this chicken thoroughly.   

If you have a hankering for chicken curry, this is the quintessential dish.  It's cooked with a generous amount of freshly blended healthy and aromatic herbs with the creaminess of fresh coconut milk.  This dish is luxuriant and mind-blowingly delish. Pairs well with rice or meehoon or dunk in your sourdough bread, white bread, pau, mantou, whatever to mop all the sauce up. Guaranteed not a drop of sauce will be left!

Drooling already? Order some to sample from Catermate.😁

Sherilyn's Holiday Baking Projects

Apart from a trip back to Ipoh to visit their grandparents and several shopping sprees at the mall to get books (again!), the girls spent the rest of their two-week school holidays at home. Drama Queen spent most of her time googling for recipes and in the kitchen whipping up surprises for us!  Alycia had her dental braces fixed. My poor girl has not had a proper meal since last Wednesday, the day that the braces were fixed.

Drama Queen's first baking project was chocolate walnut brownie. Her second project was two batches of chocolate chip cookies, using different recipes, baked on the same day. She baked them on the eve of Alycia's B day, so that her che che could stuff herself silly with the cookies. Alycia's wish was  to eat all her favorite food before her B day, as she won't be able to enjoy them for a long time once the braces are up.

Once Drama Queen started baking the cookies, she couldn't stop the momentum and after cleaning up the kitchen, she decided at the spur of the moment to bake another batch of chocolate chip cookies, using another recipe!







After baking two batches of chocolate chip cookies, Drama Queen proceeded to cook  baked Mac N Cheese.  She sneaked out her grandma's Le Creuset French oven to use as grandma had gone on a holiday at Ipoh and Penang with her visiting daughter from Hong Kong.


While she cooked Mac N Cheese, I did a quick stir fry of broccoli and cabbage with egg and grilled curry and turmeric chicken.




Killing two birds with one stone in the oven...




Two days later, Drama Queen worked on her next baking project ~ minced beef and pork pie for her grand uncle who had just returned from New Zealand.



The plan was this : Drama Queen to work on the pie dough while I cook the filling but darn an annoying PMS headache, I told her that I'd take a cat nap and cook the filling later. When I got up from my nap 30 minutes later, the aroma of sizzling beef and cumin in the wok was wafting in the air! Surprise surprise! I almost drowned in the aroma!



Drama Queen's baking and cooking skills are getting better by the day. She started to bake when she was 10-ish and those initial baking days were really MESSY! Though the kitchen still gets messy and dirty, it's not as bad as it used to be. And her speed has definitely improved.


With the remnants of the pie dough, my creative 13-year old chef created a small batch of mini cheese puffs which were incredibly yummo and addictive! Within half an hour the cheese puffs were removed from the oven, they were wolfed down by her hungry sisters and crazy mom.






Later in the evening, I brought the pie to the girls' grand uncle's house and ate the pie together, sipped on Japanese matcha and munched on green apples that he harvested from the apple trees in his backyard in New Zealand.

Drama Queen's final baking project before the school holidays ended was lemon pie / tart. This will be in another post. Stay tuned 😊

Hershey's Cocoa Cookies

Last Friday, I finally did something that I've always wanted to do but have kept procrastinating - baking!! :D

Sherilyn and Cass have been bugging me for a very long time to bake cookies but my reply to them has always been the same - no time and busy!

I googled for the easiest and simplest  Hershey's cocoa cookies recipe ever and watched how cookies are baked on You Tube. The mil was away in Ipoh and I had no freaking idea how to use her cake mixer.  So we mixed all the ingredients in a bowl manually AFTER I tried using her new hand held mixer but the mixer blew the flour and cocoa powder everywhere!!  Shit, I had a major cleaning up of the kitchen counter top.   That was lesson #1.  Use a bigger bowl girl!




Cass was REALLY excited to help me bake cookies! It's her dream come true LOL!




She did most of the mixing while I washed the utensils and measuring cups and cleaned up all the flour and cocoa powder on the kitchen top and floor, AARGH!!




The cookie dough texture looked good and they expanded pretty nicely too after baking.  The cookies looked kind of perfect from the outside but when I flipped them over, OMG, more than half the batch of cookies were burnt at the bottom *SOBS*

I was totally heartbroken! :(




Only 6 or 7 cookies were perfect.




I figured that I can't set the oven at 180C and bake for 11 minutes though the recipe said so.  My mum who is a pro baker advised me to lower the temp to 160C and to reduce the time in the oven to 8 minutes.  That's lesson #2.

I was and still am pretty much  disappointed with this failure. I think I will need another few months to get over it to try baking cookies again!  I told the girls that next time, I'll just try baking a cake from premix cake flour. Let me taste my first baking success FIRST to give me a boost of confidence before I attempt to do another round of baking, HA!