mouth exercises

I still need to practice opening my mouth if I do not want be hindered in my gormet munching activities. I still can’t get my mouth to open wide enough to stuff in a hana maki. All the mayonnaise were scraped off by my front teeth while I attempted to greedily stuff the whole piece in and this really irks me because I cannot relish the full orgasm of tasting all the millions of different flavours going through my taste buds at the same time. But I had no problems at all with the xiao long baos and beef tendon noodles at ding tai fung today. SO FULL! But extremely extremely satisfied. Thank you Nat and Cheryl! I had lots of fun today..minus the 3hr standing part.

Anyway, tmr’s the start of my birthday month! Extra 10% discount, making it 20%, plus all the other 50% discounts going around, it’s hard to comprehend the significance of saving money now. I am going to use this oppurtunity to get more school clothes and extra slippers and make myself happy shopping my heart and pocket out.

a cup of triumph

Yesterday Qi, a good old friend of mine came over to bake cookies! She was leaving her company today and had wanted to bake a small box of cookies for each of her colleagues as a farewell gift. I must say, after having many tries in baking, I have only dared to give my cookies to close friends, whom most of the time would be extremely nice to give me comforting comments. My mom recently bought me some baking utensils such as proper measuring cups and a weighing scale for my new little hobby. But since then, I had not gotten around to baking with the new measuring equipments. So yesterday I had a rude shock when I saw the amount of 1 cup of flour. Before, I used a drinking mug as cup, thinking that it should be the universal size for cups in recipes. OH BOY I was so wrong. The difference of flour turned out to be quite a huge chunk. No wonder the cookie dough never came out right in previous attempts. Most of the time it melted before I could even put it onto the baking sheets. Yes that’s right.. it MELTED. I usually would be dropping blobs of buttery liquid onto the baking sheets. So it often resulted to paper flat brittle cookies that crumbled before i could even start to chew it, even though I must say, it tasted fabulous.

Last night’s baking session was the best I had so far and the cookies were by far the best tasting! The dough turned out to be much stiffer and it held out really well when we were doing the cookie sheets, only melting when it was in the oven. Qi! We did a great job; thumbs up! It really tastes like a store bought cookie, like the name of its recipe. haha.

Anyway this was the recipe that we followed:

Cookie Shop Chocolate Chip Cookies
an improvised recipe for better cookies!
makes about 60 cookies

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
2 1/2 cups (15 ounces) semisweet chocolate morsels, divided
250 grams of unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs

Steps
1. Preheat the oven to 190 degree celsius. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the oats and 1/2 cup of the chocolate morsels and process until finely ground, about 45 seconds. Stir the oat mixture into the flour mixture and set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla extract at medium speed until creamy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. At low speed, add the dry ingredients, mixing just until combined. Using a wooden spoon/plastic spatula, stir in the remaining 2 cups of chocolate morsels.
4. Chill the dough in the fridge for approximately 30 minutes -1 hour for a better working texture.
5. Measure out rounded teaspoonfuls of the dough and, using ur finger, plop it down onto the baking sheets. Arrange the balls half an index finger apart onto the baking sheets. Don’t flatten the dough balls.
6. Bake the cookies, 2 sheets at a time, for 11-13mins, just until a dark golden brown. Transfer cookies to wire racks and cool completely.
7. If you are going to use a cookie cutter to cut the cookies into shapes, cut it right after you take the cookie sheets out of the oven while they are still hot and soft. Then allow the cut up cookies to cool completely on the wire racks.

These freshly baked cookies taste their best when they are still slightly warm and can last up till a week in an air-tight container.
 

  

buffet agony

I really need to start the momentum of being disciplined soon. I procrastinated 1 week after the report submission deadline before I got around to doing it properly the night before. Good thing for the 8 day MC. But I wished it could have been longer haha! Actually, it should have been longer! My wounds are healing well I think, but they are still leaking blood. Had to chew onto a piece of gauze and add pressure to the wound every now and then. And nina nina nina banana. WHY SCHEDULE UR WISDOM TEETH SURGERY TMR OMG!! haha oh well cos you dont have much options anyway since Project 3 starts next mon and won’t end till 8 weeks later. Quite sad. But seriously, I was looking foward to tmr since last week with trucks and tanks and oceans and galaxies full of anticipation you cannot imagine!!!!! Let’s see what Astrid has to say about changing the buffet dinner to tonight instead. Oh and nina, very sad to say this, but I think you won’t be able to eat chicken cutlet and chicken chop or fries when we go for lunch after school starts next week Miss Bubble Cheeks! hahahaha. YOU ALSO MUST SKYPE ME ON THE 4TH DAY AFTER SURGERY! I will laugh and make you laugh with me in torture.