… or rather the title should be: “The Perils of Being an Indolent Hypocritical Liar like Elsie”.
As you probably have guessed, this is a blog entry about gaining weight during the holidays. But really, as a part-time teacher (or a con-artist specializing in tricking unwitting students, who don’t have a choice, that I actually have something to teach them) and part-time bum, my life at present is on perpetual vacation (which also means to say that I gain weight regardless of whether or not it’s a holiday).
I have been doing a lot of baking though. That much from the title is true. I can’t even count how many cookies I made over the past few weeks. All because my family members are so supportive of my baking that they ordered boxes and boxes of cookies to give away to clients, friends and thesis advisers. Oh! And I did get two orders from non-family members. I hasten to add this because – well, wouldn’t it be just so pathetic if only my family patronized my baking?
Anyway, I am happy to report that I did earn a pretty good sum of money considering I can only bake during the weekends. All that hard work during the weekends bending over cookie dough and running back and forth to and from my work station (formerly known as our family dining table) and the oven (placed outside in our terrace because it’s too big to fit in our kitchen) was brutal for my usually inert 1XX lbs. body. I cannot imagine how professional chefs can do it all day. Sadly though (well… not really all that sad), all the money I earned went right back into buying more baking tools and ingredients. (No new jacket and shoes for you, Elsie…)
This was what our dining table looked like for three weekends and and a couple of weekdays thrown in. My eyes were filled with visions of stars…. Hundreds and hundreds of stars in total! Mint Star Cookies that is. And we packed them in boxes, tin canisters and mugs (depending I suppose on how much my sister likes her customers… or her customers’ secretaries).
Aside from these mint star cookies, also made lemon sugar cookies for Mom and Dad’s giveaways. I would be happy if I never have to bake another lemon cookie in my life. I don’t like them very much as they taste a lot like tangier Eggnog biscuits. You would get tired of Eggnog too if your Mom packs it in your school lunch bag almost every day of your elementary and high school life. (Well, to be fair, Eggnog alternated with Teenie Weenies chocolate sandwich cookies, so it was either one or the other for recess time for how many years since both products came out in grocery stores near you).
I wasn’t inspired enough to take pictures of those lemon cookies. But I did bake other stuff, such as…
1. Cowgirl Cookies – These were inspired by Bakerella. If I remember correctly, she used pink sort of M&Ms and when I saw a bag of strawberry chips in Chocolate Lover, I though I could maybe use the same recipe for Piglet’s Christmas giveaways to her classmates (Yes. Even Piglet commissioned me to bake something). Then I saw multicolored lentils (candy-covered chocolate like Nips) in the same store and thought that maybe I could mix that in too so that the cookies will look really festive. And the result is this:
I definitely went overboard. hahaha… It was toothachingly sweet! And the strawberry chips I thought were overwhelming. Every bite there was the crunch of the lentils. Next time I would lessen the sugar for sure and lessen the toppings as well. Wouldn’t want to give the kids diabetes at such a young age. But anyway, I ended up not making these cookies for the kids because I ran out of time. They only got boring lemon cookies. And besides, Cheska got sick on the day they were going to have their Christmas party and was not able to personally give the cookies to her classmates and teachers so I couldn’t have used her as my spy and, being a person with inferiority complex that I am, ask her what her classmates thought of the cookies.
The first batch of these cookies (along with a batch of lemon drizzle cakes) went to my co-teachers at U.P. Diliman’s Dept of Linguistics. (I secretly use them as my lab rats so I try to bring something every week or every other week. I think that was one of my main motivations for getting back into teaching: to have some people taste my baking hahaha…)
2. Chocolate-dipped Cream Puffs – I’m very proud of these cream puffs. Actually, I’ve been planning to make them for a very long time. I thought they would be very difficult to make but making the choux roux (I think is what the dough is called) wasn’t very hard not was it very time consuming at all.
Okay… I must admit that:
- I didn’t use real pastry cream for the filling. When I read the recipe for the pastry cream filling, I thought I could never find the patience to wait for four hours of refrigeration to make the pastry cream. Instead, I whipped some all-purpose cream with a little bit of sugar to make – what else? – whipped cream.
- Also, just look at this:
(*Hides face in shame*) It’s true! The first batch came out flat. Hahaha…. They look like… uhh… never mind. The mistake that I made was not letting it bake longer.
The second batch I tried baking for a longer time. And they turned out… still looking like… uhh… never mind again. Haha…
It would have been such a waste to throw away the Cream “Flats” so… top it with a dollop of whipped cream… drizzle with left over melted chocolate… and voila!
Hooray! Watashi wa tensai desu! Hahaha….
(I must be careful next time though T_T…)
3. Chocolate Mint Torte – This is a very ominous looking chocolate mint torte indeed hahaha… I must learn how to style food more properly (If you’re wondering what the white stuff is… it’s left-over whipped cream from the cream puffs). The recipe for this I found in Martha Stewart’s website (I’ve been a fan of Marth Stewart ever since I was a little girl. But that’s a post for another day.)
This is the first time that I made a torte. Actually, I have no idea what a torte is haha… (I usually eat without paying attention to what the food I’m eating is called. As long as it’s delicious, I’m fine with it. If it’s made out of something disgusting like – I dunno – monkey brains or something, then I don’t want to know.) I was not faithful to the original recipe so I don’t know if this counts as a torte or not. But the cake turned out kinda fudgy but light…. and very peppermint-y.
The reason why I didn’t follow the original recipe was because I used chocolate not really meant for baking.
A couple of months ago, our sister in Canada sent us boxes of Truffles chocolates. You know, the ones that come in big boxes and the truffles are all packed together in a plastic inside? Unfortunately of course, they melted during the journey from Montreal to Malabon….(-___-) Not knowing what to do with it, I decided to trying using it for my baking.
Guessing that truffles have high cocoa butter (which is why they melt pretty quickly), I no longer used any butter for the cake (I have no idea whether my logic is correct or not. Are cocoa butter and regular butter at all similar? Am I right that truffles have high cocoa butter? What the heck is cocoa butter anyway??? I’m such a fake foodie hahaha…) I used more chocolate as well.
The end product is…. very… I think I already said…. very minty. It’s amazing what one teaspoon of peppermint oil can do. haha…. Having a bite of the cake is like getting both a dessert and a mouthwash. It’s very weird… haha… Even though I’m a great fan of pairing chocolate and mint, even I couldn’t handle eating three small slices. In the end, I had to dispose half the cake into the “kaning baboy”. I hope the pigs enjoyed it.
4. Jam-filled Sour Cream Coffee Bread – Or it should have been if I was able to put jam in it and did not mess up the cream cheese filling. Booo!
I got the recipe from King Arthur Flour’s website which is one of my favorite sources because so far every recipe that I tried from their website was successful and yummy (my only baker friend Joy Ann agrees) The bread dough turned out fine. I like using sour cream in baking. Somehow cakes and bread seem softer and moister with sour cream (but of course you can’t use sour cream in every thing T_T) . The bread was good enough to eat plain without any filling and I would’ve been able to do a “mock braid” if only the cream cheese filling didn’t turn out so runny (the big loaf in the picture was evidence of my refusal to accept reality… that I couldn’t braid the dough with cream cheese mixture spreading all over and making a big mess…. -____-u)
The runniness of the cream cheese filling was all my fault (who else could it be???) I thought the egg white was supposed to be added to the cream cheese mixture, when actually it was supposed to be for the glaze! D’oh!
Anyway, all’s well that ends well. We still ended up with edible and yummy bread. Some of the buns I filled with kaya jam and I topped them with a sprinkling of white sesame seeds.
5. Coconut Cake – My last baking project for the holiday season was a Coconut Cake.
Actually, I didn’t plan to make a coconut cake. I didn’t even like the idea of coconut cake. But it so happened that my bag of dessicated coconut got infiltrated by ants (oohhh… I do hate ants…) The maid put the bag in a basin of water so that no more ants could get in and any ants who try to escape would die a watery death. Unfortunately, water seeped into the plastic and the dessicated coconut got wet. Yaya suggested that I use it immediately because it might go bad since it got wet and all. So I looked for a recipe with lots of dessicated coconut and decided on Coconut Cake from a Periplus recipe book.
I learned though that baking with dessicated coconut that got wet is not a good thing at all. I don’t know whether it’s from the extra moisture from the damp dess. coconut, but the cake turned out really hard.
Even so, the cake was pretty good with ice cream and whipped cream. Coconut-y! (^_^)
No picture again because the cake was ugly and boring hahaha….
Aside from these, I also baked a couple of batches of oatmeal cookies for Dad. Dad’s oatmeal cookies does not have a single grain of white sugar in it. It’s pretty awful…. -____-
So that’s the end of my account of my holiday baking.
It’s the third day of the new year! Happy New Year everyone! More baking anecdotes to come (hopefully)!
