cookie confusion

I'm a great fan of cookies, believe me. Though I still prefer a slice of cake over a chocolate cookie, I'm not fussed. If it's sweet, chewy and fulfills my cravings for whatever I crave at that moment then I'm satisfied. My ideal cookie would be those from Subway; although I haven't tried many different store-bought biscuits I do love the chewiness and size of those giant cookies. But I can't have many of those in one sitting since they're a little too sugary for me.

Everyone always talks about their perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, or their triple-tested snickerdoodles or peanut butter cookies. I've found that everyone's got a slightly different approach to baking cookies, with their own quirks and tips; and so sometimes one person's recipe will not work for someone else.

I'm hoping that that is the case, or else I'm just not one for baking cookies. I've used a couple different recipes for different biscuits, but they all don't turn out the way I want them to. Or what the pictures look like.

 I used Lovin' From the Oven's recipe for this one; I absolutely love how amazing her cookies turn out, every single time! I needed to add milk to the batter before baking, and I probably should have added more so that they would spread more. 

Now chocolate chip cookies. My favourite type of cookie and a classic. I can't remember which recipe I used for this one because it was a while ago, but I definitely know that they weren't meant to become little chocolate chip rocks. 

I tried again using Bakerella's recipe but even that didn't turn out...right. The texture never ended up the same, even though I thoroughly burnt it. 

And these were peanut butter cookies that were meant to be moist, chewy, giant melt-in-your-mouth wonders. But at the time I didn't actually mind the size because they were still relatively chewy.

I'm sure that there's something very obvious that I've missed, but I'm quite lost about what it is. Anyway I returned to something that I could do relatively well and baked these Mandarin and Orange Squares a few weeks ago. The recipe was originally for lemon, and if I would do it again then I would stick to the recipe. The citrus taste barely came out at all; in fact I would suggest adding more juice than in the recipe. Nonetheless the crust was crumbly and good, and it was a family favourite.

I've lost where I found this recipe, so I'm very sorry if this was originally yours!

Lemon Squares
Adapted from Martha Steward's Cookies

For the crust:
1 1/2 (3/4 C) unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 C plain flour
3/4 C confectioner's sugar
3/4 tsp salt


For the filling:
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/3 C sugar
3 tbsp plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 C lemon juice
1/4 C milk

Preheat oven at 350 F(180 C). Grease a 9-13 inch baking dish before lining with baking paper, including some overhang.
For the crust: Cut the butter into small pieces and set aside. Whisk together flour, confectioner's sugar and salt in a bowl. Add butter and mix until just combined and the mixture looks crumbly. Press mixture firmly into baking dish and cool in fridge for 15 minutes before baking until golden for 16-20 minutes.
For the filling: Whisk together eggs, sugar, flour and salt until smooth. Stir in juice and milk. Pour over the hot baked crust. Reduce the temperature to 325 F(160 C) and bake until filling is set and the edges are slightly golden brown. Let it cool completely on a wire rack before dusting with confectioner's sugar and slicing into squares.
The lemon squares can be kept in an airtight container in the fridge up to 2 days.

birthday and recent foods

It was my sister's 21st birthday and she found this 'Big Fat Chocolate Cake' in one of the cafes while we were in Fremantle. It was the first and last cake that she saw, and it doesnt take much to guess why she picked it. It was essentially a chocolate mud cake, with lashings of milk chocolate icing, and protected by a delicate layer of more chocolate. I don't really like mud cakes because they taste a little too boring and dense for me, and the cake itself wasn't very sweet apart from the icing and surrounding chocolate. But it was a good way to end a fun birthday dinner party.

This was from the nearby Japanese restaurant Yuki's that the family dined at the night before her birthday party. This dessert, I think, was some kind of almond and coffee ice cream, and unfortunately I only remembered after I'd taken a bite that I disliked almond ice cream, just like I disliked marzipan. 

I baked the Aria Chocolate Tart; which featured on Masterchef (of which I'm a hardcore fan of) from this recipe, for my sister's birthday lunch. I had pie dough left over and decided to turn it into some chocolate cookies for the family to nibble on. In the end I ended up nibbling the most of them. 

 My favourite lunch of late: toasted sandwiches. I think I had it about 5 times during the school break, and with the usual characters: cucumber, carrot, chicken and cheese. I'm in love with my mother's sandwich toaster at the moment, and I've tried it on spinach wraps too. Next time I'm putting in a little djon mustard.

Spontaneously I decided to make use of the gluten-free pasta I'd bought a while back. The sauce consists of some regular spaghetti sauce, fried celery, tomato, onion, garlic and pork mince. I just love a chunky pasta sauce.

batch of tastiness

I had forgotten about blogging for quite some time. It's been a little bit of a bumpy journey for me and things have yet to settle down but I'm trying my best to put everything back to normal. Life is so unpredictable at times; it feels like I'm living monotonously one day and the next everything has changed. I'm sure I don't have to remind anyone of this, because we've all got our own struggles and achievements.

I don't think I can put many words down today. I guess it's just one of those days where you're not sure of anything enough to make a definite decision. But I wanted to review the food experiences since the last post, because there is quite a bit and I think it deserves mentioning.

 This is the Chinese New Year feast at my aunt's house in which all the separate families contributed their personal signature dishes. As you can see, it was a celebration of colours, textures, smells and tastes that we all devoured happily. 

This was my aunt's special Chinese New Year biscuit platter, which consists of shortbreads, peanut cookies, pineapple cookies and pineapple tarts in the center. 

My yoghurt cake which I'd forgotten to include baking powder. The result was a dense soya-like cake loaf; not so popular with the household. Nevertheless it was finished within the week. 

That month I also made an orange chiffon pie with uncooked egg whites. It gave it a fluffy and light texture, but left an eggy aftertaste. I don't think we managed to finish this one before it went off.

Dinner one night: fried pork dumplings I think.

Banana cake with cream cheese frosting. The cupcakes went to my friend who needed some cheering up.

Results from my cooking class. :)

For a friend's 21st; the dress theme was animals and she was the glamorous butterfly.

Vancouver post cont.

Continuing on from the previous post, this was on a day when my sister and I went out to Metrotown by ourselves. She got a traditional asian meal while I decided to go with what I think is a classic italian sandwich, however I can't remember the name of the shop. I thought that it was delicious and very filling; I was already full on the first half.

I then continued to buy an ice cream from the shop nearby...again, the name has deserted me, but I'm sure if any Canadians saw it they'd recognize it immediately, since it's quite unique. Well, I'd never seen anything like it in Australia, so why not? As I've said before, I'm quite easily amused.

Me showing how surprised I was by the size. I believe that was a medium.

My sis also picked up some mouth-watering fruit yoghurt from yogen fruz. This one was strawberry and other berries I believe.

And finally, breakfast; the most important meal of the day. This particular one was quite important because it was our last day in Vancouver. The bacon ended up smelling like fresh sugary waffles, but maybe it was because the brand had something to do with maple. It tasted normal though. :)

I've done a bit since getting back to Australia, including baking and icing some vanilla satins. I finally got to use the icing tools my cousins lent to me, but only to spread the icing on top. I think they ended up quite cute, if I dare say so myself.