chomp-fest

The past few days has been a bit of a baking-fest for me! :) The school term is always so insanely tiring and busy that I seldom have the time to bake stuff though it's such an enjoyable hobby for me. (Which reminds me, how will I ever become a domestic goddess a la Nigella if I don't practise now huh??) So I took the opportunity over the past few days of the Christmas vacation to create a mess in the kitchen and indulge in a major chomp-fest.

First off, chocolate chip cupcakes stuffed with chunks of hershey's cookies and cream chocolate and topped off with rainbow sprinkles. A friend gave me this recipe once and it's actually REALLY SIMPLE :p as it doesn't really involve baking entirely from scratch (coughcough I use the Betty Crocker devil's chocolate cake mix) but it does allow for some creativity in terms of what you add into the mix. Trust me on this, the Hershey's cookies and cream chocs are divine and go soooo well with the normal chocolate flavor.

These ginger snaps actually look better than they tasted. :( I dunno what really happened but there these were just an overdose of baking powder. 'Nuff said. SIGH.

The chocolate cupcakes in a pile! :)

Then came the fun part. This was the first time I've actually made gingerbread men by myself (previously it was with my aunt in Seattle a few years back and we always simply used the ready made cookie dough) and boy, was it a challenge! I found a recipe online which called for the use of 1/2 cup of honey but TYPICAL blur me read it as 1 and a 1/2 cups of honey syrup and the boy only realized it when 1 cup had gone into the batter and the entire thing was so runny there was no way of making a dough out of it. So in order to salvage it, I had to double the batter and repeat all the steps once again in order to make up for the extra honey and in the end, I just kept adding FLOUR FLOUR FLOUR and more FLOUR. Must've used up more than 4 cups of flour for sure. Sure it was an ordeal but you know what? It was so fun. :D I LOVE making gingerbread men now! My favorite part is rolling out the dough and pressing the cookie cutter into it and then peeling the perfectly cut piece of dough and placing it on the tray. Totally tedious but so fun.

The gingerbread men are actually pretty ginormous! About the size of my palm? I didn't realize they'd be so big but the cookie cutter I bought just happened to be a larger than average. While baking in the oven under the glow of the oven light they all looked like little expanding monsters. *shudder*

Felt like a total kindergardener in an art class! :p Not great at icing them but what the heck. It kinda sucks too that my family is on the whole pretty health conscious so I had to limit the number of cookies I decorated lest no one in my family eats any of them because of the icing sugar.

In other news... I'm in HK now! :) Meant to post this yesterday while I was packing but in the end I just ended up doing all sorts of other stuff. Just felt all happy and excited because finally -- I'm able to wear my new f21 beanie and Frye Engineer boots!

One of my favorite things about HK is the weather. I love how it actually gets colder during the winter such that it's just the right weather for boots, scarves, hats, coats... layers, layers, layers! Fun things that are impossible in Singapore. I just arrived in HK a few hours ago and am going to be staying at my aunt's place for the next week or so and there's wifi so hopefully I'll be able to update daily! =) Stomach's totally growling now... can't wait for breakfast to come soon...!

So how's everyone's Christmas coming along? 2 more days! :)

Here's something I put on my Christmas list and openly hinted to my sis, my mum AND the boy yet nobody paid any attention to my pleas:

1. DOMO CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!

And these would be so multipurpose too because you can use them to decorate the place for all sorts of parties, not just xmas ones! But did they listen to my very tempered and well thought out reasoning? NO.

If I were a guy living in the U.S. with an Urbie store right around the corner, I'd so get these two shirts.

So what's on everyone's Christmas list? :) Do tell!

xx