Lots of bakes

My day started at 6.30am as usual. Got little one ready for school and daddy took her down to wait for the school bus. As we're meeting some friends for tea today, I decided to do some baking. My plan was to make cream puffs, but as I saw the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window, I got excited as it meant it was a perfect day for proving bread. So I quickly looked for bread recipe and found it. I don't know the source of this bread recipe but when I find out and get approval to post it, I shall add it here. It's my 3rd time making bread. 1st time it was ok but very yeasty in taste. 2nd time, the dough did not rise and I had to throw out the whole lot. :( Today, I felt confident enough that it was going to succeed. And it did! I did not have anything I could make nice buns with, such as sausages and ham but I did have chocolate chips and cinnamon so that's what I ended up with. I took advantage of the sun as well as the heat emanating from the oven and my bread dough actually rose, unlike the last time. I had started my bake day with a tray of chocolate chip biscuits which I had gotten from Daphne's blog. I made them the day before so the dough was sitting in the fridge and I wanted to use them all up. I added some cocoa and raisins to the original recipe so that's why mine are brown and hers are golden. They aren't as chewy as those I like but they are nice, more like a soft cookie. So if you like those you got to try this recipe. I intend to give them away as a birthday gift tomorrow so that's one present sorted. I thought of initially baking a little cake, also an excuse for me to practise on my buttercream, but I had a booboo in the kitchen while cooking lunch so now I have a very painful blister on my right index finger. Sigh.


When the tray of cookies was out of the oven, I left the oven door open and let the yeast benefit from the heat and slowly when it wasn't burning hot, I let the bowl of bread dough sit on the oven door. It rose beautifully.


In the midst of all the baking I had forgotten about lunch. Haha. So after princess was home, I quickly set about preparing a simple lunch. Made a fried udon for her and a treat of 2 little cream puffs. Of course when I went back into the kitchen to prepare my lunch, the puffs promptly made their way into her mouth even though I had reminded her that she was to eat her udon first. What's a mother to do??

I had bought some fresh yong tau fu yesterday from the market and was supposed to make a curry yong tau fu for dinner but we had dinner out so I couldn't let them go to waste. Used a little of ready rempah (blended spices) which I had gotten from the market, it's really so convenient and had a yummy lunch ready in a jiffy.

So it was at this time that I was boiling the udon, I decided to remove the cinnamon rolls from the tray as the buns were cool by then, and not realizing that the flame had heated the tray, I left my little finger against the side of the tray and I could feel a burn right away. Ouch!! I now have a blister and dabbing my blister on the icepack as I type this post. It relieves the pain for a few seconds then I have to dab again.

Here are the cream puffs all ready and filled. Have to rush off now, but just a little note. Thanks very much to Bozo for sharing the recipe and I will try it again but it needed quite a bit of wrist work so I doubt I'd be doing them often, maybe for a special occasion, but the custard was gorgeous, I'd have to add. I didn't like the first lot of puffs as much, that is the darker brown one with icing sugar on them. They turned out very crispy. The second lot of puffs I made, I put on the wrong temperature as I was baking bread in-between the 2 trays and it turned out really well, like the texture as what you get in Chin Mei Chin kind, all soft and lovely. Alright got to ciao, off to tea.