boxing day baking binge

I wanted to keep to my promise and bake something nice for my colleagues to munch, and judging from past failures, I decided to make the sticky date pudding for them as a safe bet (since that's already tried and proven to be good).

Since I've done it before, this time it was a breeze... ta-dahhh!


I'll leave it up to my eaters to comment on the taste of it tomorrow when I feed it to them. My folks have had a slice to taste and they gave the thumbs-up, so it should pass my colleagues' fussy taste buds with flying colours. I won't make the butterscotch sauce this time though, a little messy to take along (plus the pudding is way sweet enough without it). Will leave the ice-cream option up to them.

Ok, since it's Christmas and all, I really, really wanted to make these big soft gingerbread cookies. The reviews it received on the All Recipes were nothing but praises, I just had to get my hands dirty and make some for myself.

The recipe is simple enough to follow. However when everything was mixed together, the dough texture wasn't as what I'd expected - really soft, mushy, almost toothpaste-like and you can't shape it into anything let alone use a cookie cutter to make shapes. But hey, 348 reviewers would've said something about it if the recipe was wrong, right?

So anyway, I used a teaspoon and scooped up enough dough to to make a decent-sized cookie (walnut-sized, according to the instructions). Placing them as far apart as I could but still trying to be space efficient, I popped them into the oven to bake.

Oooh, the smell that came out of there was absolutely mouth-watering! The cookies expanded nicely, and as soon as they turned to a deep brown colour I took them out, let them cool for a bit...


Now for the taste and texture test... *bite*...

Yummmmmmmmmm! The taste is just right; not too gingery although if you'd like it a bit more spicy, add more ground ginger. As most reviewers said, it's really sweet so go easy on the sugar if you don't want it giving you toothaches. I've even skipped rolling the dough in sugar before baking.

The texture is crunchy on the outside, nice, soft and chewy on the inside. Just the way a really good cookie should be *grin*!


p.s. Time to go on a diet after all this binging... *sigh*


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