I really should not be in the kitchen.
Really really.



I should be up and about, nose deep in books, prepping for the upcoming week that's about to go down. Its crazy this feeling, one moment I feel like I am king of my own mountain, I can do anything, and the next I think I am going to go on a mini panic attack, I can't do anything and I am going to crash and burn. And the best part, its not even the real exam. There's a reason its called the preliminaries.



Maybe they want us to get like this, this crazy, or maybe its just me. Thinking its okay to skip a few classes here and there, and it really is. To enter university and not skip a single class, that's just going to go down as 'not a proper university experience'



But that is not the point now, the point is I have papers to sit for on monday, tuesday, thursday and saturday. Yes saturday and I'm scared. Like 'first day of school' scared. I know that it doesnt count, but I hate being unprepared, going in uncertain, stepping into the deep end and not knowing how to swim. I could run, but I'm not going to.



I will get through this. And I will be so ready come May. And after that I will have the most, (okay, I will settle for second best) if not second most awesome summer ever. But I'm still figuring a way to top last summer's adventure of a lifetime.
Now's not the time to think about it. Now is about coffee, the lack of internet connection, which will be a good thing, figuring out weird numbers, and figures and signs, and phrasing essays and getting fingers not to freeze up and hurt from writing too much and too hard. And sleeping right.



Hence these apple related foods are very out of place here, but they do provide a kind of comfort only breakfast foods can. Add in a scoop of vanilla icecream and maybe the day won't be as bad as I think it will be.
I need to pack my table (again) and my room following that. Somehow I transform into this semi-ocd person when I'm facing some sort of deadline related trauma, should I say, and everything has to be perfect, clean and well, perfect. And I really cannot get anything done in my room, this is absolutely tragic.
This week will be over soon. It just has to be.
Or else, I wont be able to enjoy the coming weekend, or the next week, and I really really want to. So help me.



Meanwhile, have some breakfast, or dessert.
And I'll be back, soon.



Apple crisp
recipe from Ann of Fidget via Joythebaker

(Bake in an 8×8 baking dish or double the recipe and bake in a 9×13 dish)
*I halved the recipe and got enough for 3 servings

Filling:

5 to 6 medium-size apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch slices. (About 7.5 cups)
3 tbsp granulated sugar
1.5 tsp cinnamon

Topping:

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups lightly packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 stick unsalted butter, well-softened
2/3 cup finely chopped pecans (optional)
1/3 cup quick oats

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Generously grease an 8×8 baking pan with butter.

Place a layer of apple slices in the bottom of the pan and dust with sugar/cinnamon mixture.

Continue layering apples and dusting with cinnamon/sugar until done.

Toss the apple mixture until evenly coated in cinnamon sugar.

The apples should be just about to the top of the pan (they will cook down).

For the topping, place the flour, brown sugar, nuts, cinnamon and oats in a large bowl and stir well with a wooden spoon.

Work the butter into the mixture with your fingertips until evenly distributed.

Take one full handful of the topping and toss it into the sugared apple mixture.

Spread the rest of the topping evenly over the apples. (I usually end up with a dough-like topping that I just lay on top of the apples).

Bake the crisp in the dish on a baking sheet on the center oven rack until the topping is crunchy and the apples are bubbling, 55-60 minutes.

Serve hot; it’s excellent with vanilla ice cream.

Know those moments in life where you just need to be alone, not talking, not thinking. Momentary respite. Well, sometimes those need to drag on just a little longer. Me time, I believe its called. There are also periods in the year, where these little spots of needing me-time seem to pop up more often than not. And that period is impending, I just know.





Then again, some days you just want to disappear into the world. To be alone in a crowded room. It's scary, but also draws out the inquisitive nature to know how it feels. Being invisible. Will people miss you? Will they call? Or will life just sweep over you like the next wave and the previously left footprints, evened out.



People are funny beings. At least I know I am one. And not in the hilarious way, in the 'I know what I want but yet I'm totally clueless at the same time' way. Funnily clueless I should say.
Do I make sense?
I want people to call
I don't want them to.
I want people to miss me
I don't want them to remember.



When the phone rings, there is this internal struggle, pick up? Leave it be. Contemplating takes as though a lifetime, you stare at the rapid blinking lights till there blink themselves out and it phone goes still. 'I should have answered'
You feel guilty, I will pick it the next time it rings. And you don't, even though it goes off, again.
Before you know it, it has been 5 rounds of staring at blinking lights.
It finally ends, then you get texts.



Easy: Reply the texts after 5 hours with some response indicating you're still alive, thankfully.
Hard: Telling the truth



Yet above all, after all, I still don't know what I want.

Hopefully a little comfort food, will temporarily push these little muddlyfuddly things out of my mind and I will concentrate on little things, but important things, like not turning rice to gooey porridge. Being totally paranoid that I will disgrace my Asian ethnicity by not being able to cook rice successfully, plumping raisins and slowly cooking milk down, very patiently, to the right creamy texture.
And thereafter, I will sit on my favourite spot on the bed, propped up by two pillows, feet curled up, and watch the latest episodes of Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother 6 and eat chilled rice pudding.
Although it is the first time I've eaten rice pudding ever, the smell and taste felt comforting, friendly and right. And I concurred that even if I did not get anything right today, at least I did get this.
That itself, is enough to bring me to a new dawn.



I love what I do.

Vanilla rice pudding
from The Gourmet Cookbook
(serves 4 to 6)

2 cups water
1cup long grain rice
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 vanilla bean, split open (I used 1+1/4 tbsp vanilla extract)
1 cup raisins

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Stir in lemon zest, salt and long grain rice and return to a boil. Turn the heat to low and simmer the rice, covered, until all of the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes.

Once rice is cooked, place it in a bowl and rise out pan. Add 4 cups of milk, sugar and vanilla bean to the pan. Bring to a low boil, stirring often so the milk doesn’t burn. Add the cooked rice and raisins to the hot milk. Stir often, until the milk cooks down and the rice is creamy, about 20 minutes. Place in a large bowl or serving dishes to cool. Serve cold or at room temperature.

You would think I'm going a little crazy when I spend time staying up till like 3am in the morning thinking of ways to motivate myself to wake up in the morning, not the usual snoozing the alarm till 11am and reluctantly rolling out of bed because the sun is too hot kind of waking up.

hot, sticky, icky and unmotivated. ew

I really want the open your eyes and thank God its a new day kind of morning. The kind where you feel and know for sure it's going to be a good day and everything is going to be just fine. And I go to bed feeling somewhat hopeful and positive the latter will come true but the former is always realised.

Then again staying up to think of ways how to make myself rise and shine early isn't probably the best way to do things, yeayea the best way is to just sleep at 11pm and rise and shine will come naturally
I am not most people and I cannot do it. I just can't so I need motivation. And that is to have food, that is only deemed acceptable at breakfast, like pancakes. Although I can probably out-argue myself on this one I am not going to.

Pancakes=Breakfast, for now.



And you will not believe the amount of time I spent contemplating between banana pancakes with chocolate chips and oatmeal raisin pancakes. Upon checking that I didnt have bananas ruled out the former. But being me, since I can't have the best of both, I shall have the best of both worlds in ONE. hah.
Oatmeal chocolate chip pancakes it is.

Plus i really have to get myself a bottle of maple syrup but I really really cannot walk 10 minutes in this crazydrought-like weather here. look at all the parched grass): so fruit it is.
Besides its healthier anyway(yes I console myself, let me be)

Weekend breakfast 1 : Lazybumness: 0



scratch to-do lists, eat some pancakes first(:

SCORE.

What can I say, I love the combination of oatmeal + raisin in anything. Anything except cooked rolled oats and raisins added in. Those are gross.

Cooked oats, like the kind you would eat for breakfast is icky.

So when making the previously mentioned oatmeal walnut cookie balls, rolling the cookies in oats left me with 1/2 a cup thereabouts of oats.

Throw or keep? Obviously the mother didnt fancy the former and suggested she made cooked oats for breakfast the next day.

Hello! EW!

So I would like to think I saved these oats from become breakfast, instead took the liberty of making my favourite cookies.



I love how my house has all the basic stuff that I need for baking cookies on a whim. And I love how the trusty oven hasnt let me down in the past 8 years! Quite amazing if you ask me.

This has got to be the fastest I've thrown together a cookie recipe. <30 class="media" id="fullSizedImage" style="WIDTH: 559px; HEIGHT: 381px" alt="oatmealraisin4.jpg picture by classifiedramblings" src="http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/classifiedramblings/oatmealraisin4.jpg?t=1266903867" galleryimg="no">

Ok, now let me talk a little about these cookies. I used the same recipe, but they're different.

Well, its my fault but they still turned out great, if not better than the normal ones that I always make. Its just that I know this recipe almost by heart and I just routinely took out all the ingredients I needed and went with the flow.

But, theres a but!

I forgot to add the egg!

(I normally read and re-read the recipe over and over again and am pretty good with following recipe instructions! but I think I was either day dreaming or sunk so deep into routine mixing that when I realised, it was too late, must be the pre-school blues rawr)

eggs! are essential in making the texture right and the batter creamier! and thanks to flour that has already been sifted in, my cookies are now going to turn out, eggless.



So I sifted in the flour and saw the silly brown egg sitting there. I even took it out beforehand and I knew it was in the ingredient list but remembered it a little too late, sigh!

But judging from the consistency of the dough I figured that the dough would still come together pretty nicely although it is a little stiffer than cookie doughs that I've put together.

Oh well! A little experimenting wont hurt right, anyway its a small batch plus I love anything oatmeal and raisin so its gonna be alright!(:

Turns out I kinda love this recipe that I accidentally created, not the usual chewy cookie that I usually get, more of the crispy kind you get with a cup of coffee at restaurants and cafes. And the fact that I made it mini sized, really made it look like it could go very nicely with a cup of hot coffee. Loves!



But I'm still gonna make some adjustments to this recipe though, like soaking the raisins beforehand in water or milk to make them fat and juicy:D Never done that before though, so I'm one step closer to finding that perfect oatmeal raisin cookie, I hope!


(how everything looks when its all over)

Yay for rolled oats and raisins(:

Oatmeal raisin drop cookies
(makes 30-40 mini cookies)

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar (100g)
1 egg
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2-3/4 raisins (depending on your taste)

Preheat oven to 350°F (180deg c)

In large bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well. Add oats and raisins (& nuts if using them); mix well.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool for 1 minute on cookie sheets; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Store tightly covered.

It's Chinese New Year, and I don't really think I need to know the exact date on the lunar calendar to be all ready for this celebration/occasion/festival. Yes the date changes every year without fail thanks to the 30 day lunar calendar but also without fail, right after the christmas decorations come down from shops, malls and homes, the bright red ones go up with immediate effect. Silent night and Joy to the world morph into cny songs that have been pretty much ingrained into us since.



Its kinda impossible to ignore.
Most years, I dont really like cny. All the visiting, continuous eating and watching bad tv, starting off with reunion dinner and ending with this big dinner on the second day. Two consecutive days of relative visiting all over the island, which otherwise would not happen any other day of the year. I know its tradition and part of customary actions that we visit and shake hands, wish them well, but the fact is I hardly know them, if at all. I might as well be shaking the hands of a stranger and wishing them happy new year.
I wonder how different it would be when we become adults, who would we visit?



But this year I had a chance to leave the country! Albeit only a 40min plane ride (half the time I take to get to school btw, ridiculous), it was still away from all the routined habits here and of course I'm in!
And it feels really really good to leave SG, even if it were for less than 40 hours.
Woke up way too early by any standards for a first day of a year. Landed in KL before 9am, had mc's breakfast (hah, its nt brunch, its breakfast ok!). Pretty awesome.
45min drive to PJ and it was the start of the non-stop eating. Grandma seems to take much delight in insisting that we're hungry even though I was still holding the sausage mc muffin in my hand, half eaten.


(Udang is prawn in malay, another so so so yummy snack, only in m'sia sigh, but grandma forced us to cart 2 bags home, nice)

Singapore has its traditions, but when we go up to malaysia, we have traditions too, sigh, we are indeed creatures of habit, either that or we're just slumped into familiarity and comfort with routine knowing it wont disappoint. I'm talking about food here(:
Going up to the same roti canai place, ordering the same thing, talking about the same things, griping about the same things.
Roti canai with egg and teh tarik. mmmm
I guess some things never do change.
Well I dont have any photos from M'sia for one because the mother's paranoid about malaysia being dangerous and we'll get mugged carrying a dslr around. Shouldve brought the digi cam. Thinking about it, despite visiting m'sia so so often, I dont have pictures of the trips, ever. Should really take some the next time.


(ahhhh!(:)

Following that was tv show after tv show on cable in the new home theatre room that the cousins got, complete with funky sofas and a 42inch. Life is good.
Plus for whoever who doesnt know, kl is pretty much a ghost town like you wouldnt believe during cny, cos everyone goes out of state (to penang, malacca, all the small towns) to visit parents and relatives. So everything is closed, literally everything, and the roads are all jam-free.
Upon which we pretty much watched tv, played dvds, and watched more tv the entire day. Peppered with small conversations throughout.
Dinner was a simple affair unlike the usual a-lot-of-fuss-and-too-much-food cny dinners.
Curry chicken with oyster saucs vegs. (:



(note to self, should probably 'steal' and keep some of these to make pistachio icecream!(:)

Grandma was also looking pretty good herself, so cute, she kinda thought chu yi was actually chu xi and how she hurriedly changed into new clothes upon realisation. Quite funny.
And from the amount of talking and encouragements to eat more, I think she was feeling pretty happy that day too.

Now if only there were her arrowhead chips and seaweed chips to eat. omg those are like my ultimate favourite cny snacks. Wins pineapple tarts, hae bee hiam, bak kwa, or melting moments anytime, hands down. I can like go through half a bottle of that at a go. And the worse thing is its so light that you dont think you've eaten that much of it and before you know it you're staring at half an empty bottle of chips. Very Bad.

And I like how cute shes being by trying to impart her recipes to me but not realising she doesnt use any units of formal measurements. Old people are funny that way(:
(ok this is obviously not my photo, got it off google but since I dont want to launch into describing my favourite cny snack and feeling sad all over again cos I have no way of getting these awesome babies any time soon) but here, arrowhead chips. Just like potato chips, but totally different, and better.

Ah yes, movies movies and more movies. Watched a grand total of 6 movies in <40hours. I think part of it was mum and her brother trying to relive their childhood (because during new years, they would go to the theatre and watch as many movies as they could in a day, because they didnt have a tv set at home). But I do love movies, and good ones at that, so I'm really not complaining. Plus with their extensive collection of dvds, we could watch all the good ones.
Awesomeness.

Total damage: CJ7, Up!, Pride and prejudice, stranger than fiction, sherlock holmes, and taken
movies ftw(:

The second day involved brunch at one of the usual coffee shops that had basically everything yumz and hawker food-ish that I love. Not exactly the cleanest of places haha but they always say, the ickiest places gives the yummiest food. I agree.
And for 3 people,we had chee cheong fun, yong taufoo, penang laksa (which I cant eat but its ok!), wanton mee, popiah! and of course, teh tarik. omg So Full! if I had a second stomach, I would have gone for dim sum but too bad):
Back home to continue with the tv mooching. Totally never visit any of the malls and spent 90% of the time at home but it was all gd. No technology, no internet, no facebook, no phones. Tiny, awesome respite.



Crunched down half a bottle of arrowhead chips between mum and myself. And it was bad, but so good at the same time. sigh.
Having cny snacks <1m away from you and arms reach while whiling time away in front of the tv is so not a good thing.
6pm came too fast and retreat was over.
It was another 45min ride to klia and back home, by which we would all concur that we were returning back to the best airport in the world - somehow whenever I leave the country I always return with the same conclusion. whether its msia or usa, the conclusions dont differ. Is it the familarity and comfort of repetition or just that I'm missing home but don't really care to admit sometimes.

Well, I dont really know myself(;

mmm tastes like butter cookies, oh wait, not butter cookies, more like butter cookies with nuts, Actually you know what, tastes almost like cereal prawns, especially of the crunchy crispy bits of cereal often strewned abundantly over the prawns or squid or whatever seafood there is.
Wait, how can the taste of butter cookies evolveto cereal prawns within the span of 4-5 chews.
dont ask me, ask the cookies. dont look at me, its not my fault! its theirs!
*conveniently shifts all blame to the cookie for being difficult.



Aha cny brings about the mother going on a massive cookie spree. much like me during christmas time and aftermajor exams. I guess the apple doesnt fall that far from the tree in relation to this(; Its a good thing though, so no complains here. Cookies, big or small are pretty much good friends with mix-ins of any sort, most commonly being chocolate chips but that in itself brings about numerous variety for those who care to look.
dark, white, milk, semi-sweet,bittersweet, mint chocolate. ah chocolate.
BUT, onto that another day.



That said, we mustn't forget nuts. Although here in singapore the most commonly found and well, readily available nut (in non exorbitant prices) are almonds.
A trip to redman or phoonhuat can bring you face to face with an entire shelf or shelves of almonds.
Almonds done in every way possible. chopped, diced, silvered, whole, blanched, unblanched, powdered (ooh almond powder = macarons!), sliced, salted, unsalted. You get the idea. And its relatively affordable as well. Second to that is probably walnuts. Peanuts dont count here, those are for teasing your perfectly manicured fingernails with during cny or coupled with beer and pizza on a saturday night. or in my parents case, snacks to go with red wine..hmm no judging here.



But we're not here to talk about peanuts or almonds, its walnuts! hello! About $16/kg give or take. Sigh no farmers markets here to go to for pecans, macademia!, walnuts, brazil nuts and all other forms of nutty delights. Hence the obvious lack of nuts in my food endavours.but well, since these cookies have nuts as a key ingredient and I didnt have to fund these myself, hah walnuts it is!
200g of walnuts can make a whole lot of very-walnutty cookies. and very awesome i might add. so thats more than half a kg of walnuts for me to play around with in the near future. double yay.



The chopping up of the nuts could well be done by a food processor - yet again. But chopping them by hand (something not done by me) is definitely the easier way to quality control the size of the nut chunks. so it is recommended, by me(: Besides, food processing does ruin the fun, whizzing everything up into a food blur, plus the washing! haha.



Walnuts + oatmeal + cookie. i think this is my new favourite cny cookie. Still cant hold a candle, though, to my favourite cny snack(s) which grandma has perfected through years and years of making them. More on that sometime in the next post. I think this is what a cross between cereal prawns and a butter cookie would taste like.



Ah chinese new year, I really dont know whether to love or hate you.

My favourite way of eating cornflakes aren’t in a bowl of milk nor are they straight out of the package, they’re in these little balls of crunchies. Cereal in anything is always, always good, and any kind of cereal too I must add. I love cereal.

Honey stars, captain crunch, honey bunches, koko krunch!, weet bix (for the healthy days), REESES PUFFS (although we don’t have them hereL) and I could go on forever but you get the point. But I have to say the very first cereal I’ve ever eaten was in day-care during pre-schooling years. Plain old cornflakes in those tiny boxes that comes in packs of 6 that I would bug mum to buy for me to bring to school to eat. Because in those days, small boxes of cereal were cool like that. Then other kinds of cereal started to evolve, and now we have pretty much aisles of cereal in supermarkets.

Awesomeness.

But these days I don’t really have the luxury of sitting down in the morning, read the papers or something or try to wake up properly and eat a bowl or cereal with cold milk. Yep, because I’m not a morning person and I’M ALWAYS LATE IN THE MORNINGS. Bah.



Don’t really know how I did it all through primary , secondary and jc days but now its like almost impossible for me to get to an 0830 class on time. Yes I know its terrible but I think I can live with that for now and I’m thankful the academic year is almost over for me. Right, less school talk, more about these crunchy things.



Part two of the Chinese new year snacks are golden, crunchy and quite very yummy. And I really do believe sometimes, the simplest recipes are the most delicious. Cereal in a cookie or more specifically, cornflakes in a cookie, this could be the substitute for on-the-go cereal breakfast, good for lets see, all of...................one day. Only during CNY calories don’t count. Sigh!

We started off in the late morning, (because I can’t get up early and very well don’t want to), creaming, folding, mixing, crushing, preheating. All adjectives which I love quite a lot(: its seldom that we ever need to use the very old tool of the mortar and pestle but for this, it seemed pretty handy. Getting out the food processor for this is just a little much work. Plus how easy are cornflakes to crush! And I didn’t want to over crush them otherwise they just wouldn’t ‘stick’ right on the cookies later.

These are as simple as melting moments really, except these rise a little in the oven when cooked because of the baking powder so a little space on the trays is necessary.

So after about 2 hours of balling cookie dough, rolling them in crushed cornflakes and alternating trays to go into the oven, and a washing up a few huge mixing bowls and many spoons and a spatula, the cookies were all decked out for CNY. Two down one more to go! Hello my golden army of cookies! Approximately 250 cookies can constitute an army you think? Just too bad this army’s gonna get chewed up within the week by bored and bingey people during the customary visiting and exchanging of new year related foodstuffs between relatives and friends.

CORNFLAKE CRUNCHIES
(makes approx 240 small cookies or 7 bottles )

Ingredients

- 2 blocks butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 3 eggs (60g)
- 4 cups self raising flour
- ¾ box of cornflakes (or as much needed for rolling)
*use 1 tsp baking powder for every cup of plain flour if self-raising flour not available

Directions

1. Cream butter and sugar until pale, light and fluffy
2. Beat in eggs
3. Sift in dry ingredients and mix well
4. Roll teaspoonfuls of the mixture in lightly crushed cornflakes
5. Preheat oven to 350 degF or 180degC
6. Place on greased cookie sheets and bake cookies for 12-15 minutes
7. Let cool completely before packing into bottles

EAT.

We all live for moments that melt our hearts and cloud our vision (in a good way) and make us question our senses.
Those come once in a blue moon, but these right here, melt in your mouth, every single time(:



My special love for things to do with the oven ultimately started with this tiny little ball of butter and sugar. And the many stories behind this little ball, is what makes out a good part of my childhood. Some things in between the growing years of primary school just get lost amidst growing up but other things like this, never gets erased. Every year, whenever Chinese New Year rolls around, whenever it was (because as a kid, I never understood why CNY falls on different days every year until maybe about upper primary I would think), blocks of butter, bags of sugar will always find its way into our fridge and mum would go on these baking sprees, making bottles and bottles of new year goodies. And this is always the first of the many batches to come.



She would roll these tiny balls of all equal size very meticulously and lay them out on baking trays and every 20 minutes the house would be filled with the buttery aroma and people would try to steal the tiny things off the hot trays for ‘tasting’ purposes. I used to always be asked to ‘stand far away, hot tray coming through’ or ‘don’t touch the tray, VERY hot!’ now I get to roll the balls of dough, bury them in sugar, press the cherries on top and even take the tray out of the 180 degree Celsius oven. Does this mean I’ve grown up? I think so!(:



This cookie has been through many many alterations and trial and errors. It used to be x amount of flour to butter and Y amount of vanilla extract and Z amount of baking time at Q temperature. But over the many new years, the recipe has been seemingly perfected to create the consistency of this cookie that literally, melts in your mouth, hence the name. And after eating one, it’s so small that you just want to put another and another and another into your mouth. And after 2 hours of American Idol on tv, cookie damage: half a bottle (or possibly more if you don’t realise and gape in horror somewhere about the third commercial break).
If I had to link a cookie back to my kiddy days, this would be it, along with the memories it brings. And the fact that I would always roll cookies of uneven (ball) sizes and mum being a mum would casually sneak the one I rolled (uneven sized) and re-roll it again and place in the army of other cookies that can’t really be differentiated from. There-in not hurting my feelings of my cookies being re-rolled. Mothers are pretty great that way, aren’t they.



And I guess this would be one of those recipes people (and now I) would call, my mother’s recipes.






Bottled and ready to go!
ps: the recipe makes 6 of these bottles

Melting moments
(makes about 6 bottles of cookies or about 480, diameter 2cm cookies)

Ingredients:

- 2 blocks of butter at room temperature (500g or 4 sticks)
- 24 oz AP Flour (12 oz for every 2 sticks of butter)
- 2 tbsp vanilla essence/extract (1 tbsp for every 2 sticks of butter)
- Diced preserved cherries (for garnish)
- Castor sugar for rolling

Directions:

1. Cream butter till pale, light and fluffy
2. Add in vanilla essence and mix till incorporated
3. Sift in flour and fold in flour 1/3 at a time so as to incorporate flour evenly
4. Continue till all the flour is folded in
5. Pinch a small amount of dough (the size you want your cookie, these won’t rise in the oven) and roll into a ball
6. Place a single diced preserved cherry on the top for garnish (be sure to press it in halfway or it might drop off
7. Place in preheated oven of 170degC or 340degF for 17-20min or until bottom is slightly browned. The top will remain relatively pale. Cut open a cookie to see if its baked through and remove from oven.
8. Leave to semi-cool before rolling in castor sugar to coat cookies
9. Let cool completely after that before packing