Cookie Decorating Day

Cookie decorating day at Ewen's kindy

Teacher gets in on the action

Christmas is a time I look forward to. As a child, Christmas was extremely enjoyable. Then again, isn't it for every kid? I now realise that Christmas for adults is a whole different ball game. Yes, it's enjoyable. Yes, it's festive. But it does take a lot of effort on the part of the adult to make Christmas enjoyable for the kids – buy and decorate the tree, buy the presents, make the food.... Since Christmas is usually very low key for us, we do try to keep the spirit alive by doing stuff with the kids. I realised a long time ago that Christmas is what you make of it, and I want to create traditions, sights, sounds and memories for them to remember what Christmas is, and hopefully pass on to their own kids.

For Ewen, this was a great opportunity for me to get involved with his school. Ewen's kindy teachers were very supportive when I asked if they'd like me to conduct a Christmas activity for the class. We decided on a Christmas story and cookie decorating. The kids were enthralled with the Nativity Story but really got excited when it came to the decorating. All sorts of colours and designs, some neat, some messy. For some, the lure of the cookies was too great and was promptly bitten into. Others decided to save it for mom.

I used this simple recipe from Betty Yew's Kitchen Secrets.

225g self raising flour
1 ½ tsp mixed spice
1 tsp baking powder
125g butter
125g brown sugar
1 small egg, lightly beaten

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl, Rub in butter until mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar. Add egg and a little milk to make a stiff dough. Knead till smooth. Wrap in plastic and chill for an hour. Roll out the dough a little at a time and stamp out with cookie cutter. Place on greased baking trays and bake in preheated 190C oven for 10-12 minutes (depending on thickness and size of cookie). Allow to cool slightly on tray and transfer to a rack to cool completely. Decorate with your favourite buttercream, glaze icing or royal icing recipes.

Michelin Restaurant Chef in the Making?

Pork and Vegetables with Orange Sauce

Etienne loves creating things – robots and machine out of Lego, drawing 'blueprints' of creative machines, making a 'house' out of my sofa cushions. He wants to create a cafe for me out of recycled chopsticks. Thumbs up for wanting to save the planet and for and originality. Double thumbs up for wanting to do something nice for Mom! Practicality – that's another thing... He does also sometimes come into the kitchen and suggest a flavour for a cookie or cupcake, or things we can make with that leftover fruit. Again, creativity rules and practicality usually takes a back seat.

However, he seemed very inspired one day and asked me to shop for some ingredients he wanted to 'cook' for dinner. I could not deny the enthusiasm. We went to the market together and he shopped (I paid). Come dinner time, I merely followed his instruction but was careful to pepper it with practicality. The dish turned out rather nice. With a little tweaking, it's a promising dish. I have to say, I'm surprised and proud of his little dish and who knows, he might be a chef one day.

See you all at 'Chez Etienne'. :)

Pork and Vegetables with Orange Sauce

250g lean pork, cut into bite size pieces

1 zucchini, cut into fingers

1 green chilli, cut into fingers

2 cloves garlic, sliced

Juice of 1 orange

2 tsp cornstarch mixed with 1 tbsp water

Heat some oil in a pan. Stir fry the pork pieces. Remove to a serving dish. To the pan, add the zucchini, chilli and garlic. Fry briskly till cooked through. Add the orange juice. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Add the cornstarch thickening. Transfer to the serving dish alongside the pork. Serve hot with rice.

Phantom Car

Can you guess what this is made from?

I had a few ladle-fulls of Konnyaku jelly the other day and just poured it into a Vintage Car mould I had. I lack a good camera and lighting equipment and this was the best I could do. In the hands of a professional, this would, without a doubt, be an awesome picture.

Sea of Stars

Sea of Stars - over 100 star shaped sugar cookies for classmates and teachers

To celebrate Children's Day (June 1) and Etienne's 9^th birthday (May 30), and from the many requests by his friends, I decided to bake a huge batch of cookies for Etienne's classmates. Some of his classmates got wind of my baking abilities, and often when I pick him from school, they hint (OK, downright ask) for cookies. Etienne gets lots of candy on his classmates' birthdays,and he requested the same. I'm not a fan of children eating candy. Aside from the sugar, there are other additives and colouring to be concerned about. A few is fine, as you really cannot separate candy from kids. But I find the consumption by some kids truly frightening. So, for 47 kids X 2 cookies per kid plus a few teachers, Sugar Cookies was the way to go.

I used the sugar cookie recipe by my friend Terri, which is really a pate sucre, and frosted them with a simple glace icing. For a co-ed class, stars was the obvious choice. I got this really pretty picture of the stars cooling on the wire rack. This is a sweet cookie, as the name suggests, but not overly sweet that you taste nothing else. I used lemon juice in the glace icing to offset the sweetness, and that worked out great.

Butter 1 cup

Sugar 1 cup

Egg 1 large

Vanilla essence 1 tsp

Baking powder 2 tsp

Flour 3-4 cups (I started with 3 cups but found the dough still too sticky and just added on till I got the right consistency).

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla and mix well. Sift flour and baking powder and add to batter till a stiff dough is achieved. Roll out between sheets of plastic (I recycle the waxed bags from boxes of cereal), dusted with a little flour. Cut out using cookie cutters. Bake 4-8 minutes in a pre-heated 200C oven. Cool on a wire rack and decorate with glace icing.

Glace icing

I use the 'eyeball' method when making glace icing. Just add lemon or orange juice, milk or even plain water to icing sugar till you get a drizzling consistency. Be aware that very little liquid is required to melt down the icing sugar. Add food colouring of your choice. I use a small resealable bag to pipe. Cut a small tip off one corner and pipe away. The resealable bag prevents any back-flow and keeps any icing from drying out. Small bits of dried icing getting in the way while you work is quite irritating. If you have any leftover, just seal the clipped corner, and it keeps neatly in the fridge.

Pancakes with Strawberry Sauce

This morning I decided to try one of the recipes suggested by Cookie Monster. When your first name is Cookie, how can you go wrong? I got this recipe from C is for Cooking, a Sesame Street cookbook which suggests simple recipes that kids can also help prepare. Kids can cut up fruit and soft vegetables with a plastic knife, crack eggs (careful!) or stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients. Very fun. The strawberry sauce is so easy to make - just cut up about a cup of strawberries, add 1-2 tablespoons of sugar and leave it aside while you prepare the pancakes. The juices will ooze out of the fruit and mix with the sugar and what you get is a natural, sweet sauce. Strawberries are in season here in Suzhou, so this is the perfect time to make this sauce. We had our pancakes with honey too. Very yum..

Here's my take on Cookie's pancakes.

Dry ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Liquid ingredients:
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
1 cup yoghurt
2 tbsp vegetable oil

In a large bowl, stir all the dry ingredients together. In another bowl, mix the liquid ingredients together. Pour liquid into the dry ingredients and mix with a fork till well blended. Lightly grease a skillet and place over medium heat. Pour about 1/4 cup of the mixture into the skillet and cook till the top bubbles. Turn over and cook for another minute. Serve with the strawberry sauce.