Cooking, baking and eating.

Before the baby is born, my life revolves around mainly these 3 activities. In fact, I am CONSUMED by it! Poring through my Bon Appetite magazines and scouring through all the cookbooks for fabulous dinner ideas are my daily activities. A Julia Child in the making, I hope. Keke... ;p I'm reading her memoir "My Life in France" and I can't believe you can actually attend the prestigious Parisien Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute for a 1 year professional cooking course at only US$450! Well, that was after WWII so I guess that amount is humongous in those days...but still... *envy*

In the last few weeks, I baked my favourite carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, Lemon Meringue Pie(yum-O), banana walnut cake and today, a new try-out for oatmeal raisin cookies(a fantastic bite-size success!)!!! Thanks to Kim for this recipe!


RECIPE :

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup(2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, well beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1.5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup raisins

1. Sift together the flour, baking soda and cinnamon. Set aside.
2. Cream butter and sugars until fluffy, about 3mins.
3. Mix beaten egg in thoroughly, then add in vanilla extract.
4. Add the dry mixture.
5. Mix in oatmeal and the raisins. Give it a final mixing.
6. Refrigerate, covered, for an hour.
7. Preheat oven to 350degrees fahrenheit. Grease cookie baking sheet with butter.
8. Roll walnut size dollops of dough and place on the prepared baking sheet, allowing about 1.5" of space for it to spread.
9. Bake for 10mins and repeat till remaining dough is used up.

TIP: If you like your cookies to be less sweet, I will reduce the sugar to about 3/4 cup and add more oats/raisins in its place.

They make great tea-time snacks! And excellent for children too! =)
Emmanuel can't resist popping them into his mouth and now we are too full to eat any dinner.... *eyes rolling*

We had just been treated to a fabulous meal at Yasmeen parent's house where Aisha cooked up simple yet mouth-watering dishes. Her moussaka is by far the best I have ever tasted, I even went back for seconds! This is one dish that is usually very "gelard" but her version was so well-balanced on the palette you can't help going back for more. As usual with great cooks, they tell you the recipe in such 1-2-3 simple steps you really wonder if that actually happened in the kitchen or did they posses any secret magic cooking wands to conjour up such delicacies? I'm gonna attempt to recreate this aubergine dish and let's see if I come any close to Aisha's. Funny, I never used to like aubergine to begin with...

On to the supermarket tomorrow! Whee!!!