Bake Date

One of my colleagues and I had planned to bake together and it was going to be this weekend or the next.

A few days ago, she informed me that her son had been asking when was Aunty Yvonne going to visit them so he could help with the baking as well.

Aww, it's nice to be eagerly anticipated! :)

I arrived at her apartment yesterday evening to be greeted by two loud "HI, AUNTY YVONNE!!!!" and how could I not respond with equal gusto.

"HI!!!!!!!"

Oh but after that they went quiet. The elder boy returned to the table to continue with his homework while the younger one stood by the breakfast bar, studying me.

Gee.

I felt like I was on a first date, as if being scrutinised thoroughly whether I would make it to the second date or not. I decided then I had to work extra hard to charm the little fella, but all was not necessary because it turned out that he was just shy!

The princess of the family.

Anyway, I joined the family for dinner and the elder one had to start it off by inviting everyone to eat. At first, he rolled his eyes and declared that he used to do it when he was younger but now that he's big already, he shouldn't need to.

Mummy told him that no, he still had to continue doing so and his brother will follow suit.

So he started off, "Mummy, eat rice. Di Di, eat rice, Daddy, eat rice, Aunty Yvonne, eat rice. Kakak, eat rice, Mei Mei, eat biscuit...!"

Everyone laughed.

The little one was busy munching on her biscuit, oblivious to all eyes on her.

After dinner, we flicked through the recipe books, trying to locate a decent "Almost Famous Amos" Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe to follow but we had no such luck.

Not everyone fancies chewy cookies so we thought we'd better stick to the conventional crunchy ones.

But nope, under such tremendous pressure (i.e. impatient kids and surfing on my phone), it was hard to find one which we both agreed to.

Eventually we decided to skip it and make whatever she wanted to.

The elder date and I, flicking through recipe books for a chocolate chip cookie one.
We were trying to figure out whether the recipe was for crunchy ones or chewy ones,

YP wanted to try out this almond flake recipe and so I told her might as well. Whilst the batter was sitting for 30mins, we started preparing for the next recipe to try.

We made 3 batches and although not entirely pleased with the end result, we discussed how we would want to tackle it the next time.

Too much almonds would be overwhelming, too little would be too sweet, and if you don't roast the almonds beforehand they don't smell divine.

The younger date meticulously putting the sprinkles on the almond clusters.

YP made almond clusters last weekend and she made them again last night, with the kids eager to help. So you can see that our clusters weren't perfectly shaped but ah, you needed to let them do their part, although they enjoyed watching us do our stuff.

I got to lick the spatula!

When she handed the spatula to me, I thought she was just jesting about Aunty Yvonne gets the bigger spoon to lick. Honest!

Well, we didn't cover much ground but I was pretty exhausted from being on my feet since 7am so we called it at night.

Bake date resumes on Monday afternoon, with homework of locating a yummy choc chip cookie recipe to be done first!