Baking for Christmas

Heya all!

Today, I had a fun day :)

It all started at Hurstville, where i met up with my good good friend Katharine :D We wondered around for a bit...not really knowing where to go first. But in the end we figured it out and got to work to buy ingredients. An hour or so later, we finally got on the bus, on our way back to my place, packed with: butter, icing decorating pens, mince beef, 1kg chat potatoes, milk and a dozen of eggs.

It was only at home that i realised we forgot to buy puff pastry, but luckily my grandma was out and could buy it for me on her way home :)

So, we fooled around for a little bit. Eating some snacks and baking some chips and smileys before getting to work. Firstly we have to gather all the ingredients we needed. Then we started to measure things and put them in bowls. Haha...somehow, we read the recipe wrong and accidently put the sugar with the flour. It was a bitch separately the two, but thankfully we had not yet mixed them together so it wasn't too bad. The salt ended up with the sugar but that was okay too :D

Oh...we also nearly made the mistake of cracking the egg into the sugar, when we were suppose to beat the butter with the sugar first. Thankfully, we realised before we put the egg in but it was a close call. However, we accidently already put the vanilla extract in (imitation vanilla extract to be exact). It didn't really matter though. Hehe..

After that, we managed to do everything correctly, always reading and re-reading the recipe to make sure we were doing the right things. The dough turned out really well. We even made a face out of the dough. (katharine took pictures of that :D). We called him Butterboy.

Eventually we had to cut Butterboy in half and wrap it in cling wrap before placing them in the refrigerator to harden. We then proceeded to go upstairs to see if we could find some clothes i could wear tomorrow. However, we only succeeded in separating the nice shirts from the ugly ones before having to leave.

We went to Kingsgrove Public School, our old primary school to visit Ms K, our yr 6 teacher. However, she wasn't around. We were able to write her a note, before forwarding out of our old class room, away from our dearly missed primary school and on our trek back to my house.

By the time we got home and set up to cut the cookie into shapes, the dough had hardened and Katharine had a fun time, bashing the dough into the table to loosen it up. We then got to work, rolling out the dough and cutting out pieces, lining it up on baking paper before putting it into the fridge to keep its shape. Then we started on the next one. The same process, except this time, Katharine insisted on rolling the dough over and over again to cut out shapes as not to waste the dough.

Our cookies turned out pretty well...except for it being a little too crunchy. Hehe..sorry Thuy.

We then proceeded to make our icing. At first when we finished beating two egg whites, 3 cups of icing sugar and lemon juice, it turned into a huge clomp of what i cannot even begin to explain. But after placing another egg white into the mixture, it turned out into a nice thick icing. We then split the mixture into half and put green and red food colouring in. Unfortunately, the colouring didn't turn out according to plan and we ended up with pink and very light green icing.

Then came the spreading part. For some reason, i just couldn't get my icing to spread evenly across the cookie and while Katharine had no problems spreading hers perfectly, mine came out like sand paper surfaces :P We then used the decorating pens to decorate the cookies, one at a time, each with a bit of love and heaps of patience :D

And finally, it's done!

There you have it people :):)

Aiya..i realised i'm such a ditz. I bought pork mince instead of beef mince...I hope you guys don't mind..it won't make that much of a difference would it??

Anyways, i better fly. I still have heaps of things to do. I gotta get off my ass and do them :)

Cya,

~Aurora