There was no last Christmas.

24th December was Xmas eve baking at Victor's place with Trisha! We got up real early to get the various missing ingredients, and I'm so glad I was baking with these two cause they've got some legit baking skills up their sleeves unlike well um me.
The last time I baked was during Valentine's day two years ago and I remembered baking with the sec3 female epeeists. But we weren't exactly baking cause we just used cornflakes, some batter and a toaster kinda oven. Yeap.

I guess I'm one of those girls who you can't leave alone in the kitchen unless you're leaving me to destroy it. But I do make relatively good sandwiches. And salads. And parfaits.

For this time's baking, I decided on making melting chocolate tartlets after contemplating them between cake pops and some other stuff. Trisha settled on gingerbread men while the ambitious Victor wanted to bake red velvet cupcakes and lemon zest coated sugar cookies. I shall let you in on my Christmas Eve baking adventure with Ong & Loh.






The crust all ready to head into the oven. This was the first batch and the batter left after this was reaaaaaaally little so I wounded up making another batch of it x2 after I was done with the chocolate.


The last time I tried to make some filling for my rainbow cake (about 4 years ago), the instructions said that I had beat the egg whites till they were well somewhat fluffy? If my memory doesn't fail me. But I didn't I just barely stirred it and dumped it into the sugary mixture. The result was some revolting concoction.
This time, for my chocolate filling, I had to beat the egg whites while gradually adding sugar till they were stiff. I thought it was no piece of cake so I decided to do it manually instead of using the electronic mixer and well what a mistake. I almost broke my wrist from that constant endless beating that only made my egg whites whiter but nothing close to fluff. And of course being the baking amateur I am, I was always asking Victor, "so is this stiff?" "what about now?" "oh it's white now is it stiff now" "how long do i have to do this" "does beating this shit really work" "omg i never knew egg whites alone could look like this" "okay i can do this" "ohhhhh yeeeeeeah go round and round and round" "argh can you do it for me instead Victor" "i want to sleep"

Yeah. They endured all of that.






This is the process of the Hershey's semi sweet baking chocolate bar x3 melting, which took a decade, but wounded up looking like melting ice-cream at best. Even Victor said that it took a ridiculous amount of time and that this was the first time he encountered such a chocolate crisis.

I guess I have zero baking luck. Some crisis always crops up when I bake sigh. But oh well I eventually gave up waiting for the chocolate to melt so I thought it's ice-cream state would suffice. I decided to do without some of those troublesome crap and just folded the mix till it looked decent and poured them into the crusts and off into the oven it goes again.









Meanwhile, these are Victor's red velvet cupcakes and sugar cookies. It's so damn pretty and I'm so jelly why is he so good at this why why why.

He was bitching while he was making his cream cheese filling though but it turned out fantastic. It looks like one of those cupcakes sold at pastry stores (with the exception of his not-so-good piping skills though). Hahaha.
Oh and he baked sugar cookie too which was yummy and I didn't get to see him make his lemon zest icing but when I tried it during today's dinner, damn is it good stuff. Everyone was raving over it and the container of sugar cookies dwindled instantly.




Trisha's gingerbread batter, but she got too lazy to cut the shape of a gingerbread man herself (she owns no cutter) so she decided to settle with those mini cutters and made gingerbread cookies. Even though I despise ginger, I loved it cause it had this unique flavour to it. Not everyone was a fan of her cookies though, I guess it's what you'd call an acquired taste?







My freshly baked chocolate tartlets ^-^ One of the pictures with Trisha's gingerbread cookies.

The reason for our baking was for the festive season of course. But I won't deny the fact that the other force driving me to do this is because I wanted to impress my boy and prove to him that I could actually bake something decent and not just "edible". So yay I fulfilled them both.

I brought the tartlets home that night, when my relatives all came over to have a Christmas eve dinner and they finished my tartlets!! The joy I felt was inexplicable cause before that, Victor and Trisha only dampened my spirits by constantly rejecting my tartlets and saying that they taste "meh". Brandon said it was nice too so I'm just flying, feeling invincible from accomplishing the task that would have otherwise been impossible for me up until this Christmas Eve.

Hopefully I'd be able to cook up something better the next time round. Hehe.

With that, I'd end this post wishing all a blessed Merry Christmas :) Till next time, xx