Mouse Baked Alive In Our Home-Oven!

Partially, this post belongs to the previous posted post. An unfinished ramblings of baking goods, celebrations and the past. Speaking of the past, the eve and the actual celebration of this year's Chinese New Year was not really enjoyable and does not seem to be one. That was the term where distressing news arrived; grandma with her badly infected ulcer needed to be warded and hospitalized. It's a pity to see such an old-aged sub-consciously mumbles about the excruciating pain she had been suffering since the admittance. With frail movements and a stop to pant for more air, that was painful to see. Even more painful to withstand. A tough woman as all I know, may god blesses her all the time.


The days were gloomy and the celebration was not happily celebrated. Thus, cookie-making were not as much as what we have for the last time. Only some of the favorites were there to entertain the guests and shall we say, us. Most of the time, we visited grandma and it's pointless somehow, for guests to come over. We've celebrated the new year with grandma, that's the least that we can do for her.


The truth is; that is the only time we sincerely had a talk or two with her. Her existence and consciousness was very much appreciated and that is the time when I, myself had realized that I couldn't care less to share my thoughts and days with her when she's all good. Pathetic. Grandma is now all good, though she might have some breathing difficulties at times. We were grateful to have her with us, knowing that part of her blood does run through our veins.


Apart from pooches and our personal ramblings, we do speak of rodents too. Since this year is the year of rodent and mouse, we get in touch with other bakers and manage to get a pineapple tart recipe, which will be in the form of prosperous rodents. The mouse-look alike pineapple tart were small, moulded in bite-sized pieces. The tart was not as great as we've expected. We wanted a smoother and milky texture; the one that melts in your mouth kind of tart. As lazy as we usually are, the pineapple fillings were bought from the bakery supplies. Not a wow-tart after all, since the fillings aren't home-cooked.


The other mousse-look-alike cookie that made into our list of new year cookies were the one on top (shot above). These babies were made out of butter, flour, baking soda, finely grounded almonds and orange zests. Orange zests were used to spice things up, we were afraid that the cookie tasted too bland, hence here goes the zests.


Moulded the dough into an oval shaped-cookie, stuffing in chocolate rice to resemble the eyes and the nose of a mouse and lastly, two almond flakes for the ears! The rodents turned out flatter than they do before they were trapped into the oven. And we've missed out their tails. Let's put it this way, we've actually docked their tails. Ouch!


Mom had her best cookie on the mill too; almond cookies and groundnut cookies. Thus, the cashewnut cookies does not leave far behind too. The cookie was a normal shortbread cookie with addition of grounded cashewnut to it.


The grounded cashews were lightly toasted to enhance and to intensify the cashewnut flavor. The surface of the cookies were brushed twice with beaten egg yolks after each of the cookies were decorated with halved-cashewnuts. We love the egg-washed cookie's color though - golden brown.


The one with great crunchiness all over were these home-baked melting moments (shot above). The other name christened to these babies were cornflake-cherry cookies. The secret to a melt-in-your-mouth cookie is a sticky dough. Too much flour will only lead to bad repercussion; hard as a rock cookie. The cookie was a simple shortbread cookie. After rolling a cookie dough approximately 1 tablespoon in size, we rolled it onto a bowl filled with lightly crushed cornflakes. This ends with the cubed cherry as topping.


The shortbread was so crunchy and melts-in-your-mouth at the same time, we went crazy over the dough and came up with a simple chocolate chip and butter cookie; chocolate chip crunch. The cookie jar which was the home for sheltering the choc chip crunch lasted for 2 days. Much were gone into our stomachs. It was very buttery and crunchy. This was one of our favorite cookie of all. Yum!


The same shortbread cookie recipe for used for the M&Ms choc chip cookies. The only difference were the additions of handfuls of M&Ms. But we found out that the M&Ms was tad hard after the baking session. But the cookie was still good.


We have so much leftover cereals - cornflakes. We bumped into our CNY book recipe, and land our hands on this (shot above). The cornflake cups were easy and doesn't involve much work. We replaced the golden syrup over honey. Yum! Oh yeah, last but not least, happy belated CNY. This is so over. Like the old adage goes, better late than never.