Baking and merrymaking

 Lately, I've been rather obsessed with cooking and baking. More baking than cooking, but both are still fun. If I had a chance to go to culinary school and sharpen my non-existent skills in baking pastries, cakes, cookies, and all kinds of desserts, I totally would. It's hard work though; not to be sexist or anything, but I think that's why most chefs are men.

Just mixing all the flour, sugar, eggs, and other stuff together, and whipping all that sugar, cheese, etc, gets me huffing and puffing and makes me feel like I'm not in shape to bake. Also, I have no patience to wait for the cake/cookie/pastry to cool off before I remove it from the pan and pop it into my mouth, and that's why I usually end up with crumbly cookies and broken-up cakes. But hey, at least they taste (surprisingly) good!
 

Last week, I baked chocolate chocolate chip and pecan cookies after the crowd died down at the pizza place (since there was an entire kitchen full of cooking utensils and a huge oven at my disposal), only to have it turn out a little too crumbly.

And then I made oatmeal raisin almond cookies; they were dee-lish. We ate them all in two days.

This is a pizza Cartoon and I made for lunch on Saturday. My side is filled with veggies - tomatoes, red and green capsicums, mushrooms, and onions. Hers is filled with meat and cheese - pepperoni, ham, minced beef, bacon, and chicken. And did I mention it's loaded with cheese?

My attempt yesterday at making strawberry frozen yogurt with frozen strawberries, natural yogurt, milk, honey, and vanilla extract. It turned out to become ice, and it tasted a little weird. Fail.

Yesterday I also made cheesecake, which turned out half okay. The cheese part was good, but the cake (crust) part was too sugary and crumbly. I couldn't find graham crackers in the entire area of Perth, so I used honey teddy bear biscuits instead, and it turned out weird. But other than that, it was pretty good. We couldn't wait to let it cool down in the fridge so we ate it right out of the oven. And Jedi ate half of the entire cake this afternoon, which is a good sign.

Today I made carrot cake with walnuts, pecans, and cream cheese frosting at the pizza place, and although it kind of fell apart when I tried to transfer it from the baking pan to the container, it actually tasted really yummy. Good job, me! :)