I barely survived two and a half days of indulgence consisting mostly of the baked goods I’ve made and I feel like I’m in a food coma. Eh, it’s not a great feeling for me. Yesterday, I’ve mentioned that I’m making mantou and cookies. My mom requested that she wanted the darn things by 5 AM. Do you know why? It’s because my mom is one of those crazy maniacs who would go for the Early Bird shopping for Black Friday and I’m the victim of her madness to be dragged along. Jeez. There goes my sleep.
Thankfully I took care of most of the preparation yesterday afternoon during the time my dad was roasting the turkey around 3 PM. I mixed the ingredients of the Oatmeal Coconut Raisin cookies by hand. (The recipe is based on Martha Stewart’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookie but I added 1 cup of coconut since my mom loves that stuff.) I have the hand mixer but I don’t like using it for cookie dough batters because they’re not durable enough to cream the butter and the fact that they fling the batter all over the place even at a low setting. I don’t own those stand mixers even though I keep campaigning and persuading my mom to get one for me for the past two years but to no avail. *Sighs* maybe next year.
Anywho, after squishing, stirring and mixing my arms out for the cookies. I went onto prepping the mantou. I just used some of my leftover sourdough starter that I’ve saved and just mixed in some flour, water, a tablespoon of sugar and salt. Let it proof for a few hours and then knead for 5 minutes or so until it passes the windowpane test. (The windowpane test is basically taking a small piece of dough and try to stretch it as thin as possible without breaking or tearing a hole that you can see light through it). Shape and proof it again.
The good thing is that my mom tends to wake up the wee hours of the morning, as in 4 AM! She started banging pans around the kitchen, making a racket in the entire house waking up most of the family. I got fed up with the noise and it’s a very clear indication that she wants food. So, she started steaming the mantou and I started to preheat the oven and brew really strong coffee. After 15 to 20 minutes, my dad woke up from the aroma of baked cookies and the coffee, and mumbled, “Morning” and go straight for the coffee. I don’t blame him at all, I really needed the coffee, too. So here how it looked like:
Thinking of Homer Simpson’s voice: “Coookieeess…”
The mantou; photo taken around 9 AMAll’s fine in the house; my younger brother is miraculously still asleep. We ate good food, still some other leftover baked goods like the pies you can barely see in the mantou pic. The mantou is basically a plain (in my opinion, quite bland but my parents love it anyways), airy, slightly chewy bun. My parents approve the bun’s flavor but my taste buds detest it so I smeared it with some peanut butter to have some flavor going on. I probably think it’s so tasteless is because my taste buds are too Americanized…?
The cookies were really yummy. It’s golden brown on the exterior with a slight crispness from a slightly darker, almost mahogany bottom. The interior is soft and chewy filled with tons of oats, coconut and the sweet, chewy raisins. The cinnamon, nutty aroma is intoxicating, especially when it just came out from the oven.
After all that has been eaten, my parents and I got out of the house around 5:30 AM and start our shopping craze.
Just to finish off the food porn, here’s my oatmeal coconut raisin cookie:
Now, I need a nap.
Zzzzz…