My Life As I See It: Baking Together

What I like most is baking (compared to cooking). I've also made baking a "family event" where Umairah and Irfan join in too and they love mixing things up (we have to do it manually coz I don't have an electronic mixer yet...plan nak beli Kitchen Aid tapi mahal giler... kena kumpul duit dulu...). Mixing things manually, especially when it calls for "beat until fluffy" is very tiring. Still, it's fun.

I only have one mixing bowl. So, if the recipe requires a separate mixing bowl, my pots and pans become victims of abuse (for wrong usage). I don't have a mixing spatula, so I use a usual frying utensil and spoon. I have only one oven pan. It has been used for baking cakes, potatoes, fish, chicken...anything that needs to be put into the oven so it's really uzur even after just 9 months use. We also do not have a kitchen table or even a dining table, so things are done on the kitchen cabinet or the floor. Mostly on floor coz the kids can't reach the top of kitchen cabinet and we don't even have stepping tools or chair for them to stand on.

Baking here is easy because the ingredients here are so much cheaper and easy to find compared to Malaysia. Philsburry flour is just about US$2 (x3.3 = almost RM7). I think in Malaysia it's around RM16 for a small pack. During promotion, Hershey's chocolate chip and Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip can go as low as US$1.50 per pack, not even RM4. I think in Malaysia it's around RM12. And there're many types of chocolate chip; semi sweet, milk chocolate, dark, strawberry, caramel... Sour cream and many types of cheese are sold every day, great when you wanna bake cheese cakes or cream for other cakes. I remember a few times when I wanted to make cream for my carrot cake and had to go to 4 bakery shops (from Kajang to Bangi) before I finally found one shop that had sour cream in-stock.

These are some of the photos I took of us baking together.