Back from hiatus

Sorry to those who dropped by my blog. I have been wanting to update my blog but was deterred by a series of activities. It's nothing too exciting. I was only busy baking and cooking during the festive season. There wasn't a day gone by without some form of baking.

This year, I decided to bake cookies as Christmas presents for our friends in St Louis. So I took some time to test the recipes before putting them in the final tray. Most of them were ok, but for those that couldn't make it, OCT had brought them to the lab for his colleagues :P

Other than the Yule log I made for the dessert competition, I also made a Latte Cheesecake Brownie for OCT's potluck lunch. It was my favorite coffee cheesecake so far, although it was not a light one. It was too delicious that I had devoured the leftover without taking a photo of it. It was a good cake and I am sure I will find another occasion to bake it again!

Plenty of cookies! Which include Bittersweet Chocolate Meringue, Black Forest Cookies, Peppermint Chocolate Chips Cookies, Spiral Cookies, Biscottis and Pistachio and Cranberries Cookies. The Chocolate Crinkles didn't make it to the final though, because of its disappointing appearance. (of course it's the baker fault).
We were baking the cookies till the very last day before we handed them to our friends, so that the cookies will be at their freshest by the time they reached the recipients. It's my favorite way to convey my love and appreciation through food, as always. Another selfish reason, was simply because I wanted to start a new family tradition with OCT. We had fun decorating some of the cookies which we were giving away. But I did most of the stuff, OCT only helped to decorate some and washed the countless trays and bowls I used. At one time he was too occupied with some stupid show on the computer that he burned my arm with the hot cookies tray! What a way to commemorate a new tradition....

The very messy scene of sugar cookies, some of which were burnt! While some were nicer.The cookies assembly line:

And a close look on the content: OCT posing with one of his creations. Inspired by the reason for the season- To remind me that Christmas is about the birth of the son of God, who die on the cross for me and others, so that we can live.
On a Christmas Eve party, I brought the One Bowl Mocha Cream Cake, which was interesting. It was a cake made without butter and eggs, but used mayonaise and marshmallow creme! A low fat recipe, but doesn't taste so at all!

my picasso decoration to camouflage the otherwise pretty dull looking dessert

Besides all the festive baking, I also managed to squeeze in an apple crostata for our after dinner dessert. Although I took the shortcut of using a ready made pie crust. It was a good vehicle to use up some of the Edy's Pineapple Coconut ice cream that we really didn't care to eat on its own. For some inexplicable reason, apple crostata (or any other form of apple desserts) tastes nice with vanilla (or other white colour) ice cream!