La vie est belle

I made a GREEN MONSTER for the first time today! English baby spinach gave it that green colour :)

My green monster consisted of:

• A handful of english spinach
• Frozen rasberries
• Vanilla milk (milk + vanilla essence)
• Sugar

I made it after my morning work out. It actually taste pretty good :)  You can’t taste the spinach at all!

Next time I will try using chinese baby spinach (instead of english baby spinach) because they are more readily available in supermarkets and they are super cheap — english baby spinach on the other hand costs $4.20 per 100g! Not cheap compared to other vegetables that cost around $1 per bunch –  But  I have a feeling chinese baby spinach is going to taste weird!  hmmm

Next …

On Monday I made Vietnamese Pan Fried Eggs. Very simple. I didn’t have all the ingredients that the recipe (from my latest recipe books) called for but it still tasted good with minced pork, chinese sausage, fish sauce, oyster sauce and 2 eggs.

On Tuesday night I baked about 70 chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (the box above could only hold about 50 pieces)! When I made these the  first time, they were flat and runny. I managed to solve this problem by simply reducing the amount of sugar! I use 1/2 cups (instead of 3/4 cups) of caster sugar and 1/2 cups (instead of 3/4 cups) of brown sugar. They were still sweet but not overly sweet.

If you’re wondering what I did with those 70 cookies … well the kids ate them all during their school’s Track & Field camp! The husband’s primary school kids that is! Yes those little super active kids! Now, kids from another school where the husband also works, are asking me to bake cookies for them! :D  I am baking about 100 more cookies tonight!

I also made a reduced-fat version (above photo). Instead of 3/4 cups of margarine (or butter) which is rougly 170g, I used 70g of margarine + 100 g of applesauce. I had to flatten them before baking them because they wouldn’t drop. The reduced-fat version tasted good too and can satisfy a sweet craving. They were a little too soft though (like a flat muffin) — next time I will try to bake them longer.

Here’s the revised recipe for the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup margarine, softened (for a reduced-fat version use 70g of margarine + 100 g of applesauce)
• 1/2 cup white caster sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 3/4 cups rolled oats
• 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (you can add raisins or nuts too)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In large bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth.
3. Add and beat in the eggs and vanilla until fluffy.
4. Stir together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
5. Gradually beat into butter mixture.
6. Stir in oats and chocolate chips.
7. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
8. Bake 18 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.
9. Cool slightly, remove from sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

Tags: baking, cookies, cooking, green monster, smoothie

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Food, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.