Lily’s Blog, Dragon Absconded!
Baking Until I Drop

I made the shortbread from the same cookbook as the cheddar biscuits.

And as I mentioned before, I had a flour problem.

At some point, the recipe said knead the dough lightly and so I added more flour to make it kneadable – it was liquid. But I didn’t want to add too much flour because I wanted it to be buttery and not floury. I mean it’s shortbread.

So, I think I need to review another recipe.

However…it came out great. I mean it tasted lovely…it could have been more buttery but it was quite good…very crumbly…and addictive (the problem with shortbread). It’s finishing quickly (and I had two 8″ rounds).

I loved it and will make it again.

The verdict is I need a scale.
And I need to remember to use it.
Remember how I kept having to add flour to the shortbread (although I still am not sure I had to…so a scale would have helped).

It’s a recipe from an English book I think (The Complete Biscuit and Cookie Book).
I don’t make refrigerator cookies alot. It’s the time involved…the delay you know?
But that day I started with them and made two logs and wrapped them up and stored them in the freezer because I didn’t know when I would actually bake them.

So last night, we took one out. I let it soften a bit and then cut it with my chef’s knife.
I put it on my silicon sheet on the tray.

And baked.

And it smelled nice. I didn’t check it until 8-10 minutes in.
It smelled like nice cheese pies.

It had all melted.
Melted.
And was bubbling.
And lacy.
And filled the entire tray.
Not cookies.

Not even really recoverable as crackers (maybe if I baked them longer to get hard).

*sigh*

I’m guessing not enough flour.
*sigh*
Baking is precise.
We have a scale. I just forgot to use it. (I mean, I used it to separate a cake mix into equal halves).

Argh.

And we still have one more log.

I think if we make a pastry we can put the slices in it and make nice cheese pies.

But.
I was looking forward to these “cheddar pennies”.

This is the lovely sweet potato plant that I mentioned before

We’re also planting peas and look at this little sim plant:
Only a couple days before it was *tiny*.
And about a week after, dad and them finally put stakes down for it and…lo! it twined itself around it overnight.
Plants are both freaky *and* amazing.

I mean…one day you have a bucket of soil in which you scattered zinnias
and the next day there are these green things poking up. It’s so gross!
Seriously! It’s weird to see things poking up in soil all by themselves.

Unfortunately some days later mom found a frog squatting in the pot and it damaged the zinnias :-( So must wait longer. One day I will tell you about frogs and this house.

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Like worms and spaghetti and pencils standing with the pointy side up. They give me shivers…make me want to gag (I’ll post the sprouts when I upload).

Or my dwarf pineapple (yes! remember the dwarf ornamental pineapple from the orchid show? A couple days later we went to the place mom buys a lot of her plants and there was one! Just one! Waiting for me! To buy! Well. I bought! Okay mom bought it for me :-)

If you look at that picture you can see purple tips…barely.

But as it grew…white spikes with purple tips started poking out from the pineapple (must upload picture). I mean how gross is that? Things spiking. EW. To cap it all, it looked like the pineapple had acne…a pimple…ripe and discoloured on your face waiting to be burst!!!!

Doesn’t it look like it’s having a breakout??

Now the spikes are gone and there are little flowers or something in its place. See. the pimple spike burst into flowers…

This was a summary of my entry into gardening.
I have to repot stuff soon.

Well, at the orchid show we bought a bamboo orchid, a brassia rex, D Uraiwan x Lasianthera and a D Black Spider x Lisa Kanayama.

We didn’t just buy orchids but also lemon basil and rosemary.

Manicou Report already blogged about the return (questionable) of the Solo in the glass bottles.

Well it’s something we grew up with. Traditionally, it’s a doubles (or a roti) and a red solo.

But we both only got the banana solo :-(

Fortunately I love banana soft drink..or swee’drink.