Since I switched companies a few months back, I’ve recently found some time to explore my domestic side and re-discovered how much I love cooking. It has always been there, I know, and even when I was busy with work, I’d find time to whip up something for the family on weekends or every morning if I get to wake up early enough. 

I’m not a good cook, mind you. My maternal grandparents were both wonderful cooks, I have an aunt who prepares to-fie-for feasts on holidays and my parents both prepare good food (well, my mama does if she forgets her being health-conscious and doesn’t skip on all the seasoning). But somehow, those genes got lost – or maybe I got replaced in the nursery? 😛

Anyway, I’ve been cutting up recipes from magazines for so long and I figured It’s about time I put our oven to good use. I was beginning to think it would rust away as it had never been used in the five years we’ve had it. Plus, I wanted to make sure Joey eats healthy snacks while I’m away. But of course, just baby steps so I settled on making good old oatmeal cookies for my first foray into baking.

Ingredients: 

3/4 c quick cooking oats

3/4 c all purpose flour

1/2 c brown sugar

1/4 cup nuts, chopped

1/4 c butter

1/4 c sugar

1 egg

1/4 tsp iodized salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp vanilla

1) Preheat oven to 375 F (191 C – good to find out I still remember some of my conversion skills, ha!).

2) Beat all ingredients. I didn’t have a beater so I just mashed everything with a trusty big metal spoon, and finally doing it by hand to make sure everything is mixed well.

3) Grease cookie sheets and drop the mixture on the cookie sheet 1 inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until slightly brown.

I did little improvisations with the recipe, using Nesvita instant oatmeal, Queen all purpose flour, anchor unsalted butter and almonds instead of raisins and walnuts as the original recipe called for. And I added a dash of cinnamon to the batter. 

Well, what do you know? Hubby and the kid loved it so much and so did my kiddo’s friend from next door. So much that they ate up a lot and just left me with one piece. 🙂

That inspired me to move on to another recipe – chocolate chip cookies. 

Ingredients:

2 c all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 c butter

1 c brown sugar

1/2 c white sugar

1 tbsp vanilla

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 c chocolate chps

This time, I used Pillsbury flour , magnolia butter, and Ghirardelli chocolate chips. And I suggest cutting down on the brown sugar by half – get just 1/2 c instead of 1 whole cup. Got myself new measuring cups and a manual mixer (I’ll get the electric one next time – figured it’s exercise anyway).

Procedure’s pretty much a breeze. Just preheat the oven to 165 C, sift flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Then in a another bowl, cream together butter, white and brown sugar, add in vanilla and the eggs then mix in with the sifted ingredients (flour, etc). After everything’s mixed well, stir in the chocolate chips. Then put them in greased cookie sheets and bake for 15 minutes or until lightly brown.

So, two straight weekends of ruling the kitchen! I’m thinking of doing this again next weekend – it takes about 20 minutes  for the oatmeal cookies and 30 minutes for the choco chip ones, including prep time so I really don’t have an excuse not to, especially when I still have all the ingredients.

This summer, I’m thinking of being more ambitious – I want to make carrot cake with fondant icing. Something which I’ve been wanting to do since forever. I’m still searching for some good recipes online though. Wish me luck!