New Year 2007 Baking at Lee's

Lee was so nice to open up her home again for us to bake. It was yesterday, January 2, 2007. The first thing that Lee told us when we got to her house was that her oven was busted, but she was waiting for the repairman to come fix it.

I brought a bowl of ready-made pineapple jam for Khim's pineapple cookies. Khim started to make her dough while I made the second batch of pineapple jam - short cut way, in the microwave:

2 20-oz cans of crushed pineapple
1 cinnamon stick
3 cloves
1 1/4 cups sugar (more or less, depending on how sweet your pineapple is)

Mix all ingredients, microwave on a Pyrex bowl for 15 minutes. Stir, microwave for 5 minutes, stir, microwave and stir again at 1-2 minute intervals until pineapple is dry.

Here are Phaik See, Sandra, and Khim shaping pineapple cookies:















Look at how much work it is to cut every single one to make them look like little pineapples:






















I'm not a very patient baker, that was why I opted for the easy route, which you will see later.

The repairman came to fix the oven, Lee burned a fuse, but they fixed it real quick so we could get on with our baking project. By now we were all hungry for lunch, and the 2 late birds, Angeline and Vivian, finally showed up at lunch time. This was what we had for lunch, Lee made it:















What happened here? Someone already took a few cookies to sample:















So here's Khim's recipe for those interested in making Khim's Pineapple Cookies:

250 g butter, at room temperature
50g powdered sugar
1 egg yolk
360g all purpose flour
2 Tbsp custard powder (sub with cornstarch if you can't find custard powder)
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg and 1/8 tsp of salt for egg wash

Preheat oven at 350° F.

Beat butter and sugar at medium speed until well mixed. In a separate bowl, mix together all purpose flour and custard powder. Add egg yolk to butter/sugar mixture, mix well. Slowly add flour mixture and mix well to form a dough.

Pinch a little bit of dough out to form a little ball. Flatten the ball and put pineapple jam in the middle, seal it, reroll and shape into an almost oval like pineapple shape. Use scissors to cut the pattern, stick a clove on one end as the stem. Repeat until you finish using the dough.

Bake on a cookie sheet in oven for 15 minutes. Remove cookies from oven, brush with egg wash, bake for another 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Okay, I was saying that I was not a patient baker, so this was the one I did, together with all the ladies, based on Cafe of the East's recipe:















Close-up look, including a couple of "Hello Kitty" ones by Sandra:






























We also made some Kaya based on Cafe of the East Kaya recipe - we messed up, but we realized it and fixed it and ended up with some GREAT Kaya!! Didn't take any pictures because we were all about to leave and we were busy packing our snacks to take home with us. Will post a picture and the modified recipe when I make it later.