I've been such a lazy blogger... But I am going to rectify the yawning gap by getting up to speed.

Thus, in chronological order (with some missing, because I forgot to take photos):

Oreo Cheesecake (from some allrecipes.com recipe; I can't remember which one) with Microwave Lemon Curd

which is really quite a weird combination, but since I had lemon curd in the fridge to use up, we just slathered it on. The cake was actually round, but we hacked off the sides so it could fit in the box, and so it would look more presentable.  

old friends making a birthday cake and taking many silly photos.

Next was an attempt to use the frozen raspberries that have been lying in my freezer for a while now. I was looking for something with a gloopy berry section and found a recipe for Cranberry Bars, and substituted the cranberries for glorious

Raspberry Bars (from the Taste of Home Baking Book, henceforth know as TOHBB)

. I didn't think they were very tasty when they first came out of the oven, but they improved on standing in the fridge and by Sunday, I was eating quite a few slices at one go. Besides the fact that the streusel topping was a bit soft, I think this is how I like these berry slices- not overly buttery or sweet.

they look ugly, don't they? but they taste good.

Then one week I had lots of banana, so I turned back to TOHBB to see if there was anything that fitted my needs. There were

Banana Oatmeal Chip Cookies

and

Southern Banana Nut Bread

which had different degrees of success. The former was actually nice, light and addictive, especially with the chocolate chips. The latter just tasted very sweet and didn't have the hearty banana flavour I'm used to getting from banana bread and cake recipes.

clo ate 5 in a row! I think; looks nice but I couldn't eat much of the banana bread

There were

Lemon Curd Bars

and

Double Chocolate Muffins

from TJOC for the announcers' get-together. Actually, just the lemon bars, because I baked the muffins early in the morning, and when I put them on the cooling rack, the rack moved and one of the legs moved off the counter, so that meant upon application of pressure cause by the muffins, the rack and hence the muffins all fell on the floor and went SPLAT. They looked very sad, so I didn't bring them to church, and ate them at home as the days went by. They still tasted fine. This was the weekend of the F1 race.

Social baking: Wan Li came over and she had chosen a recipe beforehand which was for

Cheese Raisin Bars

or something like that. It called for cream cheese and goat cheese, but we didn't really like goat cheese, and I didn't have any, so we substituted that with cheddar with cranberries. We had to fold in egg whites- I usually avoid this kind of recipe because I don't like cleaning my electric mixer- and we also soaked the raisins in Bailey's.

This gave us a rather strange but stimulating slice. It wasn't sweet enough to be whole-heartedly dessert, especially with the salty cheese, but it wasn't what I would term as savoury.

i think the Bailey's gave it a heady edge

Okay, there was major baking day with Clo. We were only going to bake some cookies: first, my lovely

Citrus Slices (from Bake It!)

for which Clo grated all the rind. It's still such a nice cookie- bursting with flavour, easy to make and has never failed me yet. While she was busy using my microplane, I headed to make the dough for a recipe I'd been eyeing in TOHBB:

Macadamia Cream Cheese Cookies

which were basically made the same way. But they tasted terrible. I kept on trying to eat a cookie by taking a bite, but every time would spit out the part I had bitten and then throw that away with the rest of the cookie. I thought perhaps it could improve a bit by keeping it a few days, but one, two and three days later, the result was the same. My father bravely ate some, though. Maybe it was the low-quality macadamias. Or the strange taste of orange in the cookie. Never again...

Then Chloe was browsing through TOHBB and she spotted a rather easy-to-make

Apple Cake

which we then made. Which also tasted terrible because it had way too much nutmeg; every bite was like peppery spices exploding in my mouth. I think we were trying a particularly trying corner, but I didn't dare eat any more after the first day. I bundled most of it with Clo and she said her loved ones actually deigned to eat it and say it was not bad (I think).

 
citrus cookies yums, my friends

cream cheese yucks and apple cake yucks, not my friends

The failure of the apple cake/ macadamia cream cheese cookies made me back off a bit from my baking binge, but I'll have to resume my kitchen wanderings soon. The next project will be to prepare a thanksgiving dinner with the relief-teaching friends. I'm not sure how much of it will be bought and how much of it will be made at home. Turkey? Rolls? Sweet potato? Pumpkin?