Celebrate Teacher's Day with some Cranberries & Raisins Oatmeal Cookies

Teacher's Day is just round the corner, so I decided to get the kids involved in making some cookies for their teachers.  Search the net and found this very nice blog Mennonite Girls Can cook and the outrageous oatmeal cookies and I thought I just have to give it a try.  However, she uses a lot of oats and so little flour in her cookies, I was worried that the cookies will taste too oaty, so I went back to my favourite allrecipes.com and found this Cowboy cookies recipe and decided that I will combine these 2 recipes and make my own.  Here's the final recipes:

Cranberries & Raisins Oatmeal Cookies

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup packed brown sugar (I cut down the sugar as I prefer cookies that are less sweet. The original recipe called for 1 cup of brown sugar and 1 cup of white sugar) 
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups quick cooking oats
• 1/2 cup of dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup of raisin

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, cream margarine, oil, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time. Gradually stir in the sifted ingredients until well blended. Mix in oats, cranberries and raisins (note: I reserved  some of the raisins & cranberries for decoration later). Drop from a teaspoon onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Put the remaining raisins and cranberries on top of the batter. 
4. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Let set up on the cookie sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.  

Carrot Cupcakes

Ok, this post is kinda a delayed post, I made this cupcakes for a national day celebration at my SIL's place. Wanted to make a simple cupcakes for the kids to decorate with the fondant icing I made in my earlier post. As usual, wanted my kid to eat something healthy instead of just sugar laden cakes, so, search the link and found this Carrot Cake recipe from www.allrecipes.com. It was really easy to make and it actually tasted quite nice, it doesn't have the carrot taste and the kids ate it like any other cakes. Am going to make this cakes again, a definite keeper for me.

Carrot Cupcakes

Ingredients & Directions

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (I opmitted this)
• 2 cups white sugar (I replace this with 3/4 of brown sugar)
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups grated carrots

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 9 inch round cake pans.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, cinnamon and sugar. Add the oil and eggs, mix until blended, then stir in the carrots and nuts. Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared pans.
3. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven. A toothpick inserted into the cake should come out clean. Cool cakes on wire racks before removing from pans.

Happy National Day, Singapore!

National Day is coming.  My sis-in-law invited us to her place to celebrate.  I decided to make some cupcakes and get the kids to decorate it there at her place.  However, I was worried that all the icing and creaming maybe a little too messy (don't want her to be cleaning the house after we left), so decide to do a not so messy icing, that is, a fondant.  At least it's like playing playdough for the kids and it wouldn't create too much of a mess.  Search the web for an easy recipe and stumble upon this Marshmallow Fondant from allrecipes.com  I decided to give it a try, it was actually quite easy.  I made 2 colour, one white and one red as that's our Singapore Flag's colour.  However, I make a huge mess with my first attempt as I was too eager to knead the dough, so I added half the icing into the marshmallow and started kneading it, it was a sticky messy and it took me almost an hour to get the dough into the correct texture.  So for my next attempt, I have learnt from my mistake, I melt the marshmallow with a little water, then pour in as much of the icing as I can until I form a really stiff dough, than I put on a disposable gloves, coated it with lots of butter, take a chopping board and put it with lots of icing, then took out the entire dough and started kneaded it.  It was so much easier this time round and I manage to get the dough ready in 15 minutes....phew....

I also realised that I should make the dough in small portion as it was so much easier to handle since I'm using it for cupcakes.  Here's my small portion recipe:

Marshmallow Fondant

• 100g of Marshmallow
• 2 teaspoon of water
• 250g to 300g of icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla essence
• food colouring
• 1 tbs of butter

1. Put marshmallow and water in a microwavable bowl and microwave for 30sec to melt the marshmallow.
2. Stir in the vanilla essence and food colouring and 100g of icing sugar. Wait for a while and let the mixture cool down.
3. Pour in another 200g of icing sugar and stir until you form a very stiff mixture.
4. Put dough in a flat surface, preferably on a chopping board or something that won't get stained by the food colouring, that have been generously covered with icing sugar. Then wear a disposable gloves and apply a generous amount of butter or shortening on the gloves.
5. Start kneading the dough until it become soft and pialable.  Then wrap dough in a cling wrap and refrigerate overnight or until ready to use.
6. To use the dough, take it out of the refridgerator to let it soften slightly before working on it.  Enjoy!

This is how the end result looks like with the carrot cupcakes and cream cheese frosting that I made in my next post.  The fondant kinda melted when the kids was working on it, so it looks kinda messy but the fondant was really tasty, the kids was eating it while decorating the cakes.