I had initially planned to make a batch of pancakes from scratch for breakfast this morning, but decided not to in the end. First off, I woke up pretty late and figured by the time I had finished cooking them, it'd be close to 11am. And I didn't really want to eat irregular meals. Moreover, I looked through the ingredients and instructions and found out that I didn't have a griddle or skillet to make pancakes. A frying pan would do the trick, but my frying pan is rather large in diameter and I'd have a humongous-sized pancake if I were to spread the batter all over the frying pan. I'd have 1 large pancake instead of 12 regular sized pancakes. So bugger that. Hence, I decided to bake Ginger Snaps after breakfast. I followed, yet altered the recipe from one my mum's old recipe books: I distinctly recall flipping through the pages as a young girl, marking with a bold tick in red ink, as to the cookies that I would bake. Plus, it gives the calorie counts whatnot so I'd know how much I'd have to alter in order not to bake cookies that are equivalent to the serving of a cheeseburger. Reflecting on how the cupcakes I made for SY and KSH were too buttery for my liking, I had a glorious wonderful idea to replace butter with milk to make the snaps. After all, I had done that same thing with my chocolate cupcakes so surely the principle is the same? So I happily whipped out my milk and poured it into the mixing bowl, congratulating myself on my cleverness. Creamy yet low cholesterol. What a brilliant idea! After mixing the wt ingredients with the flour and ginger powder, it resembled the "light, creamy texture" that the book described which lifted my spirits considerably. Who says we need butter to bake cookies? Sod those people! Healthy cookies are here! Of course I had the ultimate last laugh when I dipped my finger to test the batter and to my abject bewilderment, amusement and horror, the batter turned out to be liquid instead of the soft solidish cookie batter. What the hell happened? I almost scremaed out in exaperation. I reasoned that I used too little flour and instead of adding more flour, I figured an egg white would do the trick because egg whites serve as a "hardening agent". So I scurried to the fridge and cracked the egg and turned on the electric mixer. The finger dip test concluded that my cookie batter was not cookie batter. In fact, it was too liquidy. So much for my new found brilliance! In the end, I decided to spoon the liquid batter into my mini cupcake moulds and created a sample batch of Ginger Cups:

Of course when I tried them, they came out too tough. Like overcooked meat. It was difficult to chew and so it dawned on me that this was the result of that egg white I had merrily chucked into the mixing bowl. Plus, the ginger taste was a little sour, which I completely did not fancy at all. So I decided to add some lemon glaze that I made from scratch that was in the fridge as cupcake filling, and they turned out much much better.

But ultimately, the Ginger Cups weren't good so I decided to throw the remaining batter into the trash. It was a waste of flour and eggs, but at least the lesson learnt is that butter is essential to bake the cupcakes (or other butter substitutes) and to never add an extra egg white unless directed by the recipe.

Bobby is contentedly snoring at my feet, though he has an annoying habit of sleeping directly at the legs of the chairs and we always scream that one day he'd get run over. In fact he did get run over by my chair. I was studying and decided I need a break and pushed my chair back and suddenly heard a strangled yelp and looked down in horror and saw that Bobby was lying there, sleeping and I did not notice him! Bobby leapt to his feet and started sniffing at the wheel of the chair. I found it so incredibly strange that I bent down for a closer look and to my abject horror, saw that a tuft of white hairs were protruding from the underside of the wheels. I had shaved Bobby with my chair. I was filled with a sense of shock, mingled with bemusement, yet Bobby just stared solemnly at me with his puppy dog eyes, then circled around at my feet and laid back on the floor with a sigh:

Vanilla Custard Pie later!