When I moved into my current house early this year, I noticed a huge oven (which is obviously better than the one I had back in my hometown). I had these thoughts of baking cookies myself over the summer and I started baking a month ago.

The cookies were surprisingly well made, they look and taste exactly like Cottage Cookies. The only thing wrong was that these are all a dream yet to come true.

I am a huge fan of chocolate chips cookies and I was surfing the internet for recipes until I found Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. Apparently they claim that Famous Amos grabbed that recipe straight off and start profiting from it. Since Famous Amos’ cookies were pretty good, I tried the recipe.

So far I have baked for a total of 3 times.

The first attempt of cookies came out compact and looked like butter cookies. Friends on facebook had a good laugh at them.

The second attempt failed miserably. I will explain on that earlier.

The third attempt was the best so far, with better texture and taste. But still, not quite the Cottage Cookies taste yet.

Blunders

Like I said earlier, baking is no engineering business. Even as an engineer (we’re supposed to know everything there is about units!) we have to relearn the whole new language of “Baking”.

1. Teaspoon, not tablespoon.

First rule of baking, know your sizes! When recipe says for teaspoon, it is the smaller spoon, not the one used you use for breakfast.

I actually did that on the second attempt for both the salt and baking soda. Cookies came out extremely salty and bubbly (lots of holes). I had to throw the rest of the batter away.

2. Sticks does not literally mean sticks.

As you can see from the Toll House recipe link above. It says “1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened”. As a non-baker, what would you do?

I can tell you what I did, I bought two sticks of 250 grams of butter and mix all of them according to the recipe from the link. Cookies in the oven did not retain its shape and came out flat and oily.

What happened there was that there was too much butter in the mix. 1 Cup (2 sticks) of butter actually means 227 grams of butter since a stick of butter is 113.4 grams. Not two sticks of 250 grams butter.

3. If you don’t have an insulated baking pan, SPAM baking sheets!

One thing I realized is that the more baking sheets I have placed on my lousy baking pan, the less cookies I burn. On my third attempt to bake, I actually had around 5 baking sheets stacked together so that the bottom of my cookies would not burn too quickly.

So you can easily guessed it, usually the first batch of cookies are the fried ones.

Also, how does the cookies manufacturers are able to retain the crispiness of their cookies for such a long time. The cookies I bake usually becomes less crispy on the second day, even when they are in an airtight container. If there are some experts out there reading this, would you please answer this question.

I wonder when I could bake the “perfect cookie” …

In a Nutshell

With my professional engineering analysis on this matter called “baking”, I can conclude that the units used in baking is not standard … or I should take up another Bachelors Degree on baking.

Yes, you are thinking what I am thinking. Fried Mars bar! Mars bar alone already taste better than many chocolate bars in the market, but fried bars? That is totally in a different league.

But have you ever imagine maybe a few hundred millions of good/bad bacterias live inside the bar are being fried raw in the frying wok and nobody give a damn about it. Bah, humans only care about how nice their food is. And I’m telling you, Fried Mars Bar is damn nice and I’d like to rate it at 8/10.

I have no idea how they make it, but I think it’s fairly easy.
Steps:

1. Prepare your batter. Mix flour, milk, egg, whatever ingredient that you think would make this thing nice.
2. Unwrap your Mars bar.
3. Gently dip your mars bar into the batter
4. Throw it into the frying pan with the appropriate level of oil.
5. Fry until it has the fried colour glowing out of the bar.

This might be the end product that you will get.

This is how a fresh fried Mars bar looks like. It looks like a penis ejaculating on itself. LOL. Just that this one is not as smooth.

Bite it and you’ll have this. All the chocolaty taste that squirts out from the penis Fried Mars bar.

My aunt bought me one of the Fried Mars Bar and we (the family) were enjoying it at Bondi Beach. Eating the Fried Mars Bar with the cool breeze was a really nice thing to do. That’s what we call enjoy life.

It Feels really great when you eat the first bite, but I want to warn you people before you try making this. Don’t try more than 2 standard size (3 inches) bars of it per person. One bar is more than enough. I can imagine you puking after the third bar. If possible, try to get the smallest size (about 1.5 inch) Mars bar. During the last few bites, I was still loving the taste but I can feel that it’s much sweeter (the cook’s fault? No idea) and after I finished it, I felt VERY thirsty.

Anyways, Vhoe, please try this so when I go back Malaysia I get to eat something nice there. I bet it’s worth trying.

Hurricane’s Grill, one of the most famous restaurants in Bondi, Sydney. Their famous dishes were mostly grilled dishes. About 90% of the people go there just to eat their grilled dishes. As for myself and my cousins, we went there to celebrate our sales in Paddington Market, celebrate Sherlyn’s birthday and my arrival at Sydney.

We ordered for 3 kind of ribs, pork, chicken and mutton. Let’s start with the complaints part first.
We’ll start with the pork ribs.

The pork ribs was said to be one of the best dish in the menu. But when it reached us, it was dry, not juicy, hard to bite, I might even get cancer from eating some seriously burnt parts. I’m a pork lover but this was not as good as expected. I’d give it a 5/10 rating.

Chicken however was the worst dish we had ordered. It’s dry, it’s empty inside, from the outside it looks nice but when you bite in, it feels like chicken grilled with no sauce. Like when somebody gave you present on your birthday, a box that has the PSP picture on it. But when you opened inside, it’s actually a rock. That’s how it feels when you bite this … "thing". Some parts are even so badly burnt. I’d give it a 2/10 rating.

Lamb ribs, oo this is one of the best I’ve eaten in my entire life. Beats any mutton I’ve tasted in Malaysia. It’s nice to bite, there are a bit of fats somewhere hidden around the bones, those are the best places to eat. Fresh yummy, I’d give it a 8/10 rating.

Overall the food was quite okay, but too much ajinomoto and salt. Even now as I write, my tongue feels dry. So, a mark off every dish I had rated above.

Here’s the compliment part.
I love it when they gave us some free breads before we order our foods, it’s so unique. I’m not sure if it’s normal here in Sydney, but in Boleh-land, I haven’t seen things like these before. What’s better is we’re given wet cloth to clean our hands after eating, do note this, WHITE CLOTH. Usually we just get wet tissues which are not enough at all. Service wise I will rate it a nice 8.5/10.

Despite all the complaints and stuff, I’m sure I will be here the next time to enjoy other dishes that I have not ordered before. Til then, enjoy!

Cheers.