People bake for relaxation, but I think it may be quite the opposite for me. I don’t feel quite as relaxed as I do tanning with a strawberry milkshake in the swimming pool. I find baking to be liberating, not relaxing. My thoughts are often hard to control and always spiraling in different directions- and sometimes I’m just too preoccupied with the outside world and the inside world to think straight. Baking offers a chance; a distraction of sorts, to preoccupy my physical body so that I could be left alone to think and mull over recently read books and life in general, I suppose. Is it relaxation? No, it’s both a physically and emotionally draining thing- in no way do I feel relaxed at the end. But I feel satisfied, satisfied as if I’ve just come home from a good day’s work.

At any rate, I love the look on people’s faces when they take that first bite into my creations. These are the gingerbread men cookies that took two days to make: one for the dough, the second for the baking and decorating. In the oppressively humid and aggressively hot Singapore weather, it’s somewhat inevitable to get sticky, buttery dough that melts within ten minutes of emerging from the freezer. So there’s no other solution but to work fast, and working fast is certainly not my idea of baking. But oh well, next time I’ll turn the air-con on.

Now, I think I’ve posted about these chocolate chip cookies in Sunday Mornings but these are simply divine so I couldn’t resist making a few for Santa! It didn’t turn out as well as last time though, but I think that could be attributed to the fact that I only used half of the Ghiradelli bittersweet 60% cocoa chocolate chips, and substituted Hershey’s semi-sweet for the other half. Now we know which is a better option, eh?

Merry Christmas eve, everyone!