Siew Pau, Muffins and ....

It is always a great time when you get to do some cooking with family. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to bake some Siew Pau and chocolate muffins with my beloved partner in life, SLing. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with SLing in cooking out this meals. Actually, it has been quite some time since we do any cooking together. Honestly, it is always fun when you get to do it with your life partner and usually, it can be chaotic and messy but our colloboration was fun and fruitful.
It started out in the morning when we went to the market to get some pork meat and some basic baking stuff. I guess, even lard has their price nowadays. Anyway, we got back and prepare the ingredients for the Siew Pau. I cleaned, cut and diced the meat so that SLing could marinade & cook the meat nicely and it tasted savoury. Hmmmmnnnnnnnn.......good food is underway. A quick peek at the recipe in one of the 200 pages old exercise book, SLing and I started out to do the pastry. Interestingly, there are two types of pastry to prepare and SLing expertly did both of the pastry - lard infused pastry and peanut oil pastry. She then mixed both of them together to create a vacuum in the centre and filled it with the meat ingredient . She then would pinched the pastry together and formed a pinched top ball while I would do the finishing touches of making sure the Siew Pau is in shape. I brushed the top with egg yolks and spread some sesame seeds at the top of the finished Siew Pau. Once they are ready in a batch of nine, it is off to the oven and the smell is quite heavenly, actually. Slowly but surely, we managed to complete the ingredients and the pastry. As it turned out, they come out just fine. Just fine, indeed! The taste - well, I must say they tasted real good......SLing and I were so relieved. We were happy with the end results. The process is repeated until we got about 37pcs of Siew Pau from the meat filling which we had readied. Phew! We have made it, finally! It was tedious but fun time, really.

With time in hand, SLing decided to bake chocolate muffins instead and I was game for it. So, amidst the splashing of white wheat flour, baking powder and egg beating process, the muffin mixture was ready in a giffy. Then SLing and I sprinkled bits and pieces of chocolates chips into the muffin trays. It was really fun. We made quite a lot of muffins that day and we really felt good. I guess, like I said earlier, the nicest memories are often when they are spend with your loved ones. I really had a great time with SLing and doing things together. Yeah! We still quarrel with one another over the ingredients and the way to prepare the food but at least, those memories holds very dear to my heart. I know that we each spend lots of time in our works and our times are always packed with the children's tuition and well-being while we hardly have much time to ourselves. So, having time with SLing is fun and worthwhile - precious.......

I am truly happy - one of the many days I have spent with SLing.