Monday, May 11, 2009

A Busy Sunday

When I set my mind to do something I just have to do it. For this mother's day I came up with the idea of preparing something good and homemade for mummy rather than going materialistic. Last week I had thought of preparing her a strawberry cheesecake as it looks aesthetically pleasant and I had already bought the stuff. However, when I called my mum last week she mentioned how much she liked anything to do with lemons...I mean, I knew she liked lemons but I never knew they were her favourite fruit ...so my strawberry cheesecake idea was shelved temporarily .. So I asked myself what lemon tasting dessert could I make for mum. A friend of mine suggested I try a lemon meringue. I liked the idea but the only snag was that I had never tried it. And this was definitely not going to discourage me.

Come Sunday morning and I woke up at around 6:20 when even the birds were still snoozing near our house. I went to check the recipe and realised I was missing the short crust pastry. So off I went to the nearest confectionery. Back home I started preparing the Sunday lunch (spare ribs, baked cauliflower - thanks to my friend Doreen's recipe, chinese noodles, and potato wedges) while defrosting the pastry in the microwave.

I was very careful to follow the instructions word by word and everything seemed to be going perfect until I came to the meringue bit...That's where I blew it. I mixed the sugar and eggs together before having beaten the eggs by themselves. So 4 egg whites went down the loo.

Luckily I had another batch of eggs and managed to beat the egg whites until I had 'dry peaks'. Boy, didn't I feel relieved! At around 9:30am my hubby woke up, and came to see what I was up to. He asked me if I was ready - well I wasn't but we had agreed to go out with his family at around 10am. I took a quick shower, dashed to the roof to hang the clothes, checked on the lemon meringue in the oven and tried to clear some of the numerous utensils I had left on the cupboards...

We went to San Anton fur and feather fair to see the cute rabbits and strange looking hens and cocks. Back home I said to myself why don't I prepare a strawberry cheesecake too. Sometimes I am simply unstoppable. And I started taking out some more utensils to finish this cheesecake. By 2:00pm I managed to prepare Sunday lunch + 2 desserts. I was dead tired, what with all the cleaning and clearing but was so glad to have managed my Sunday itinerary perfectly well. As the saying goes...it's all a matter of timing!

And by the way when I took the lemon meringue to my family's home they thought I had bought a lemon meringue packet and whipped it up in 5 mins! I didn't know whether to feel offended that they couldn't recognise the real thing from a ready made one or pleased that my dessert tasted so good that it seemed like a professionally done one. hehe. Anyway to cut the long story short they liked it so much that they asked for second helpings. Another success story!

3 comments:

Doreen said...

Definitely a busy Sunday eh Zen!!! And fruitful too : )

Hope your baked cauliflower turned out nice and that you and your husband enjoyed it.

Well done on your lemon meringue!

Suki said...

Yes the baked cauliflower was really good. Thanks for sharing your recipe, dear.

Doreen said...

You're so very welcome, glad you enjoyed it : )