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!
