From French to Swiss

French men are hot. :)

When you say French men, I always have an image of a man (topless of course) with rippling muscles and washboard abs, long wavy sexy hair, a short stubble that could rub your skin raw where it touches...

Oh, and aren't all French men great kissers? (Somehow reminds me of the movie French Kiss starring Meg Ryan) XD

But. I've switched over to Swiss men. Hotter? Cuter? More insane ripples of muscles? Better kissers?

I have no idea. Cos that's not what I really mean when I say "From French to Swiss."

Sigh. I really do like to talk crap nowadays, don't I? =.=

Well, if you know me, you'd know that I'm crazy over French manicures ! :D

(I didn't realize it myself until I read through my old blog posts. Quite a number of posts dedicated to the latest shades of colour on me cuticles >.<>here, here, here, here, here, here and here)

(I know, I know. How can someone blog about nails so much?? =.=)

Anyways, I had this craze for the Frenchies (nails), see?

And now, I've moved on to the Swiss.

What do I mean?

Swiss rolls, of course. Aheh.

(OMG, That's lame! you must be yelling. Ahah. I guess it is ! But I'm just starting out a revival of my blog after so long; forgive me if I can't think of good titles to go with my posts. >.<)

(Okay, I'm sorry. Won't do it again. Read on. It'll be interesting, I promise !)

(It's about me cooking !)

(A-hah. Got your attention now, didn't I? Scroll down. :P)

For Mother's Day, my best friend Yen invited me over to her house via Facebook (no more SMS or calls when you're on FB 24/7) to bake Swiss rolls as a surprise ! :)

I don't bake. And there's a perfectly valid reason for that.

I'm no good at it. >.<

However, being the stubborn person I am, and also having nothing else to do at home besides eat, sleep, watch movies/drama/anime, eat, sleep *repeated 100x* I thought, Why not?

Oh, and also because I wanted to do something special for my mum and dad as well. (They'd never expect me to bake, so it'd be a real surprise, don't you see? :D)

I just prayed fervently the couple of days before D-Day that I would not burn poor Yen's house to the ground. I would feel awfully guilty. >.<

Nana was around for that particular weekend so she came over with me to Yen's place on that fine, unsuspecting Friday before Mother's Day Sunday.

We planned to bake TWO Swiss rolls; one for my parents, and another for Yen's mum.

Yen was the sifu of the day, seeing as how she'd actually done this before, successfully (not burning down the house, or anything for that matter, is a success !) albeit with the guidance of her mum.

That day, we were on our own. *plays Star Wars theme song* (Why Star Wars? I don't know, really. Just popped in my mind >.<)

Nana was busy greasing the pan with butter

Doesn't she look super-determined?

In the meantime, we added the eggs, castor sugar, self-raising flour and vanilla essence into a bowl and whipped them until it became "white and fluffy". Well, those were the instructions given. *shrugs*

Phew, it was not easy to beat those darn eggs ! >.<

Can you see the sweat off my brow?

Hard work, people !

The mixture had to be beaten and whipped till it left a trail when the beater is lifted out of the bowl. We were whipping it for a while and yet, nothing of the sort was happening. The mixture still looked egg yellow to me (and smelled like them too !)

For the first few minutes, my hand would be in a blur - I was moving so fast, beating the mixture until there were bits of yellow flying all over, hitting me in the face.

Okay, well, maybe not that fast, but it was fast alright? Believe you, me.

BUT, as I mentioned earlier, only for the first few minutes. You cannot maintain such speed for longer than that >.<>aching horribly.

The three of us had to take turns beating the mixture and all of us were complaining by the end of it. We started off well though. Silent beating, with a look of complete determination. After a while: Eh, take over la wei. Painful la!

Whoa, this baking stuff is tough. =.=

Anyways, when it's "white and fluffy" it should look like this:

Then it was just pouring the pretty "white and fluffy" mixture into the pan and placing it into the pre-heated oven at 220 degrees Celcius for ten minutes - no more, no less.

Alarm rang and out it came, smelling heavenly ! :D

We laid it out on the grease paper, excited cos it smelled really good and was a beautiful golden ! Well, I, at least was excited. *jumps up and down crying "Let me see! Let me see!"*

Unfortunately, we forgot to grease the sides of the pan with butter as well as the grease paper itself. We spent several minutes peeling, no, more like scraping the roll off the grease paper with a knife. It was sticking to the paper ! We were horrified ! Our beautiful baby, ruined ! :(

What we ended up with, was this:

A naked roll.

It looked....well, naked. >.<

Since it was such a disaster for the first one, we knew better for the second one. We made sure we greased the sides of the pan and the grease paper we laid it on. But, we still had problems removing it from the paper. Susahnya. >.<

Anyway, it turned out better than the first for sure. At least it had its skin on !

We spread blueberry jam onto it, and rolled it up, nice and tight....

Ta-daaaaa !!! *beams*

Doesn't it look simply heavenly?

And I assure you, it tasted as such too !

Finished and gobbled up within half an hour of bringing it home !

SUCCESS ! :D

whoohooooo~

(I didn't burn Yen's house down ! *sighs with relief* :P)

Since there were no pyro-related incidences for my first baking experience, I just might try again :)