Happy Easter from the Woo's!

Hooray for Easter! The holiday that we get to contemplate our Savior's willing sacrifice and his glorious resurrection 3 days later. I'm grateful for all that He has done for me and for his unconditional love.

I also love Easter because it gives me an excuse to try new baking projects. I teach the CTR 6 kids (6 year olds going on 7) at church and get to teach them every Sunday. They are so fun to teach! They are also happy recipients to my treats and goodies. Easter, after all, is a very special occasion, so I made goodie bags with these little chick cupcakes and some candies.

So fun to make and super easy! I added food coloring to coconut in a ziploc baggie, and shook it around until it was the yellow I wanted. I used chocolate chips (put them in upside down) for the eyes and cut up little orange slice gummies for the beaks.

We also had Charles' brother and a couple friends over for Easter dinner. Charles didn't know what an "Easter Dinner" was, so I got a ham and showed him. It was a yummy dinner with ham, mashed potatoes, salad, rolls, corn, and cheesecake.

We also became one with our inner child-like selves and dyed eggs! Except this wasn't the egg decorating that I always did as a kid when I just dumped the egg in the cup, pulled it out, and giggled with glee... No, we are more legit than that.

Check out our egg-cellent collection! (haha.. yes, pun intended)

Charles made the super cute minion in the middle, and I made the Gastly and 3 eyed monster dude from Toy Story. I was very impressed how they all turned out!

John was very meticulous with his Spiderman egg. 

Keith's special rainbow egg, and Ariel's adorable Pikachu! There's a tail on the back, too...

Hooray for Easter egg decorating! Our Minion and Gastly.

Chocolate Eclairs

I had made a Boston Creme Pie for our friend John's birthday and had some extra creme filling that I didn't know what to do with. Yes, I could have eaten it and it would have been delicious, but why not experiment with a classic dessert?

They really weren't as hard as I thought they would be. Just needed to make the pastry and then form the eclair shape. I put the pastry dough in a plastic baggie, snipped off a corner, and squeezed it onto parchment paper to resemble a hot dog like shape. After doing that a few times and putting the egg wash over them, I popped them in the oven. After I took them out and let them cool, I used scissors to open them up and put a glob or two of the creme filling inside. Then I made my chocolate glaze topping and poured it on top. Yum! Chocolate eclairs, Kim's homemade version.

They aren't as pretty as the bakery ones, but at least I can say I can make chocolate eclairs! I got the recipe from here, if you were interested.

Pineapple Tart Experimenting

So I have Fridays off from work, and sometimes I like to work on a baking/food project to keep me busy. It was a couple months ago, a little bit after Chinese New Year, that I decided to embark on the journey of attempting to bake Singaporean style pineapple tarts. Being ABC (American Born Chinese), and my husband being from Singapore, I am learning more and more about the Singaporean culture. I guess you could say making pineapple tarts was my way of trying to be more Singaporean. First off, was the jam. I thought this would be easy-peasy and done in a jiffy, but I was wrong. It took a long time for the water to cook off and for the jam to form. I ended up putting a stool in the kitchen, reading a novel, as I periodically stirred and watched the jam. But finally, voila! Homemade pineapple jam- a couple hours later, haha.

I put the jam in the fridge overnight and did the rest the next day. I made the pastry dough and then when I felt like the end was almost near, I realized that this was no easy project. But I trucked my way through and rolled up the jam from the fridge into little balls.

The next step was rolling out the pastry dough and using a nifty pineapple tart cutter to cut out cute shapes to hold the pineapple jam. This was fun at first.. then I wished I had more arms and hands so I could get it done that much faster.

Then I used a paintbrush (yes, a paintbrush because I didn't have a basting brush) to put on the egg glaze on the pastry tarts. Next step was for me to put the little rolled up balls onto the tarts. After I filled up the cookie sheet, I stuck it in the oven, and then several minutes later, finished pineapple tarts!

Hurray, I had done it! Yeah, I know they weren't very pretty, but they were tasty, and that's the most important part. Let's see if I actually have the patience to make these for next year's Chinese New Year!