Reading Lawson

I have a habit of buying cookbooks. Not the sort that have well-modelled pictures above straight-forward recipes but more like those with rambling stories, recipes and then well-modelled photos on glossy pages. Going through these books is like reading fairy tales. They always have a happy ending but kind of somehow leave you high and dry after that, unless of course, you decide to preheat that dormant oven and follow a recipe confidently. If it turns out well, it's good, otherwise you'd have the satisfaction of having tried it at the very least. Sometimes, these cookbooks even read like chick-lits. (My all-time favourite chick lit, although some may argue that it's just really a bloke-lit, is Date Expectations, written by a man, Paul Reizin.) By now I own quite a few of em, cookbooks, and I'm not ashamed to admit that it had initially kicked off with Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess!

Mich and I used to look through this book (and other Lawson and non-Lawson books) and pretty much salivate over most of what we saw. After a while, she usually got inspired and baked. This was great for me because a batch of every recipe had always ended up at my place in a container after a baking session. Sometimes, I found a random Daisy-fur (Daisy is an adorable Golden Retriever who probably thinks of itself as the lady of the house) when I snapped a cookie into two but Mich had always insisted that they were organic and cooked, therefore it was O.K if I ate them.  Ahemmm. And I can't even unknowingly swallow my own hair. 

Nevertheless, the baked goods were always comforting especially during that time when I was dealing with Housemate From Hell (HFH). I tell ya, HFH was from the most notorious part of hell. I haven't seen that biatch in the city for some years now. Maybe she's planted herself somewhere in the middle-east, F*&@ing some oil tycoon for his bank account. Yes, I'm serious. No, I don't hate her anymore. Well, that's another story there.


Soon I too had started baking some of the nasty Lawson muffins and had even confidently agreed to bake for a charity sale that year. Settled on the amazing Snickers and Peanut-Butter Muffins. This thing is truly amazing even for someone who has peanut allergy like myself. I risk getting sick each time I have this simply because you have these half-melted Snickers bit and rich, crunchy peanuts in all its baked glory when you bite into a muffin. If you're baking like Nigella, generosity is key, never mind the recipe so much. So I baked a few batches for the sale with that attitude. Coming onto the third batch, Clumsy Baker had suddenly realised that she'd forgotten to add sugar into the last two! Freshly baked trays of it without sugar. Did I panic ? Initially, yes. But didn't bother much after tasting it because I'd been quite generous with the Snickers and peanut butter! 

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