Little Joy Factory

If you like shortbread, this recipe is the one!  Compared to  Scottish shortbread I made last year for Christmas, I had doubts these would be any good with only four ingredients. However, these cookies are just incredible. They taste like Chessmen cookies from Pepperidge Farm. You've got to use really good quality ingredients, like SCS unsalted butter and real vanilla extract. Otherwise, the flavor maybe ruined.  I’d say these shortbread cookies are fantastic, but I have a confession to make. I inadvertently made a major change to the recipe. The recipe calls for 1 cup of butter. That means two sticks  (227g) of butter. For some reason, though, I was thinking it was one stick of butter. So I only used ~120g of butter. The cookies were still very, very good and were well received.  If you want a reduced fat version, try making it with just one stick of butter.  The dough is dry and crumbly, which made it easy to cut out with...

Just returned from 2D1N trip to Hello Kitty Town and Legoland in Malaysia.Through this trip, realized my daughters have grown up faster than I thought. Both of them feel the two theme parks sort of "boring". They have no intention for a 2nd visit, especially Hello Kitty Town. Nothing wrong with the two theme parks, it's just that they are designed for younger children, at least for the crowd younger than my two daughters. Overall, it's a memorable family outing as we spent Mayan "doomsday" in theme parks and 5-star hotel rather than the bomb shelter at home. The world is intact, so are we! Though it's a short trip to neighbouring country, we were exhausted due to the heavy jam at the customs. 30 minutes drive from hotel to home turned out to be 3 hours, and reached home at almost 2:00am in the morning. Well, after a good 10hr sleep, woke up and felt fresh again. Still have time for some Christmas cookies. Scottish shortbread is in my ...