Throwback to Taman Negara

When looking back through my iPhone's photo album, I quickly glanced through the photos of the TUISC and I back in Taman Negara. We went to the protected rainforest a few months back and it was such a thrilling experience, I must say! The council members and I stayed in a seven-room home stay facility in Jerantut (Yes, I know it's a really funny name). 

On the very first day, we traveled from the home stay facility we traveled to the Gua Kota Gelanggi and a few other caves. It was terribly exhausting because the whole cave excavation took nearly three hours or more! Super duper tiring. W also trailed the forest, which was fun but kind of creepy at the same time since it was our first time entering a real forest. In the caves, we saw various rocks with many bizarre shapes! Some were shaped like a skull, an elephant, a baby and many more! I found it rather dubious that they were formed naturally because it just seemed unreal to my naked eyes. The cave excavation was also very challenging since we had to fit through small gaps between rocks and it was pitch black inside the caves, too! Nonetheless, it was an unforgettable experience since we got to see some breathtaking views from the caves

On the second day, the council and I went into the Taman Negara and we went on the Canopy Walk or a suspension bridge that stretched 530 metres long. I'm telling you, it was not as easy as it sounded especially for those who are afraid of height, that's for sure. The bridge was only fit for one person and we had to keep a certain distance from the person in front of us so that the bridge wouldn't shake vigorously. I kept singing nursery songs when I went on the bridge to keep myself happily entertained and to take my mind off the creepy height.

After that we went trekking the jungle and then we went rapid shooting which was the highlight of the entire trip. Rapid shooting is a speedy ride on a wooden boat in the Taman Negara's river. Because there were twenty people of us, we were separated in two boats. The interesting part? We had water fight against each other, splashing each other's boat with the river water and water buckets and the boat was in a really high speed that we thought it almost flipped over! SO. FUN. 

After having so much fun splashing water like a 5 year-old, we had our 'picnic' lunch by the river side and visited the Orang Asli encampments, where we learned how to use their traditional bamboo blowpipe. 

To wrap up our teambuilding trip, we went for another trip the next day to experience Flying Fox and raft building. I've tried flying fox before I truly enjoyed it! The hardest part of our last day's activity was the raft building, in which we're supposed to craft a raft from barrels, pipes and plastic ropes and we had a raft race on the river. It was such a hard work but my team won in the end, yay to that!

Our team building trip was extremely exhausting but all the mud, sweat and blood (nah, no blood) was really worth it in the end! Can't wait to go on another trip with this bunch in the future! Love you all so mucho :)

A Whole Lot Of Cookies!

Brought back some brown sugar to Medan, which is pretty much a weird thing to do. I mean, who'd buy a packet of brown sugar weighed +- 1 kg all the way to Indonesia from Malaysia? Me.
So the reason of me going through all the trouble was to try out some cookies recipes and because brown sugar is pretty much expensive in my favourite supermarkets.

I do believe that brown sugar is an essential component when making cookies as I've tried making some using only white sugar and the cookies didn't seem to hold its shape. Anyway,this is a recipe that I found a few days ago from an online blog, I pretty much halved the recipe because the original recipe itself would yield more than a hundred cookies, which is too much! This recipe will produce slightly crunchy but mostly soft and chewy cookies, they're really delicious especially when eaten freshly out of the oven!  (of course you have to wait for a few minutes cause you're definitely gonna burn your tongue if you don't)

The ingredients that you need are:

1 cup of Blueband butter-margarine (or any other butter/margarine brands, a combination of both is preferable)

2 cups of all-purpose flour

1 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of white sugar

2 eggs

2.5 cups of instant oatmeal, blended

1 tsp of vanilla

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp of baking soda

chocolate chip cookies (as much as you want!)

How to make them:

1) The first step is to preheat your oven into 190 degrees celsius and beat your butter/margarine with both brown sugar for a few minutes until the butter is soft. 

I personally use Blue Band's Cake and Cookie butter flavored margarine because they taste oh-so-divine! I've always loved the unique flavour of butter but I'm also crazy in love with the distinct kick that margarine always give to baked goods. So I really think that this margarine is the best for this cookie recipe because it gives the best of both worlds! Trust me, at this point, even the butter-sugar mixture is absolutely delicious! Don't hesitate to steal a few licks off the spoon :p

2) The next thing to do is to add the eggs, one at a time and beat at a low-medium speed until they are incorporated. Don't forget to scrape off the sides of the mixing bowl to ensure that the ingredients are beaten thoroughly.

3) After the eggs have incorporated into the batter, add vanilla and other dry ingredients, which are flour, blended instant oatmeal, baking powder and baking soda. Start with vanilla and then add three additions of flour followed by oatmeal and baking/soda powder. Beat until they are well incorporated on low-medium speed and scrape off the sides of the bowl, too!

4) The next step is the most fun part of all! Yes, you've guessed it right.. it's the 'add as much chocolate chip as you want' part! At this point, I caved into one of the most irresistible temptations...yeah, I ate the cookie dough. Raw. But even the cookie dough itself was really good! When I first ate the cookie dough, I realized why people all around the world have been having this obsession with eating raw cookie dough and unbaked cake batter;  they're simply too good!

The last thing to do is to roll those tempting cookie dough into small balls and arrange them neatly with 2 inches space between each cookie in a baking pan lined with aluminium foil or non-stick baking cookie sheet. After that, just pop them into the oven for 10-15 minutes until they turn a little bit brownish for that extra crunch!

There you go, your very own homemade cookies is finally done! Enjoy :)