Baking Party

Some friends came over tonight because I enticed them with cookies! It was supposed to be a 집들이 (housewarming party), but in reality I just wanted to test-drive my new convection oven. The instruction manual was in Korean, so I needed some help... My friend 은진 graciously took me shopping for baking supplies this afternoon, and then we set to work making banana bread! Preparing the batter was easy and quite fun -- 은진, like most Koreans, doesn't bake often at all, so it was a novel experience. When it came to using the oven... well, we ended up just pressing a lot of buttons. (I learned that convection ovens don't need to preheat. At least, mine doesn't. Is this normal?)

바나나 브레드, which is not technically bread but who cares?

We then ate our delicious banana bread and watched a movie, and when Aaron came over, we started on chocolate chip and M&M cookies. These were less successful. I think we were all comparing them subconsciously to the warm, gooey cookies that Maggie Gyllenhaal's character makes in Stranger Than Fiction (the movie we watched). Ours were warm and a bit crispy. Too little flour? Too much butter? I'll figure this out. I have a whole year to get good at this.

엠엔엠 쿠키, which was a wonderful culinary invention!

Also, like Maggie Gyllenhaal's character in Stranger Than Fiction, I'm going to have to give away a lot of what I make, because I'm trying to eat healthfully this year, and cookies don't factor into that anywhere. You know what that means, readers who live in Korea: come visit me, and I will feed you delicious baked goods! In the meantime, I think I'll give the rest of the banana bread to my old homestay family. I bet they've never even heard of banana bread...