Rocky Road Ahead

It has been a week since the start of the new year. We are happy to be back home and we even welcomed the heat. The kids are back to school and we are all busy adjusting to the new school term and getting ourselves familiar with the new set of routines.

My tween begins the new school term with a great hurdle in front of him. Like all his peers, to mark the end of their sixth year in primary school, he will be taking the national exam later part of this year. Whether a student gets to be posted to the secondary school of his choice would mainly depend on how well he performs at this nationwide examination. It is definitely going to be a tough year, judging from the amount of homework my child had to do on the very first week of school.

I bought a box of brownies mix when we were in Beijing. I had intended to bake a batch of rocky road brownies on Christmas day. However, I didn't had time to do any baking after a day trip to Simatai, (a section of the Great Wall). So, I brought the ready-mix, together with the marshmallows and M&Ms, all the way home, and now these rainbow brownies became my 1st bake for the year! What a sweet start!

As with all ready-mix, baking out of a box is simple, fast and everything is done in a bowl. Like an obedient student, I followed the instructions to a T...including the part on stirring the ingredients together...with a spoon for about 50 times. I couldn't believe myself that I actually counted the number of strokes! Well at least I proved that the instruction is accurate, by the 50th stroke, the batter was well mixed with no traces of any of the flour mixture.

The brownies was done after 25mins in the oven, I took it out and dotted it with lots of marshmallows (I didn't have mini ones, so I used a kitchen shear to cut them into smaller chunks), followed by a shower of chopped peanuts and a light sprinkling of mini-M&Ms. I popped the pan back into the oven and waited patiently for the marshmallow to melt. I removed the brownies once the marshmallow started to brown.

These brownies are terribly fudgy...dense, moist, gooey and a little chewy! My kids love it! I prefer the texture to be firmer so I kept them chilled in the fridge. The chocolate-nuts-marshmallow is a perfect combination of flavours and texture...you get sticky, crunchy, chewy all in one mouthful!

Even though it is going to be a rocky road ahead for me as well...as I would likely be operating like a single parent for most part of the year...I will be holding on to my boys hands and hopefully we are able to cross or maneuver whatever obstacles along the way.