The Cinnamon Buns Which Ate The Earth

Okay, I tried to be good at work, but I swear I've fallen asleep three times trying to read about the law governing arbitration agreements already so to hell with it.

Raj and I found out our mutual delight that we both harboured secret shameful desires to watch Dirty Dancing 2 even though we were well aware that nothing could come close to the power and glory of the original Dirty Dancing. So we agreed to meet up over the weekend and be totally girly and bake cinnamon buns because I found these much too alluring to resist. I nearly licked the screen when I read about them. That would have made for interesting office gossip. ("See, she doesn’t just look crazy, she IS crazy.")

Naturally, neither of us bake, but in our naïve, optimistic fashion, we figured that it couldn't be THAT hard.

Fools.

We wandered the aisles of NTUC Fairprice looking for vanilla pudding. They didn't have it. Well, we figured, never mind, it's just one ingredient. (Never mind that it's the key ingredient.) Back at her house, I asked Raj what she thought the vanilla pudding mix did, in order to correct the lack of it in our recipe.

Raj said, "I think it makes everything more gluggy."

We didn't know how to fix the gluggy issue so we just left it and hoped for the best.

It was like watching The Idiot's Guide to Baking By Idiots. It was terrible. Raj is going to be a doctor. I'm a lawyer. But the two of us might as well have been monkeys trying to type Shakespeare. There was the horrific moment where I thought that we might be following entirely different recipes. There was the moment where we realized that we didn't have a rolling pin. We were enthralled by the fact that we could produce dough, already a sure sign that things were not going to go well. There was much prodding of the soft dough with these awestruck expressions, much like cavemen who beheld fire for the first time. Rolling out the dough, my portion refused to be rolled out flat, and kept joyfully springing back into an elastic lump.

It should have been made into a TV show. Cooking by Dumb and Dumberer. People would tune in just to watch it with the same morbid fascination which drives people to watch 'When Stunts Go Wrong'

After much monkeying around, we stared at the little cinnamon buns arrayed haphazardly on the baking trays.

"They don't look...too...bad...., " Raj said.

"They look like turds."

"Well, yeah, okay, they look like turds if you have lipid absorption malfunction," Raj conceded.

This is why I hang out with Raj. We can be medical geeks together.

We ran off to watch Dirty Dancing 2 (American teen goes to Cuba, meets Cuban boy who looks like he's 12 years old, there is a misunderstanding, he gets fired, she decides to make it up to him by both of them entering a dance competition so he can win money, lots of dancey-dancey, the eventual ‘I luff you' declaration by a rather unintelligible, stereotypical Javier.) and ventured cautiously into the kitchen to see if our mutant cinnamon buns had stormed the kitchen and held the butter hostage yet.

They looked exactly the same as they did when we first put them in, except mine had grown to MONSTROUS proportions and threatened to climb out of the baking pan.

We took them out and screwed up our courage and bit into one.

They were actually edible. In fact, they were pretty good. Except for the fact that they looked like they needed a good long beach holiday getting a tan, Raj's ones turned out looking St. Cinnamon - worthy. Mine still like looked like something found in the pages of a medical textbook, but they tasted the same, so it was all of the good.

People besides us actually ate our cinnamon buns. Maybe it's because both Raj’s father and my father are doctors. They know how to treat violent stomach disorders.

Anyway, just because I feel like it, here's a list of sweet things I find irresistable in no order of preference. Hopefully people reading this will give them to me at random intervals so I will never have to make my own again and the Biohazarad division of the Civil Defence won't have to seal off Raj's kitchen.

1. St. Cinnamon chocolate and cheese cinnamon buns (they're good, I swear!)
2. Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia
3. Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Pudding
4. Dunkin' Donuts Chocolate Pudding, but I am a food slut and I will happily accept any other flavor
5. Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey
6. Beyond Decadence's Double Chocolate Chip
7. Dairy Bell's Nuts About Chocolate
8. Those little fruit tarts with custard at the bottom which are the perfect size to stuff whole into your mouth.
9. Cream puffs
10. Eclairs
11. Browne's Muesli yoghurt
12. Any cereal by Post except those that pretend they're healthy
13. Ginger Snaps by McVities
14. Heavy whipping cream by Bulla (yes, I know you're not supposed to drink it, but I LOVE it. And it has it other uses too....)
15. Milo powder
16. Nestum (I know it's dorky, but I like it anyway)
17. Banana chocolate cake from god-knows-where, I've only tasted it once and nearly had a food orgasm on the spot.
18. Giant profiteroles from The French Stall (any dessert which has the word 'giant' in front of it automatically gets my vote)
19. Chocolate Thunder from Down Under from the OutBack Steakhouse
20. Oreo Cheesecake from the secret cheesecake place
21. Strawberry cheesecake from the Hyatt
22. Gula melaka
23. Puttu mayam

I have to stop, I'm drooling on my keyboard and Tech is too cheap to replace it if I short it out.

BTW, Raj, if you're reading this, thanks for such a brilliant weekend. As usual, your company was brilliant and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There are two more cinnamon buns sitting in my fridge scaring the other food.

The Slinky Cat licks the cream off her whiskers and her boyfriend too.