Thursday 30 July 2009

This is the first official post!

After three days of not checking my email. ( Because I went to Milan for vacation.) I am surprised to find out that one of my photos on webshot was featured on the home and garden channel. Which lead to this new blog! Okay it does not look new anymore, after having copied and paste all the older bake entries from my other Blog. But if you look at the dates of all these older post its all posted today 30.7.2009 (today) and clearly some of the entry content does not tally with the date.

Anyways, I have decided to set up this blog purely for food and the enjoyment of life. Not to say that I am an expert in leading a life of luxury ( clearly not right now, since I recently graduated and is in the process of job hunting aka UNEMPLOYED and have plenty of free time to explore and ponder about life.) or that I am good an expert at enjoying life but in general I am a person who tries to look on the bright side of life and remain POSITIVE. My Motto in life: Remain high all the time, High not with the help of alcohol but high as in the opposite of depressed. ( I am not a motivational speaker, even if I sound like one right now.)




Bread Pudding

Ingredient for the day is 面包。( Bread) The first time I tried bread pudding was in one of those buffet restaurant and felt it tasted really good, especially with the warm vanilla sauce. Did not realise how easy it is to bake it till today. Until I got this recipe. I used 8 slices of bread instead of the 6 slices stated in the recipe. And would suggest using lesser sugar. if you are female baking for your girl friends. I've discovered that women and men have relatively different taste buds or rather different tolerance of sweetness. Perhaps females are alway watching their weight, or are more concern about weight issues, hence sugar or sweet stuff is somehow emphasized.
 
bread

I really had no idea how bread pudding would look like fresh out of the oven. Since I usually see it in a restaurant half eaten already but koh took a look at this picture and said it looked fine. So yup it looks like that. 

baked

Soft and moist on the inside.

slice

Ingredient of the day: Sesame

 
The weather today was pretty bad. ( Picture below looks more like an alien invasion rather than bad weather.) Hence staying at home was a good idea. 

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Because some brat wants cookies I decided to check out some cookie recipe and chance upon an Italian sesame cookie recipe. Its more common to find chinese pastery/ desert with sesame and there was a big packet of sesame lying around. So was pretty curios to see how does Italian sesame cookie taste!  

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The hand that made the dough smooth. ( need much more flour, about one more cup, than stated in the recipe)

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Smell of roasted sesame was fantastic!

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These Sesame cookies takes a while getting use to. The first bite was a little tasteless but as you chew, the aroma of sesame fills your mouth. Nice!

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Carroty

Food is important and coming from singapore I tend to take food for granted. I live to eat. Its not to say that I am great at the fine art of culinary. I eat everything, well most stuff and I like to try stuff. Wish my tummy could be a bottomless pit. I like baking, not really because I like to eat cake or muffins, (Savory dishes goes much better with my tummy and chocolate of course) but because I like how people enjoy what I make. Its because I have been useless for the past few months, having people appreciate what i bake makes me feel slightly better.

Since today is a sunday and ah huat's mum and dad is painting the living room I decided to bake carrot cake for the second time ( after my first failed attempt due to some misunderstanding with my oven) for tea. Using this carrot cake recipe. I made some changes to the proportion and would actually suggest much less sugar for the cake. ( I personally am not a big fan of things that are too sweet.) 

This are carrots. Looking all fresh and orange. If only carrots could look this earthy back home.
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Glowing carrots.                              Fresh out of the oven.

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All dolled up carrot cake.

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Ready to be eaten

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Das Perfekt Dinner

Yesterday's Dinner was this piece of meat. Beef tenderloin. ( Quality stuff and damn expensive too. 500g for $40!)

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This is the potato side which was damn good! Salt, thyme and olive oil baked in the oven. I could eat a bowl of this.

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Below is the green man and his preparation table. I think to say that a person 'can cook' is when he/she is able to cook without the help of any recipe. Hence Huat can cook.
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And the final product! Taste SUPER!
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Earlier in the afternoon I bake some donut looking apple cake. I wanted to bake something with apples and found this recipe. I did not know that the pan was meant to bake donuts till I filled the mixture into the pan. And the recipe said to bake with red apples but I did not have any and wanted to get rid of the green apples before it becomes bad. 

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See the oversized donuts. Clearly I did not expect the mixture to make 24 donuts and attempted to fill the mixture for the first batch of apple donut cake to the brim. 
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Fresh out of the oven. 
 
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Taste much better when its cooled and taste pretty good even without the cinnamon on top. 
 
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Mini Cheese Cake

My First attempt at baking cheese cake! I thought it tasted better not baked ( I placed it in the fridge till ready to eat and thought it was a little too hard for my liking, however even though the outside is hard, the inside is relatively soft.)  but I'm not sure if its possible to eat it, not baked, without having a tummy ache. 

Original Cheese cake recipe is here 
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    • Crust
    • 1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs ( I used some chocolate wheat cookie as substitue.)
    • 1 tablespoon white sugar
    • 1 tablespoon margarine, melted
    •  
    • Filling
    • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
    • 1/4 cup white sugar
    • 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
    • 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
    • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
    • 1 egg
  •  
  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a 6 cup muffin pan.
  2. In a medium bowl, mix together the graham cracker crumbs, sugar and margarine with a fork until combined. Measure a rounded tablespoon of the mixture into the bottom of each muffin cup, pressing firmly. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 5 minutes, then remove to cool. Keep the oven on.
  3. Beat together the cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla until fluffy. Mix in the egg.
  4. Pour the cream cheese mixture into the muffin cups, filling each until 3/4 full. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 25 minutes. Cool completely in pan before removing. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Banana Chocolate Muffin

Since there aren't any parents at home, at least till sunday, I have the whole kitchen to myself and will make full use of it.  ( Plus there is a dishwasher here wish means I do not need to do the cleaning after baking.) The chemistry of baking is another story altogether. Because there were some bananas thats about to rot and some left over chocolate from a few days ago, you put the two together and what do we have here, Banana Chocolate Muffin.

bWhats even more fun about baking is when you are able to find substitute for certain ingredients and the final product taste just as good. (At least from ah huat's feedback, and I hope he is not being bias.) I found out that baking powder works just as well as baking soda, and could be used as a substitute for one another. ( 1tsp of baking soda = 2tsp of baking powder) And that there are many substitutes for yogurts. ( Milk and lemon/ vinegar or Buttermilk could be substituted for yogurts, which is suppose to make make the muffin/ cake moist on the inside.) And I prefer to chop up chocolate bars rather than use chocolate chips because different types of chocolates used gives a different taste and i find it more visually pleasing. 

I am still a noob at baking and will try to bake other stuff and I often get my recipe from allrecipe because they have reviews that are pretty useful and get my inspiration from looking at Tastspotting, (Warning: website could cause hunger)

For today's bake I got the original recipe from Here.

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    • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
    • 3/4 cup sugar
    • 3 teaspoon baking powder
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • 1 egg
    • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
    • 1/2 cup plain yogurt ( I used 1 tbsp of lemon juice and mixed it with milk till its a full cup, then used half the portion)
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    • 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
    • 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, yogurt and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in bananas and chocolate chips. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake at 180 degrees for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.
 

Dark and White chocolate muffin

Today is suppose to be my commencement and I was not there. I should stop looking at fb pictures of commencement.
Baking has a therapeutic effect.

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Made some changes to the Recipe
Its a recipe for chocolate chip but i decided to add white chocolate as well and took the advise of some of the reviewers as well!

Nutella Chocolate Brownies

 
I present to you Nutella Chocolate brownies
Sugar is good for the brain! Chocolate is good for the mood :) 

Before
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After      
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Got the basic recipe from here but made some changes to the amount of chocolate and nutella added. 

 

Chocolate fondant for Two

Saw a Chocolate Fondant recipe last sunday and decided to bake it today. 
Simply Heavenly
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Warm Chocolate oozing out. OMG!
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100g couverture dark choco (preferably with 70% cocoa solids)

90g butter

1 whole egg

2.5 egg yolk 

50g sugar

25g flour 

 

1. Pre-heat oven to 250 deg C

2. Grease 2 large muffin tins or cup with butter then dust flour

3. melt choco and butter in bowl set over a pot of hot water on low heat

4. beat whole egg, egg yolks and sugar together with a whisk 

5. sift flour into bowl of egg mixture and fold it in till well incorporated 

6. fold melted butter and choco mixture gently till well incorporated 

7. pour choco mixture into muffin tin and bake at 250 deg C for 8-10min. The top should form a crust and begin to come away from the sides of the mould 

8. Slide a small paring knife along the inside of the mould to loosen the fondant. 

Tip if from the mould onto a plate and serve warm! 

 

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