Saturday 31 October 2009

Savory and Sweet Palmiers

There is always a first to everything. Today is my first time baking with puff pastry. Its unbelievably EASY. Simply idot proof! I first wanted to play with puff pastry when I was reading the cook book that ah huat's mum gave me. In the book, its Pesto- Palmiers. I used olive spread instead because there are two bottles of olive spread from Greece sitting in my fridge and nobody seem to know what to do with it. I bought ready made puff pastry and simply used the recipe as a rough guide to what I should do.

I will not state exactly how much ingredients I used because its really base on estimation. Base on what I am able to remember,

Ingredients
175g of Puff pastry ( Which is about half a packet)
1.5 Tbs Olive spread ( Or Green/ Red Pesto)
Handful of Parmesan, to be placed on top of each Palmier.
1 egg yolk + 1Tbs water



Its as simple as roll (the puff pastry to about 3mm thickness), Spread ( Spread whichever spread you are using), fold ( Fold in both sides of the dough.)



Preheat the oven at 200 degrees.
Place the rolled up dough in the fridge for about 15min, so that it is easier to cut, alternatively if you have no problems cutting the dough, its alright to simply cut and put it in the oven. The pastry could also be kept in the freezer till you are ready to bake them.
Cut the pastry, brush each with egg wash and place some Parmesan on top before placing it in the oven




Bake for about 10-14 min or until pastry become golden brown.








Serve hot! Perfect as finger food for parties :)

I also tried making it sweet. Tried it with Jam and then with sugar cinnamon. Turned out to look like mini cookies.


Sunday 25 October 2009

Chocolate cheese cake brownie.

Ah huat's mum gave me a cook book when they were in town last week. Now that I have some time on hand to bum around, I decided to open the book and check it out. I sure do miss baking and really wanted to bake something savory for a change this time. Wanted to bake something with puff pastry. But again, wanting to do something and actually getting my butt out to get the ingredients is another thing. So I decided to bake something thats on my to bake list, since...donkey years. And since I have the ingredients anyways, I decided to give it a go!

So today I baked Chocolate cheese cake brownie. The first time I came across this recipe was actually from Tastespotting. Unfortunately the recipe was in spanish or something. So I was too lazy to check out for translation and stuff and kinda forgot about it, until I was gonna have a potluck with my hall mates one fine day. ( Which did not work out, because I had to stay for a meeting till 9.30pm of all days!) That would be the perfect dessert to bake! That did not happen of course. Hence today was a perfect day to try it out.

I kinda combined two recipes into one. The first one is from an awesome One Bowl Brownie and the second is from a Chunky Cheesecake Brownie recipe. Okay does not make sense that I used two recipe when the latter is the recipe of the Brownie I am gonna bake. My only reason is that I wanted to bake with the best brownie recipe I could find. Hence the added step, only to realise that I had some missing ingredients, because sister Tan stole some of my chocolate! Hence I used cocoa powder as a substitute for the missing chocolate, which I believe is also a healthier alternative.

28g of chocolate in baking could be substituted with 3tbsp unsweeten cocoa powder and 1 tsbp of butter
or
28g of premelted baking chocolate could be substituted with 3 tbsp of unsweeten cocoa powder and 1 tbsp of vegetable oil.
I modified the recipe such that it makes 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients
Cheesecake portion
112g Cream cheese
1/4 C White Sugar
1 Egg

Brownie portion
50g Chocolate ( I used 70% dark chocolate)
3 Tbs Unsweeten Cocoa ( To substitute the remaining shortage of Chocolate)
 ( The recipe asked for 75g chocolate)
110g Butter
1/2 C White Sugar
2 Eggs
2/3 C Flour
1 Tsp Vanilla

1) Preheat oven to 175 degree C.

2) Combine cream cheese with 1/4 cup sugar and 1 egg in a mixing bowl; beat until smooth.

3) In a double boil, melt butter and chocolate, together with the cocoa powder.

4) Stir until chocolate is melted. Stir in sugar. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour.

5) Pour half of the batter into the muffin tin. Spread the cream cheese mixture over the chocolate layer.


Top with remaining Chocolate mixture

 

Using a knife/ toothpick, swirl the top chocolate layer into the cream cheese to make a marble pattern.




6) Bake in preheated oven at 175 degree C for 25-30 minutes, or until top is crinkled and edges pull away from sides of the pan. Cool throughly. Store in the refrigerator or freeze.




Cheesecake does not like brownie.

( Please pardon the terrible lightening!)

Sunday 11 October 2009

Corn Muffin

After having lunch with Corrine and Rachel last week at Kenny Rogers, I was inspired to bake some corn muffins for a while now. And today I finally got down to baking them. Well the truth is, these muffins does not last anywhere like the Kenny Rogers corn muffins unfortunately. They taste like muffins, with corn in them. Its not to say that they taste horrible. In fact they are moist on the inside and I could actually taste honey in the muffins and they are not too sweet.

So for the past few weeks I have been working and swimming and meeting up with friends.



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I was watching MTV today and they were playing hits from the 80s and 90s. ( Men I feel old) I paused to watch the music video by Alanis Morissette, "Hand in my Pocket". The line in the lyrics actually hit me.

"I'm lost but I am hopeful baby."

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"I feel drunk but I'm sober
I'm young and I'm underpaid
I'm tired but I'm working, yeah
I care but I'm worthless
I'm here but I'm really gone
I'm wrong and I'm sorry baby."

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"what it all comes down to
Is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving the peace sign."

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When I had my first corn muffin, I felt like my muffin. Its tasty, but no where near my expectation. I can't really pin point what I have done wrong, or perhaps its just not the right recipe. Yes, it taste like muffins, soft and moist on the inside. Indeed I could taste the corn and honey as well. But simply not as special as I thought it would turn out.

Pardon how this entry has turned into an entry about how I feel currently. My food seem to simply reflect my emotions. I am not feeling emo or sad btw. Rather, I dont know whats up right now.

Before I go on and on about how I feel, I got the recipe from this link
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Krissys-Best-Ever-Corn-Muffins/Detail.aspx
I have no idea how to link this website to the blog anymore, because as I am posting this right now, the layout of writing a new entry on blogger is totally confusing.

P.S. I did not use cornmeal, as stated in the recipe because I could not find any, so I used corn flour instead, which worked pretty alright. perhaps its because I could not find cornmeal that my muffin did not turn out ideal.

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