Flourless Chocolate Cake I

Having a lot of free time right now, I have been watching a lot of TV. Recently there is a program on the travel and living channel, called Willy wonker's chocolate factory. Need I explain what the main ingredient is? Thats my first love as well. Very much inspired by the rich chocolate goodies he makes, I feel there is a need to get in touch with my first love again. 

Since He is flying in today, its the prefect occasion to bake chocolate cake! And No. Its not any chocolate cake, its flourless chocolate cake. The sort of rich and intense chocolate cake that could potentially cause nosebleed. 

Its 60% cacao

A friend recommended a flourless chocolate cake recipe, which I did not use this time. ( That recipe i'll try next time!) This time I tried a recipe I found from allrecipes. Which had tons of good reviews and looked rather easy to make. 

The smell of chocolate is irresistible, I could not stop dipping my finger into the warm chocolate mixture! 

Tasted like pudding just out of the oven and when chilled overnight, taste like chocolate truffle. This is the sort of cake that the diet zone in the brain should be switched off and its important to get a healthy fork in your mouth to be able to taste the richness of the chocolate. 

Finally, goes pretty well with a cup of coffee or tea. :) 

 

Strawberry Muesli Muffin

My friend, friend told me about a recipe she found in a women's magazine and suggested that I try it out. It looked really healthy with all the oats and berries in the ingredients. Since I am back home, where about half of the family is pretty much concern about sugar intake level. I decided to give this a try. Instead of using berries, which is really expensive here, I decided to use frozen strawberries instead.

The strawberries looked so good even though they were frozen strawberries. So shiny and juicy. (actually they taste pretty sour.)

Before entering the oven.

Fresh out of the oven. The dash of red looks really pretty and simply screams "hello summer"!

Thought it was not sweet enough, because the frozen strawberries were pretty sour. So I added some strawberry jam for added sweetness! Pretty healthy breakfast I must say.

Here is the recipe, (Made some changes to the original ingredients)

Makes 12

165g flour

80g oats ( I used Muesli instead.)

55g brown sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar, extra

15g baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

235ml fresh milk ( used 1 cup yoghurt instead)

1 egg

45ml Vegetable oil

2 tbsps butter

290g fresh or frozen berries ( Used strawberry instead)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 220 deg cel. Meanwhile, grease a 12-hole muffin pan and line with paper cupcake liners

2. Combine flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder and cinnamon in a mixing bowl. Stir in milk, egg, oil, butter and extra brown sugar. Fold in berries. Continue mixing until well-combined

3. Spoon mixture into the prepared muffin pan, filling each paper case only 2/3 full.

4. Bake for 25 - 30mins or until golden brown. Serve Warm.

*If you prefer muffin that are less sweet, leave out the 1/4 cup brown sugar, extra

*If using frozen berries, thaw them and drain the excess water before folding into muffin mixture

*Its advisable to use extra brown sugar if berries are sour.

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.
 

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. 



Soft and moist on the inside.

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. 

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!  

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



Smell of roasted sesame was fantastic!



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!

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.

Glowing carrots.                              Fresh out of the oven.

 

All dolled up carrot cake.



Ready to be eaten

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 

 

• • 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.

 

• • 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.

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

After      

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





Warm Chocolate oozing out. OMG!

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!