And there was one

Sorry for the silence. Things have been busy, but rest assure the cooking goes on. :)
This was the chocolate cake I made for my friend. I passed it out during class..no one asked for seconds. :S Kristen told me today that it was really good but since it was during class, no one dared to ask for more?
;)
I don't know. anyway, very very chocolatey. And I went budget - so PC organic 70% chocolate=1.99 (vs. Lindt 2.99), and PC bitter sweet chocolate = 3.99 (vs. Lindt ..1000? :P ) and PC decadent chocolate chips. Ok, but they liked it so I conclude that it is the *ahem* skill that matters and not the ingredients.
...
hahahha.
I also made sourmilk-sourdough buns. Quite nice.
I toast them and have them with my vegetable soup. mm








And..
I also made ....che-che's favourite.
The real star of the night. heehee. Wish you were here che. :)

















No no..wait che. I know you will really like this..:P

Yeah ok. No esthetics lah..but when you are cooking for yourself, and you are tired of piping the meringue, hehe. this is what you get. yes, a blob of meringue goodness. :D

Guess what?

I heard about it, I read about it, I've searched high and low for it, but I never found it.
I went to the supermarket to get some chocolate to bake (friend's b'day tomorrow)..and as I casually browsed the produce section, something bright caught my eye.
I thought to myself, "interesting. very interesting". Yeah right! I was like "WHATTT??!!". :P
Yes, MEYER LEMONS!
I first read about it in orangette
And I thought to myself, "I must get these lemons!"
But I never found them. All I found were big ugly yellow ones. bleh. They are like the ugly stepsisters of Cinderella.
And soon, I gave up i.e. learned hopelessness. :P
Ok, long story hor? heheh. Without further ado, may I present MEYER LEMONS!


Ok. options - I'm baking for my friend's b'day party next week.
Should I go with Orangette, or La Tartine ? Your votes please. :D

...
...
edit: what am i talking about? I have 7 lemons. 2 for cookies, 5 for tarts. OH MY!! perfect! heehee.

Care package cont

So - I know how much you love marshies. :)
I never did post anything on them, even though you got them for christmas too.
So I thought I'll walk you through the process..

The hardest part of the process is taking care of the sugar conconction. The recipe calls for it to reach the soft-ball stage. Yes - so you have to be careful not to under boil it ..in which case it'll be just..sugar..hehe, or over boil it in which case it will caramelized (i'm guessing). :)

So you leave it overnight (8-10 hours). After 1/2 -1 hour, it should feel pretty firm. You mix rice flour and icing sugar in equal proportions, and then dust the surface with the mixture.

Make sure that the parchment paper is oiled! I didn't do it the last time and I had to kinda scrap it off. Not a pretty sight. But look at this one - peels right off!

and Voila!
It's not that hard, just takes time. ..and I don't even like eating marshmallows! hahaha.
Susah ok?? I had to do it early morning before I left for school. Cutting cutting cutting. :)
Hopefully it won't spoil before you get to taste it..;)

Napoleon Dynamite

who says we all can't be famous?? ;) y'know what i'm talking about. lol

A care package.

You see..
I had good intentions. Noble intentions of making the best chocolate rads EVER -using Lindt 85% chocolate. Just for Y-O-U, cheche dum dum.
I went to the store to look for this gourmet ingredient. But I found only PC...(Don't diss PC - it's cheap-ER..sometimes..). Anyway, it's also alot cheaper than Lindt. :)
I bought 1 pound worth of bittersweet chocolate for 4 dollars. Tastes alright. It's not Valrhona or some fancy European chocolate..but HEY, it's made in France. Viva la France! :)
The cookies are VERY rich. in fact, possibly, ...sickeningly sweet.I'm going to give some to my classmates, and some will be sent to a special someone in birmingham. ;)
The Tower of Gluttony

Nasi LEMAK!!

Ok. What does my face have to do with nasi lemak? heheh. nothing. That's the face that went to a jazz concert on Friday. :)

Right, back to nasi lemak.
I made nasi lemak..using brahms sauce and liza's curry paste. hehe. Of course lah. takkan I'm going to sit there with a pestle and mortar grinding the spices. o_O She only had brown rice. So I made coconut brown rice, with sambal (no ikan bilis lah. you know these white people..ahhaha), chicken rendang, boiled egg (because i so love eggs!!), peanuts and cucumber.
One satisfied customer! :)
she ate the WHOLE bowl of sambal ok?? Spicy and hot. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Furore

Rocky Bru's and Jeff Ooi's blogs are being sued by NST. There's going to be a backlash and many people are thinking with their emotions.
Censorship is getting less and less acceptable. What is strange is that - I think if one's country was successful, there will be less murmuring, less discontent as people tend to justify the system they live in. Think Singapore. How many Singaporeans go, "overthrow the government"?
A weak government, a weak leader...I guess the tower will topple over.
The consequences of it I think, are unimaginable and who knows the future reprecussions of this growing furore?

Struanbo

As you probably realize by now, any word with -bo means bread. :)

Today's recipe is brought to you by Rose Levy Berenbaum, the author of "The Bread Bible" and whose recipes you have already seen in previous posts (challah and raisin cinnamon bread).
Bobo is just growing and growin and there ain't no stopping him. ...:( I dont' know lah, this batch of yeast very active. heh.
(I was somewhat obsessed with the 2 little seeds..and wanted to take a picture of them. so cute! :P )

Anyway, I found this recipe some time ago.

Here's some background taken from The Fresh Loaf:

About Struan Bread

Struan Bread (properly pronounced "STRU-en bread", but most people I know call it "STRON bread") is a harvest bread. I believe the story is that Peter Reinhart read something about a traditional bread that Irish villagers baked into which they threw a little bit of everything they were harvesting. Struan Bread as we know it is an attempt to capture the spirit of that loaf.

Regardless of the origin, this bread is wonderful. One is certainly free to experiment with including different or additional grains. I've done so a bit and the bread has turned out quite good, though I don't think any of them have be as excellent as the combination found in the original recipe (reproduced below).

Oh yeah, I need to add that this recipe is roughly the recipe found in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice. I believe he includes versions of it in most of his other baking books (Crust & Crumb and Brother Juniper's Bread Book come to mind). If you don't already have one of his bread books on your shelf you owe it to yourself to pick one up.

I made some slight changes to the recipe
- 3/4 cup of sourdough instead of 1/3
-I added Tuff flour. ..TUFF FLOUR?? I know, what is tuff flour right? I went to bulk baking store and found several packages of tuff flour sitting there..so lonely. I thought to myself, ah -hah! Tuff flour....*think *think *think..nopes, I couldn't think of any recipe that calls for tuff flour. But I decided to buy a small packet of tuff flour. Ok I can't find a link to tuff flour..but I'm pretty sure it is NOT this. :P At least I'm hoping not lah. The lady gave me a hand out - apparently it's some ancient grain...oh OH!!!
It is TEFF flour, not tuff flour. ...HAHAHAHAH!!
*phew. I was getting worried there for a minute, I thought I was eating volcanic flour. heehee. *blush.
Alright, 2 tbsp of teff flour. :)
-1/2 cup of multigrain bread flour.
-I know that polenta is cornmeal..but is it really just the name? I don't know, anyway I used cornmeal because I only had instant polenta and I didn't really want to cook the polenta by pouring hot water on it.
-corn syrup instead of honey
- Scottish oats (cut oats) instead of rolled oats
- couple of drops of almond extract - I thought that will give the bread a hint of nuttiness.

and that's pretty much it! I made the bread round instead of shaping it into a loaf since I don't have a loaf pan. :D

Ta daaaa!! It tastes pretty good too!!

Bosin

Raisin Cinnamon Bread...with 1/3 cup bobo the sourdough

Raisin Cinnamon Loaf, adapted from "The Bread Bible" by Rose Levy Berenbaum

Makes 1 tall, large loaf.

Sponge
262g plain flour (approx 11% protein)
310g water
35g honey
3/4 teaspoon instant yeast

Dough
238g plain flour
30g powdered skimmed milk
3/4 teaspoon instant yeast

98g unsalted butter softened
11.5g salt

Filling

110g raisins
55g granulated sugar
7g ground cinnamon

+ Egg wash

1 tablespoon butter, melted

Changes - + 1/3 cup sourdough and play around with the amount of flour you have to add to compensate for the addition.
+ Vanilla Sugar for the inside. This really made a difference. The hint of vanilla- mmmm.

Alright..I only have an aluminium tin. and ..the dough was like too big for it, and too small for 2 tins. ho hum..it became a gigantic loaf of bread. Sigh. So much for "Dignity, always dignity"

I am waiting for it. It's baking right now. Today is one snowwyyy day. 10cm of snow. Too much work and not enough brains. I wrote my thought paper for my class and I think I sound too angry and annoyed at the theory. Unfortunately, that's the only way I could come up with something to talk about, since I don't really care about the theory, or have any thoughts on it. heh.

Oh. and voila! Here it is...Raisin Cinnamon Bread. :D

There is something satisfying about cooking. You cook and you reap. Now, I'm not sure there's something satisfying about reading a journal article. You read..and you either end up with more questions than you first began with, or you regress and decide that you really don't know anything after all. haha.

Shaking off the blues

I went out for dinner yesterday and then to the bulk store to buy chocolates for a study. the amount of chocolate bars I bought is pretty disgusting..but cheap. lol. I bought a "party mix" which consists of kit kat, aero, smarties and coffee crunch. each pack has 16 bars (normal size). I bought 14 packs. Do the math.

It's amazing how I was in Glasgow just last week, it feels like I've been in Waterloo forever.
Since I emptied my fridge before I left, I went grocery shopping when I came back.
I made a number of dishes..but I was too lazy to take pictures. :S
Anyway, green curry, chicken tandoori and sambal. mmmm..
no skill - just magic in a box (or rather bag). :P

But now I'm back with the "stately graham biscuit". I wanted a traditional..idiot proof recipe - so I turned to the recipe provided by Anson Mills. The only changes I made was that I didn't roll out the dough - I shaped it into a log and sliced it. it's a lot easier and faster...and I don't have a cookie cutter.
It tastes pretty good - a nice breakfast. I don't have honey, so I have wildberries jam on the side and Queen Anne's tea. :D
Do they look stately or what? as stately as the empire building..that's what I think. heehee.

I'm back

kinda wish I wasn't. :(