Cherry Chocolate Muffins

Bought about 250g of cherries at Carrefour the other day whilst I was shopping for my lunch-ingredients, without even knowing what i was going to do with them. they just looked so gorgeous that i had to get them.




On the way home, I decided to make muffins with them, and decided to add dark chocolate to the mix. So I pitted and halved about 3/4 of them, and grated the rest into a pulp, and chopped up about 3/4 of a small bar of Cadbury's Old Gold Dark Chocolate—which was the only thing 7-11 had. the muffins came out well enough, even though they seemed too wet at first. When i broke the first one apart, I thought I was doomed never to make successful fruit cupcakes. However, after sitting for awhile, they became pretty damn good.

So good, in fact, that they were all gone by this morning—I made them last night. And so good that my mother called me to tell me she'd ordered cherries, and that I should get the rest of the ingredients needed for more cupcakes. haha. this from my mother, who doesn't even like cakes and stuff very much.

So for this batch, I added more sugar, since my mother complained that they weren't sweet enough, and quartered the cherries instead of halving them, since my mother said that there needed to be cherries in every bite, instead of a big chunk or three here and there and none elsewhere. Also added a few drops of almond essence, since I thought that that would complement the cherries and the chocolate. But, as I was leery of adding too much, I ended up putting too little, and the almond-y scent I'd been aiming for was pretty much nonexistent. But, all in all, am quite happy with these muffins: they're sweet and buttery, with a nice, springy texture, creamy and darkly sweet from the chocolate, juicy and tart from the cherries. the only thing is, the batter itself has no cherry flavour or fruitiness, despite the almost half a kilo of cherries i grated in. but, they are nice and moist. plus, the fruit chunks give them a really nice look.



Drizzled with dark chocolate on the top—yumm.

Luncheon

Mmm. lunch today is a good one. I've taken to bringing my own lunch to work, since there's nothing good to eat hereabouts, and today's lunch is a salad, one of the few things that can be prepared mostly the night before and eaten at room temperature. sure, it'd have tasted much ncer this morning, but well, it works way better than something like sushi or pasta would've. Plus, it's tasty, and pretty as well.
So what is in this luncheon salad of mine?

Let's see..
-Romaine lettuce
-French beans, blanched in salted water
-Asparagus, blanched in salted water
-Yellow zuchinni chunks, stirfried with butter and salt
-White button mushrooms, sliced and dry sauteed, then smeared with a little butter and salt
-Cherry tomatoes, seeds squeezed out and grilled
-Bread, cut into small 'cubes' and toasted on the hot frying pan
-Grated aged Gouda cheese
-Toasted pine nuts

YUMMM.
Crisp greens punctuated with the cheery, sunny yellow of the zuchinni, the bright red of the tomatoes, dotted with the earthy brwn of the mushrooms, toasty pieces of bread, a carpet of shredded cheese on top and a sprinkling of triangular little pine nuts. pretty, and yummsome.

mm-mmm! lunch today rocks. much better than those vending machine sandwiches. healthy too.

Carrot Salad

Came home after work today after a rather disappointing 'dinner' of a sausage encrusted with potato cubes and deep fried. Dinner, if on a stick, is hardly ever satisfying.
So, I came back determined to eat something I had prepared by myself. Also, I wanted something light, and healthy, considering all the vending machine/junk food that has been my lunch for the past two weeks. saw this recipe online today for Carrot Salad, but I don't have olive oil at home, since my mother never uses it, and I didn't like the sound of raw crushed garlic in a salad. So, I made some alterations and came up with my very own Carrot Salad:




It was the perfect thing for tonight, since it was fast and easy, and it had the added perk of letting me practice my knife skills. It's basically carrots cut up into matchsticks, lemon juice to taste, pinch of salt, bit of sugar, and a touch of sesame oil, stir it all up, and eat. yum. it's tangy, sweet, crunchy, and with just a hint of smoky, fragrant sesame oil. am leaving a bunch in the fridge to see how it holds up, because I'm thinking of bringing some to work. Am utterly sick of the crap we keep making do with every day.
And just as a side note: I love this picture! haha.

Soyabean Ice Cream

Everyone who lives in Singapore should try Mr. Bean's Soyabean Ice Cream. Especially if you like ice cream and/or soyabean milk. Sadly, there are no pictures, because i was too busy eating my ice cream to think about things like photographs, but this ice cream totally rocks. it's advertised to be low in fat and cholesterol and all the other things that are bad for you, which makes sense, since it is made from a bean. so, when you think about it, it does not sound very appetising, especially in my book, where stuff thats good for you is rarely good to eat. Plus, it sounds almost sacrilegious, ice cream, made with no..cream?? it sounds on par with reduced fat potato chips!!
so why did i even eat this ice-cream-imposter? well, my mum and i were at suntec's food fair one year and i decided to try it, because i wondered how it would taste. man, was it good. today, whilst working, i suddenly had an insade craving for it, so after work, M and i headed down to AMK Hub to eat it. mmmmmmmm-good.

it's thick, rich, creamy, and so, so distinctively soyabean in flavour that it quite boggles the mind for a moment after that first bite. soyabean is not supposed to taste rich and creamy, and, in M's words, sinful. soyabean is what my aunt eats/drinks when she's on a diet! but this ice cream will just smash to smithereens your previous ideas about soyabean. the texture is somewhat akin to that of coconut cream, especially when you eat it all the way into the cone, where the ice cream has sort of melted, and there's this thick, creamy sludgy thing that is oh-so-goood. mmm. i love it. lurrve it. love the creaminess, love the flavour, love the price too! a cone costs you only $1.20, and ice cream fills the entire cone, plus about 3 swirls on top. is that value for money or what?

man. thinking about it makes me want it again. pity it's soft-serve and you can't take a pint home...

Lemon Stars

So i was feeling bored the other day and decided that i would make cookies. not really because i wanted to, but because i'd bought lemons and hundreds-and-thousands and was bored. which turned out to be a mistake, because the weather was so bloody hot, and i was all hot and sweaty, and and and and and. and by the time it was time to ice them, i was just so relieved to find out that i had just a little bit of icing sugar left, not enough to ice all the cookies. heh. this is NOT cookie-baking weather, let me tell you. especially in this house, where there is NO ventilation, and the kitchen is so bleeding hot. pfft.

so anyway.
i don't know what happened to my pictures of the end products—the cookies that i painstakingly spread lemon icing on and dipped (artistically?) in h-and-ts, so all i have are these plain ones, on the rack in the picture above, and fresh from the oven in the one below.




i like the end product anyway. the minus-icing ones. the lemon oil from the peel releases this really light, fresh lemon scent that is ever so light such that the cookies don't taste of lemons, they smell of them. i think my pictures are getting better. but perhaps that's because i took these in the afternoon, when there was plenty of sunlight—and heat. :(

ok, going to watch dvds now!

Santé!

For those of you who didn't know (and before last night, this list included me), Suntec is having a French Fair, just outside Carrefour—it's really not bad, wide selection of cheese, yogurts, olives, jams and the like, some of it Carrefour-branded, but others not. There is, too, of course, a rather wide selection of wines. I don't suppose they're to be expected to be excellent vintages, since it Carrefour we're talking about here, and don't expect to be recomended a nice bottle by any f the staff, since, well, it is Carefour we're talking about here. But well, I was in the mood for wine, and so, it seemed, after a quick phone call, was mother. So I went looking around for a bottle to buy, and this one caught my eye:

yes, i admit it, it was because of the packaging. But would't you be attracted to a wine packaged like this? I liked it because it wasn't pretending to be some classy fine wine with an 'antique' label that was printed to look like it had been sitting in some cellar despite being a 2005 vintage. So what was a 'Beaujolais'?
Luckily, the fair also had those 'How to Choose Wines' books, so i flipped through one, and found out that a Beaujolais was a light red, with berry/red-fruit tones, suited for young drinking. Which i felt suited my purposes rather well, not a serious-drinker, "nice legs", "draws well", "good colour" and all that etc that i know squat about. This is not the wine i was craving, in case you were wondering, that deep, dark, rich wine that remains elusive. But i wasn't looking for that in any case; i know that i know nothing about choosing wines. basically, i just felt like drinking wine, just for fun. So i bought the Beaujolais.

After a quick sit in the freezer—my mother said an ice-bucket was too leche, we opened it. Obviously, I can't show you pictures with a corkscrew and someone pulling it out, but this should suffice. heh.


So the wine itself? Pretty much as advertised, light and young, a bit too young for my liking, needed a bit of swirling about to make it nicer. Which, incidentally, happened when i was trying to take a nice shot. But yeah, it's just one of those random things i do when i'm in the random mood—buy a random bottle of wine and drink it, and it turned out pretty okay. So yeah, pretty happy with the whole thing.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Chunk Muffins

Aand the muffin saga continues, with today's foray into chocolate-hazelnut studded muffins.



Aren't they pretty? okay, maybe not pretty per se, but they look pretty inviting. haha. i think it's just chocolate in general that has the ability to make everything look inviting/enticing.
So why chocolate-hazelnut chunk? basically because i bought a square of riter-sport milk chocolate hazelnut and didn't feel like eating it like that. it was actually a toss-up between daim-studded muffins and choc-hazelnut, but i figured those hard caramel pieces in daim wouldn't taste very good after being baked. so, chocolate hazelnut it was.

the muffin recipe is basically the same as the jam one, with some changes

Ingredients:
75g butter, melted
3/4 cup (plus a bit) milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/4 cup self-raising flour
a bit less than 1/4 cup caster sugar (the smallest measurement my cup has is 1/4, but less than that, cos of the chocolate..somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 cup)
1 slab of Riter-Sport Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut, room temperature

Preheat oven to 180°C.
-Cut up the chocolate into smallish chunks, and place aside.
-Whisk together milk, egg and vanilla essence.
-Sift SRFlour into bowl, and mix the sugar in, then make a well in the middle.
-Pour the melted butter and the milk mixture in and mix. Whilst still lumpy, add in the chocolate and continue to mix, but be careful not to overmix.
-Ladle into muffin tins, almost to the top, then bake until they rise and turn golden brown.
(I can't really give you very detailed/specific instructions for baking time, since i use a microwave oven, but it's pretty obvious when they're done).
-Remove and place onto cooling rack, drizzle with tempered chocolate if desired. (or if, unlike me, you have extra plain chocolate to melt)

i suggest eating one whilst it's still fresh from the oven, or toasting it when you want to eat it, because when the chocolate is all nice and melty, mmmmm-mmmm-good. haha.

yumm.

Surprise Muffins

My latest baking expedition has been to make these funky jam-filled muffins. Making them was pretty fun and easy too. got the recipe from here, and it's basically a prep, prep, prep, pour, mix to get the batter, then a dollop of batter, jam, and more batter. quick and easy in terms of making them, but I am less than pleased with the end result.

Even if they are pretty, they don't taste all that good, especially the day after, and the day after that. After they've cooled, they taste pretty good, springy, moist, fragrant and yummy, with a slight crispy shell on the outside. So, that night, I was pretty happy. Then, I ate one for breakfast the next day, and it was kind of a shock when i realised that the cake had somehow become a lot more dense and dry/oily overnight, not moist and all like the previous night. it wasn't horrid, but it definitely wasn't as good as it had been the night before. M seemed to like them though, so that's something. Then, i ate one for breakfast today, and it was like yesterday, but worse. sigh. tomorrow i'll try toasting them, see what happens.
Maybe i'll make them again, but substitute some of the butter out for water or milk. or maybe it's the microwaves—cooking from inside out instead of outside in. dunno. it'd be tragic if i had to stick to cookies ONLY. sometimes you just want to stir stuff together and chuck it in and get a nice end product, not cream, stir, roll, refrigerate, cut roll, refrigerate cut etc etc etc until you are so darn tired. ah well. maybe shall try another muffin recipe sometime soon. god knows i need the 'therapy' after staring at virtuallly METRES of microfilm for six and a half hours a day.

Potato Cheeps

Yes, I've scoffed at those "REDUCED FAT (!!!) Ruffles", so what am i doing preparing to blog about virtually oil-free chips? well. i dunno. the main reason why i decided to make these was cos it sounded so fun/easy, and it was a good excuse as any for me to practice my slicing skills. I can't remember where i got the recipe from, but it's basically, slice as thinly as you can, place on baking tray/dish, salt, then bake.
i tried that the first time, and it was somewhat of a, shall we say, MONUMENTAL flop, since, contrary to what the recipe said, my potatoes stuck to the (nonstick) tray like barnacles, and were basically inedible. so i bid the kitchen a momentary adieu, since mother was preparing for the mothers' day lunch the next day, but inside, i had not given up!!!!!! yeah.
so that night, after dinner, i was back again, this time with plans to use the (nonstick) frying pan instead. have i mentioned how much i love nonstick? i loveitloveitloveitLURRRVE IT. er. right. back to tatties.
so i sliced (not very well), until my mother could not stand to see slice after uneven, thick slice fall from my knife, anymore, and told me to hand. her. the. knife.
so she took over slicing, but halfway decided that halving the potato would be easier. hence, i ended up with many semicircular chips. but what can you do right? it looked like instead of honing my slicing skills, i would be working on my patience instead, watcing the chips turn from white, to transparent, to yellow-brown, to gold.

So, the end product. They were an odd texture, half chewy and half crispy, with none of the shiok-ness that comes from eating artery-clogging, fat-drenched potato chips that have been fried in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. but as an experiment they were mightily interesting.
and they don't look toooo bad here, do they?
heh. who am i trying to kid.
it sucks that i only really cook at night, since by that time there is no more natural light for me to snap my pictures by. plus, a lousy camera. pffts. they don't look like chips at all! they look like...mini quiches? fried egg-tofu? some kind of round vegetble gone wrong? overcooked eggwhites? pfft.

The best breakfasts are in the pm.

Went to New York, New York for dinner yesterday with E and M, and it was gooood. the best thing about NYNY is that they serve breakfast ALL DAY. yes, all day! no dinky 'until 11 am' shit here, no siree! *chortles*

So whilst E went for the alfredo—or was it carbonara?—with chicken, I went for the Big! Big! Breakfast. Two eggs sunny side up, half a fried/grilled tomato, two sausages, bacon, a side of sauteed mushrooms and two of the fluffiest pancakes i have ever eaten in my life.
everything was pretty good, but the pancakes were simply fantastic. thick—about 2-3 cm—and fluffy and tasting faintly of sugar and eggs, and the slightest bit cakey, they were really really excellent. mm. i'd be over the moon if i could make pancakes like those. yummyummmmmmyumm.

list

seeing as how this blog has been dedicated to all things edible, i've decided that my latest list shall be put here. it's called 'things my kitchen lacks'—or, if you like, 'kitchen stuff i lust over'. or 'thing's i'll buy when i'm building my perfect kitchen'. or 'how i'll spend that lucky draw top prize i'll never win'. or...well, you get the point.
so. here goes..:
1) an oven. i am so sick of the damn microwave. pfft. no matter how that best denki guy tries to hard sell you, do NOT believe him when he says there's no difference.
2) an ice-cream maker.
3) the woodles waffle machine. hee.
4) the perfect granite motar-and-pestle: big and deep, not big and shallow, please.
5) a set of lovely, big, heavy-bottomed pans/pots.
6) a set of measuring cups. one just doesn't cut it.
7) a hand-held blender/puree-er. whatever it's called.
8) a china tea-set, complete with teapot, cups, sugar and cream pots, the works. i have strange fantasies about drinking tea from thin-thin cups, pouring tea from a delicate pot, etc.
9) a coffee-bean grinder. why? because....
10) how could you have thought that i wouldn't include an expresso machine on the list??! haha. mmmm.

siigh. now if only half a million bucks would materialise.

Banana Macadamia Pancakes

Well, after packing up the room today, came home and decided to make pancakes. Alas, there were still no apples, so I decided to make Banana Macadamia Pancakes. The basic pancake recipe
I got from here, go click recipe file, and the "inspiration" for the rather weird-sounding banana-macadamia combination was from 101cookbooks.com. The original recipe from 101 required way too many ingredients that i don't have at home, stuff like buttermilk and desicated coconut, which i don't like to eat much anyways, but i did have some leftover macadamias (from that trip to Pat's Oven..?) and we did have bananas, so i took the easy bits of the two recipes and mixed them together.
The end product(s) were toooo delicious–yes, I'm bragging, but credit doesn't really go to me, la—but boy were they ugly. but well. (which is why there're no pictures, hee)

so, i ended up making 4 variations of the banana/macadamia thing.
firstly, cos i'd eaten soo many of those yummy nuts, i figured there just was not going to be enough for the whole bowl of batter. so i poured about a third into a separate bowl and added mushed bananas to it and made plain banana pancakes.

then, in the other two-thirds of the batter, i added the crushed honey-roasted macadamias.the 101 recipe calls for the macadamias to be added to the batter, and after pouring the batter onto the pan, to add three thin slices on top, so they get nice and carmelised. sounds workable—and yummy—in theory, but the slices don't quite stick on the batter, so when you flip, they kida get scraped away. plus, they get burnt/browned before the rest of the pancake does, so after a few of those on-top kind of pancakes, i decided to stop with that.

so i made a few macadamia pancakes with the plain macadamia batter. also not bad. it's also quite cool the way the pancakes leave smudges of oil on the pan—it's the macadamias! cool, eh? haha

then, i added chopped bananas to the macadamia batter, since i was determined to get some improved banana-macadamia pancakes. this batter was by far the chunkiest, and the pancakes were shaped the oddest, cos they don't spread out to form circles, they kinda just plop down the way you poured them.

so taste-wise? i definitely liked the last version best, although the 101 ones were not bad, just..not banana-y enough, and visually the worst. the plain macadamia ones were a rather interesting pancake, crunchy, very pang; not bad at all.
so all in all, it's been a great pancake experience, and yy is happy. here's the recipe for those of you who want to try it.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup plain flour
3 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp melted butter
1 1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
2 bananas
about 40g honey roasted macadamias, crushed (I have no real idea about the weight, it's just a guess. just gauge for yourself)

Mix the first four ingredients together in a bowl. Mix the next three in a separate bowl.
Get out your non-stick frying pan and heat it up, oiling it slightly. Just grease it like you would a cake pan—use kitchen towel to rub with a bit of oil.
Mix the wet ingredients with the dry, along with the nuts and bananas. Be careful not to overmix, or your pancakes will not be fluffy and nice. Don't worry even if there're some lumps.
Pour into the pan and cook them, then eat with butter and honey/golden syrup.
yumm.

Makes many many small pancakes. I usually halve the recipe. Half would get you about..17-19 small pancakes.

limbo

Well, it's that last night before that last exam, and I cannot wait for it to all be over. Am already dreaming of the stuff I want to cook. Here's a list:

1) Apple Cinnamon Pancakes. v excited about these. was supposed to make them last weekend when i went home, but alas, there were no apples. How unbelievable is that?? but well, yes, apple cinnamon pancakes. yay.

2) A nice big, warm salad—the unhealthy kind, loaded with ingredients such as sauteed mushrooms, bacon, a fried egg, cheese, and whatever else catches the eye—and imagination— when I'm at the supermarket.

3) Cupcakes! mannn. I cannot wait. there's the candied ginger one from 101cookbooks, you can check them out here. and there's this other dark chocolate and peppermint bark one from here, although if i'm lazy, there'll be no bark, just crushed candycanes. or mints.

4) French toast! found this funky recipe and it looks funky-tastically delish.

and loads more! i don't particularly want to eat very much, i just want to cook! so if you're craving anything and want to eat, just tell me/find me a recipe and i'll cook for you! especially M and E, seeing as how i'll be seeing you guys most everyday..
yay i cannot wait for the weekend to come!

but ugh. packing. :(

nuts!

Went to vivocity with M today for dinner, and after, we stopped by Pat's Oven again, to pick up more healthy, heart-friendly, low-salt, cholesterol-busting snacks. heh. i decided to cave to the lure of Honey Roasted Macadamias. They don't look like very much here, in a lousy, phone-camera picture, but they're really gorgeous, a lovely golden-brown, with salt/sugar crystals on them. And the best part is that they're so absolutely fresh that the oils in the macadamias are so..delicious. It's hard to explain, but if you've ever eaten those canned maui-whatever brand ones and then these really fresh ones, you'll know what I mean.

Also got a bag of relatively cheaper mixed nuts—plain toasted pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, slivered almonds and cashews. Not a big fan of cashews, but I do so love pine nuts and almonds. Yumm. And my phone camera is proving itself to be woefully pathetic. :( Well, after this week, I'll have my real camera, then hopefully no more ugly photos like these..