Well, this weekend was quite a food-filled one, I made Dark Chocolate-Orange Muffins, Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies, and I tasted a reallllly good cheesecake/brownie thing, and I discovered the greatest thing to snack on. All in just three days. This was one goood weekend, food/kitchen-wise.

The muffins, sadly, could have been better. Taste-wise they were really good; the orange flavour really strong, and the dark chocolate providing a rich but not too sweet foil to the zestiness. They were, however, a little tough, which I at first thought was because I'd mixed them too much, because I'd doubled the recipe to make enough for all the people my mother had "pre-allocated" them to, but then, when I made another half-batch, being careful to not overmix them, they were still tough. sigh. i don't know why. they taste good if you microwave them, though.

The chocolate bits inside get all nice and melty, and yummy. Or, if you don't have a microwave (or are too lazy to put them on a plate that you will have to wash, and walk down one floor and up again), you can blast them with a hairdryer. It works, really!

So, I guess, overall they weren't a complete failure.


The next thing I did were Cinammon Oatmeal Cookies, whilst waiting for the football match to start. These were a bigger success, although it really didn't seem so at first. The recipe called for coconut and oatmeal, but I didn't want coconutty cookies, so I omitted them, which I didn't think would be an issue. Then, the recipe said to drop rounded teaspoons on the sheet, but they expanded to a huuuge size, then flattened to wafer-thinness. I thought it might be because the lack of coconut might have made the dough too thin, so I added two tablespoons more of flour, and reduced the size of the dough balls to half a teaspoon. They didnt get so big (duh), but they were still quite thin, and they were a tad too sweet yesterday night. but today, they taste really good. buttery and chewy, and fragrant with cinnamon and butter. yumm.


So, those were what I made this weekend. what I ate, though, will be another post, because I just have to move on to my work now. buggers.

Shortbread Cookies

When I first saw this recipe for shortbread, I was extreeemely excited, firstly because they looked sooo delicious, and, more importantly, because the recipe was so simple. most shortbread recipes i'd encountered before that had called for chilled butter and rice flour and whatnot, but this one, was basically just butter, sugar, and flour. and boy, is it good. i totally lurrrve this cookie, even though some people have not seemed very impressed to me. this is totally a keeper, to me. i love the way the texture of the cookie is dense and almost velvety, because of the use of icing sugar instead of caster, i think. and although the recipe called for unsalted butter and a pinch of salt, i went ahead with my salted butter, omitting the salt. i think the shortbread might be saltier than if one were to use unsalted butter, but i love the saltiness! not that the cookie is salty per se, but it is faintly salty, which contributes to the buttery fragrance and flavour of the cookie, a deeeelish counterpoint to the sweetness. the only thing about this recipe is the huuge amount of butter used. more than 400g ok! think that's little? it's almost two blocks of butter. yeah. yes, the yield is fairly large, but, seriously, this cookie makes it unable for you to tell yourself that the butter is divided among many many cookies, so each cookie doesn't really have that much butter. this cookie is seriously BUTTERY.
which is partly why it tastes so good with fruit, and even jam. it's delicious with cherries, and plums, and i think it'd go fantastically with strawberries! and oranges. the juicy tartness of both the strawberries and the orange would be a great way to balance the richness of the shortbread. it also makes me crave hot earl grey tea, or really hot black coffee, the kind with no sugar. it's also great with a smear of apricot jam. and raspberry too, i'd bet. mm. i love it, love it, love it.
the next time i make these, i'm going to cut down on the sugar, and roll them out very thin, cut them out in fluted circles, and drizzle/dip them in chocolate. maybe if i ever decide to sell (or rather, if people ever decide to pay me
for my baked goods), or give these as gifts. i think they make verry presentable gifts. and they're fun to make. and your kitchen smells delightfully of butter and vanilla when they're baking. yay. i love this recipe.
and yes, i know that the picture of the cherries is rather random, but i was very happily taking pictures of my yummy cherries just now, and i took some very nice shots, if i do say so myself.

Raspberries

Went to the supermarket just now and saw these gorgeous ruby-red, perfectly formed raspberries, releasing their soft, sweet perfume-y scent to lure people like me into buying them.

Aren't they just beautiful?

I love the way they're basically many many little seeds/sacs joined together. they look so pretty. and they're delish too. yumyum.
I really do wish i lived in a place where fruits like these don't cost half an arm. For a punnet of i think 100g, these organic berries cost more than $10. goshhh!!! the only reason i actually got them was cos i was with my mum, who, whilst she doesn't like berries because she thinks they're sour, was also unable to resist the way they looked.

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.

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!

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.

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.