bake week

Here ends a week of sore legs from standing for hours at one stretch, agonising over the taste and aesthetics of the cookies throughout the week, or the cake yesterday.

Prior to this week we had 2 days of Chinese New Year baking. New family tradition I helped create since I developed an interest in baking.



Less butter this year,but still oily nonetheless. And still in search of a good recipe for those almond cookies. 



 Almond cookies

Same good melt-in-your mouths this year, except I reduced the butter to 250g.

Our class had a bake sale on Friday as part of the CNY street market, and what was good was that all profits went to Breakthrough Missions, a halfway house that provides rehabilitation to former drug offenders.

To be honest, I was so so tired after coming home late from baking that I almost dreaded going for the next session. But once we started, I was in my element again I guess.

Failures dressed up: Most of the rocky roads we made on the first day seriously weren't presentable; for some reason they all rebelled and spread out. So we got the idea of making bars out of them.

Plus, they really sold!

Sorry there aren't more photos of the other cookies, which were much more successful. (We did lollipops and drizzled icing over for more class)

Yesterday was birthday cake for my brother. Pretty good,considering how the yellow butter cake I made for my birthday last year was a flop.
The cake was moist like I how I like it to be and the frosting not too overwhelmingly sweet.

Made this from the Root Beer Bundt Cake recipe from Baked. One of the best cookbooks I've read.

Root Beer Cake
Adapted from Baked

Cake
2 cups root beer (no diet)
1 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 cups AP flour
1 1/4t baking soda
1 t salt
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C. Butter the inside of a 9-inch round cake pan, dust with flour and knock out excess.

In a small saucepan, heat butter,root beer and cocoa powder over medium heat until the butter is melted, stirring constantly. Add the sugars and whisk until dissolved. Remove from heat and let it cool.

In a large bowl,whisk flour, salt and baking soda together.

In a small bowl, whisk the eggs until just beaten,then whisk them into the cooled cocoa mixture until combined.

Gently fold the flour mixture into the cocoa mixture. Batter would be slightly lumpy- do not overbeat which could cause a tough cake.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 1 hour, rotating the pan halfway.

Frosting
2 oz unsweetened chocolated, melted and cooled slightly
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 t salt
1/4 cup root beer
heaped 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/4  cups icing sugar

Mix all the ingredients together until shiny and smooth.

Use spatula to spread over top and sides of cake.

Serve at room temperature!

(You can put the remaining into molds and refrigerate them for a quick sugar rush like I did!)





1 hour and 45 mins

Before both date and year changes simultaneously.

I'm not going to state my resolutions here; I think I will figure them out next year as time goes.

What shall I write about then? Honestly I do not know. (hey it sorta rhymes!)

These days have been pretty mundane. But I've come to the age where this mundanity brings about a kind of bliss, where you know the memory of these days will be that of bright sunlight and fluffy clouds, a kind of neutral contentedness and thankfulness that God has given yet another nice day.

***

It has taken me 6 minutes to write this.

You know when I heard Don't Stop Believing for the first time, it really felt like me? Or basically everyone drifting about in life. "Everybody wants a thrill" cos they don't know what they want. Aargh the intellectual, or rather school-trained mind automatically snaps "You are making a sweeping statement!" But I think its true though. That people would deny it could prove that its true.

Okay I should stop this back-and-forth thing I always lapse into. Anyway, now I still like the song but while I still can't quite put a finger to where I fit into the grand scheme of creation, I know I will know someday. This I say will as much certainty as my faith goes. I think I have grown quite abit, as a Christian. Sure, I'm still uncertain of many things but I still believe. Yes, I've seen suffering and still I want to and still believe.

Hope everyone gets closer to finding their meaning in life in 2012! That's the crux to feeling really alive I think.



blabber

Normally I will start the post with a title first but today I just had the urge to blog but had nothing in mind I wanted to put here. Anyway since I don't have an obligations to blog regularly and on common themes, I can blabber all I want.

America is really a place of possibilities. You can really do what you want and get support for it too, and the only things that stand in your way is your lack of talent or God's will. Mebbe that's why we all (by that I mean Singaporean teens) want out, to varying degrees. But I'm secretly scared I won't survive overseas. Once I was in the airport and some Caucasian asked me something and took awhile for me to realise he was speaking English. Asking whether there's rice in Macs. Dumb. But I felt dumb instead. I hate feeling dumb. (Especially in guitar class)

Okay, I don't know why the post became like that. It was supposed to be letters to people I really wanted to write to, but somehow couldn't. In this weird, somewhat ironic way, I miss my friends and those times but never kept in touch, because I'm scared of the imperceptible change that you can't put a finger to but you know its there all the same.

Vernis: Hey, you know, seeing all your bits and pieces on Facebook is seriously inadequate. I want to know what's going on in your life now. You seem happier than back when you first left, but I don't know, I can imagine sometimes the bewildering sense of being lost you might feel sometimes.

XH: I was really really lost the start of this year, and I really felt different and wanted to be. Cos in some strange way I didn't want to blend in. Yup, so the part about you saying I didn't want to get too close to new friends was kinda true. I'm beginning to accept changes better I think. By the end of next year I will say I will miss that place.

ZY: Sorry if I confused you. Nothing tangible happened so I don't know if its my imagination or what. Well, nothing will I guess.There are just some people in the class you don't get close to -- the unexplainable logic of making friends.

Hui Zhen: I miss you. Or rather, those times we spent recess in your class and always always there was laughter. Mebbe even Felix's stinky shirt, so we can contort our faces at it. I guess it was like I said in the letter, there's the invisible thread holding us together just became longer. Until nice nice memories to be wistfully recalled remain. (I'm being melodramatic/contrived/ what's with the deliberate use of this)

Joy of Baking

I'm supposed to sleep now cos I need to wake up at the unearthly hour of 2 tomorrow to catch a flight, and the labtop is dangerously close to shutting down by itself.

But still, let me humbly dedicate this post (though there's like 80% chance no one would read it) to the wonderful website Joy of Baking. I don't know how I started baking, but I know that I started to love it when I saw all the photos of those glorious baked cookies, pies, cakes over there. And not only that! They have interesting anecdotes behind everything, like the history behind that cookie.

Sad to say, I just got reminded of its presence while doing recipe searchs for an upcoming bake sale (excited!), and am suddenly overcome with gratitude and a tinge of guilt for forgetting it.

Ah, the joy of baking and sharing!

Going Vegan

Foreword: No recipe shared here!

(Initially the title of this post was something like Maiden Vegan but nevermind)

It didn't go well. The dough was so resistant to coming together to form what it should be- nice cookie dough that I can place nicely on the baking tray without them close to disintegrating into its components.

Why is a knife there? Cos the smart me decided that it was impossible to 'drop teaspoonfuls of dough' like what the recipe called for, so I gave it cold treatment in the fridge and cut the dough to tame it.

As usual, the plus side was that no matter how weird the baked dough/batter comes out, the uncooked dough usually tastes nice. Coconut-oat-sugar crumbs. Free of raw eggs too.

It wasn't too bad. Right? This batch is the crunchy batch cos I wanted to find out what will happen if I baked it for 5 minutes longer. A lot, I realised.

This is the better one. Both crunch and chew in the cookie.



Anything Goes Rosti

Grating is good for the arms. That's why you should make this. Plus the fact that you can add whatever you want into it. Nice.

For me it was black pepper ham, onion slices, garlic, a bit of minced meat topped with mozarella cheese. Yummy. Add salt and pepper too!

For a brownie-pan-full, coarsely grate 500g of floury potatoes, squeezing out the liquid for a crispier rosti. Add in 1 egg and a scant 1/4 cup AP flour. Mix together.

Then add in all the stuff that works with you. Mix again. Easy huh.

Bake in a preheated oven at 200 degrees C for around 20 mins or until lightly browned.

Inspired by recipes+ (Sep 2011)

lemoncakepie

I love making pies/tarts.

 As you will most probably notice, I baked this in a tart tin.


I was nearly going to get a pie dish today, but in the end, pragmatism prevailed and we got a baking dish instead because it can be used for other purposes when I'm not baking pies.

Next time I will make a real pie following this. But still in a tart tin.

Till then, I still have 2 slices of this in the fridge. Yum.

Recipe from Beatrice Osakanga's Light and Easy Baking

CRUST
1 cup AP flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons ice water

FILLING
1/3 cup AP flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest (I used more)
5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 large eggs separated
1 cup skim milk (but I used the normal milk anyway)

Preheat oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

Crust: In a small bowl, stir flour and salt together. In another, combine oil and water. With a fork, stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients until mixture resembles texture of cottage cheese. Press crumbs onto the bottom of a 9 inch pie pan.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack. Reduce oven temperature to 190 degrees C.

Filling: In a large bowl, stir together sugar, flour, salt, lemon zest and lemon juice. In a small bowl, beat milk and egg yolks together. Stir the egg mixture into the lemon mixture.

In a medium bowl, beat egg whites till stiff but not dry. Gently fold egg whites into the lemon mixture.

Pour filling into pastry shell. Bake for 45 to 55 mins (NOTE: I baked it for only 25 mins..I don't know if it was my oven or the recipe) or until top and centre feels set when lighted touched.

Makes 8 servings

You would probably get more filling, so cook it along with the pie or if you want to be like me, microwave repeatedly for short time intervals cos you wouldn't know if the microwave will burn the thing.