ill never forget the eggs again

Vanilla cupcakes

This week I was going to be baking only on a weekday, so i thought I'd do something quick so as not to lose sleep especially since i gotta get up for wakeboarding the next day. I was kinda lost for inspiration at first, then suddenly remembered that I had always wanted to redo the vanilla cupcakes I tried and failed at several months ago. This time, I tried a new recipe, and even prepared a piping bag so as to give a nicer top of frosting. ( the first time i did this my frosting was just randomly smeared on =X)

Anyway, everything was going according to plan, I was quite proud of myself since I am now experienced enough to work almost without directions, just needing the proportions in the recipe, and I did everything as I should, creamed the butter and sugar sufficiently, sifted my flour, mixed my milk and vanilla, and took great care not to overbeat when combining everything together. However, just as I was spooning them in the muffin cups, I felt that something seemed weird, the colour and texture was off, and after a few moments thought, I came to the most shocking realisation ever, I HAD FORGOT TO ADD IN MY EGGS! Oh my god, I can remember myself just staring at my incomplete batter in total shock, and cursing myself for being too overconfident. Well, luckily, i managed to cheat and just beat them into the batter at the end and the cupcakes turned out edible. They were a little mushy and sweet, and far too milky for my preference ( I hate milk ), but it was still smooth and had a nice vanilla fragrance, and it was a huge improvement from my first time making this ( Maybe its the recipe).

To decorate, I went with a lemon buttercream frosting, but, my lemon was very very very sour, so my frosting tasted abit strange, with the sourness of the lemon conflicting with the icing sugar, but at least it looked nice, especially with the hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top. Ill probably try other frostings in future, less creamy ones since i prefer it sugary. I did something different with a few of the cupcakes, something I learnt in a blog somewhere ( Sorry to the owner, I cant remember what your blog is, but i remember the recipe), where I dip the tops of the cupcake in melted butter then roll it in cinnamon sugar giving it a cinnamon sugar coat, I might have did something wrong here, since I couldnt really taste the layer of sugar on top, or the cinnamon, maybe the flavour of my cupcakes was too strong, ( If anyone else tries this and it works, please let me know how you did it ).

Anyway, heres the recipe, its really quite simple, so anyone who wants to try should go ahead, Ill probably make this again, when I have more ideas for toppings, and maybe tweak the recipe around until I get the perfect vanilla cupcake recipe =X

Magnolia Vanilla Cupcakes

105g self raising flour

90g plain flour

115g butter (add 1/2 tsp of salt to the recipe if using unsalted butter)

180g caster sugar

2 eggs ( PLEASE DONT FORGET THEM LIKE ME)

1/2 cup milk (Try to be exact, I went slightly over half cup and it turned out abit too moist and milky)

1 tsp vanilla

1. Mix the milk and vanilla together, set aside.

2. Sift flours together, set aside.

3. Cream butter in an electric mixer, then add in the sugar and cream until white and fluffy ( 3-5 mins minimum)

4. ADD IN EGGS ONE AT A TIME, MIXING THROUGHLY AFTER EACH ADDITION

5. Add the dry and wet ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture alternatingly in many parts, starting and ending with the dry ingredients ( flour, milk, flour, milk, flour). Mix just enough to combine after each addition ( DO NOT OVERBEAT)

6. Spoon into muffin tins and bake at 180 degrees for 25 mins, taking them out when a toothpick inserted into each cupcake turns out dry.

7. Allow to cool and top with whatever you like

Sorry, the lighting in my house is really bad at night. (WTB Photographer, and food decorating course )

Can the weather get any hotter? (Apple Crumble)

Omg, totally screw this weather, its just gettting hotter and hotter everyday, to the point even my baking is affected, I couldnt get a cab home when I went grocery shopping yesterday, so my sticks of butter had to brave the heat as I walked home from the mrt, thank goodness, while I was sweating enough to fill a bucket, my butter did not turn into a bag of liquid fat.

Well, that butter was for my most recent baking foray, an apple crumble, which is by far one of my favourite desserts, which I made for my mahjong khakis to munch on while i take their money off their hands, and of course, so I have an excuse to eat lots of it claiming its all a taste test.

To continue on this "perfect" weather we are having, apple crumble requires me to make a pastry by cutting in cold butter with flour, and my butter was melting alot faster than I could work, until I could not follow the recipe properly anymore, since my pastry was turning from nice crumbles to a big slop of dough. Bleah. I had to make 4 batches of it, and it was driving me nuts.

I also didnt forsee any problems in trying to cut the apples, which I thought would be quite fun, until I almost cut my fingers off, thrice, causing my Mum and my maid to chase me away from the chopping board and end up cutting the remainder of my apples forme, well, Im quite thankful of that for sure, since by the 3rd time the knife reached my fingers, I was beginning to get very very nervous.

Luckily, after all thr frustrations and dangers involved, the crumble turned out quite nice, I thought everything was just great, except the bottom layer of pastry ( My mum suggested a base for it, but I had no idea how to make one, so I just used packed up crumble pastry and it didnt really bake as well as the rest of the crumble) At least, most people liked it, my mahjing khaki almost finished all of it, so I assume it tastes fine, and even better with ice cream. I dont think I can be a good judge since I am totally biased towards almost any crumble being nice, so ill just make more in the future and let others findout for themselves. But of course, like everything I bake, I seem to have added a little too much sugar. =)

Sadly, crumbles dont seem to give nice pics thou, so heres the nicest I have, and if anyone wants to help me take pics, or teach me how, you are most welcome, coz I really dont know how to take nice pics =X.

And for those who watch Yakitate Japan, I would really want to see how anyone with Solar Hands try and bake in this weather.

brownies : simple.. yet delicious

I had these great plans to bake cupcakes for my family for mother's day.. but then. my 3 hour wait at ICA to collect my passport killed them off totally, so I had to go through the weekend without turning on my oven at all. Well, to make up for it, and just to pass time since i got home early today, I found a simple 1 bowl recipe for Double Chocolate Brownies in the new baking book i bought ( Baking - A commonsense guide by Murdoch Books), which btw, has a whole ton of recipes and tips and will prob be one of my bibles for a while.

Amazingly, this recipe was so simple and easy to prepare, and yet, the brownies turned out almost perfect, cept that i was playing my ds and took them out 3 minutes late, but aside from the edges of the pan, the rest of the brownie was nice and soft, not too sweet, and had an intense chocolate flavour, but just enough so it didnt get bitter. My only complaint was that the edges were a little dry, but at least the centre was fine. I bet anyone who hasnt baked before could probably create this with little difficulty even, really one of the simplest yet nicest recipes ive done, and to top it off, it requires very few bowls! So.. I wasnt spending another hour at the sink trying to wash everything up.

Well, at least getting this done right helped to cheer me up abit, my mood hasnt been at its best lately ( not emo thou), its amazing how much better I can feel after baking something that turned out right, of course, on the other hand, when things screw up, I feel completely disappointed with myself. But yea, thats where the fun is I guess, when I put something into the oven and wonder how its going to turn out.

Anyway, I was really tired, and had no ideas on how to make it look nice, so I just took a simple ( and ugly ) photo of my brownies, cut up into small chunks so I can share them round office tmr ( think the people at camp must think im crazy, who bakes stuff and brings it to an airbase ) . I was considering a vanilla cream to go with the brownies, but.. might be abit hard to store, so maybe Ill just whip one up when I get home tomorrow and finish up whats left of them. Hopefully I can use this recipe as a stepping stone to make more varieties of brownies ( peanut butter + oreo perhaps?) , so if any one of those people I see regularly read this post, give me ideas for what I can put into my brownies in future k =)

Ok, enough crap, heres the ugly photo. =P ( sorry for the bad background, but my Mum was making bread for my bfast tmr behind me, so I dun wanna disturb her ingredients. )

Chocolate Muffins

Bahhh.. was still feeling the after effects of having a bad week, so i decided to bake something just to try and start this week off well. Was surfing through recipes in office today, and suddenly chanced upon this recipe for chocolate muffins and thought Id try it. Can't really bake anythign complicated since its a weekday and I have to fight with everyone else for the kitchen. (my kitchen is way too small for 3 people at once, esp when there are dishes to wash after dinner )

Ok, before I start rambling, here are the pics of my muffins :

I think i screwed up all my proportions for this recipe alot.haha. Firstly cause it gave everything in cups, which I totally have no idea how to measure accurately, and also, I only wanted to use half the recipe, but I kept screwing up my calculations, esp with the chocolate, where I was supposed to half the amount again to melt, but forgot to do so. Also, I did not want to open a new stick of butter, so i ended up estimating with what I had left from last time. Well, in all, considering all this, it tastes pretty ok, quite chocolatey, but not sweet enough, since my Mum said my stuff always turns out too sweet, so I controlled my sugar alot this time as well, and I ended up adding too little =X. I think I might have overbaked them, or overbeat them, or added too little milk/butter or added too much cocoa, coz the muffins are soft and seem moist, but are quite drying when I tried one, not very sure about all the theory behind chocolate muffins, haha, but I swear in time I will finally bake something that is so perfect that I cant complain about it. Its kinda demoralising that I bake so much stuff and all of it seems to have shortfalls. I WANT TO MAKE DELICIOUS AND PERFECT FOOD!

Oh, something I learnt from this recipe is about buttermilk, apparently, to make that, I just need to add vinegar to fresh milk, which does not make any sense at all to me, buttermilk sounds like it would be a more buttery and rich milk, not anything to do with vinegar! But well, thats what all the baking sites say, so I just follow. I gotta go and research more to find out how it affects the stuff I bake, really have no idea about it, and http://www.joyofbaking.com/ does not have an entry to explain it, so I need to search further.

Aside from the amazing difficulty I had in getting the right amounts of each ingredient, this recipe was quite simple, I went to ask my maid to get ready the mixing machine for me, only to realise its not even needed at all, just melt the butter and chocolate, sift the dry stuff, mix the buttermilk, and combine it all together. I think I overbeat it, which of course, is another bad habit i need to fix. But, at least it was quite exciting to end up having to estimate every ingredient, and figure out how to compensate for having too much chocolate/too little butter/ extra egg and more. Tomorrow I start reading my book on baking science and theory, so hopefully once I am done with it, Ill be able to understand how everything works, instead of just following recipes blindly.

Alright, baking at night is quite tiring, so I am going to stop here, its like a mad rush, I have to squeeze around in the kitchen coz all the after dinner cleaning is going on, then I have to get all the cleaning done before my parents want to off the alarm and stuff or I might end up attracting all kinds of stuff into my kitchen, and I definitely do not want that.

Heres the recipe, courtesy of 'slowlikehoney' at http://slowlikehoney.net/2008/04/13/recharged/ , who for some reason, I imagine to be really nice and that I can relate to ( seriously,dont ask me why), haha. I melted down all my chocolate left, so I added hershey's semi-sweet chocolate chips to my muffins just for a stronger flavour =) ( I hope its ok to just paste someone else's recipe here as long as I put a link to them, not sure on the etiquette on all this )

Chocolate-Chocolate Chunk Muffins from Baking: from my home to yours
Ingredients:

3/4 of a stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

2 cups all-purpose flour2/3 cup sugar1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

1 large egg

2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions:Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.Melt the butter and half the chopped chocolate together in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water; or do this in a microwave. Remove from the heat.In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, egg and vanilla extract together until well combined. Pour the liquid ingredients and the melted butter and chocolate over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough-a few lumps are better than overmixing the batter. Stir in the remaining chopped chocolate. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin molds.Bake for 20 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.
Yields 12 regular sized muffins, 24 if you use mini muffin tins.

Coffee cake.. my first self-made recipe(sort of)

After baking a few cakes and reading so many recipes, I decided to try and bake a cake without following any recipe or directions, and coming up with the amounts on my own, based loosely on the proportions used in the various cake recipes ive done. So.. the end result was my coffee cake!

Heres the nicest shot of it I got all day, most of the others are boring ones where the cake is in the tin and stuff like that. Its just a basic coffee cake, with added Kahlua ( thanks to my bro for the idea of putting kahlua in, really makes the taste loads better), and its supposed to have a center layer of coffee frosting as well as all round the cake, but I only had enough for a thin layer in the centre and on top ( more on what happened later )

Anyway, I am not sure if I have an accurate taste test since I had to put it in the fridge before the frosting started to melt due to the extremely hot weather today, and so I ate the cake while it was just out of the fridge awhile later. Well, the cake is edible, has quite a nice coffee flavor, and the frosting has just the right sweetness. But, there isint enough frosting on it to be nice, and Im not sure if its coz of the fridge, or my baking, the cake isint soft enough and the texture is a little tough, compared to the soft and moist aim I had, I'll need to try it again tomorrow when it has time to settle to normal temperature just to know what it really tastes like

Well, what happened with my frosting was that I made a first batch that was quite good, but I unknowingly left it in the open and the cream started to curdle ( Sigh.. its been getting hotter and hotter each day) So.. I had a whole wasted batch of frosting, and I had to make a second one, but... I was almost out of icing sugar, so I just made as much as I could and tried my best to frost the cake ( unsuccessfully)

It was great fun making this cake anyway, especially since it was like working blind, I kept worrying that I did something wrong on every step and that the final result i put in will just be a lump of coal ( or something similar ) So Im quite pleased it actually turned out edible. I really dont know if what i ended up putting into the cake was what I had initially planned to when I worked out the recipe in my head, but here it is anyway. ( As much as I can remember or measured)

Coffee cake :
200g cake flour

2tsp baking powder

2 eggs

200g castor sugar

110g butter

1.5 tsp vanilla essence

100ml milk

Mixture of concentrated coffee ( dissolve in hot water and let cool) and Kahlua ( I really have no idea how much I put in, I mixed up until it didnt taste too bitter and I could taste the Kahlua and the Coffee together, then just keep adding it to the batter until it turned a light brown)

Frosting :

150g Icing Sugar

2-3 tbsp Cream

50g Butter

Coffee and Kahlua mixture

The steps are really easy, firstly, cream the butter with an electric mixer for about 1-2 minutes, then add the castor sugar and continue to cream until fluffy ( 3-5 more minutes) Next, add eggs 1 by 1, beating well after each addition, and then add the vanilla essence and the coffee and mix it all in ( add the coffee bit by bit, and stop when the batter turns a nice light brown)

Next, Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add the flour and milk to the batter in 5 seperate additions ( flour,milk,flour,milk,flour) For some reason, you have to start and end with flour, then mix gently after each addition,just enough to incorporate em together.

Pour it into a greased cake tin and put into the oven at 180 degrees for about 1 hour, until the sides start to pull back from the in and a wooden stick comes out clean when inserted into the centre.

For the frosting, what I did was simply mix all the ingredients together with an electric mixer, going slowly from low to high speed, and adding more coffee to taste, and more cream when I wanted it smoother. Have to improvise abit here, just keep tasting the frosting until you get the taste you want. ( Dont leave it out in our warm weather! or the cream will curdle)

At the end, all I did was cut the cake in half after it cooled, let it cool slightly longer, then add a layer of frosting in the middle and a layer on top. Ta-Da

Omg.. such a long post, and I doubt people will even care about my recipe, but, I kinda made it myself, so I feel a desire to post it online, hopefully more will come.

Ok, here are the random pics i have for the day

This is my workstation after I was half done with my cake.

And heres the cake after taking out of the pan and cutting it along the sides =)