Is it a brownie? Or a cake?

Firstly, I need to apologize to Jolene, coz I gave her a bad corn muffin. =X



As I was saying earlier on, I wanted to try something new this week, my first idea was a chocolate banana cake, but.. my house kinda ran out of bananas when I wanted to bake, so I settled for this thing called a Chocolate Almond Torte. This was interesting to make too, especially since it used alot of methods I am not familiar with, most of the cakes I've made so far all use the creaming method, so its nice to try something else for a change.



Here it is, I wasn't really sure if I did it right, since it was quite soft, but held its shape well, and it tasted cooked, so I assume it should be like that. Then again, maybe I didnt whisk my eggs properly. But, the overall feedback was quite good =) Brought some out for the RJ pple when I went to meet em for dinner yest. ( thanks guys! ) It was abit too rich on the chocolate, but luckily, not too sweet that its sickening, and the texture was a little soft and mushy, kind of like a Mrs. Field's Brownie, but a little softer. Sadly, after all the work buying and toasting almonds, I couldnt really taste em =X, next time I do something like this, I'll make sure I use whole nuts, bet that will be alot better. But generally, I thought this was one of the better things I have done so far. Really pays off to try something new.


Well, for those who are wondering what a torte actually is, it just means a flourless cake, which explains the brownie like texture and the softness. This is the first time I had to whisk egg whites, and I dont really think I got the technique yet, to be honest.. I didnt even dare separate the whites and the yolks myself. And I learnt something new, cream of tartar is used to stabilize egg whites, like wth? I imagined it to be used to make tartar sauce, and stabilize?? I kinda felt that I was working with like hazardous material or something. Well, always good to gain new knowledge.


After all this time baking, I realised that cakes are still way more fun to make than muffins or cupcakes, I dont really know why either, but i gain much more excitement from baking cakes, as well as thinking of what cake to bake, maybe its because theres just so many different things I can try. Also, I realised that there are loads and loads and loads of baking ingredients that I really want, I'm starting to build up my small stash of baking goods already, but it's not enough =P Im definitely going to go shopping for more, I heard theres a shop near sembawang mrt that specializes in baking goods, have to check it out. Stay tuned for next week! Hopefully I'll be able to get down to making my banana cake, or, perhaps a cheesecake, been ages since I did that =)

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 and butterscotch chip cookie pie!

Ok, after drooling at the recipe and pics for almost a week, i managed to get down to trying out the chocolate chip cookie pie i found on bakerella. ( credits for this recipe goes to http://bakerella.blogspot.com/2008/04/chocolate-chip-cookie-pie-oh-my.html). Sadly, what i got looks nothing at all like the pics i saw, go take a look, i swear anyone will drool straight away.

Here goes :

Yeps, so here are my first pics of my first attempt at baking since setting this blog up. I really need alot more camera skills, and I gotta learn how to present my food better. This was quite an easy recipe to make at least, but.. the recipe gave the amount of butter in cups! how does anyone measure a cup of butter?? so I tried and converted to grams myself based on some weird idea I had. and I ended up adding too much butter to the pie. It was really oily when i first took it out of the pan, but luckily most of that excess oil din stay on it when it was transferred to the plate. The recipe itself is quite foolproof though, just take everything, and mix them with a mixer in the right order. Almost impossible to screw up.

In the end, the taste was quite alright, I think i made it abit too sweet though, I have this tendency to always add slightly more sugar than called for, and I added Nestle Butterscotch Morsels as well, firstly since I poured all the choc chips I had in and it still was not enough ( I think) and also cause I just wanted an excuse to use those butterscotch chips ive been nibbling on each time I walk past the jar sitting on my dining table.

I considered making my own chocoloate syrup to top off the pie, and then eat it with ice cream, but on the first sampling, I realised, all that sugar will probably get someone killed if they so much took a slice of it, so Ill leave that till the next time i try this recipe again. And, Ill make sure I actually bother to make a pie crust ( when I learn how to ) to line the cookie.


Yeps,my first official baking post! Thanks to all who dared to try it and told me it tasted fine =)

P.S
HJ- If i ever do this again, Ill make sure ur the first person who gets to try it.