Happy 2011!

Time flies! It's already nearly mid of Jan 2011. I've been super busy since school term started last week. Olina entered P1 this year. She's in the morning session and her school bus reaches our place at 6am! I've got to wake up at 5am now, one and a half hour earlier than last year. So I'm now leading a healthy lifestyle of 早睡早起.

I'm still trying to adjust to the new routine. First week was really chaotic. I didn't even have time to watch my favourite K drama. Stepping into the second week, things seems a little better as the momentum picks up. I need to further adjust my routine, as I do not have much time to sit down and supervise the kids on their work. As a result, the two younger ones are still leading a life of school holiday. :) Darren is going to take his PSLE this year. Having a tutor to take care of three of his subjects, no doubt, is a big relief to me. Sometimes we just need to let go and allow others to help.

This year, I have to pack lunchboxes for the two primary school kids, especially since Olina will only reach home after 2:30pm. So I reckon I'll probably do baking at least once a week, though I'm not sure if I can find as much time to blog them.

I started 2011 with buns. During the Popular 20% member sales, I went to grab a few cookbooks, one of which was "Bread Magic" by Alan Ooi. This has been one of the books I wanted to add on to my collection. I use the basic sweet bun recipe from this book to make these 莲蓉面包.





Packed into lunchbox


The texture is ok, but not as fluffy when eaten on the second day. The next time, I'll try his dough recipe.

I'm now constantly on the lookout for things which can assist me in my lunchbox journey. Unlike my hubby who thinks that it's ok to let the kids bring butter and jam bread, I try to make the lunchbox varies. Recently I found a sandwich maker from Isetan NEX which can be used on the stove. It's a perfect choice for me. I used to have one electrical sandwich maker, but hate to use that as I can't wash it and the melted cheese always ended up stuck in the machine. This new toy addresses my previous concerns and I love it so much! The kids love toasted sandwiches with melted cheese. Hubby complained he's getting fat and asked me to stop making him these though I know he loved them too. ;)



I'm ending this long entry with the backlogs of 2010. After my first two log cakes trial, I went on to do a few more. I find Chiffon base to be the best among all the different bases tried. I'll probably stick to that in future.

Chocolate logs




Mango logs

Time to do some blogging

My pictures have been piling up. If I do not clear them, very soon, they will go into the Recycle Bin.

After my last attempt of moist brownie, I wasn't really satisfied. So I went on to search for more brownie recipes to try.

Attempt 2 - Jamie Oliver's brownie


Great taste, but my pan size is obviously wrong to be able to yield this super thin brownie.

Attempt 3 - White brownie


A self-experiment which turned out to be a disaster! I wanted to make a white brownie using white chocolate. So I tried to modify the moist brownie recipe to use white chocolate. I ended up with a super sweet dense cake instead. Yucks!

Attempt 4 - Back to Jamie




I decided Jamie's recipe is worth trying again. This time I adjusted the ingredient and amount and got my own version of perfect brownie. Don't you think so? LOL... This will hence be the recipe to use whenever I feel like baking brownie.


Besides brownie, I also tried Jamie's Banana and Honey bread.



Although I really love his brownie, can't say the same with the bread. It's best eaten fresh from the oven. Once overnight, the texture is compromised.


Did some Naan for dinner one night after seeing the easy-to-follow recipe on Gina's FB. I did two versions, onion and cheese. Both were good, the kids love the cheese ones.



It's 11:55pm now. My eyes are threatening to shut down any minute. Must be the effect of the medication starting to kick in. I shall let the pictures of my bake today end this session.

Waiting to be transformed...


...into this!


My forever lousy deco skill...


我很丑，但是我很好吃



Trivial... I sliced off the top of the cake for deco reason and had a big piece left (almost 9"). My girls who were eyeing the cake were happy that they can finally lay their hands on something. I told them not to finish the whole piece of cake as it was nearly lunch time. They really listen to what I said and left this.



When I questioned them, one of my girls answered, "we didn't finished the cake what". *fainted!*

A "not so brownie" brownie?

I mentioned in my earlier post that I was looking for a brownie recipe. I sourced through a few fellow bloggers' recommendations and decided to give Edith's Moist Brownies a try.

Frankly speaking, I was never a brownie person. Brownie, to me, is something dry and not so interesting, even when goes with ice-cream. I do not know what prompted me to try to bake one. Maybe it's the need to try something new, rather than some same old cakes and breads.

The recipe wasn't too difficult to follow, thankfully. However, I made a mistake of trying to bake the same amount of ingredients intended for a 8" pan, into a 6" pan. Needless to say, my brownie took forever to cook. Since it was my first time making brownie, I wasn't even sure when it should be considered done. In the end, it took about an hour before the stick inserted was no longer wet. The top of the brownie was already turning dry and I had to tent it for the second half of baking for fear that it might burn.

My brownie was quite tall, when out of the oven. To my dismay, it started to collapse quite a bit upon cooling. So much so that the top cracked and tore off from the brownie! I wasn't confident at all whether it was even eatable.

Once cooled, I couldn't wait to test it. Surprisingly, the result turned out really good! Although I'm not sure whether mine was the correct texture, it probably was a good mistake, if it was one to start with.



It was moist and dense, yet not heavy. I can't find the perfect word for it, but the kids adore it. DS said this was probably one of the best cakes I've made (initially he thought it was a cake). I may try it again. But this time I'll make sure I use the right amount of ingredients for my pan size.


The kids requested to have pizza for dinner. I was quite reluctant as it was already 6pm then and I knew I would not be able to make the pizzas in time for dinner. They insisted they were not hungry and can have a late dinner. I had no choice but to quickly set to work. I used Happy Home Baking's pizza dough with mixed herbs. I added 1 tsp of mixed herbs instead of 1/2. It was a good choice. I love the aromatic base and the kids had no complains too. This dough recipe is a keeper.

A slow death

I'm slowly killing my blog. Haven't been posting for months and I wonder if anyone still bothers to read. My passion for blogging has been reduced to almost nothing. At times I just don't feel like posting something for the sake of posting. Moreover, I haven't been baking new things. It would have been boring for you guys to read the same thing over and over again. I guess I'm one of those whose passion in something always cool off after a while, 三分钟热度, which can be quite bad.

Some of what I've done recently, nothing spectacular though.

Green tea Azuki buns - not a favourite with the kids


Blueberry Chiffon - can't say it's totally successful with the blueberries sticking together


Plain swiss roll - something I'm still trying to master. Yet to get the right texture. I'm really bad at swiss rolls!



One of the nights, I decided to cook something different for dinner. It was well received by hubby and kids. Effort worthwhile. :)

Grill fish for the kids. Sides are creamy mashed potatoes (too creamy though) and mango prawn salad.


Steak for the adult


Ever since I learn the tips from KC members, I was able to get the perfect medium rare which hubby and I like.



Lastly, luncheon buns for today's breakfast, kids' favourite.



I'm looking for a not so sweet brownie recipe to try. If you have one to share, do let me know. TIA.

A new year, a new beginning

In case you're wondering where I've been, well, still alive and kicking. :) Just that the December school holiday has totally set me into a holiday mood. Not just me, rather, the whole family, was in a super laid back and lazy mode. I'm glad that school has finally started and everything is slowly getting back into the norm. It gets kind of scary when you've lazed around for too long. Sometimes you'll wonder if you're still living.

I haven't been baking much in December. Hopefully I will find the energy to slowly pick up baking again. Age must be catching up with me. I get tired easily nowadays (maybe just an excuse not to do anything).

I started Jan with some breads (made pizza once, but didn't take any pictures). My pack of wholemeal flour has been ignored for long and is threatening to expire. So I better start giving it some due attention.

Mixed Herbs Wholemeal Bread




A new wholemeal bread recipe I tried. Not bad, but need some adjustment the next round to fill up the bread tin. Got a nicely browned bread this round.

I am bad

I've been neglecting my blog (and almost everything else) ever since I got hooked on Facebook games some 3 weeks ago. I'm still playing them now, but have learnt to slow down a little (or have I?). It's very addictive. I used to set timer for baking, now I set it to remind myself to login the game when time is up to collect the game money. Yes, that was how bad I have been.

As such I haven't been baking much these few weeks, except for the recent Chocolate cupcakes for the kids to bring to their teachers for Teacher's Day. I still had two outstanding "old" bakes done in early August which I have not put up in my blog. I reckon I had better put them up now before I really forget about them.

I tried my hands on bread roll.



It wasn't too difficult except that I probably should have underbaked the bread a little so that it doesn't crack during rolling.



I rolled in some cheese and ham slices with a mixture of tartar sauce and mayonnaise. Simple and yummlicious.

I bake this during the National Day period, for hubby's birthday. Can you guess what it is?



It was actually an Oreo Durian Cheesecake. Hubby has been mentioning the Oreo Durian cake from some hotel quite some time back. Maybe he was hoping I would do one for him. I didn't want to do a sponge cake (I still have inconsistent result with sponge), so I twisted it into a sinful cheesecake instead, with chunks of Oreo in it.



And one final happy news to share with all of you. I've finally bought my KitchenAid! Yes! A bright Orange fellow that sits on my kitchen top everyday. Had it for $599 at the recent Robinson sale, a good deal.



Am going to churn out some goodies with this fellow now so that it justifies the cost.

All things yogurt

I always have problem catching up with my blog. The bakes to be blogged are always accumulating. I wonder how many food bloggers out there are facing the same problem as me. I bake before I could blog the earlier items.

I did three different items with yogurt last week. The first was another Yogurt Chiffon cake. This time I've paired it with Chempedak. This was a total failure, possibly one of the worst Chiffons I've baked this year. The cake didn't drop off the pan during cooling, but this was what I got.



And the result was a dense cake, of course. More of a "Chempedak cheesecake" kind of texture.



I realised yogurt tends to make my cakes dense. Or maybe I'm just bad at the Yogurt-Chiffon combination. All my past yogurt Chiffons didn't turn out well. I don't think I'll be trying this combination anymore, don't want to waste more ingredients.

It's been quite a while since I last made bread. Since I've got quite a fair bit of plain yogurt in my fridge and I didn't feel like making any more yogurt Chiffon, I turned to my tested Yogurt Bread recipe. I added in some Yuzu paste (I got mine from Kitchen Capers retail store at Geylang Bahru) to form a Yuzu Yogurt Bread. It was refreshing. The bread smelled great while baking in the oven. I knead this bread using my normal stand mixer at medium speed. Since it's not meant for heavy duty task, you'll have to make sure you stop the machine frequently to give the dough some turns and to prevent overheating the poor machine.



Yuzu Yogurt Bread

Ingredients
260g bread flour
15g sugar
3g salt
3g yeast
90g plain yogurt
60g fresh milk
15g egg
30g butter
2 tbsp Yuzu paste (about 40g)

Method
1. Mix all dry ingredients together.
2. Add in all wet ingredients except butter and knead to form a dough. Knead for a few minutes till you can stretch the dough a little.
3. Add in butter and knead till smooth and elastic.
4. Shape the dough into a ball. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth or cling-wrap and leave it to proof in a warm place till double its size (about 45 mins).
5. When proofing is completed, punch down the bread dough to release the air.
6. Divide the dough into 3 equal portions. Relax the dough for 10 mins. Roll and shape each portion into an oval log and placed them into a loaf pan.
7. Cover the loaf pan with a cling wrap and allow the dough to go for second proofing until it has reached 80% of the pan.
8. Cover the pan and bake in preheated oven at 170-180C for 50 minutes. My oven loses heat easily. So you may need to adjust the time according to your oven.
9. Remove bread from loaf pan immediately to cool completely.



The bread is soft and fragrant. Do give it a try. I think I'm still better at bread than cakes...lol...



The last yogurt item was some Yogurt Raisin mini cupcakes.





These were more for the kids as the two girls had excursions with the school last week. So I decided to bake these for them to bring as snacks and to finish up my tub of raisins. I had used berry yogurt for these little cuppies. It goes quite well with raisins.

17 hr low-temperature pre-ferment - 2nd attempt

I'm feeling gloomy now. This is another of those days which things don't turn out according to what you want them to be.

Tried the 17 hr low-temperature pre-ferment way of bread making again today. This time round, I did a pumpkin bread, full recipe. I followed all the measurements, except for the yeast which was changed to instant yeast (1/3 the stated amount, as advised by the author who uses fresh yeast).

I thought the last black sesame bread dough was wet due to my miscalculation or measurement. So I wanted to try another time since I was quite sure the correct dough should be manageable. But I was wrong again this time. History repeated itself. I got an extremely wet dough again!

I was determined not to add any extra flour this time round. It was tough as I was using hand kneading. That little mixer of mine sounded like it was ready to give way anytime when I started kneading the dough today. So no choice, had to exercise my long rested hand muscles.

After half an hour of kneading the stubborn dough, I discovered I had forgotten to add in the butter! Gosh! What was I doing all along? Quickly added the butter and shredded pumpkin in and continue kneading. After about 15 minutes, the dough remained just as wet. I gave up and dumped the whole chunk of flabby dough into the bowl for first proofing.



After the first rise, I filled the greased bread tin half full, couldn't even roll out the dough for shaping. The remaining dough I scoop it into my silicon cups. These are the end results.





The cup-a-breads turned out quite all right, the loaf, a disaster. It was a little undercooked. After some struggle to remove it from the tin (probably because it was undercooked), the bread collapsed as it could not support its own weight. It still tasted like bread, just not a nice loaf as I would very much want it to be. I wonder if I have over proofed it a little.



It's been a lousy experience. My bread making skills must have rusted after the long break. I feel guilty, not supervising DS of his work today and ended up with a failed product, totally unjustifiable. Ok, enough grumbling. The day will pass very soon and tomorrow will be better...hopefully...


Mood: gloomy