A Wedding Gift

I saw a recipe in the book, 'Essentials of Baking' by Williams-Sonoma and I've been wanting to try it... and I found a perfect occasion to bake these lovely cookies.... and so I tried....

These were simply butter cookies, cut out with cookies cutter and filled with jam. Don't they look lovely? But... I did not succeed in making them. This is only a picture of the book illustration. The dough turned out to be too soft & impossible to work with. Difficulties working with a dough again... Grr...

In the end, I settled for a simple chocolate chip cookies from my most trusted blogger, Happy Homebaker. And fortunately, they taste quite good... or at least my sisters thought so. Have not heard from the wedding couple yet.

This was what went inside the lovely container...

And the recipe which was adapted from Happy homebaker (Original source: The Cookie & Biscuit Bible) is as follow:

Ingredients (makes about 28 cookies)
115g butter, softened
115g caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
175g plain flour
110g semisweet chocolate chips
65g chopped hazelnut (toasted)

Method
Preheat oven to 180degC. Line baking trays with parchment paper.

With a wooden spoon or electric mixer, cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until the mixture turns pale and fluffy.

Beat in the egg gradually. Mix well after each addition. Add in vanilla extract, mix well.

Sift the flour over the mixture, fold in with wooden spoon or a spatula. Fold in the chocolate chips & hazelnuts.

Drop tablespoonfuls of the cookie dough onto the prepared baking tray. Leave some space between the cookies to allow for spreading. Flatten each cookie dough slightly with the back of a fork, keeping the shape as even as possible.

Bake for 10 mins or until golden (My oven took 20 mins). Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Home cooked Chicken Rice

I seriously think I can follow recipes and cook better than I bake.... Cooked these for my family and they taste quite good.

Of course, I did not cook these from scratch. We had a premix from our CNY hamper and it was expiring at the end of this yr.... so... decided to use it.

The instruction was pretty easy to follow. And the packed seasoning made cooking much easier too... what's more, it came with yummy chilli sauce, dark soya sauce & ginger sauce!

Chicken was soft, tender & juicy. Rice was a little weird in taste though... not as nice as the chicken rice sold outside. Maybe because it was a 'healthier choice' product afterall...

I don't think you would even want a bite of this. Haha...Blur me somehow made a blunder of the ingredients again. This always happens when I am reducing the recipe. Grr.... First, the cupcake itself was way too sweet and crumbly. Then, the cream topping was too watery.. probably because I whipped for too long. I absolutely cannot see myself baking cupcakes again anytime soon. Haha....

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

With one big packet of buttermilk in my fridge which was going to expire soon, I had to bake something and this was it. Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins. A recipe which I copied down from some website donkey years ago.

I baked these before and the colour was much darker and nicer. Guess what happened? I put in the wrong quantity of chocolate! Haha... I think the colour of these muffins look like 'huat kueh'. Fortunately, they still taste quite good... just that the texture is not really like a muffin.

When will I ever be able to have a perfect bake?

On a side note, I threw away one big bag of flour and other miscellaneous ingredients a few weeks back. I need to stop myself from buying things unless I have time to bake. My baking cupboard is so full that I can hardly squeeze in more things. Stealing space from my mum slowly... Lol... No more lunch time shopping at the baking shop!

Jap Food again!

I was cheated into cooking this meal. Sis said we shall cook together on Sunday so that my mum can rest. Ended up... she only helped with the vegetables.

I wanted to cook Oyaku Don from the Jap Recipe book initially but mum said she has pork chop so I decided to make do with it and made Katsu Don. I took the recipe for the Japanese Pork Cutlet and used the sauce for Oyaku Don. And tada... I have.....

The end product was a bit too dry... I cooked the "egg sauce" for too long... But overall, it still taste good. Could have seasoned the pork more too. Along with this, I made tofu teriyaki again. Oya, n I cooked the rice using the same process... but... my mum recently used the rice cooker to cook it and I must say it tastes the same. Shall ask her how she does it to save my time the next time. Haha...

Loving the golden brown fried pork cutlets here! :D

我的很多第一次 :)

For the very very 1st time in my whole life, I cooked a complete meal (mostly) on my own! It was not a 1-course meal... In fact it was a 4 course meal, enough to feed 6 people! *Proud* Something which I always wanted to do!

I was inspired by the 'Japanese Home Cooking' book by Yoshiro Murata which was featured in the Straits Times sometime back. I managed to get hold of the book at the library and browsing through it just makes me feel like cooking so many many dishes. And I just decided I had to cook a meal one of these days and this was it. A Japanese meal for my family!

I cracked my head a little when planning which dish to prepare first as I was concerned that some of it will turn cold and might not taste as nice by the time everything was ready... which can be quite long with my well-known 'efficiency'. Heh... :P

So I decided to start off by preparing the RICE! My very first time cooking rice entirely on my own and what's more... I was cooking rice in a pot over the stove. Mum nagged at me to use the rice cooker but I insisted on following the recipe instructions! Kinda disappointed that I got the wrong type of rice... never knew japanese rice has got different types. I got the medium grained ones instead of the short grained ones. But I think they taste good too!

The recipe for cooking this japanese rice requires soaking the rice for 20 mins, boiling it for 5-10mins, cooking it on low fire for 15 mins, turning off the heat and leaving it undisturbed for 10 minutes. Finally, you aerate the rice by 'stirring' it before it is ready. Long process compared to cooking normal rice but I guess it was worth it. Mum says she will cook this rice in the rice cooker one of these days. Let's see if it will taste just as nice.

Next up is my first dish for the day:
Steamed Egg Custard aka Chawamushi

I am not a fan of chawamushi. My verdict on this dish was that it was too watery, I guess the proportion of eggs was too little as I did not get the large eggs which was indicated in the recipe. Bro-in-law says it might be because I did not dry my ingredients like mushroom before adding it in.... possible.... shall take note.

Anyway, the chawamushi lovers told me the taste was not there yet. I guess it was because I did not use store-bought chicken broth or home cooked dashi stock. Mum prepared home cooked chicken broth by cooking chicken breast in water as she feels that it is healthier than store-bought chicken broth. But I guess the lack of flavor in my Mum's chicken broth did not bring out enough taste for the chawamushi. I shall be more hardworking and try making Japanese dashi the next time i attempt this recipe.

My 2nd dish of the day was.... healthy vegetables!

This was easy to prepare. I just had to cut the french beans, boil them, shock them in cold water and mix them with the prepared sesame dressing and they are ready!

Although we do not normally prepare in this way, I think it tastes quite nice for a change. They were finished up quite fast too. In fact, all my food was finished up. Might be because I did not cook a lot too. Haha....

Now, my last 2 dishes for the day was....

Both are quite easy to prepare. You basically just have to cut them up, dust them with cornflour, cook them for a while, add in the sauces required, simmer them for a while and tada... they are ready! But one thing I realised when I was cooking these 2 dishes was that I do not know how to see if my food are cooked... had to shout for my mum for help a couple of times. I would say the pork chop was slightly overcooked as they were a little tough.

As for the Tofu Teriyaki, it was a test of my skills. I was supposed to buy firm tofu but blur me got tofu with firmness of 2/5. So... I just had to make do with it. Luckily they did not get smashed very easily and I was able to make decent looking and nice tasting tofus. I tried them the 2nd day using tofu with firmness of 1.5/5 which I had in the fridge and it was kinda disastrous. Anyway, love the bonita flakes garnishing on top. Expensive but they taste GREAT!

Eager to try out the many other recipes in the book soon.... :D

Yet another failure :(

Hopefully 失败真的是成功之母... another failed cake. Decided to make this interesting Pandan Cheese Roll from a blog which I have bookmarked for so long. A simple roll cake which went wrong. The cake turned out lumpy... a result of my poor folding-flour-into-mixture technique.... Grr.... The cream filling was not bad. Overall, it was edible but I wouldn't eat much. I kept them in my fridge for 3 days before throwing them away. Managed to make some guineau pigs eat though. :P Anyway, a photo below showing the decent looking swiss roll.

Looks totally different from the pictures from the blog I took the recipe from :D

Cheesecake again!! :)

I seem to bake a lot of cheesecakes... but they never seem to be able to taste as nice as those yummy ones I get to eat in cafes. Maybe it is time to go for classes or do more research.

Anyway, this time round I made a variation of the normal cheesecake for my sister's birthday.

Yesh... Blueberry Cheesecake... She has been bugging me for months or years. This recipe was taken from the 'Essentials of Baking' by Williams-Sonoma. What I love about this is the hazelnut base. But what I dislike about it is the taste of the almond essence. I wish I had followed my heart and not put it in instead. Being someone who dislikes the taste of almond, the taste of the almond essence was too overwhelming. I couldn't even taste the cheese. Eeks.... But I love the crust... :) My tasters felt the cake was quite okay. If I am going to attempt it again, I will definitely leave the almond essence out!

The outlook of the cake wasn't perfect with the snow powder not evenly distributed due to the lack of proper equipments :P But I love it! Simple and nice. I wanted to deco it with writings on a white choco board but somehow the white choco did not melt nicely.. not sure what went wrong... wasted my $5 worth of white choco. But I really have been having problems melting my choco recently... seriously need to find out what is wrong.

~2 Chefs.8 Hours.4 Bakes~

A weekday afternoon spent baking with Qin on 6 Sept 2010. Haha... not a very motivated baking day though... the rainy weather makes me feel lazy and I left most of the baking work done by Qin. I did the washing up though. This seems to be what happens when friends come over to bake at my place. I do less of the baking and more of the washing up.

So our first bake of the day (if I rem correctly):

The taste of the cupcake was good since it has nutella... but it was overbaked. :P Also, the texture was heavy.

Next up are these Nestum Cookies which you see below:

Hmm... they taste okay but I wouldn't attempt it for another time. Using nestum as the ingredients was an interesting idea though. :)

Our 3rd bake: Cheese Logs

It was fun piping the dough into wordings and shapes but I did not like the taste of the 'cookies' when they were cooled. Too saltish...

And our final bake of the day was the Marble Cheesecake:

This is my 2nd attempt baking this. The texture is pretty similar to my first attempt, maybe a little softer and soggy. Need some improvements and I am keen to master it.

This time round I made the chocolate sponge base and it tastes even better. I am so proud of the springy chocolate sponge cake which you see on the left... tastes a little weird on its own but tastes great as the cheesecake base... :) Most importantly, it is springy! I can press it down and it will return to its original form immediately! Worth experimenting it again.

This cheesecake is well-liked by my family but apparently not so well-liked by Qin's family. Shall let my friends try it the next time and see their response.

So this ends off my baking day with Qin. 4 bakes in 8 hours by 2 efficient chefs... Haha... :P

Another unsuccessful bake :(

I made these cream cheese spirals on a weekday night, after work. They look simple enough to be made in a few hours but... they were not. I realised I am not good with doughs... perhaps there are some special techniques to handle them to make them less unpredictable...

These were basically made up of butter and cream cheese. The filling was brown sugar, cinnamon and almond bits. Somehow, I was not able to roll up the spirals in a neat manner. Secondly, the filling was way too sweet. I only used half of it and I couldn't even make myself finish one. I kept all of these baked ones in a container and instructed my mum not to let anyone eat it. And I threw it away the 2nd day. I just can't bear to throw them away immediately. What a waste!

Looking back, I wonder why I chose to make these. Maybe they look good in the pictures which I saw. Lesson learnt-Never be deceived by outlook in future. Haha...