Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

Another Sunday evening, poring over recipes in How To Be A Domestic Goddess for next morning's breakfast...we haven't had cake for breakfast for some time now so it came down to either the Banana Bread or the Sour Cream Chocolate Cake with Sour Cream Icing. Obviously the chocolate cake won hands down. (This is the second time the Banana Bread didn't make it to the kitchen! I wonder why??? ;-p). It wasn't a difficult recipe but Nigella used an unconventional method which worried me for a bit. All the dry ingredients were put into the mixer first, followed by the soft butter on it. THEN cream. Funny isn't it? Nonetheless, I started the mixer on slow to bind everything together before increasing the speed for creaming. No mess. The liquid ingredients were hand-whisked in my large Pyrex jug before they were poured into the mixing bowl to combine. The recipe didn't state how long or till what stage the mixture should look like, so I did a gu-esstimate. As usual, I didn't have enough sour cream to make the icing... well, that's the official line to my icing-loving daughter. The batter was good for an 8" round pan and this morning, we had yummy chocolate cake with milk for breakfast. As with any Sour Cream Chocolate Cake, the texture is always softer and moist albeit a tad crumbly.

Jam Doughnut Muffins

Another 6am morning with nothing on the table for breakfast...and muffins are the easiest and quickest to do within 30minutes. These Jam Doughnut Muffins are even better because there's no need to melt butter at all. Just vegetable oil. I made them into mini muffins and was too stingy on the strawberry jam filling. Should have put in 1 teaspoon worth instead of half. Despite that, the muffin was no less attractive on its own. It was soft, tender with a touch of sweetness...like doughnuts. I didn't melt butter for the muffin tops or rolled it in fine sugar either...too much work for 12 mini muffins. Just dusted icing sugar on them and they were all gone by 9.30am!

Chocolate Cheesecake

It seems like ages ago since I last baked something isn't it? True, true... while the children were on their 2-week mid-term break, I took a little break, too. The MOTH scored major points with me when he suggested that I take a holiday sans kids!!! I was like - serious? Short of asking him what wrong did he do (naaah..love him to bits), truth was, I wasn't going ask too many questions or pretend that I'll miss the kids (oh, all right...maybe a tiny bit) because I may just lose the opportunity altogether! Wicked.... Long story short, the MOTH applied for a couple of days off from work to babysit HIS children and I booked my ticket for a long weekend Down Under. So before I left (call it my guilty conscience or what not), I baked this don't-forget-to-miss-me Chocolate Cheesecake. It was very, very good. I attempted to marble the cheesecake instead of folding it in evenly but my heavy-handedness in dolloping the melted chocolate messed it up. So I had some wodges of chocolate amidst the smooth cheese. Clearly, nobody noticed the botched job because the three enjoyed it so much that the whole cake was finished before the weekend ended. Or reckon they had it as 3 meals a day??

Chocolate Macaroons

Now, here's one macaroon that doesn't intimidate the baker. If you've enjoyed eating them but hadn't the nerves to attempt to bake them yourself (it's a whole lot cheaper!!), try this recipe. If you can get over the fact that a macaroon is a macaroon, that yours aren't going to look anything like Laduree's and it's just going to end up in the mouth all the same... then do this. Using the French macaronage method, these taste delightful despite its lacking in the looks department - mine looked like whoopie pies here. It isn't as chewy as the French macarons because these are airier but not dry. I've been (luckily) successful in the 3 times I made French macarons (pieds and all) and I'd say these are lovely macaroons made without the stress!
p/s: Don't ask me why there are 2 spellings for this confection. The French spells it macaron, the Australians say that macaroons are made with dessicated coconut while macarons are just ground almonds and Nigella in her book spells it macaroon.

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

Ooooo...these are yummy (glad I baked THIS instead of the banana cake). It's dark, moist and kinda sticky, squidgy in a good way. Who would have thought something so luscious could come out of a watery batter?? I must say that I was very worried when the mixture turned out watery. I hadn't had very good experiences with liquid batters for cakes and when Nigella mentioned that the mixture will be "fairly liquid"... that's an understatement. It was watery but I went on to pour it into my lined loaf pan anyway (even put a tray under the rack in the oves as recommended for fear of spilling over as it rises). It rose nicely, spilled a little on one end but nothing severe. I left the loaf to cool overnight because Nigella said that it will improve. We had it for breakfast with milk (kids), coffee (the MOTH) and tea (me), it was a nice.

Banana Muffins

I had quite a bit of very ripe Pisang Mas (small and very sweet local bananas) in the freezer for weeks now and hadn't gotten round using them until now. Kids were having their mid-term exams the whole of this week and yours truly had to be the drill master aka most-hated-mum-of-the-week. Nonetheless, there were 2 recipes in the book using bananas and I opted to do a batch of muffins instead of a cake (had another plan for this). Muffins as I've mentioned before are the easiest to do - no need to wait for the butter to soften or the drag the mixer out. Just a melt-and-mix process. The muffins turned out fine and wholesome. Honey were used instead of sugar and that gave it a nice fragrance. Very good for children who wrinkle their noses at the smell of bananas.

The Essential White Loaf

I know in my earlier post (My Brown Bread), I said that I will never attempt to manually knead bread. Well.....if you know me, you'll know that I don't give up that easily. I'm a control-freak to a certain degree and to realise that I'll always need a machine to knead my bread? Not good. So, on Sunday night after dinner, the MOTH suggested that he'll take a drive out to buy some dinner rolls for breakfast on Monday morning. That's like telling me I'm uptight. I react and I react quickly. Out came the mixing bowl, measured the flour and started mixing and kneading. I didn't use all 500g of white flour. Halved it with wholemeal flour...couldn't resist sneaking in fibre into the kids' diet. I also used only water instead of potato water. I kneaded, and kneaded. It's actually quite therapeutic and while I was at it, I suddenly remembered what a French chef said in a magazine about doing the window test! That's it! That's what I forgot to do the last time. To know if your bread dough has had enough of kneading, stretch a piece of the dough. It should not tear when stretched out. It'll be like a thin membrane. After a good 20 minutes or so of muscle-work, it was good. Left it for 30 minutes to rise, shaped it into rolls, rested it again and baked the rolls for 15 minutes. The bread was perfect. Soft crust with tender crumbs.