Fresh Gingerbread With(out) Lemon icing

Woke up at 5.30am two weekends ago and couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to bake something for Sunday breakfast. It's not Christmas but I fancied something wholesome and comforting. This recipe was categorised under "Cooking for School Féte" in Nigella Lawson's HTBADG book and I could see why. It was so easy to slice them in slabs and old-fashioned enough to get them sold! As its name, the recipe called for fresh ginger. Fresh ginger is abundant here and it's important to note that you use fresh young ginger. We get both types here and old ginger is usually used in cooking but for baking, you need to use the juicy young ones. The method is melt-and-mix like for brownies, quick and simple. I didn't do the lemon icing. It wasn't necessary at all in my opinion. It's just a tablespoon of lemon juice in icing sugar and water. Nothing great. The children enjoyed it as much as we did, especially when we had it warm. Have to remember to bake this during Christmas.

Star-Topped Mince Pies

It's Christmas already, and the potluck party invitations are in. I'm always having so many dishes I want to bring, only to find myself pressed for time. I love baking and cooking for friends and families during the festive season but it is also one of my busiest season with Great Bakes. My poor oven runs daily and on some days, for hours straight...just the fruitcakes will take 4-5 hours to bake in very low temperature. So, I have to plan very accurately. This year, I planned for Mince Pies. First up is the Star-Topped Mince Pies. This recipe is available in both Feast and How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson. Mince Pies are very easy to do especially if you can buy a good jar of mince instead of cooking it yourself. Not that cooking mince is difficult, it really is easy especially without suet. I'll do it next year just to prove it...remind me. The pastry is relatively easy to mix and all you have to do is roll 'em, fill 'em, star-top 'em and bake 'em. Doesn't even take long to bake them. Just 10 minutes. I'll give it to you if your fingers are a little large because you do need to gently place the fine pastry into the miniature tins. But these babies are beautiful to look at and to eat. Pop-in-the-mouth sizes. My kind of mince pies...I can't stomach large mince pies :-p

Chocolate-Pistachio Cake

This cake came about when I was idling in the kitchen while the boys were watching the Singapore F1 race on the telly and a jar of pistachios on the sideboard threatening to go rancid. Got a kilo of these wonderful nuts from Dubai and we've been popping them till our throats were scratchy. Needless to say, we refrained from them to recover and it's been rendered purposeless since. So, I sat in the kitchen for half an hour just shelling all that were left. Thankfully, there was just enough for this cake. I've resisted baking this cake in the past because pre-grounded pistachios are non-existent and I worry that my food processor may not do a good job. But this old kitchen helper proved me wrong. It did a beautiful job processing the pistachios until dust and it was simply putting the rest of the ingredients after that, to finish off the batter. This flourless cake was moist, yet light and that's all due to the meringue folded into the batter in the last step. So, you have to make sure that you beat the egg whites till they are glossy and firm. I didn't cook the orange-flower-flavoured ganache and this scrumptious cake didn't need any icing to take it to cake nirvana.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares

I've been on sabbatical from "commercial" baking for 2 weeks now and will continue for another 2 weeks to purportedly help with Young Master's year 6 SATs equivalent. Well, I don't know how much I'm helping when I've been cooking and baking up a storm in lieu of cake decorating! Must be a stress reaction or instinctive mothering...you know, cooking for his brain? Just this morning, a friend updated her Facebook status saying her son's teacher recommended fruit juices to help them. She said sure, will get some Peel Fresh (packaged juices) later. Son replied, "no mum, fresh juice"...You can already see good ol' mumsie skinning oranges. Frankly, I've been doing the same. The MOTH (who'd reason with you that fishes are friends not food if he can have his say in my meal planning) have been scrunching his face a lot lately. Yes, if you don't know, yet, fish is brain food....yeeeesss.
So, Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares - brain food or not? Well, chocolate sharpens the mind and peanut butter nourishes the brain! See? I knew I had a reason for putting this together...*snigger*. These fudgy squares are divine. By using dark chocolate and a smooth peanut butter, the match was made in heaven. They just melt in your mouth. Think these squares have been helping Young Master keep his anxiety level low?

White Chocolate (and Macadamia) Brownies

Another morning of , "What shall I bake for tea?". No, I don't always bake for tea on a weekday but I had to make a point to do that on Mondays. Young Master has a jam-packed schedule on Mondays and while he's swallowing his food instead of chewing 20 times, I had to make sure whatever he swallowed were jam-packed with calories. On Mondays, he has to be snacking tea in the car on the way to sports practise. So, snack had to be something small and easy to eat. We had dark chocolate brownie the week before, and I had to try finish the white chocolate buttons in the fridge. So, I looked for a Blondie - white chocolate brownie recipe. HTBADG has one and with my apprehension with white chocolate....I was determined to tweak it from the beginning. First, I cut the sugar by 1/3. Second, I replaced macadamia nuts with dried cranberries. The recipe change worked wonders. It was divine and you don't hear that from me very often when it comes to white chocolate. The balance was perfect. This will probably be the only white chocolate dessert recipe I'd repeat.

Pizza Casareccia

I'm back! And I'm back with a 10kg loot from my recent trip Down Under. Much thanks (or no thanks, depending on whose view ;-p) to my girlfriend, I was in culinary haven over those few days. Not only did we feast, we, I mean I, shopped. Melbourne is Australia's foodie territory and there was no question that I could find every gadget, pan or spatula here. I had a very modest 1 item to shop for this trip, and ended up with....let's see...10kg worth including a pizza stone. Needless to say I was keen to put it to use and see if my pizzas crisp with the stone. I chose to use a new pizza dough recipe (from Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess), feeling very goddess-like with my new toy. Well, the excitement pretty much ended there with my enthusiasm. Turned out that this dough recipe was a soft and sticky kind. The kind that needed well-oiled hands to handle. I flattened one half of the dough onto a non-stick pan and the other half on the pizza stone. Both turned out exactly the same texture! Crispy! Talk about a good pizza dough recipe. Well, I must say though, the crust got stuck on the the stone leaving traces of oil impregnated in it and extra cheese melted and burnt on the the stone left it looking very well-used. I shall try the stone with my regular pizza dough recipe and see if it's better than before. I'll be damned if it's the same after carrying that heavy stone back!! Stay tuned....

Schnecken

These are killer buns!!! The MOTH and I gallantly skipped lunch last Sunday thinking that our breakfast will sustain us till at least tea if not dinner. Fed the kids at Coffee Bean and came home at 1pm only to hear our tummies rumbling. I wanted to bake the Norwegian Cinnamon Buns for tea (and warm up the rest for Monday's breakfast) and realised that there's something similar on the next page. Schnecken- German for snails. Nigella wrote, "They are like the Norwegian Cinnamon Buns, only more so. By which, I mean they are stickier, puffier, gooier and generally more over the top." We couldn't agree more. While it did involve a few extra steps, who would have thought the results were going to be soooooo good. The mixture of butter, sugar, maple syrup and golden syrup was what completed the whole experience of bread indulgence. A good blob of the syrup with walnuts went first into the muffin pan cavities. When the dough was done, it was rolled out, glazed and generously sprinkled with the sugar and cinnamon filling. Roll the dough and cut as you would when preparing cinnamon buns, and place the 12 slices on top of the nuts and syrup. It was love at first sight when I turned the very hot muffin tin over on to a flat tray. The rolls popped out topped with oozing caramelised walnuts, smelling a million bucks. That sight was to die for. The taste was unparalleled. Best cinnamon buns ever. I am so going to abandon the traditional cinnamon bun recipes and bake only these from now on.

Christmas Cupcakes

Err...a post that didn't get published then. No idea why...

MERRY CHRISTMAS, folks! I've finally completed the last round of Christmas baking for both clients, friends and families. Among the goodies I baked this Christmas were the Traditional English Rich Fruitcakes, Yule Logs, Gingerbread Men and Nigella's Christmas Cupcakes (and in cakes, as well). These very light, yet moist chocolate spice cakes are simply a pleasure to not only bake but to eat, too! I offered these for this year's Christmas booking besides the fruitcakes because they were more "healthier" among the holiday buffet spread. Last year was Mint-filled Brownie Cupcakes! I made them in cupcakes as well as cakes (see 2011 Christmas Bakes) - most as you've seen are fondant-covered. At home, I iced them with Crushed Candy Cane White Frosting and some minis in Crushed Candy Cane Chocolate Fudge. Kids loved them with the frostings (obviously...) and as usual in our household, I leave the other half of the cupcakes un-frosted just for us oldies. No less yummy.

Banana, Cherry & White-Chocolate Cupcakes

Another cake baked with "We have nothing for breakfast tomorrow morning!" in the mind. A fairly easy cupcake to do if you have all the ingredients in hand. I had 3 bananas and lots of white chocolate (I don't remember how I ended up with such a large packet of them when I personally hate white chocolate). Didn't have dried cherries, only glacé ones, so I replaced them with dried cranberries. The cranberries turned out to be the saving grace with these cupcakes.
    In case I haven't mentioned this before, white chocolate isn't chocolate. It's primarily cocoa butter, sugar and milk. No cocoa solids at all so it doesn't have any characterising ingredients of chocolate. Me & white chocolate = mortal enemies.
   Back to this cupcake - It was way too sweet. I should have had the foresight to reduce the fine sugar by at least 50gms because white chocolate is sweet, really sweet. The children actually asked about the chocolate in their cakes because they couldn't see nor taste them. Yes, it was banana-ish and the cranberries helped. Had it been cherries, it would have been harder to swallow. The tartness of cranberries helped. Do use the dried unsweetened ones and increase the volume if you're planning to bake this. Texture-wise, perfect. The sticky, goey mixture doesn't look promising in the pan but it bakes beautifully.

Mulled Wine & Garlic and Parsley Hearthbread

These two items have been a staple on my Christmas menu for years now and this morning, I cooked-up these two as a last minute contribution to a pot luck Christmas party. The hostess was serving lamb and another guest was bringing mince pies, so I thought the hearthbread would be good to mop up the lamb drippings while the mulled wine is excellent with mince pies. Wish I had photographed them better and individually but I was pressed for time this morning.
Let's start with the Mulled Wine. I love to use Merlot for this because it's a light enough wine to complement the spices, orange and tea. A Sauvignon is too overpowering for "mulling" but this is just my personal opinion. Plus, I usually reserve the Sauvignon for Sangria ;-). It really is very easy (or you won't see me doing this every year). Dump everything into a pot and heat it up. I let it simmer and not over boil it  because I like to have a teeny tiny element of alcohol left in it instead of letting it all evaporate. Then turn off the heat, drink warm and be merry!
Next is the Garlic and Parsley Hearthbread. I have since renamed this to Garlic and Cheese Foccacia. Everything's the same as the recipe, except I lightly saute the chopped up garlic in olive oil instead of the whole fiddly garlic preparation in foil and processor. We prefer to be able to taste the garlic. Spread the garlic oil all over the bread dough AND sprinkle finely-grated Parmesan. If I happen to not have Parmesan, I sprinkle salt flakes. That makes the hearthbread yummy even on its own. Yes, I also find that foccacia is more understandable to my guests than hearthbread.

Passionfruit Cheesecake

I thought I'll never get a chance to do this cheesecake because I haven't seen any passionfruit being sold in our local grocer. When I chance upon them last week at a supermarket, I grabbed a box of 6 fruits. I knew how they looked like inside but had no idea how the whole fruit looked like. I haven't seen them before! I even had the impression that passionfruit was an imported fruit until my dad and cousin enlightened me when they were over for the cheesecake. Apparently, the fruit is rarely found now because no one grows them as much as they used to umpteen years ago. One can still see them once awhile in a wet market. Nonetheless, I doubt I'll do much with passionfruit in future. It is a very sour fruit! The cheesecake base was great made with the passionfruit juice I yielded using the food processor. Only complain I have is that the the double cream called for in the recipe resulted in a very soft centre. I couldn't bake it any longer because the top was browning too much. I did bake a little longer than the stipulated time but the centre still didn't set enough. The cheesecake tasted light and un-cheesy. Pleasant to the palate actually -sans the extra passionfruit on top of the cheesecake!

Mini Lime-Syrup Sponges

I don't know why I don't recommend this cake often enough to my clients. My records showed that the last time I baked this cake for a client was a year ago! It's always lemon, lemon, and more lemon cakes.... The texture for this sponge is very much like my Moist Lemon and Lemon Poppyseed Cake. Light, soft, moist and very delightful. Ms Lawson uses the same recipe for the drenched Lemon-Syrup Cake by the way. Since I was  to bake for a client yesterday for a small wedding cake (see Purple & White Hantaran Cake), I decided to do this cake. For one, it's brushed with boiled Lime syrup and that'll help keep fondant cakes moist for a couple of days. Fondant (sugar paste) dries out cakes. The cake is to be picked up on Thursday for a Saturday wedding, so it has to stay moist and yummy at the same time until Saturday! Don't be taken back by the use of limes. We have limes in abundance here and they aren't as tart as the lemons, much cheaper, too. Tangy but not tart. So, that makes the cake palatable.

Cheese, Onions and Potato Pies

It was one of those nights when I was at loss for a dinner idea and wasn't keen on eating out either. I had some bangers in the freezer but did not have enough potatoes for mash. So, I decided to use the potatoes for a couple of accompanying pies with the bangers. Pies, despite them being the yummiest "fast food", there's nothing fast about them except in the speed they enter your mouth. They involve a lot of fiddly prep work especially if they're small pies. Nevertheless, I love this recipe....separately. The pie crust is short as expected but rivals the new Hot Water Pastry I learnt from Donna Hay a couple of days earlier. And the potato filling - yum x 100. I prepared the filling while the dough was resting. After rolling out the dough, I stole a tablespoon of the cold filling and it was the best potato salad I've ever had! The cubes of boiled potatoes were completely flavoured by the two cheeses I used - Red Leicester and (very) Mature Cheddar bound by 3 tablespoons of cream, fresh chopped onions and parsley. Yes, I did tweak the original recipe but not on purpose. The creme fraiche I had in the fridge had gone bad, so I used the pouring cream I had. I did not have any spring onions and since my family never had any trouble with chopped up raw onions (we're Asians), that was used instead. You can taste every flavour in the filling when it's cold. Once baked, the flavours were muted. The pies were fine with the bangers and HP, but not exceptional. It was a good carbo accompaniment though but personally, not pie on its own. Pie filling however, which I have now christened the Double Cheese Potato Salad, is excellent on its own.

Coca-Cola Cake

Hmmm...what can I say about this cake? Rather what the kids said about this cake...."Huh? Coca-Cola cake? Where's the Coke?". That's what I thought, too. Don't get me wrong, love the texture of this cake. As usual, Nigella aced in this bit of the creation. It was absolutely soft and moist, not dense at all. But flavour-wise, it lacked big time. Couldn't taste any distinct Coke flavour (no, I didn't use Diet Coke or Coca-Cola Light) nor the chocolate (used Valhorna cocoa). Just, plain. Yes, even the icing didn't help. Royal icing as usual is very sweet and it didn't complement the cake at all. Just, plain AND sweet now. Maybe Coca-Cola isn't what it used to be anymore? Missing the secret feel-good ingredient?

Fresh Gingerbread With(out) Lemon Icing

Another melt-and-mix kind of cake and awfully easy if you have all the ingredients at hand. I was a little apprehensive when it came to baking this. One, there was too much of a good thing in its ingredient list. Especially in the sweetener department. Though the recipe didn't call for white sugar, I got a bit concerned as I had to tip in nearly the whole tin of golden syrup and a bottle of molasses (I had this in hand, so replaced the treacle) after the muscovado sugar! Secondly, the whole runny batter business always gets me worried. I know I should have complete faith in Nigella's recipes by now as they've not failed me so far in terms of the finished product. But, fears like these comes second nature after many years of runny batter=soggy, dense cakes!! Nevertheless, the whole process went on without a glitch and popped the roasting tray into the oven for about 45 minutes. Kids went "phieeeuuuww" when it came out of the oven. Let's just say the smell of the molasses over-powered the whole gingerbread. I suppose treacle would have been a little lighter. But the texture and taste of this gingerbread was divine. Perfectly soft and light, yet moist. Very good tea cake but not something you can have slice after slice. A bit much. Perhaps a good slather of zingy lemon icing would have done the trick?

Cherry-Almond Cake

This morning's breakfast - Cherry-Almond Cake. Another very easy cake to do with satisying results. The cake's every bit an almond cake- nutty, gritty and crumbly (not too dry though) and is pleasant with a cup of tea. Children and the MOTH dug out the dark pitted cherries and left them at the side of the plate...sigh. But I loved them and thought they added a nice flavour to the otherwise ordinary-tasting almond cake. Think I'll pass a few slices to grandma Ivy who loves anything almonds (and apples). See you at school, Ivy!

Rosebud Madeleines

Been meaning to bake these forever but I never got around buying a madeleine tin. I had intentions to get an antique madeleine tin when I was in Paris. But we didn't have time to check out the marchés or go to Le Halles where all the cookware shops are. Sigh. Well, I suppose I'll need to plan for another trip then! Back to these Rosebud Madeleines. I ended up buying a silicon 28-cavity madeleine mould. The upside of using a silicon mould is that you don't have to grease and flour the mould as you would with a regular tin. The downside is the groves in the cavities aren't as deep and I didn't get the nice shell design. Nevertheless, the results were good. It's a very simple batter recipe but the key is to let it sit in the fridge for an hour. Just like pancakes, the batter needs to bloom so you get it spongy. I found a lovely bottle of organic rosewater from Ben's General Store (also bought a bottle of orange blossom water) and love the subtlety of it fragrance in the madeleines. They're quite addictive if you asked me and I intend to make more the next time. I ended up with only 25 madeleines with a single recipe here. Ordinarily, madeleines are plain and eaten with a cup of coffee or tea. You'll see some even dunking them into their beverages! But, I'll be tinkering with more of these soon and swap the rosewater for orange blossom, lime zests, honey or even cinnamon...

Banana Bread

If you've been following my attempts, you'd realise the number of times I've put off baking the banana bread. I don't mind banana cakes but banana bread? Hmmm....not my kind of food. Anyway, yesterday seemed appropriate since the whole family was down and out for 2 weeks with viral fever and we had to (I mean, I had to play "responsible mother") eat somewhat bland food (think cream crackers and water). With the leftover bananas, this was easy enough to whip up within an hour. I left out boiling and steeping the sultanas in bourbon for obvious reasons but kept the walnuts. My loaf only took 45-55 minutes to bake. Funny since the recipe says 1 to 1 1/4 hours. But I was glad it was done sooner. The verdict - everyone ate at least 2 slices each at 3pm because we didn't have lunch (we had a heavy breakfast) and there was a soda bicarb aftertaste. There was only 1/2 a teaspoon in it but somehow, we could taste it. Could have done with more sugar in it. I think we all agreed that we'd prefer the banana cake.

Madeira Cake

Little Miss (she's 8) has been talking about baking a cake on her own for a long time and I always have a reason for not letting her do so. While the idea is great and learning how to bake is practically a given past-time with me as her mum, I think of the possibility of batter in my mixer's engine, eggs in crevices on my scales, the mess and clean-up after. My kitchen, utensils and equipments are spotless and in tip-top condition... In short, I'm a tight-ass with anything to do with my kitchen. Anyway, this Sunday felt like one of those I-don't-care-to-be-prissy days and I told Little Miss that she can bake a simple cake. I picked the first recipe in the book -Nigella Lawson's mother-in-law's Madeira Cake. Madeira Cake historically for me was always a dry cake. Made it a couple of times, always using different recipes thinking that it could be me or a missing link in the ingredients but they were all the same. Dry.

Well, Little Miss got to try this version and she aced the whole process from weighing to pouring the batter into the pan. The cake baked beautifully and rised as photographed in the book. She was awfully pleased and so was I! We decided to let it cool through the night and cut it this morning for breakfast. As you can see, we got good cuts which should mean that the cake isn't too dry. Little Miss and Young Master had a slice each. Little Miss said it was ok (quite softly) while Young Master said out loud that it was too dry. The MOTH kindly said that the taste was nice but too crumbly. As for me, I just made a cup of tea and had a slab. I'm with The MOTH. It tastes good with the tinge of lemon but still too crumbly and dry. Now, to assure Little Miss that that's how Madeira Cakes are and it's got nothing to do with her skills!

Boston Cream Pie

What a mix-up last Tuesday was... I was supposed to bake some Red Velvet Cupcakes for an order and there must have been an invisible kitchen gnome shading my eyes because I weighed and creamed ingredients for a Strawberry Shortcake sponge, thinking it was for the Red Velvet until I was looking for the buttermilk volume!! Sigh... I had to go on despite discovering this at 3/4 of the process, and went on the bake the 9" sponge. So, I had this huge sponge cake with no strawberries in stock. I don't really fancy eating plain sponge for the rest of the week so I had to think of some filling for that cake. The book has a section on sponges and Miss Lawson featured a couple of suggestions to fill the basic sponge - jam and cream, butterscotch and the Boston Cream Pie. The fillings are simply chocolate and creme patissiere. I have some good bitter dark chocolate which I love to use to complement sweet cakes and beautiful vanilla beans for the pastry cream. I can't comment on this sponge because it wasn't Nigella's recipe but her pastry cream recipe was spot on. I've never had any problem making creme patisserie, thankfully, but her recipe seems fool-proof even for beginners. So, I say give it a go and don't worry too much about the curdling or scrambling the eggs. Just follow her instructions carefully. The melted chocolate is as with any ganache. Simple and straighforward.