Lemon Meringue Pie Thursday, Oct 29 2009

Pies and tarts, what’s the difference?

This site tried to explain the difference, but I still don’t get it. I figured when it’s something fruity, it’s tarts. But then there are such things as blueberry tarts and blueberry pies, which are 2 different things, and it’s back to square one.

But those bite sized things are fruit tarts aren’t they?

Whatevs. My head hurts trying to figure them out.

OOH! I finally got my blowtorch! BLOW-freaking-TORCH! BLOW TORCH!! BLOW TORCH! I spent a good 15 minutes trying to pump butane into the torch, and then realised nothing was going in because when I turned the switch, there wasn’t any hissing sound.

Damn that butane can. And it was brand new! So I used my other butane can, and YAY! It filled, for like 1 minute, before the can started leaking, and started freezing and frosting the whole blowtorch. You know, because of the latent heat of vapourisation and whatnot. Then I tried the other can again, and finally it worked! Weird, but whatever.

Hissing sound — checked

Click and behold! BLUE FLAMES!

WOHOO! It worked!! So obviously we got really excited to torch our individual lemon meringue tarts (pies??) after lunch.

Crust recipe here and lemon meringue recipe here.

The filled pie shells:

The meringue layer, pre-baked and pre-torched

I decided to bake the pie, because of the amount of uncooked egg whites used. Just didn’t want to risk anybody getting salmonella from eating the lemon meringue pie. So I baked the pie and about 3 tarts for about 40 mins on low heat, while the rest were baked for about 10 mins on low heat just to kill any bacteria, before we fired the torch.

Torched!

I think the burnt edges make the tarts pretty! And they smell like roasted marshmallows!

So whatever happened to the baked pie?? The lemon curd oozed out!

Which was probably my fault, because I made the crust too thin, and it broke under pressure! AND I didn’t chill the filling long enough.

So I was trying to salvage it, by attempting to put it back to the pie pan.

BAD IDEA!

The crust was too thin, and too fragile, so the pie broke into 2, and I got a sticky gooey mess of runny lemon curd. OMFG! It was so disheartening!!

And I forced it back into the pan anyway! Hahah.. Terrible person I am! Half of the pie doesn’t have a crust!

Sya, Hafie and Salmah thought I should never be a surgeon after seeing how I tried to stuff the crust back into the pan. Messily, I might add.

Oh well. There’s always a next time!

And! Baking didn’t give the burnt edges effect, so I torched them anyway to look prettier!

Even the texture’s different. Baking gave a crispier meringue layer while torching made it gooey, soft, airy marshmallowy. Then the paranoid in me decided to bake the torched ones anyway! For about 20 minutes! Die, bacteria, die! Thankfully, the merigue still remained gooey!

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Red velvet, revisited Sunday, Oct 25 2009

A new round of immortalising the Red velvet for the birthday girl. She deserves it.. After all, red velvet treats don’t come often! She had to wait exactly ONE YEAR for this. And, the red velvet we ate in Sydney on our backpacking trip didn’t count at all!

So this year, Bakerella inspired me, with her cupcake balls. They are just the most adorable things!

What started out as a thin  round cake:

Got crumbled down to:

And then pressed into these shapes:

And frozen overnight before they were dipped in white and dark chocolate:

So here’s the cupcakes, 90% completed!

And final pieces!

We have the hearts..

And the stars:

And finally, all in line. Ready to be devoured! I honestly don’t know how they tasted.

Happy 23rd, Birthday Girl! Love ya babe!

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Rainbow cupcakes Tuesday, Oct 13 2009

My mom asked if I was interested in teaching a cupcake baking class for the month of Nov/Dec. Of course I’m interested!! And it’s a source of income!! Please excuse the excitement. I get overly excited about getting money!! Money is hard to come by, you know, when you’re unemployed, and spending your allowance on weekend exercise classes and meeting up for dinners and whatnot. Speaking of exercise, I’ve yet to achieve my 2009 new year’s resolutions of losing weight AND attaining a hot bod. It’s kind of hard to achieve that when I lack self control over desserts! It’s simply shameful, I know, and yet, I choose to believe that I’ve reached a fitness plateau at the same time. Ohhh but I’ve digressed enough.

So anyway I was planning to teach this, so I’ve gotta try it out first, just in case I don’t get it right! I don’t know if it was beginner’s luck or what, but it turned out pretty well, I must say.

Isn’t it pretty??? There’s just something about  rainbows that makes me smile. No wonder kids paint rainbows when they want to depict happiness.

Somewhereeee… over the rainbowwww.. blue birds fly~~~

Okay stop it!

Yes I know there are only 3 colours to the cupcake, but I don’t have that many food colourings!

I absolutely love the vibrancy! My new Panasonic Lumix rocks! This picture wasn’t even edited. How great is that?

I don’t really like liquid food colouring. They ruin the texture of everything, especially frostings! The best would be gel colouring, but they are darn expensive, and I only have 1, in pink. Even paste would be pretty good, but I only had blue. I need to go to a bake store to stock up!

Uncoloured vanilla cake batter

Aren’t these adorable? I figured since I was baking colourful cupcakes, the usual liners just don’t fit into the theme. I love these!! Got them from Cold Storage, a bit expensive, but hey! When else can you get a Twister Mat themed liners?

All done, and freshly baked from the oven!

They look like Play-Do, don’t they???!!

Even the crumbs are pretty!

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Hari Raya Edition: Honey Cornflakes Wednesday, Sep 9 2009

Sya dubbed this as ‘the most evil of all kuih raya‘, and she was absolutely right to say that. I can finish an entire container of 50 by myself within 5 minutes; 10 minutes if I have a tiny ounce of self control. Tell me, who can resist cornflakes of buttery-honey goodness??! If you can, you’re missing out!

Well said, Sya!

Ingredients:

125g butter

250g Kellogs cornflakes

80g castor sugar

50ml honey

chopped almond (optional)

Directions:

1. Melt sugar and honey

2. Add butter to melted mixture, stir till combined. Leave it till it gets hot. Be careful not to over cook it, or the sugar will caramelise.

3. Mix cornflakes and chopped almond in a bowl.

Pour butter/sugar/honey mixture over cornflakes, and fold. Make sure every single piece of cornflake is coated with the mixture.

4. Spoon into papercups and bake at 160C for 5 to 10 mins.

Evil, I’m telling you. VERY EVIL. It’s hiding behind the veil of innocence. But looks can be deceiving.. Pure evil!

And whoever thought of using cinnamon sticks and star anise and cardomom to repel ants is a genius. But now my kitchen looks like rumah bomoh.

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Hari Raya Edition: Chocolate cornflakes macaroon Tuesday, Sep 8 2009

I love this hari raya cookie! I can safely say that it’s always a hot favourite at everybody’s house! I remember once we attacked the whole jar of cornflakes macaroons and the host had to refill, AND we shameless finished that too. It’s really embarassing how we lacked self-control. Really. Can we call it cookie, when it doesn’t look like a cookie? If not, what else? Biscuit? Food stuff then!

The best thing about working with egg white and sugar is that clean up is easy. Well, as compared to butter, or anything greasy. I’ve always hated cleaning up after baking cupcakes and making frostings.

Ingredients:

115 ml egg white

255g chocolate chips (depends on how much you want!)

210g icing sugar

140g Kellogs cornflakes, lightly crushed

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

1. Beat egg white at high speed till soft peaks are formed.

2. Add sugar bit by bit until it dissolves before adding more sugar.

3. Add vanilla essence only when it stiffens.

4. Add chocolate chips and cornflakes and fold.

5. Drop 1 tsp of mixture into small paper cups.

6. Bake for 30 to 45 mins at LOW temperature (some people do it at 160, I do it at 130C.. really depends on your oven) until surface is dried.

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Apple crumble pie, revisited Monday, Sep 7 2009

Yet another successful attempt at apple crumble! This time with a crust. I love this recipe!! It’s totally fool proof!

I found pretty good crust recipe:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup oil
3 tbsp milk

Directions:

1. Mix flour and salt
2. Blend oil and milk
3. Add oil/milk mixture to flour/salt mixture, stir with a fork.
4. You can either press the dough to a 9 inch pie mould, for lazy people like me, or you can shape it up into a ball, and then roll out a thin layer, and then assemble onto the pie mould/tin.
5. Line the top of the crust with baking paper, adding uncooked rice/beans to weigh paper down. Bake for 10 mins in 170 C.
6. Assemble pie filling and crumble as per usual, and bake as per crumble recipe.
7. Serve pie with vanilla ice cream!

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Mango cupcakes Monday, Sep 7 2009

Okay I lied. It’s not really mango cupcakes. It’s actually just the vanilla vegan cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and mango cubes. But it’s really too long to put that as the title! Recipe here.

Just a word of caution: Fruit acid causes the cream cheese to become runny and therefore causes the cupcake to get soggy. Something about breaking down some chemical bonding somewhere in the cheese. I don’t know! I can’t remember my Food Chemistry. Whatever. They taste really good anyhow!

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Hari Raya Edition: Kuih Sarang Semut Monday, Sep 7 2009

Yay! It’s nearing Hari Raya Aidilfitri, and what better time to kick start the long awaited bake spree, when it’s 2 weeks to raya? Heh heh. That’s just an excuse. I just hope that these cookies would last till raya! We lack self control!! Anyway, I can’t wait to exchange cookies with Sya this Saturday!

Have you ever wondered why it’s called kuih sarang semut (ants’ nest)? It’s not very appetising, is it, to be eating an ants’ nest? And really, ants’ nests aren’t these pretty.

I got the recipe here, but since it’s in Malay, I’ve included the English translation below, for those who don’t understand Malay, or, *ehem* step orang Putih. Hahaha.. Melayu celup!

Ingredients:

250 g butter
100 g castor sugar
350 g plain flour   ]
100 g corn flour    ] sifted
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla essence

Decoration
Chocolate rice
Colourful rice

Directions:

1. Cream butter and sugar.
2. Add egg yolk and vanilla essence and beat till combined.
3. Add sifted flour and beat till combined.

4. Grate dough into a clean bowl and spoon into small paper cups.

5. Sprinkle with chocolate and colourful rice.

6. Bake at 170C for about 15 to 20 minutes.

I think the pink casings are prettier than the purple ones.

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Graduation Day Tuesday, Aug 25 2009

I baked these babies in anticipation of Graduation photoshoot weekend. Aren’t they adorable??

Getting here was tough though. I was trying to make healthy cupcakes, aka tofu cupcakes. Don’t snub the tofu before you taste it.

But that’s another problem. I couldn’t get the perfect texture, or quite possibly, didn’t replace butter and eggs with the correct amount of tofu. Unlike Betty Crocker cake mix, 1 package of silken tofu replaces 1/3 cup vegetable oil and 2 eggs ( I think), but didn’t manage to achieve it with my from scratch vanilla cupcake recipe.

Weird right?? They tasted a little bit like pancakes, and were hard to remove from the black cake liners.

Then on to Recipe 2, which was supposed to be vegan cupcakes. So they were egg-free, and used vegetable oil instead of butter. Which is supposed to be on the lighter side.

About 10 minutes in the oven, I already felt that this was going to turn out to be a disaster. The top part was glistening and shining with sugar! And it sank within seconds after removing them from the oven!! Loved the colour though.

True enough! It was really sweet, but still. More edible than the tofu PANcupcakes.

Argh! I had half the batter left, and figured that it was possibly my fault for not adding the correct amount of flour (In my defense, I was really depressed about the PANcupcakes!), so I added enough flour till I think it’s the right texture.

Third time’s the charm!

I’ve never been so glad to see the proper cake texture! And they tasted great!

I frosted them with cream cheese frosting, and used Lindt chocolate squares to make the mortarboards, with Van Houten choc as the mortarboard stand, and twizzlers dipped in melted chocolate for the tassles.

Sounds like a lot of work, but it was super fun!

Vanilla vegan cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 tbsp rice/white vinegar
1 1/2 cups soy milk/low fat milk
2 cups caster sugar
2 1/4 cups self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla essence

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C. Add vinegar and oil to milk. Put everything else into the mixer bowl.
2. Pour over the oil/milk/vinegar liquid.
3. Set mixer to low and beat just long enough to combine everything.
4. Set mixer to medium speed and WHISK for 1 minute, stopping halfway through to scrape down the bowl.
5. Scoop and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Cream cheese frosting

Ingredients:

1 package cream cheese, softened
50g butter, softened
Icing sugar, sifted

Directions:

1. Beat butter and cream cheese until combined.
2. Gradually beat icing sugar into mixture, adding 1 cup at a time, until desired consistency.

Assembling the cupcakes:

1. Spread cream cheese frosting.

2. Place a piece of Van Houten chocolate coated raisin in the middle.

3. Arrange Lindt chocolate square to resemble mortarboard.

4. Using melted chocolate as glue, stick the chocolate coated twizzler strands to resemble tassles.

Tada!

The bear wants the cupcake too!

Congratulations to us, Class of 2009!

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Cheesecake Tuesday, Aug 25 2009

The tried and tested recipe.

The no-fail recipe.

The fool-proof recipe.

I present to you, The Salmah Cheesecake.

Be forewarned. It’s dense, and extremely addictive!

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