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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