I've made a lot of mistakes in my life and this is one of them. I over beat and over baked this pound cake and Martha Stewart would not have been pleased.
Look at that fissure. I do wonder if it was supposed to be like that. Look at those sugar spots. Look at those holes. Yes I'm guilty.
But at least I've used up the cream cheese that I've had in my fridge since forever. This recipe used no baking powder. So it was heavy and dense but it had a lightness and moistness to it when sliced. Six eggs must have done that. It cuts very well. Very few at home got excited. But many reviewers raved over this. So it must be me.
I'm not too happy with the photographs either so I'm not saying much.
Click here for the recipe ~ Yes .....I'm so unexcited and feel so guilty that I don't even have the desire to type out the recipe.
BUT it's almost gone though. H liked it ^o^. Phew! I've been acquitted. *Taking off the leg irons*
I thought it would be wonderful if I could get my grandson to do a guest post while I get busy somewhere else. Lucky for me he was more than willing.
And it's a good thing he can bake and cook ~ even at the tender age of ten. And he isn't the only one. S can too while N is the creative writer and artist and Z is simply the baby.
This is a little bit of art by them...mostly by N, the creative writer and artist ~
Here is a video that I just have to share with you because I think it's quite brilliant....It's an ad for a special edition of their comic strip series, Zo and Boe Spytime. The creator is N and the special effects are by H ~ Did I say they are creative?
My very lovely daughter, a super multi-tasker, not only home schools her children but she has, amazingly, taught them to cook and bake as well. Amoung a gazillion other things of course.
My super talented and enthusiastic grandson H is only 10, the third of the 4 children, but he bakes like a pro (in my eyes). He plays soccer like a pro too (like his awesome dad). He's very, very smart, tooooo cute, very athletic and has an absolutely quirky sense of humour and will be going on to grade 5 this September (thoroughly my type of man).
A few days ago H sent me an email all the way from the US informing me that he has grown a beard! A pair of disbelieving eyebrows and a scroll down later I saw the attached photo of himself ~ with a beard! Painted generously on! He looked totally weird. Suffice to say that I seriously cracked up and it took a whiley while before I got back together again (with a lot of help from all the King's men and all the King's horses), I gathered myself up and continued life.
While H played Spiderman.
Without further ado, let me introduce you to H, my sweetly funny and gloriously talented grandson with a recipe for some very, very, very delish brownies!
"Take it from here dearie" ..........
( Aside: being endlessly proud of H as I am I might also add that H is a great writer so this is H's write up verbatim. I know his mom and dad are dying to see what he has written :) Please do take time to read the recipe as well. You've got to love that sense of humour.
Brownie photos courtesy of my grandkids.
Hello everyone!
this is actually my first time typing down a recipe. and I'm not Zurin. gasp. Well grandma let me make a post, and I think I'll introduce myself to you before I start writing down anything like recipes or anything. I'm a kid you know, so I can't reveal my full name, so just call me H. I'm Zurin's grandson.
Now don't start thinking this is my first time ever baking, because I made many things before, cookies, pizza, shortbread, pancakes, and more! But the thing is, I don't want to be a chef, I just bake for the fun of it. Well, that is, if you think it's fun. I like the computer a lot more than baking, and I want to be a computer scientist in college, just like my mom was.
Well, let's get started baking! I found this recipe from allrecipes.com and I find it to be very easy. I already made it more than five times before. one of those times, we didn't have enough egg. so I think I used cornstarch with water as a substitute. And obviously, as I now know, it grew hard. but they were eatable. so please make sure you have eggs when you make this! Well, now to the recipe:
Yield: 24 brownies Ingredients
1 oz (4 squares unsweetened baking chocolate)
3/4 cup butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 cup flour
*1 cup chopped pecans
preheat oven to 350. line a 13"x9" pan with aluminum foil. Place chocolate and butter in medium or large sized microwaveable bowl. push the butter's wraps aside, you'll need it later. Melt the butter and chocolate in microwave as soon as you see the butter melting (about 2 minutes). take it out and stir until chocolate is melted. then add sugar and stir well. then add eggs. then add flour and pecans. stir well.
Hey, remember those butter wraps? well go ahead and get them....taps foot....Oh you're back! well wipe those wraps over the lined pan you lined earlier (grease the pan). Put the batter in the pan and smoothen it out. place in the oven and bake 30-35 minutes. bake it until when you stick a toothpick in it, it comes out clean or with fudgy crumbs on it. let it cool on a cooling rack for five minutes, then cut it. Scrumptious, delicious, crumby, fudgy, chewy delights will tempt you to take more when they touch your taste buds.
Although I have mentioned that I will be closing comments for the time being, however, for this very, very special post I will be opening the comment form just in case you all have something really, really sweet to say to H;). H will reply to you if you have any questions about the recipe too.
Thank you dearie for the most beautiful post in my world ~
Sigh...if you've made a large batch of doughnuts and nobody came home to eat them you'd very likely have a large batch of doughnuts sleeping in your refrigerator overnight and for the rest of the week. They are after all best eaten on the day they're made.
I couldn't throw them away so I made doughnut pudding. I scattered on some chocolate chips and they were ready to go.
I have to say the pudding looked rather good. Better than plain ole bread pudding. The golden sheen of fried doughnuts and the buttery interior really came through which made the pudding look evenly golden, luscious and delectable.
Surprisingly, however, I much preferred plain old bread pudding. I would put it down to the fact that a doughnut dough is not quite a bread dough in the sense that plain all purpose flour was used, the kneading process was not as intense and repetitious thus resulting in a less 'bready' product which was not quite perfect for a bread pudding.
Also I would have thrown in some chunky chocolate pieces, had I had them, rather than teeny weeny chocolate chips to match the chunky quartered doughnuts in it. That would have made it much more chocolatey and satisfying.
All in all I thought it was quite a good way to use up those doughnuts and it is something that could be made in individual bowls if you have only a couple lying around.
And yes. I bought the pink bowl from Daiso. And no. I'm not being paid to link :)
So here's the recipe ~
4 eggs 3/4 cup sugar 21/2 cups whole milk 1/2 tsp vanilla extract about 5 doughnuts, quartered some butter to grease the pudding dish
Beat eggs and sugar until well mixed but not too frothy. Add vanilla extract. Add the milk and mix again until well mixed. Keep aside.
Cut up the doughnuts. Arrange in buttered bowl and pour the custard mixture over and let stand for 15 to 20 minutes to let the doughnuts soak up the custard.
Bake in 170 C for one hour, more or less or until the custard is firm. Serve.
Lives lived are mostly dysfunctional. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout throws that fact into our faces. And I find it hard to dispute otherwise.
Olive is a large woman, solidly built, who lives without apology. She may be illogical, logical, temperamental, perceptive, obsessive, ego-centric, compassionate or abrasive. Or all of them at once. You feel her rage, you connect with her frustrations and her denials but at times you also despise her. Finally you sympathize in her fight to endure.
This is a book about several people, each, neck deep in living out their lives and reacting. Some desperately, some resignedly and some stubbornly to the crap their world has to offer.
This is also a story about the pain of growing old, the feeling of despair and frustration when you watch your stroke striken spouse become blank and distant then relieved and heartbroken when he dies. It is about the anger welling inside of you as you watch your children grow away and who seem intent on breaking your heart. It is about being "done with that stuff" in regards to bedroom life and about "I don't care if I die either....Long as it's quick."
This is a story about spouses who sense the infidelity, each in the other, mentally or physically, but who sometimes choose to pretend otherwise, to appear, even to themselves, to understand, intent on rationalizing the unacceptable or where things happen that alter their perception of each other forever.
It is about wondering how or why you have become what you are and your marraige what it is. This is a story about life. Take it or leave it.
There is no plot really. Like real life. Strout presents Olive Kitteridge through the stories of uniquely different people each connected to Olive in some way, significantly or otherwise, in a small town of Crosby, Maine, a town by the sea where the waves lap, the seagulls squawk, the wind blows and the flowers bloom.
It ends with Olive Kitteridge feeling vindicated in her belief at the age of seventy four "that lumpy aged and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young firm ones."
I found the book depressing but from page 203 onwards Strout 's descriptions of situations and characters began to take on the occasional hilarious streak. Some simply made me laugh out loud.
Olive is a multi-faceted character, like us. And to be able to write about people like us in minute and introspective detail, with clarity, is astonishing and, to read it, is frightening.
This is not a book for everyone. It wasn't unputdownable for me simply because it was mostly depressing or perhaps because it was too raw, uncomfortably truthful and blatant about angry feelings, about growing old, about infidelity, about imperfection, about real life. Perhaps we all live in denial at some point of our lives.
It won the Pulitzer Prize and I can certainly see why.
Perhaps ~
We may be old enough to make choices but we may never be old enough to know if we have made the right ones.
Olive Kitteridge loves doughnuts.
Dunkin donuts was where Olive and Henry, her affable husband, would stop by for a coffee, for doughnuts and for the doughnut holes. Doughnuts feature consistently in the book and I knew it had to be either donuts or doughnuts for Food For Thought.
It's amazing how pretty and playful doughnuts can look. I'm not much of a doughnut person and am amazed that people actually make a long bee line for doughnuts from a shop called Big Apple Donuts when it opened several years ago. I must say their toppings simply set them apart. They were gorgeously pretty. You just have to click on their link.They are beautiful! Sorry Dunkin Donuts!
If I had a little bit more love for doughnuts I would probably be queuing up myself.
This doughnut recipe belongs to Delia Smith. These doughnuts are gorgeously delicious, soft and thick. I've never tried any other doughnut recipe but my son says a lady at his university canteen sells doughnuts that are just so good because they are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. But I don't have her recipe so Delia Smith's it is.
The recipe ~
Makes 8 doughnuts......
8 oz plain flour
11/2 oz castor sugar
2 tsp dried yeast ( I used the same amount of instant yeast)
1 egg, beaten
1 oz butter
1/2 tsp salt
3 T milk
3 T boiling water
Oil for frying
Method......
Measure the milk into a measuring jug and then add the boiling water, a teaspoon of the sugar and the yeast. Stir it and leave the jug in a warm place for about 10 minutes till the yeast mixture froths. Put the rest of the sugar, the salt and the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter. Then pour in the beaten egg and frothy yeast mixture and stir and mix to a smooth dough. If it sems a little dry add a tespoon or so of warm water.
Turn the dough out onto a board and knead for about 10 minutes by which time it should feel springy and show slight blisters just under the surface. return it to the bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave in a warm place to rise until double in size, about 45 minutes to an hour.
When it has risen tip it out onto a board and punch it down to disperse large air bubbles. Divide the dough into 8 equal parts and flatten to a disc.
At this point I depart from Delia Smith by shaping it into a ring instead of filling the centre with jam.
Once shaped place on a baking tray and enclose them in an oiled plastic bag or a bin liner as Delia suggests. Let them rise for 30 minutes. Heat up enough oil (I used canola) in a pot to deep fry to about 185 C and fry the doughnuts, turning them frequently so that htey will brown evenly. About 4 minutes frying time.
drain on kitchen paper tehn toss then on a bowl of castor sugar or any sugar combination that you like.
Few things could be worse than losing a spouse to sickness and death, and when it happens and you have loved, it changes your life forever.
"Lev pressed a damp towel to his face and prayed that the heartache would pass, like a brief storm, like a nightmare from which it's possible to wake. But it wouldn't pass and so he stood there weeping....."
"When men cry it's never for nothing..."
It was the premature death of his wife, Mariana, that Lev wept for.
Lured by the opportunities of a capitalist country Lev had travelled to London from Auror, a deprived village in Eastern Europe, in search of a new life for his daughter and his mother back home.
Lev spends a year in London, with memories of Mariana tucked into his heart, sometimes reliving his past at will and at other times helplessly.
It is a story of Lev, as an immigrant in London, his shift from one ideal to another, the loneliness he encounters, the displacement he feels, the despair of poverty, the friendships, the love affair, his foolishness and finally the discovery that he dared to dream.
This is a story that is profound, enchanting, painful and bittersweet. I loved it.
Because ..............
Tremain writes with such depth and intensity for every character. She makes them breathe and pulsate so I could touch them; each one fascinating and complete. Each precisely and expertly chiselled that it leaves you without a doubt to whom and what they are.
Tremain made me savour the book like a sweet not wanting to go too fast lest I lose its sweetness too soon.
Tremain made me tender and kind towards Lev's despair, his confusion, his rage and even his blunders because he was kind, gallant and genuine.
Tremain made me laugh thorugh Rudi, Lev's wild, impulsive and unpredictable friend.
Tremain made me cry.
It was woeful........It was wild...........It was beautiful.
Ruffled only by..................
An ending that was too predictable too soon before the end; it felt like a deja vu. If she had not let on a little too early and had ended the story with an optimistic hope rather than as a gift too neatly wrapped it would have been perfect. This was one of the three little brown spots in the apple. But I'm not going to make mountains out of molehills. I'm not going to nitpick.
It won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.
This book proved perfect for Food For Thought because the story centred around Lev starting out as a dishwasher and later as a vegetable cutter at GK Ashe, a classy, high end restaurant, where he observed the chefs as they worked. So I had a vast uppity choice from paragraphs of detailed descriptions through Lev's eyes and mind.
I chose my favourite. A dessert named chocolate tart.
It was also the dish on which Lev's mother, Ina, made her first comment, after a long and stubborn silence, marking her recognition and approval of Lev's dream.
She said, " I liked the taste of that. It reminded me of sleep."
The recipe...........ceated by Sydney's Aria pastry chef, Andrew Honeyset.......
This is a recipe I had extracted from a beautiful blog I had only recently discovered called Citrus and Candy. I had scrolled down innocently. And quite shockingly I found myself face to face with this gloriously evil tart. We glared at each other. I ~ stunned. It ~ proud. And I realised.......
That I had come. I had seen. And I had been conquered.
ARIA CHOCOLATE TART
The recipe is as exactly as I had found it. I dared not fluster a speck...
270 gm good quality chocolate, chopped 60 gm butter, diced 315 ml cream 3 eggs 2 egg yolks
Chocolate glacage :
300 gm dark chocolate, chopped 240 cream 300 ml chocolate sauce (recipe follows) Chocolate sauce :
60 gm cocoa 200 ml water 120 gm sugar 25 gm butter, diced
Make chocolate pastry :
Place flour, cocoa, sugar,salt and butter in bowl of food processor and process till fine as breadcrumbs. Add eggs and process till it holds together.
Turn onto a lightly floured boared and gently knead till just smooth.Shape into a disc and cover with plastic wrap. Place in fridge fro 10 mins to rest.
Roll out pastry according to the tart pan or mould you're using. It's important that you use a tart tin with a removable bottom. You could roll out the pastry between 2 sheets of baking paper. Let the pastry be about 3mm thickness. Line the tart tin. Place in fridge for 15 mins to rest.
Line pastry with paper and fill with beans or rice and bake 10 mins, take out, remove, beans, and bake again for another 5 - 10 minutes or until firm. Keep aside.
Make filling :
Preheat oven 160 C.
Place butter and chocolate in a bowl.
Place cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour hot cream over th ebutter and chosolate and stir until it all melts and the mixture is smooth. Stir in eggs and stir until even and smooth again.
Pour the mixture into the tar shell up to about 3/4 full leaving enough room for the glacage.
Bake 25 minutes until the centre is just cooked and the top just set. Take tart out and allow to cool to room temperature before topping with the glacage.
Make chocolate sauce for the glacage :
Combine cocoa,water and sugar in a saucepan and stir over heat until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil, stir in butter till melted. Strain through sieve placed over a bowl and set aside.
Make Chocolate glacage :
Place chocolate in a large bowl. Place cream in saucepan and bring to a boil. Add in chocolate sauce. Stir to mix well and is smooth.
Assemble :
Pour the glacage over the cooled cooked tart up to the rim. Put in refrigerator to set and firm up.
Serve. UMMMMPPPPHHH.....
It was rich, deep and sonorously soothing ~ like sleep.
She must have been about 17 or 18 and I about 4 or 5 because I remember standing in my grandaunt's kitchen having agreed, with a nod, to a cookie or something when my young aunt had asked me if I wanted a snack.
Kneeling in front of me she tried to coax and bribe me out of my shyness so that I asked for it by speaking up. I couldn't.
So I simply stood there, blinking, head down, tongue tied while I felt my lips pursing up, hoping she would give it to me still because I really, really wanted it. And of course she did.
That was my first memory of my Aunt Montel.
Thirty years on I found myself coaxing recipes from her instead. Recipes that she would not normally share because those were her trade secrets.
Food was a constant in her home even at the oddest hours. I think she was born with a whisk and a wok in each hand and landed feet first in the kitchen.She was a foodie in every sense of the word.
Sadly, she passed on a couple of months ago, a little too early. She will be missed by those who knew her through food and by us, her nephews and nieces, because she never did have children of her own, her husband having died a day after their wedding. And she, never having remarried since.
But she did not depart in vain. I have kept a couple of her treasured recipes that I had pried from her over the years. And of course the memories.
So when Ju, The Little Teochew, emailed and asked me if I had a sugee cake recipe that I could share with her my Aunt Montel came immediately to mind.
I searched for the brown tattered exercise book where I had scribbled the recipe. It was nowhere to be found. Then I remembered that I had had it typed out, printed and filed safely between plastic covers in my old recipe file. I wiped the years of dust off and emailed Ju.
And now Aunt Montel's sugee cake is going to be famous-amos because I'm blogging about it in synchrony withJu, The Little Teochew, the first person I am sharing it with. And, strangely, with the rest of the world as well.
I'm quite sure my aunt would have proudly and happily consented and I'm quite sure too that she is now happily reunited with her husband.
I knew Ju was going to bake it as beautifully as she always does and make my aunt very proud.
She did a spectacular job!!! Just look at that cake!!
Thank youJu! I think this makes Ju and I related no? :)
~ wipes tear~
The original recipe...............
250 gm butter, softened 250 castor sugar 125 SR Flour 1 tsp baking powder 125 gm semolina flour 50 gm cashews, ground 1/3 cup evaporated milk 1 tsp pure vanilla extract 1 tsp buttercream essence 5 eggs plus 1 yolk, the whole eggs separated
Preheat oven to 150 C,
Stir semolina flour, Self Raising flour, baking powder and nuts together in a bowl and leave aside.
Seperate all the eggs. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time. Add cold milk, vanilla extract and buttercream essence and mix well.
In another bowl beat egg whites till stiff. Fold in flour mixture into creamed mixture. Then fold in beaten egg whites gently until well mixed.
Bake 150 C for 50-60 mins until skewer comes out clean.
A 10 mm star nozzle was what I thought I had for these churros. I was wrong. But I had to have it. So I dug, I dig and I dug.
Finally I settled for the disc-cum-spout star nozzle from a cookie press and used a piping bag to sheath the nozzle with. Very awkwardly I might add. I won't even begin to describe how the contraption looked or worked. But for few odd moments it did.
The reason I did not use the whole cookie press thing was because it jammed up and it would not press.
However, to cut a long story short the churros turned out looking just the way I wanted them to look.
Long and slender, long and slender, Each little churros A lady's finger.
And delicious? ~ Utterly ~ Utterly ~ Utterly ~
Then I made a bitter hot chocolate As a dip or a drink And the sweet little churros I dipped within.
Were they delicious? ~ utterly ~ utterly ~ utterly~
The recipe..............adapted form Vogue Entertaining and Travel with some necessary tweaks.......
The dough for these churros are very like the dough for cream puffs or eclairs. The only difference being they are fried not baked and are sweeter. They are also denser inside and not hollow like a cream puff would be.
And did I say they were delicious? ~ utterly ~
1 cup (4 oz) plain flour 1 cup (4 oz) self raising flour 11/2 cup sugar Or less Or much less
2 cups water a knob of butter 1 whole egg + 2 egg yolks
cinnamon lots of cooking oil
Mix 1/2 cup of the sugar with a pinch of cinnamon in a plate and keep aside for later.
Sift both flours together and put aside.
Put the water and 1 cup of the sugar and the knob of butter in a large heavy based pan and bring to a gentle simmer stirring until the sugar dissolves.
Once the sugar has dissolved and the small bubbles appear in the syrup pour both flours in. Stir immediately and vigorously until it becomes a smooth and quite stiff paste and the dough leaves the sides of the pan. Almost.
If it appears not too smooth, don't worry. Just throw it into the mixer bowl and turn on the machine with the paddle attachment and let it do the work for you for about 15 to 20 seconds.
(Transfer the dough to a bowl of an electric mixer and using the paddle attachment turn on the mixer.) While the mixer is working throw in an egg yolk and beat until the egg yolk is well beaten in.
Put in the whole egg next and continue to beat. If you find the mixture a little too stiff still add in the other yolk as well and beat well. By this time the mixture should be firm and not too soft but not too stiff either otherwise it will be difficult to squeeze out the dough through the nozzle.
Prepare a piping bag with a 10mm star nozzle if you wish of a plain nozzle if you prefer. Fill it up with half the mixture.
Heat up a medium pan with oil enough to deep fry the churros. Heat up the oil until a piece of bread browns in 10 seconds.
Have a small knife ready near the stove. Pipe the paste directly into the oil as long or as short as you like them to be. Mine were about 10 cm in length and using the knife cut the pastry off from the nozzle.
Do a few at a time depending on how large or small your pan is. Fry them for about 2 minutes turning so they get evenly brown all over. Finish off the rest of the dough. Drain on kitchen paper and toss teh fried churros in the cinnamon sugar.
Serve with a chocolate dip or a hot chocolate drink. Utterly delicious.
The hot chocolate drink...........from Chocolate Cooking by David Schwartz...
6 oz plain chocolate, broken into pieces 6 fluid oz hot water 1/4 pint (450 ml) milk
Thicker than hot chocolate, this beverage in Spain is served with churros for breakfast.
In a saucepan, melt the chocolate with the hot water, whisking until teh mixture thickens. Heat the milk in another pan. Divide the melted cocolate between 4 hot mugs and, without stirring, fill each with hot milk. Serve immediately.
