four-bake

scones:

woke up at 7am and immediate started baking. after many items to serve up freshly-baked breakfast, i finally got my timing right; the scones came out exactly at breakfast time.
ok fine, i didn't specially make something for fathers' day, but merely used the frozen dough made two weeks ago. still, the scones were nice.

brownies and blondies:

i made these for the june birthdays in the bunk. they were all nigella recipes, and quite successful too. this was also my chance to test if cadbury chocolate can be used for baking. i'm glad to find that the dark chocolate turned out beautiful in the brownies, so i'll never have to buy expensive baking bars anymore. the white chocolate, however, seized/separated when i was melting it with the butter. i still don't know what caused it yet - too hot, moisture?
from batter to brownie: these is the plain brownie into which i've stirred walnuts. i tried the original recipe two months ago and failed to bake it completely. this time i reduced the recipe to one-third, and managed to get very chewy brownies.
the batter for the cream cheese brownies was a little scant. i didn't have enough batter to make the brownie-cheese-brownie layers, so i just stirred everything together. these turned out very moist, very nice, but the cream cheese taste was too subtle. i need that salty sourness to cut through but it didn't.
blondie: the white version of brownie. to be honest, i really hate white chocolate; it's just so not chocolate. in a very bree way, you can by all means use white chocolate in certain dishes, but don't pretend you're using chocolate.

because of the seized/separated chocolate, i used my mixer to beat the batter into form. stirred in some damn expensive macadamia nuts. quoting nigella, blonde brownies can never have the depth and intensity of their darker sisters... very. blonde. of. them.
so, i sliced the brownies and blondies and stacked them. so pretty right! the idea is to stick many candles on them, set them gloriously alight, and celebrate the birthdays.

思: thought, 甜(田)在心上