thick heads

just had the 'class' dinner with beejuan, jia en, yiyan, tiffany, nadz and yihui. hmm haven't met some of them for so long! we had dinner at fisherios, where i tried a supposedly intense beer-battered fish. then we had dessert at tong shui cafe, along liang seah street. oh and the just-returned-from-japan beejuan had lots of chocolates (and i plundered the box of royce 80% and 90% chocolates from her). lovely lovely.

choosey

baking bread requires a lot of advance planning, more so if you only have a small oven that bakes one loaf at a time, and if you have to make many loaves. this is my schedule to make just three loaves. i've also decided to make the white wheat bread recipe from the american book my standard weekend bread recipe. that is, if i ever feel i need simple white bread to eat over the week, i'll use that recipe.
also, i've begun to trust the mixer to do the kneading. and i wanted to see if a sticky dough can eventually be tamed into a smooth ball without extra kneading. you can see the difference: in the first photo is the dough just after it's been kneaded. i did away with turning it out and shaping it into a ball. instead, i left it to rest and turned it out twice, at half-hour intervals, to fold. what i got after one fold you can see in the second photo. a good ball of dough with a smooth surface that doesn't stick or tear easily.
divided the dough into three after the second folding. i wanted to practise shaping and scoring the loaves. from this point, the schedule begins its work: to preshape and shape the first loaf, to continue degassing the other loaves as they're still waiting to be preshaped.
the first loaf was shaped into a ball (or boule in french). i wanted to score it with a big square. the problem was, i left it to prove and forgot to mist the cloth covering it, which resulted in the dough's surface drying out a bit. i think this got in the way of allowing the dough to expand fully.
the second loaf was shaped into a bâtarde. i followed hamelman's method for the shaping, and was pleased with the result. scored it with a big central diagonal slash, and two smaller ones by the sides. this loaf i made sure i misted as it proved, and already you can see the larger loaf volume.
like the first, i shaped the third loaf into a boule too, but i wanted to try scoring it with a pair of scissors. i made six cuts that didn't look very nice. next time, i'll try just four, and anchor one tip of the scissors at the centre of the loaf. still, it looks like a flower, just that the petals on one side are drooping.
four hours after i started at 10pm, the three loaves were finally finished. haha i've always wanted to take a photo like this: many loaves of freshly-baked bread, in different shapes and sizes, just randomly assembled together on the table. even better, maybe in a bread basket.
i think the result was consistent with what i had last week: soft, moist crumb with numerous small air spaces, and the occasional bigger voids. i also realised that unlike breads i made from other doughs, this one seemed to hold on to it's moisture better; the crumb remains moistly soft even after i leave it exposed for an hour or two - another reason for permanently making this my sunday bread. again, eat with good bought jam for a good breakfast.

hi, evening

sometimes life is just full of funny twists; i happened to find ms soh (my sec1 form teacher) in a 2005 MJC yearbook! today i saw the national day jets fly by and create smoke trails as i was walking to paradiz centre. dinner was with 姐姐 at tao's. then we went to the arcade to play games like bishi bashi and puzzle bubble. i am reminded of how i always thought the little dinosuars in puzzle bubble were so cute. and then we played the shooting game that weizhen was so good at.

the teddy bear has a name now!
her name is henrietta georgette. although she has a little sewing defect on her foot, i'm not going to bring her for an exchange, because if i do, she'll be unwanted by everyone else.

chocolate strawberry pavlova

a pavlova is not complicating: it's simply a baked meringue base topped with cream and fruit. of course, it's your call when it comes to flavouring the meringue, choosing the cream and fruit to use. this is my adaptation of nigella's chocolate raspberry pavlova, because i just don't get raspberries at ntuc. this was also easy to make; the night before you want to serve it, bake the meringue before going to sleep, leave it to cool in the oven overnight, and the next day you can assemble the pav in less than an hour.
this starts off easily enough. sugar, egg whites, cocoa. i didn't use the vinegar stipulated in the recipe, because i didn't have it. i think it's just to help stabilise the foam when you whip the egg whites.
used my electric mixer to whip up the meringue. i think it would be crazy to manually whip it with a hand whisk - i've tried whipping one egg white. this is three, and to whip three by hand is to stand a few steps away from madness.
folding in the cocoa. as you can see, chocolate always prevails.
then i piled the chocolate meringue onto a baking sheet, smoothed it into a disc, and baked it in a low oven. this makes the meringue slowly dry out to give a crispy crackliness. but you don't want it to dry out completely; the centre must still have the squidginess of marshmallow.
ok so i baked the meringue last night. this morning i assembled the pav. inverted the meringue disc onto a serving plate. i love how the pale crust cracks randomly to reveal the darker, softer interior.
strawberries and whipped cream. ntuc doesn't sell double cream, so i used whipping cream, which just doesn't have that much-needed fatness in taste. again, i used my electric mixer to whip the cream, though doing this by hand wouldn't kill. (but i hesitate to exercise my arm early in the morning. besides, my electric mixer was still out in the kitchen from last night.) if you want, you can make other types of cream, like chantilly cream, to use as the topping.
voila! a pretty pavlova. chocolate meringue base, piled on with whipped cream, studded with strawberries. truly, forever summer.

gatorade generator

ok, before anything else, the caramel croissant pudding from last week:
croissants roughly torn up and arranged in the baking dish. you really don't need top-quality croissants here. in fact, it would be a waste to use those. just some cheap, or even stale, ones would do.
this is the caramel i cooked. definitely less burnt than the last time.
whisking in the cream-milk mixture, followed by the eggs to make the custard. you can really see the frothing up of the caramel as you beat in the cream/milk. sometimes i really love working with eggs, feeling the rich velvety smoothness of the custards they produce.
soaking the croissants in the custard. usually we do this by leaving it to lie around for a good 45 minutes, but this is nigella express: just use the back of a spoon/fork to press on the croissants to make them absorb up some custard, then immediately pop it in the oven.
a very nice caramel croissant pudding. the caramel was probably just right. no bitter taste this time. and the butter in the croissants just brings this pudding to another sublime realm. very filling too.

ok. about this week. i completely became a joke at the dip test for a vehicle. but it was my first time doing it! thank goodness i didn't walk into the pool, otherwise it'll be a level-up on my dumbness.

the oreo cheesecake was indeed not bad! just that it was two days old, not receiving good, cold refrigeration, and was looking/smelling a bit, well, old.

there was a race in which i think i ran too fast and hurt my knees. then came the mother-long day and night walks in the hills of the faraway. though it was painful (because of the knees) and disgusting (think sliding down a vertical muddy slope), upon reaching the peaks of the hills there was an absolutely beautiful view of everything down below. and at the night walk, i broke a tree trunk while holding on to it. (i believe the trunk was too thin, not that i was too heavy.) i saw a firefly too!

on thursday morning i started my 24-hour guard duty. can't say it was terribly tiring. in fact, it was quite fun. i got to play rubik's cube, fight with kokchong over the radio, strut over to the canteen for snacks, listen to symphony 92.4 and identify the instruments, sit and be driven around in a tank, eat three pop doh donuts, and play with mosquito coils as though they were sparklers. i also caught a chinese version of joey yung's 痛爱 on the radio.

and today i had an injection by weijie =/

right now, i'm baking the meringue base for a chocolate strawberry pavlova (adapted from nigella's chocolate raspberry pavlova in forever summer), and enjoying the chocolatey smells emanating from the oven. all i have to do tomorrow is whip and dollop on the cream and top with the strawberries.

it was a gloomy day, what with the bleak skies and gently mocking rains. but it ended off quite nicely: i've got a big teddy bear now to fight any gloomy day. (haven't named her yet.)

爱, 不会不告而别

i think i've been eating non-stop since lunchtime. first, i spent a lot at dempsey for brunch; had poached eggs with asparagus, rocket and béarnaise sauce, and a banana-apricot smoothie. i tried an arugula from weiyang's plate, along with some truffle fries. (omg how cool is that?) on top of that, we had loads of bread from jia en's bread basket. then i bought a brioche à tête roll and a herby garlic focaccia from a rustic place that had slices of bread for sampling. needless to say, i had quite a bit of their crumble-topped chocolate-swirl bread.

next, we went to jia en's house because there was a sudden craving for nigella's caramel croissant pudding. and that i made with quite some success. much better than the caramel wholemeal bread pudding: i didn't burn the caramel to utter bitterness. photos to come soon.

oh i discovered (from how to eat) that nigella's way of separating eggs can make things so much faster: just catch the egg in your hand and let the white flow through your fingers. that probably works very well for fresh eggs, whose yolks tend not to break.

i'm also building up a store of whites in my freezer, gearing up to make a meringue pie, pavlova, or some angel food cake!

full house

omg i was cooped up all day at home with nothing to do, to the point that i didn't even realise it had rained, until i went out for dinner. today i walked round and round tiong bahru plaza looking at all the food places. can you believe that donut factory is opening at the plaza? please bring in krispy kremes! had burger king for dinner because it's been so long since i ate there. and i never recalled that there was a comics connection in the plaza.

after walking round for a long time, the sky was still bright. so i started making bread at 7pm.

this white wheat bread's recipe comes from the american book. this time i combined methods from the CIA, hamelman and bertinet. it was my practise for shaping good, round loaves.
this is the dough. i used my mixer to do the initial mixing, but after a while, i flipped it out onto the table and manually worked it.
i followed hamelman's instructions for folding the dough. this was done twice in the dough's whole fermentation process.
divided and preshaped the dough into two big balls. hamelman says we must be careful not to incorporate raw flour, or else it'll result in grey streaks in the baked bread.
the dough is given a final shaping and left to proof. this time i did the proofing on parchment paper. because i wanted to slide the loaves directly onto my 'baking stone'.
i still failed at scoring a nice checkered pattern. i think next time i'll just make a big cross. or three slashes.
i slid the loaves directly onto the 'baking stone' because i wanted to see if i could induce a very big oven spring. i suppose tonight's loaves rose quite well.
ok so baking the bread took three hours in all. i love the roundness of this white bread loaf. the only problem i had was that i couldn't peel the parchment paper off properly; think it needs to be floured first.
nope, i can't wait for breakfast. this is for supper: freshly-baked bread with some good jam. hmm, the crumb of the bread was not open and airy, but it was soft like nothing i've ever made, like gardenia bread. maybe it's got to do with the fact that i handled the dough tonight much less, much gentler than last time.

i shall try hamelman's methods for other shapes of bread.

始终害怕

hello, i've been busy since morning making a cheesecake! if you remember, i tried making nigella's london cheesecake last time. it was an utter disaster. but today i used the right cheese, and without having to unmould and slice the cake, i can already tell it's gonna be good.
a voluminous load of cream cheese mixture. well, today, i wasn't making a london cheesecake, but adapting the recipe to make an oreo one. so i omitted the sour cream topping as well.
folding powdered oreos into the cheese mixture; i was trying to create a marbled effect. i had no idea that they would tint the batter so deeply brown. next time i'll process the oreos to crumbs, not powder.
poured the somewhat marbled cheese mixture into the springform pan lined with an oreo crust at the base. this pan's really water-tight, so i didn't even bother wrapping it with foil.
you can see my lame-ass attempt at trying to decorate the top of the cheesecake with six oreos. incidentally, six happens to be a very important number in geometry. (i don't know why.) then i placed the pan into another baking dish, filled with some hot water. this is called a water bath, or a bain marie.

i think i understand why a bain marie is used now. it's for the slow baking of eggs-rich stuff with gentle heating: this cheesecake had seven yolks and four whites; the rich truffle mud cake had six eggs. the idea is not to let the eggs in the batter get overcooked in a short time. baking slowly with gentle heating ensures a smooth texture. for this reason, baked custards done in water baths. (a cheesecake is essentially a baked custard, replacing the usual cream or milk with cream cheese to achieve a creamy texture.)
you can see the subtle difference in the two photos above. the first is when the batter is still wet, and the second is when the eggs have been cooked, giving the cheesecake a set structure.
i think i might have just baked it a little too long. the top surface appears to have hardened a little too much; it's sprawled with fine cracks if you look close enough, like the signs of ageing on a woman's face.

ok, this cake is for the july birthdays, and it's an oreo cheesecake because PC wanted it >.< right now i'm waiting for it to cool completely before i refrigerate it. the problem is, i don't dare to unmould it in case i can't slip it back into the springform for transporting tomorrow. so i have to live without a photo of the cake unmoulded and/or sliced.

i think any basic cheesecake recipe can be easily adapted to make an oreo cheesecake. so, this should be aptly called 'london oreo cheesecake'. next time i'll try nigella's new york cheesecake, then a new york oreo cheesecake. it's like how sourdoughs take on the name of the place they are made.