no talking keep shopping

made the banana cream pie from the american book again with weijie. this time, we did a proper blind bake ie. using parchment and rice to weigh the dough down. cooked a pastry cream again, but this one was like condensed milk, as someone pointed out. topped the pie with a little whipped cream for more fatty goodness.
then we made some buttermilk corn muffins, recipe from the desperate housewives cookbook. i bought this box of cornmeal from cold storage (can't be found at ntuc), and was very excited to use it. however, the muffins turned out big and, unfortunately, not so tasty. think they have to coupled with jam/butter/chilli for taste. (and i think the last photo looks like muffin-land, like teletubby-land.)

perhaps the best bake of the day was the chocolate guinness cake from nigella's feast. this was an interesting way of making cake batter; instead of mixing ingredients in the mixer, the stuff are gradually added together in a simmering pan of guinness. believe me when i say the batter is dangerously eatable - it's almost like a drinkable sauce! and when you send the batter into the oven, you just keep getting wafts of either alcoholic smells or seductively dark chocolate scents. and better yet is the cream cheese icing. however, i didn't manage to whip it to spreading consistency, so it flowed over the sides, but that made a cute presentation too. it was also like the foamy top of a glass of guinness, as nigella described.

made the sunshine cookies from the betty crocker cookie book, with wingtai helping me cut out the cookies. these came out of the oven very soft and tender, but upon cooling would harden into crunchy cookies. nice. then we made chocolate cookies from my martha book. indeed, today was a debut for nigella's feast and my martha book.

then we made an apple pie, from the american book again. today's pie dough was very well done. in fact, i think it came out of a mistake: while adding water to the dough, i ended up folding/kneading it a lot to get it to come together. i think this sort of contributed to some considerable amount of lamination, which is why if you look closely on the cut-outs, you can see some layers, much like puff pastry when it is baked. i really love the crust.

and just for breakfast, i made the molasses oatmeal loaf from linda collister's quick breads. this was a really dense loaf.

旁人話我看起你居然揀你
別理世間這麼勢利　明日變成戀愛傳奇
覓個辦法做個預算每分每刻每日都於一起
但是你我都欠見地　情人就似好的知己
但若你有別的女子也許我都永不會知從何管起
無時候陪你　這一生不夠十個星期真可交給你
但我有餘下半日　仍是愛著你
(from 天之驕女)
now i'll never have to bang the icebox to get the ice cubes to fall out.