rushing for lost time

i tried nigella's essential white loaf again, this time using the potato water that i stored.
the dough was not very sticky, just holding firmly onto itself. maybe it's the good waitrose flour i'm using. i put it into the refrigerator overnight, and an air bubble rose through the dough.
after the yada-yada-rising-punching-shaping, i got a dough that was surprisingly very easy to score. the surface never dragged along with the blade, but just split apart willlingly.
i love the way the loaf turned out. the crust was even better than the sourdough ones; it's so crackly. maybe it's the effect of the potato water. and the inside was very soft too.

weijie came over and we made the lemon-syrup loaf cake, which i remembered sonya telling me was nice.
lemons zested and squeezed dry. there were two components for the cake, the lemon-zested batter, and the lemon juice syrup. (the cake batter was very lickable.)
pouring the syrup onto the baked cake, letting it seep through the poked holes to drench the cake.
makes eight to ten slices, but feeds one of me.

two nights ago i saw the moon; it was a faint sliver of a crescent. so thin, so sharp. i started eating the chocolate crunches that seibu bought from disneyland, but my ghirardellis melted slightly in my cupboard, and then my world crumbled apart slightly. practised braiding blu-tac like challah dough.

i'm feeling so undecisive now. i want to watch the fireworks, but i still have to make egg tarts for tomorrow. and sieve icing sugar in the process.

replicating windows

just came back from the primary school class gathering. haven't seen jean ai since p6, i think. and then i just realised that the bbq wasn't recent like i thought, but, in fact, three years ago. this time, two discussion topics only: army for males, and university for females.

boxing day

yesterday everyone came over for dinner, but i forgot to give out the millionaire's shortbreads.
the christmas log cake. oops some decorations slipped off. this cake was super rich, super chocolatey. and the grapes were full of alcohol.
exchanging christmas presents, with seibu in the computer.

today i went to esplanade library, and bumped into weeleong and yiheng.

merry christmas

i sneaked a slice...
the only part i didn't like was the (unsweetened) chocolate, which was way too bitter. but the caramel layer has enough condensed milk in it to mask the blackness of the chocolate. just don't eat the chocolate layer by itself.
i sliced the bars, but had quite a hard time sawing at the hard chocolate layer. all wrapped up nicely for giving out as door gifts, or - if in excess - take-home gifts.

marry christmas

this is for weiyang, yiyan, beejuan and jia en when they come tomorrow. it's a recipe from nigella, but i think she got it from someone else. it's called roxanne's millionaire's shortbread.

millionaire's shortbread is a three-layered sweet treat. the base is the shortbread biscuit, and sandwiched between that and the top layer of chocolate is a layer of caramel. so i don't really know what makes it roxanne's. maybe it's the shortcut ingredient (condensed milk) used in the caramel layer.

i think it is quite fun, and soothing, to take part in a long drawn-out process of baking something (think sourdough), and this should have been fun. but i was rushing through the whole process, using the fan to cool mixtures rather than letting cool naturally. still, i like what i have made.
the base layer is the shortbread. cut the butter into the mixture of flour and sugar. press the sandy mixture into the base of the tin and prick with a fork, then bake and cool.
next is the caramel layer. this was easy enough, but quite scary. easy because you just put butter, condensed milk and golden syrup into a pan and heat to combine. scary because the mixture gets fantastically hot and bubbles viscously, threatening to spurt any moment. pour it onto the cooled shortbread and leave to set.
the final layer is the chocolate. just melt plain chocolate and pour it over the caramel mixture. of course, i licked the scraped bowl (and found that the chocolate i used was absolutely bitter, like 99% cocoa). oh well, i like the glassy look of the well-tempered chocolate.
my final touch: christmas m&ms that yihui gave to me all the way last year! i finally waited long enough for this time of the year to use these christmas coloured m&ms. then again, it was only a small portion used for this sprinkling.
i chilled it in the refrigerator after the chocolate cooled down. then i cut it into big blocks. but upon discovering the caramel layer to be still quite liquid, i stopped, though you can still see the three distinct layers. maybe if i'm feeling more calm tomorrow i'll slice it up more, put them nicely on a serving plate.

undecided crowds

i just don't know why i get so mortally pissed so easily these few days. i have green tea stains on my pants, and i have zero space in the refrigerator right now; i still need to squeeze in a tray bake of millionaire's shortbread and my nigella sourdough starter.

刻不容缓, eat a big portion of bread and butter pudding.
the original recipe was from nigella, who got it from her grandmother. it was supposed to be a ginger-jam bread and butter pudding, but i have substituted so many things that i can't quite call it the same thing anymore. (and to call it nigella's grandmother's ginger-jam bread and butter pudding would seem a bit offensive to nigella's grandmother...)

instead of ginger jam, i used blackcurrant jam; instead of sultanas, i used raisins; instead of brown bread, i used my sourdough bread; and i completely reversed the milk-cream ratio. so i think it would be much more accurate to call it 'blackcurrant jam sourdough bread and butter pudding'.

hob villa

christmas is coming again! yesterday i was on a train and there was a baby. everyone takes to a baby; babies are never alone. i just discovered a good christmas present for me next year would the dvds of nigella's cooking shows. (because i can't bloody find the torrents.)

m&m

made mudslide cookies and macaroons today.

the mudslide cookie recipe came from the american book, and are so named because the batter for the cookies is very soft, almost pourable.
it involves a lot of chocolate. it's been a really long time since i took out the double boiler to melt chocolate.
the recipe also uses a phenomenal amount of sugar and eggs. whisked from yellow to thick and white. then the chocolate is blended in, and everything turns brown.
as promised, the batter was very wet, but not fluid. just sticky and viscous.
the cookies came out looking nothing like the photos in the book =( they were supposed to look smooth and cracked on the surface, but mine were all bubbly. they were also very cakey, and tended to break. this whole plate of cookies were the rejects.
only the last two cookies had some semblance of the ones in the book.

then i made macaroons, using a recipe i jotted down from nigella's how to eat. of course, i didn't expect them to turn out like the bought ones. but these came out looking like the most un-macaroonish macaroons...
the macaroon dough. used a lot of sugar and ground almonds in this. now, in retrospect, i think the ground almonds were too wasted. the macaroons spread a lot, both outside and inside the oven.
this looks like a butt. and they were all so very sweet, very grainy. absolutely not like macaroons. but i'll try the recipe again; think i'm too flustered today.

打转

i think i'm getting better with the sourdough. this time, i followed exactly nigella's method, not going through with dividing the dough. turns out, my oven can take a loaf of that size.
the dough kneaded in the machine. it's still on the sticky side, but i'm getting used to it. and somehow there seems to be a pattern on the surface of this dough, like a tree, or a dancing girl.
i somehow managed to turn the dough out of the bowl and shape it into a rough ball, placed it in an oiled bowl, and let it rise until very big. i think the oil helps keep the surface of the dough from sticking.
though nigella instructs you to punch the dough down, my american book says it's too vigorous for most doughs. but since i'm following nigella, i did what i was told, and punched the dough down. you can see one bulb of air trying to escape, but the thin layer of skin just trapped it in.
this is the proving stage. i was scared that the dough would puff beyond the sheet, but it was just right.
scattered cornmeal on top and made checkered scoring. i discovered the trick to make checkered scoring look good: instead of scoring perpendicularly, skew the scoring lines a bit to form diamonds, not squares. but it isn't easy to actually score that way, because somehow i have a tendency to cut perpendicularly still.
the dough continued to expand sideways, but luckily after a while it began growing upwards, pulling the sides inwards so that it wouldn't touch the sides of the baking sheet. this came out big and moist inside. looking better than before. i hope the sourdough continues to improve.
thin-sliced toast with butter. i love how the butter percolates through the holes in the toast.

modifying recipes

if you haven't cleaned your keyboard in years, it's probably time to do so. my keyboard was finally stripped today, and just look at the dirt in there...
and that's only one key pried out. imagine all the keys pried out. *gasp*
so now my keyboard is noticeably whiter than before. no more grime and dirt.

cooked dinner for everyone while 奶奶 was around for mahjong. made meatballs again, but this time all-pork, because 奶奶 doesn't eat beef.
mashing the meatball ingredients. (now) i rather like the feeling of squishing my fingers through stuff to shape them into smaller pieces, and see the fishcakes below. with all-pork, the meatballs seemed to not hold together as well, compared to pork-beef.
the shortcut/cheating ingredient of the day was stromboli pasta sauce, which i felt, after eating, wasn't a very good choice. but heck, it was on sale. i went through the process of adding milk, diluting it, and boiling to thicken it again, just so that i could make myself feel that i put in more effort into the (making of the) tomato sauce instead of just buying it ready-made and on sale.

now, the double haddock fishcakes. adapted from nigella's recipe in feast, i dub mine 'nondescript-fishcakes'. this is because i don't know what haddocks look like, and where to get them, and so went instead to buy some cheap frozen nondescript fillets that i knew to be nice when cooked.
and these are the fillets, thawed and baked (and stealthily eaten). forked them into fish flakes.
and then mashing the fish with the other fishcake ingredients.
setting up the assembly line to mould the fishcakes, dredge them in ritz cracker crumbs, and lay them out for baking.
baked fishcakes. these were quite nice, a whole lot healthier than the salmon fishcakes - no added butter, oil, no frying. but they turned the ritz crumbs rather soggy. and the mashed potato-to-fish ratio was too high for my liking.
dinner. i cooked the rice in too much water.