Home-Cooked: Udon Noodle Soup (Hoto-Noodle Inspired)

Hi there. Wow. Yet another few months have passed by just like that! I'm just in a semi-tired happy state now after being up all night last night on a relatively decent night shift. My body just is not made for shift work. But at least it's just a temporary 6 week rotation that I am going through. After that, back to comparatively regular programming hours.

The one thing that I don't mind about shift work though is the free time during unexpected hours. For example, yesterday my shift only started at 10pm so I had pretty much the entire day before the trepidation and dread set in around 7pm/dinner time. ;p Still quite decent because the morning and afternoon I was able to do a whole bunch of things. For example, cooking this Hoto-Noodle Inspired dish.

I was totally inspired to cook this after watching an episode of the awesome Cooking With Dog, a fantastic youtube channel to learn how to cook Japanese cuisine, hosted by this really cute poodle and 'his assistant' who looks like a typical Japanese homemaker with rad cooking skills! :D The explanations are very easy to follow and he/it explains it in such a step-by-step manner you can totally cook while playing this video.

I love how this dish is totally vegetarian and you can pretty much use this technique to make an easy soup stock to go with noodles if you're hungry at night. There was one time after a late night shift at 1am when I just wanted some noodles but didn't know quite how to make a decent noodle broth. Of course, it would be much faster and easier if you actually had dashi stock on hand in the fridge which seems like something Japanese families might do if they cook Japanese dishes on a daily basis. Something to consider! :)

Just a bit of background to this Hoto-Noodle dish:

- it's basically Hoto noodles + vegetables + miso soup
- the noodles don't need to be parboiled; they are boiled raw along with the other ingredients
- according to Wiki (our best friend after Google), the best taste is thought to be brought out by boiling pumpkin in the miso soup! So this would be a key ingredient
- Hoto is like a variant of your typical Udon (flatter and wider it seems, almost like the Chinese Ban Mian).

Ok, so here goes:




Udon Soup Noodles (Hoto noodles-inspired)

(I would say this is good enough for 2 really hungry Asian peeps who want to use the dish as the main course for the meal. Or good for 3 moderately hungry Asian peeps who want to use the dish more as a side dish to accompany their main course)

Ingredients: (the amount of the vegetables is really up to you! I just sort of put in whatever I thought I would eat :))

For the noodles and broth:

- 6 oz of udon noodles
- 40 g of Niboshi (dried baby sardines)(i bought mine from Meidiya) (I took this to be the net weight after de-gutting/beheading them)
- 4g of Kombu Seaweed
- 1 tbsp of Miso (or to taste)
- 900ml or 3.8 cups of water

For the vegetables:

- 1 carrot
- 150 g of Kabocha squash (or any type of sweet squash)
- 1 oz of leafy green vegetable (I ended up using Malaysian spinach because it happened to be much cheaper than the Japanese air-flown Komatsuna spinach) ;p
- 1 oz of mushrooms - Shimeji/Maitake recommended but I just used sliced button mushrooms
- 50g of cabbage
- 1 stalk of leek
- 1/2 a block of Atsu-age (fried tofu)

If you want to be more faithful to the dish, here are the ingredients they had recommended:
- 1 daikon radish
- 2 oz of Komastuna Spinach
- 1/2 Abura-age (thin deep fried tofu)

Steps:

To prepare the broth:

1. Remove the head and stomach of the Niboshi. This helps to reduce the bitterness that you get from boiling it in the soup.

I just sort of approximated the amount of head/gut to remove by watching the video. I might not have removed enough of the head/gut because immediately after boiling, my stock did have a definite bitterness to it. But at the end with all the vegetables and the addition of miso, I couldn't taste it at all. So it's worth to wait till the end too for the final flavour. :)

2. Pour the water into a cooking pot and put in the Niboshi and your kombu seaweed. Leave the niboshi and kombu seaweed in to soak for about 30min.

3. Heat the water till a boil on medium low heat. When it begins to boil, remove the foam that appears on the surface with a mesh strainer.

4. Simmer dashi stock for 4-5minutes

5. Remove the kombu seaweed (cut it up into tiny strips to be used later as one of the veggie ingredients)

6. Strain the stock into another cooking pot with a mesh strainer to remove the sardines.

To prepare the veggies:

1. Slice your carrots into quarter-moons (they do look prettier!)

2. Remove excess oil from the Atsuage with a paper towel. Slice into 1-2cm strips.

3. Remove the extreme end of stem of your spinach/whatever green leafy veggie you have. Cut into 1.5 inch pieces.

4. Slice the leeks diagonally into 1-2cm thick slices.

5. Slice your kabocha pumkin into 1.5 inch pieces (this always requires an insane amount of energy and a really sharp knife)

6. Cut the cabbge into 1.5 inch pieces.

To cook the dish:

Add the carrots, atsuage, mushrooms, and kombu into the stock.

Heat up the soup to a boil. Remove any foam that forms.

Reduce the heat to low and allow to simmer for 4-5 minutes.

Add in the kabocha. Submerge it into the soup. Bring to a boil.
Then reduce heat to low and simmer for 4-5 minutes.

Add in the leek, and the rest of the vegetables.

Simmer for 2 more minutes.

Ladle the dashi stock into a bowl to loosen up your miso. Then put the miso into the soup and distribute evenly.

If you do actually have Hoto noodles, you're supposed to cook them along with the veggies so refer to the video to know when to put it in.

Cook udon noodles as instructed on your udon noodle package (mine was 6 minutes in 1 L of boiling water for one helping).

For my udon noodles, I actually cooked them separately then put the noodles into the hot veggie soup at the end.

--------------------------------------

ENJOYYYYY.

Seriously, it's actually an easy dish at the end of the day. I love how you can be creative with what you throw inside so that solves leftovers to a large extent. Plus, you definitely feel healthier after that. :) Cos it was all the good stuff.

Have been doing the occasional cooking whenever I have the morning/afternoon off due to weird work hours and there are so many recipes to share! :) Moaarrr soon. Promise.

xoxo

Home-Cooked: The All Time Fav - Banana Bread

One of my favorite things to bake would be BREAD. :) Granted, it often requires the longest waiting time because it usually involves proofing for an hour or two till it's doubled in size and so on... but the feeling of punching and kneading dough with your bare hands...very cathartic. That said, there are other bread recipes that don't require that sort of time/effort but can still give really yummy stuff such as BANANA BREAD. I like to throw in blueberries into the mix because they taste so good together! One time I was a little more ambitious and added strawberries into the mix but then I realized that unless you are gonna eat all of the bread up on the same day or the next day latest, it gives a really moist (that turns soggy quickly) bread because of all the moisture from the strawberries. Blueberries + walnuts are a safe and delicious bet.

I usually try to get recipes that are on the healthier side with less sugar (once I see more than 1 cup of sugar involved which can't be cut down to a smaller portion I skip on to the next one) and more substitutes like applesauce. You can try THIS RECIPE over here for starters.







X)) Don't you just love the taste and colour of blueberries? They're probably my favorite berries to use in baking. Raspberries tend to be a little too tart and need the sweetness of say...lemon curd to go along with them. And for strawberries... well when they're sweet and juicy I just love to eat them as they are instead of baking them. It's a dream of mine to go berry picking one day! I would just have a field day picking, eating, snapping photos, maybe baking them into a pie after...So many dreams. <3  

Plus this recipe is a good one to start with because from here you can add in your own variations - Banana Oats Bread... Banana + Oats + Walnuts Bread... Banana + Chocolate + Walnuts Bread... MMM. 

Here are some of the Banana Breads I've tried (over the course of the past few months of course ;p):

1. Banana Walnut Oats Bread 

2. Banana Chocolate Bread 




It's highly possible that I might have eaten these last Banana + Chocolate ones too quickly or packed 'em up to give to someone hence there are no other photos ;p. But isn't the combination of banana and chocolate just irresistible? 

All ready to bake some banana bread now? Let me know if you've got some combinations for Banana bread (or any kind of bread for that matter) that you like and would recommend!  

More next time! 

xoxo

easy peasy summertime succotash

Yet another dish from The Kind Diet. This one's super duper easy to whip up and I couldn't find lima beans in the supermarket so I just bought some frozen Edamame beans (which I've been meaning to get for ages!) and used those instead. Edamame beans are just so tasty by themselves. I could easily eat a whole bowl for a snack. And apparently, it's one of the popular summertime snacks in Japan, commonly eaten in the hot summer evenings after work by Japanese, washed down with a glass of chilled beer. It was funny because I'd read about it in this book by Naori Moriyama ('Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat') just a few weeks ago, and a few nights back while walking past a random restaurant with a bar, I spotted three Japanese men dining al fresco, each with a bowl of edamame beans and glass of beer in hand. So it IS true.



Recipe for this dish can be found HERE. 

Fun fact - Succotash is a bean dish (usually with corn/lima beans/other shelled beans) that's a traditional Thanksgiving dish especially in New England and the Native Americans were apparently the first to come up with the dish. Looks like it'll be something to cook again next month along with pumpkin bread/pie. :D 

Once again, this was technically meant to be a vegan dish but at the moment it's only vegetarian because I ended using normal butter. ;p Not too keen on using the Earth Balance butter that I bought the other day after using it for the tofu cheesecake because normal butter just smells and tastes soooooo much better in my opinion. 

I've been checking out more vegan cookbooks and have just placed an order for Vegan Cooking for Carnivores by Roberto Martin. Though at the moment I'm not ready to make such a drastic shift in diet but I do like the idea of gradually increasing my repertoire of vegetarian/vegan dishes such that one day, maybe I'll find myself wholly capable of eating vegetarian (or vegan!) on a day-to-day basis. Who knows? But I definitely like the idea of doing something that's not only better for my health but with ripple effects on the environment. More to come soon. 

xoxo

Home-Cooked: Whole Wheat Pancakes

This is starting to become a little more of a food blog than anything else. :P But what can I say - nowadays the main highlights of my week happen to be the weekends when I get to bake/cook and leisurely/lovingly take some photos. This next two weeks is meant to be revision weeks for me but that also means (I hope!) a slightly more flexible schedule. First thing I did was plan out a bunch of meals that I want to make for myself from breakfasts/lunches/dinners to desserts. And since Friday was a public holiday, it was the perfect day to get started. :)) What better way to start off the day than with home-made pancakes? And since I've got a little health-conscious streak in me (I do! I really do!!), I decided to try making whole wheat ones at that.


This was my first time making pancakes and boy, it was NOT AS EASY as I'd envisioned! The main problem I had was flipping the pancakes. I'd totally forgotten about this step. But when faced with the bubbling pancake batter on the pan all those American diner scenes in movies that I'd watched before came rushing back into my mind and that's when I realized - oh yeah, this is the part when I give a fanciful flick of the wrist and send the pancake soaring into the air to land perfectly back on the pan on the opposite side. And next thing of course was the thought - DANG. I had to flip them with the spatula which was not easy either! They kept folding over in half instead of flipping right over entirely. After this experience, I've come to realize this fact of life:

The key to making pretty pancakes is to make SMALL ones using the biggest spatula you've got. >:)

Agreed? It's pretty common sense right? But took me my first batch of large wobbly pancakes to realize that.

Here was the first batch:


And then the second time round:

 
To tell you the truth, though the smaller pancakes look prettier to me, I still prefer the large ones. More traditional. And there's nothing like needing to use a knife to cut out sections of a huge pancake to slowly chew on and savor.

Whole Wheat Pancakes 
(Recipe adapted from Joy the Baker and Skinny Taste) (yeahhh I tried to make it a little more healthy ;p)
Ingredients:

-2 eggs
-1 cup of whole wheat flour
-1 cup of plain/all-purpose flour
-2 tablespoons sugar
-2 teaspoons baking powder
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 teaspoon salt
-2 cups buttermilk
-4 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
-½ teaspoon vanilla extract
-Oil or cooking spray (for cooking)
(I think I need to get myself some cooking spray. It's not ideal trying to wipe bits of butter onto the frying pan each time. But I didn't feel like using cooking oil since I thought it might mess a bit with the taste.)

#1: In a large bowl beat eggs. Add buttermilk, butter and vanilla and mix well. Then add your two types of flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix well until mostly smooth.

#2: Heat griddle or pan over medium heat. Add a teaspoon of oil to the pan or spray with cooking spray.

#3: Use a ladle to pour out batter onto the griddle. You can use 2 tablespoons or if you'd like really small ones like the ones I made the second time round, I sort of used only 1 tablespoon of batter each time.

#4: Cook on the first side until bubbles form across the surface and start to pop. Check occasionally to make sure the bottom is not overcooking by gently lifting up the sides. It also helps to loosen the pancake for the flipping part. Flip the pancake over with a spatula and cook until golden brown.

This batter makes quite a lot of pancakes! I'd say if you've only got 2-3 people with Asian appetites ;p it's better to halve the batter. If you have unfinished batter just keep it refrigerated for the next day.

For the blueberry syrup, I decided to make use of the maple syrup that I'd brought back all the way from Montreal those months ago. Finally! I've been meaning to check out maple syrup recipes but never quite got around to doing so. This was the perfect opportunity.

Blueberry-Maple Syrup

Ingredients:
-1 cup of blueberries
-1/2 cup of Maple Syrup
-1 tsp of cornstarch
-1 tsp of lemon juice

 #1: In small saucepan, bring blueberries and maple syrup to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until berries break up, about 5 minutes.

#2 : Stir in the lemon juice and corn starch to let it thicken slightly.
And you're done! :)


Kinda happy with the way these turned out. :) Seriously, whenever something I cook/bake turns out edible I'm still pleasantly surprised deep down inside. Cheap thrill, I know, but I like feeling happy about the stuff I cook! I'm thinking of trying out waffles next...Or what else is a typical breakfast/brunch dish? 
xoxo

Home-cooked: Japanese Milk Bread

One of the best things I've learnt to bake over the past couple of months (of rather zealous weekend baking stints if I might say so myself) is this - Japanese milk bread! :) The best thing about this, apart from the fact that it's incredibly light, fluffy, and browns beautifully on the outside, is that the variations to this basic bread are endless. I baked this plain/basic version about two weeks back and since then I've already attempted a couple of variations - adding raisins to them, making a Matcha and Azuki Swirl pattern, and just today, I did a walnut and raisin braided version which tastes even better that the raisin one alone. :) And it's just the beginning. I've already seen recipes for Custard fillings and there are probably tons more out there that I've yet to discover or think up for myself.

The secret to this Japanese Milk Bread lies in what's known as the Tang Zhong Method, something which I've only recently learnt about as well. It's something that has been written about by a Japanese author, Yvonne C., in her book, 65°C 汤种面包 (or 65°C Tang Zhong Bread), and is basically a Water-Roux (or starchy paste that is formed from milk/water and flour) that is the secret ingredient to making soft and fluffy bread. (Read more about it here !) I've always thought that Japanese bread (or Asian bread for that matter, and by that I guess I'm just thinking of breads that are sold in local bakeries) had a very soft, fluffy, slightly sweet taste to it and have always wondered why it's so different from the Western forms. So I suppose this is the first secret ingredient. :)


This is how my very first bread loaf looked like. I know it's somewhat strange since the individual loaves are in an elliptical form, but this is me, not realizing that all I had to do was shape them into round balls to place in the pan to get the typical bread loaf appearance. ;p The things we learn every day. 

Japanese Milk Bread 
Recipe adapted from Noshings (adapted in my own words) 
(check out her site because it's chock-a-block full of recipes and delicious looking goodies!! I've gotten inspiration for so many recipes that I want to try out)

Ingredients: 
For Tangzhong mixture,
- 1/3 cup flour (all purpose/bread flour)
- 1 cup milk

- 1/2 cup warm milk
- 2 tsp. yeast
- 3 Tbs. sugar
- 2 and 3/4 cup flour (all purpose/bread flour)
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 Tbs. powdered milk 
- 2 Tbs. softened butter 


1. To make the Tang zhong mixture, whisk together 1/3 cup of flour in a saucepan and heat the mixture over medium heat until it thickens (don't bring it to a full boil!). Whisk the mixture while it's being heated up and after a few minutes, almost magically, it'll start to thicken until it resembles a white paste. When that happens, switch off the heat, and let your Tang Zhong mixture cool by the side.



Here's what it more or less looks like when the Tang Zhong mixture is done! 
 


2. In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup of warm milk, 2 tsp of yeast and 3 Tbs of sugar (I used normal white caster sugar). Whisk it together and set it aside for a few minutes to let the yeast start.

(One thing I'd recommend you do is wait until you see bubbles forming on the surface of the yeast mixture, indicating that the yeast is working! Today I ended up having a batch of dough that didn't rise probably because something had happened to the yeast. :( I can only assume it was because the milk I had added in was too hot and had killed off the yeast inadvertently but I could've saved a whole batch of dough if I had only waited a little longer to confirm that the yeast mixture was bubbling and hence working before mixing it into the rest of the dry ingredients! So it's my tip to you.) 

3. In a large bowl, combine 2 and 3/4 cups of flour, 1 tsp. salt, and 1 Tbs powdered milk. Stir to mix. Once the Tang Zhong mixture is cooled off so that it doesn't hurt the yeast, measure out about 120g of it (almost exactly half of the mixture). Add it to your yeast mixture along with 1 large egg. Mix together then pour it over the dry ingredients in a large bowl. (You can create a well in the center of your dry ingredients and pour the yeast mixture in for easier mixing.)



4. When the wet and dry ingredients have more or less come together to form a dough, add in the 2 Tbs. of softened butter. Continue mixing it in. If the dough looks shaggy, you can add in some flour until it doesn't cling to the sides of the bowl any more. 

(If you're using a mixer, let the dough knead for about 5 - 8 minutes till it becomes elastic.) 

5. Transfer the dough to a well-floured surface and knead it by hand till it becomes less sticky. Since I don't have a mixer, I just kneaded it for about 5 - 8 minutes (or until I got tired ;p), adding some flour whenever the dough became a bit too sticky. Shape the dough into a ball and let it rise in a well-oiled bowl for about 1 hour or until it has doubled. 
 

6. Once the dough has risen, divide it into 4 pieces. Form each piece into a ball shape, then flatten each one out into a round disc shape about 6 inches across. Roll the discs up cinnamon-roll style (starting at one end and rolling over like a log to the other end!). Shape each one into a ball and place into a well-greased pan. Repeat for the other discs. (The original recipe called for an 8" round cake pan)




See, unfortunately I didn't have the sense to shape each rolled up disc into a ball and instead I merely laid each rolled-up disc flat, parallel to each other. ;p I mean it really doesn't make a difference to the taste or the end product, just that you don't get the typical bread loaf appearance. 


7. Let the dough proof a second time under a plastic cling-wrap for about 45 min - 1 hour. Carefully brush the surfaces with a beaten egg then bake at 180 deg Celsius or 350 deg Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes. At the 20 minute mark when the surface starts to get very brown, place a piece of aluminium foil gently over the top to keep the bread from overbrowning. (This is a really great tip in my opinion! :D Works for all breads/pastries you want to bake in the future too. Whenever it gets too brown and you're worried about the top over-browning/burning, the piece of foil saves the day.) 


Ta-dah! Don't you love the gorgeous shade of brown with its lovely sheen? And trust me, it tastes SO good as a plain loaf of bread. Definitely not on the sweet side so it goes really well with jam.



And something that my mum really liked was the bread sliced up thinly and then re-toasted in the toaster oven. Do that for about 1.5 minutes (make sure you watch the bread at about that time to make sure it doesn't burn!) and then you'll get a really crispy slice of Japanese Milk Bread. Pretty darn awesome especially if you like crispy food. 

It's definitely not the easiest bread to make because of all the steps and different things you have to do at the start but after a few attempts, you'll get used to it and really, you'll want to keep baking and eating it over and over again because it tastes so good. :) 

Today I made a walnut and raisin braided version which I like even more than the plain one. Will share that with you soon. 

xoxo

Home-cooked: Matcha Shortbread Cookies

Here's presenting to you... my attempt at Matcha Shortbread Cookies! :) 



Recently I've gotten into a bit of a Matcha craze. I've always loved green tea (especially with soy milk!) but my love for it was catapulted to a whole new level after I visited Nana's Green Tea Cafe at JCube and had probably the best Green Tea Latte in my life. It was probably a combination of factors that made that drink so perfect. Firstly, I noticed that the owner of the cafe was Japanese, which automatically makes all of the green tea drinks legit by association ;). Next, the green tea latte that came out had just the right amount of bitterness. I hate drinks that are overly sweet/sweetened so this one was just right. Added to the fact that it was a quiet cafe in the late afternoon with a really cozy ambiance and that each sip of warm latte was lifting layers of worry and anxiety (school...work...life...what's new? just a lame bunch of first world problems) off my back, I came to the conclusion that it was a perfect cup of green tea latte that was perfect for the occasion. 

(Here's my little Instagram shot.)

Nana's Green Tea Cafe is at JCube (really near Franc Franc! 2 good reasons to go there even though it's all the way in the West ;p) and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you check it out. It has such a huge array of Green Tea drinks and desserts that are absolutely mouth-watering. They are a little on the pricey side but for some good quality Japanese tea and desserts, I'd say it's well worth the splurge. (Hopefully I'll do a proper post about that place soon.)

So back to the post proper, I decided to try baking some Matcha Shortbread Cookies or Sablés. I got the recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini , another cooking site that I'm eager to trawl through over the next few weeks. It's easy enough to make and I like how they turned out with the flower shaped cookie cutters. :D

Slightly adapted recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini
Matcha Shortbread Cookies (Very slight changes made here!)

- 100 grams of good-quality butter, softened (add 1/4 teaspoon of salt if you use unsalted butter) 
- 50 grams (6 tablespoons) of confectioner's sugar 
- 1 egg yolk 
- 90 grams (3/4 cup) flour 
- 40 grams (6 tablespoons) finely ground almonds 
- 2 teaspoons matcha powder (I bought mine at NTUC and it's called Uji Matcha. You can check out Evan's Kitchen Ramblings for more info about where to buy matcha powder in SG. :) 
- 2 tablespoons sugar, preferably an unrefined cane sugar in coarse crystals, such as turbinado or demerara

1. In a medium mixing-bowl, cream together the butter and confectioner's sugar with a spatula. Add the egg yolk and mix it in thoroughly.

(I actually prefer using an electric mixer to cream the butter and confectioner's sugar together! When I used a wooden spoon the first time round, there were chunks of sugar that ended up unmixed which I only discovered at the end when I was shaping the dough. Bit late then. It's probably because confectioner's sugar tends to clump together by nature of its texture so it also needs a fair bit of sifting to separate the grains out.)



2. In another bowl, combine the flour, ground almonds, and matcha, and stir with a whisk to remove any lump. Add to the first bowl and stir it in until the mixture comes together to form a ball; don't overwork the dough. Lightly shape the dough into a ball. Wrap in cling film and place in the freezer to firm up for 40 minutes (or in the fridge for 2 hours).



At this point, the mixture was really kind of moist so I'm not too sure how you're supposed to roll it into a log without adding a decent amount of flour to it. What I did was that I just placed the moist ball into cling wrap and let it harden in the fridge for about 1 hour. After that, I still needed to add about 1/4 - 1/2 cup of flour for ease of rolling it out.



3. Preheat the oven to 180° C (360° F) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll out the dough on a well-floured surface till about 1/4 inch thick (it's easier to remove from the cookie cutter if it's thicker), adding flour to firm up the dough when necessary. Cut out your cookies with desired cookie cutter and place on parchment paper, about 1 inch apart.

 

For me, instead of rolling it into a log and cut using a knife as in the original recipe, I decided to roll it flat and use cookie cutters. Perhaps it has to do with Singapore being an extremely humid place, because after awhile the dough started getting awfully soft and moist, making it difficult to cut out with the cookie cutters. I ended up having to chill the dough a bit longer in the fridge. So I guess just go by whatever is easier for you - you can chill it longer or add more flour to make it less moist.



For extra crunch and added sweetness, I sprinkled the sugar on top of the cookies. They definitely help to offset the slight bitterness of the matcha flavor if you decide to add more matcha powder.

4. Slip into the oven and bake for 12 minutes, or until the cookies just begin to turn golden at the edges. Let rest for 5 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a rack to cool completely.



Ta-dah! :) I love how these turned out. Slightly brown at the edges and a nice pale shade of green in the center. Perfect with some actual green tea too, as my friends rightly pointed out. I'm so glad these turned out really tasty because they're the perfect treats for green tea lovers. Give them a go? And let me know how they turn out if you do. 

xoxo

Home-cooked: Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins

This weekend has been soooo good. I wish I could have more of these slow-paced weekends when I don't really feel pressured to study and time flows slower... like a warm dribble of liquid honey. ;) Managed to exercise (FINALLY!), take a nap on Saturday, bake... all things that make me happy. And today, to combat the insane heat (S'pore's seriously turning into a sauna >:( and that's to all the people who don't believe in the threat of Global Warming), I decided to go for a swim despite it meaning I would have to be out in the hot sun. I figured I was sweating so much I might as well immerse myself in a pool of water to distract myself from all that sweat. And it totally worked. Nothing like feeling that you've done your body some good.

I actually baked some Matcha shortbread cookies this weekend (which turned out great!:D) but since I'm always one step behind in my photos, I'll be sharing instead of some Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins that I baked a couple of times recently. This recipe comes from Joy the Baker whose website I've only recently discovered but am REALLY LOVING! The muffins turned out SO well each time I made them and have been to date, probably the most well-received goodie that I've baked for my friends in the past few months.



LOVE LOVE LOVE blueberries. But I like them better when they're mixed with strawberries and cereal in soy milk than eaten alone. 



I've now discovered the incredible goodness that is BROWNED BUTTER. I've never made it before prior to baking these muffins but the instructions on Joy's website were pretty easy to follow. All you have to do is melt the butter over medium heat and wait... until the butter starts bubbling then you wait some more... and slowly but surely, a delicious smell will start wafting from the pan. Very much like the smell of caramel. Which is pretty magical, since a few minutes before it was plain butter. It's a little hard to tell when the melted butter has browned (especially if you're using a regular black based pan like me) but a trick is to use a spoon and scoop a little of the butter out to check its color. And, by the time you should have tell-tale brown bits at the base.  But really, the best gauge is going by the distinctive caramel-ish scent. :) You'll be pretty amazed the first time you smell it. 

 



Ta-dah! Really easy recipe that takes less than an hour. Plus, the crumble is a real winner. Everyone who's tried it somehow really likes the crumble on top. Take note though, if you go by the measurements in Joy's recipe, there is WAY too much crumble even for two batches of muffins (and her recipe is only for one). So I really don't know why there's so much excess crumble but you can definitely halve it (or quarter it even) if you're only making one batch of muffins. 

P.S. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone! Didn't quite celebrate it this year but I happened to be in the west just now and managed to catch some fireworks that were going off at Chinese Garden. :) So that was pretty nice. And the best part about MAF so far would have to be all the food fairs that are going on at the shopping malls (so far I've been to the ones at Takashimaya basement and Vivocity). Samples GALORE! On Friday, I happened to go with two friends to the one at Vivo and we just whiled away our pre-dinner time poking our noses at various stalls, requesting for samples of new mooncakes (we didn't bother wasting tummy space with the traditional lotus paste/yolk mooncake fare, no siree!). And take it from me, it's possible to actually get full on samples. 

xoxo

Home-cooked: Chocolate Brownies and Cinnamon Raisin Rolls

Nothing like the smell of ground cinnamon. :)



One of the things I must've baked at least 4 or 5 times already in the past 3 months is Cinnamon Raisin Rolls. Why this recipe in particular? Because my mum loves the cinnamon raisin rolls from Cinnabon. :D I'm just trying to perfect the recipe so that she doesn't have to go very far to get them when she gets a craving for them. Plus, my mum is probably still my biggest baked-goods fan. Though she eats at a snail's pace, she actually does manage to eat her way through quite a large portion of whatever I bake over a week or so. And that's encouraging enough for me to make more! Seriously, Mums are the Bob-the-Builders of self-esteem. (Though sometimes I wonder if it's not the best thing for me that she always laughs at my jokes, even the terribly lame ones. ;p) 



And you know what? Cinnamon rolls are surprisingly easy to make! It's just a matter of rolling everything up and trying to make sure the dough doesn't stick to the surface below while doing so. I still struggle a bit with that portion but nothing a good handful of flour can't solve. 





So, I used to make the cinnamon rolls like these, individually spaced out on the baking tray. Until I realized that the outsides were pretty HARD. They were crispy and warm once out of the oven but after being left in a box for a day or two, they would end up pretty hard (thankfully not popping-your-teeth-out type hard but still), which is totally different from the typical cinnamon rolls you get from say, Cinnabon, which are a lot softer on the exterior.



After reading around it online, I realized that the way to make the outsides of the cinnamon rolls soft and moist, is to really SQUISH them in together in the baking pan. Which is why I kept seeing pictures of freshly baked cinnamon rolls all squashed together forming an odd tortoise-shell type design from the top. I'd always thought that was a weird way of baking it but turns out it's actually that way for a reason. DUH. 



Tadah! This is how they turned out after baking them squished cheek by jowl. The sides definitely turned out a lot more soft and moist which was what I'd been hoping for BUT -- I had trouble cutting the individual rolls out without leaving behind a shaggy doughy trail of  evidence on the sides of each roll. They ended up looking rather...GRIZZLY at the sides. Tough luck eh? When you think you've solved one problem and moved on, you end up with another. But that's life. At least the problems in baking seem finite. A friend recommended that I try placing them in rows in a rectangular baking tin rather than a circular one so that they turn out a more uniform in shape and would be easier to cut out. That was definitely the case! Didn't take a photo of that so maybe when I next try it. Have been busy trying out other recipes. That said, how do the stores get them so beautiful at the sides and soft at the same time? I almost feel like doing a short stint at one of those stores like Cinnabon just to find out what their secret is. 

Incase you're wondering, I used this recipe from the website Food Network. Not too sure how I decided upon that, but I tend to google recipes and look at the number of stars garnered by reviewers and also what the reviewers say. Can't go too far off with a recipe that's gotten 5 stars from 400 odd reviewers. :D 

(Another way of baking them is to put the rolls in cupcake paper liners to bake them individually, the way they do it at Sadie Rose, a local baking enterprise started by Sarah of Sarah's Loft. Seriously, subscribe to their facebook page and be wowed every other week by incredibly scrumptious looking cakes/breads/tarts/cinna-rolls!! I really wanna take a baking class from them one day but most of their classes are in the mornings. >< ONE DAY SOON.) 

Believe it or not, on the same morning that I baked the cinnamon rolls, I steamrolled on and baked chocolate fondant brownies too. It was a particularly productive Saturday morning. God, I miss those days during my electives when I didn't really have to study during the weekends and would wake up, bake, eat lunch, nap. ZZZ. 

For the chocolate fondant brownies, I used the recipe from Smitten Kitchen. 



My first attempts at using a Bain Marie! Basically it's a 'water-bath' that prevents the melted chocolate from burning by making use of the steam from the boiling water to heat the chocolate, rather direct heat from the flames. It's easy enough to create - just fill up a pot with about half to 3/4 with water, and place another bowl with the chocolate etc on top of it. Then stir the ingredients around slowly as they melt into place.





These chocolate fondant brownies weren't too bad. They came out a little too thin for my liking though! I'd expected them to rise a little bit more but they hardly rose and ended up as rather thin pieces of brownies. The taste is definitely rich and densely chocolate-ly which makes it more decadent than your usual soft, taller, chocolate brownies eaten with a generous scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. But you know what? Turns out I prefer the latter. :P My friend, however, who doesn't have much of a sweet tooth, told me that she really liked the brownies because they weren't particularly sweet. So if you have a thing for dense pieces of chocolate brownies that are a little more on the rich, dark chocolate side, you might wanna give this a try! 



Otherwise, I'd definitely recommend trying THIS RECIPE out. I tried it subsequently and they were pretty much the best brownies I'd ever baked/eaten in quite a while. :D Photos and more details the next time I make them! But they are labelled BEST-EVER BROWNIES on BBC Good Food for a reason. 

I'm kinda glad baking's a new hobby of mine. After all, it does keep me away from the shops downtown where I'd probably be spending more money. -__- BUTTTTTTT, the downside is that I've packed on a number of pounds. :((((( I've realized that I probably can't rely solely on the French way of eating to maintain my weight because it ain't really working (my highly sedentary lifestyle after school is a definite contributing factor grrr). So, it's back to the gym for me. But baking is such a huge stress-reliever. Is there such a thing as stress-baking? (Like stress-eating) If not, I'm coining that term and keeping the copyrights for it. :) 

Here's the video that actually inspired me to go on my whole cinnamon raisin roll baking craze! It's so gorgeously shot and just makes me want to spend my weekends baking and holding parties so people can come round, eat and be merry. 

Here's to the weekend~~~ 
xoxo

Home-Cooked: Raisin Scones :)

There are a couple of things I've been baking quite a hell of a lot of ;p, much to the chagrin joy of my mum and sis who are inevitably the first people to taste whatever comes out of the oven. The top three things I've baked in the past month would have to be: 1. Citrus Cake, 2. Cinnamon Raisin Rolls, 3. Raisin Scones. The last of which took me AGGGESSSS to get right!! As a pretty amateur baker, most times when things don't turn out as expected I can only think of two reasons - weird recipe or poor technique. So when the first batch of raisin scones turned out stone hard (after repeated stints in the oven until the insides FINALLY baked), I thought, maybe it's the recipe. So I switched to another one. The second time however, it STILL turned out badly. Rock hard and tiny. Not quite the light and fluffy scones I'd been expecting. That was when I googled a bit more about scones and found out a GOLDEN rule for scone-baking: the dough should be kneaded as little as possible!! The more you knead it, the denser it becomes and the less it rises. 


Armed with that knowledge, I'm happy to report that the past two batches of raisin scones have turned out pretty darn awesomely. :D PLUS, I've been using a recipe from Epicurious.com that's garnered 4.5 stars (well, they use little fork icons :D) all round.




Tonight's one turned out well! This recipe is just perfect - the scones come up crispy and crumbly on the outside and are soft enough on the inside. And they go so well with some berry jam. I used the recipe from Epicurious.com and the only minor alteration I made was omitting the vanilla extract and lemon peel for flavoring along with the beaten egg for coating the scones right before baking. I think it makes the scones a little too brown (bordering on charred!) so without the coating, it comes out evenly browned throughout after 20 minutes of baking, just as the recipe stated. 


I happen to think that the hardest part of baking is actually finding people who are willing to eat the stuff you bake! There's only so much of your own food that you can take and without people to polish off your food, how will you ever move on to another recipe and keep improving?? Fortunately, my groupmates happen to be a bunch of ravenous eaters who have rather non-selective palates and are very easy to please. :) 


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I can't believe the weekend's gone by so quickly! These past few weeks of term time have been extremely tiring :( what with waking up extremely early (does arriving at 6.30am in the morning smack of insanity? I think so too!) and going home late. I've never appreciated weekends and the opportunity to sleep in more than I have right this moment. I'm sure things will get better with better time management...and more rest. I've also discovered a great company called The School of Positive Psychology that posts pretty awesome photos on FB that always remind me to keep positive. I think I'm going to pop down one day and possibly take a course or two.

 

 source: The School of Positive Psychology 

But honestly, one thing I feel strongly about is that adequate sleep is the bedrock for all positive thought. So, it's bedtime for me kiddos. Here's to a great week ahead~! xx