how you like them apples..

I am currently on break.

Officially anyways.

Mentally, I'm still in that weird in-between phase where my mind is adjusting to a  much slower pace.

I can't wait until we fully transitioned.

This is my contribution to that process..



That is my apple cake. Did I tell you that apples are my favourite fruit to bake with? I haven't? Well, apples are my favourite fruit to bake with. Way ahead on berries or citruses.

Since I'm not feeling the least bit chatty today, lets get to it, shall we?



I got this recipe from David Lebovitz's site. My favourite part of this one is that it calls for different types of apples. As many as you can find and whatever you can find. I have there some cherry apples, local "manalagi" apples, granny smiths and the red USA crisp apples. Coincidentally, these are all quite sour apples, which I think balances the sweetness of the cake perfectly.

 

French Apple Cake

French Apple Cake
Adapted from davidlebovitz.com

• 110 gr flour
• pinch of salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 100 gr butter (room temperature)
• 150 gr sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•  Rum

Firstly, peel and core the apples, then dice them into 1-inch pieces.

Secondly, preheat your oven to 180 Celcius.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until foamy then add the sugar, vanilla and rum. The amount of rum is entirely dependent on your preference but if you want to leave it out completely, double or triple the amount of vanilla.

Throw in the flour mixture and mix well before adding the butter.

Now the batter is ready. Get some parchment paper and line your cake pan. Pop the apples into the batter and fold them until they're nice and covered. Spoon the cake mixture into the pan. Use the remaining batter to make sure the apples are covered and the cake is somewhat flat on top.

Bake for 55 minutes- 1 hour. Additionally, when the cake is done, turn on the broiler to brown the top of the cake for around 5 minutes.

Dust cake with some powder sugar and serve with custard.



Use this recipe to make the custard but instead of 1 2/3 cups of heavy cream, do 2 cups instead since a  runnier custard complements the apple cake perfectly.

Yield: 8 Serving

out to sea..

Happiness is a word not easily defined. There is no universal identifier, no single, agreed-upon meaning, something along the lines of subjectivity and open interpretations. Me, I'm quite convinced otherwise.

hap·pi·ness 

 [hap-ee-nis] 

–noun1. A day spent by the sea.2. Good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.

They say I exaggerate.

My mum and I, decided to spend the day together last Tuesday. It's been a while, I'm not going to lie. The usual excuses; she's been difficult, I've been difficult, things've been difficult, et cetera, et cetera. The point is we did and man, was it glorious.

We got there quite late. Very late, in fact, the sun was all but gone when we arrived. It didn't matter, to be honest, the sun and sand has never been my favourite thing about the sea. I'm not being silly I swear. It's just that I prefer the wind and the water. Both were, as always, perfectly present that evening.

The next day, inspired by our trip, I decided to make fish soup. I also decided, since I didn't have any recipe for this particular dish, that I'm just going do this one by gut (pun intended).

Ok, that's not entirely true I just have to get that out. I watched an episode of Jamie Oliver's cooking show the other day. He was sitting in a small row boat trying to cook a soup not unlike this one. He used fresh fish which he had just "caught" right before taping and sea water. Yes, THAT sea water. Do you love it or do you love it?

Now I know some people doesn't share my love for mr. Oliver, but how could you not love a guy who makes the simplest dish worthy of rooftop shouting? Or has such passion for olive oil? Oh and did I mention, cooks with sea water?

Rockstar.

Anyways, I don't have a photographic memory, or a very good one at that, but this is soup we're talking about. The only thing you need for certain is your taste buds. Trust.

Mediterranean-style Fish Soup 

Tomato Fish Soup

inspired by Jamie Oliver

• 6 - 7 tomatoes
• 1 large onion, diced
• Whole fish, gutted and cleaned (You can use fillets but it won't taste as good, I promise. Alternatively, you can use only fish heads and make a fish head soup)
• Sea salt
• Olive Oil
• Lemon
• Black Pepper
• Dill & Parsley

Now, you're wondering why those ingredients list doesn't include exact measurements, that's because there is none. Just keep tasting the whole thing throughout and add the ingredients accordingly.

Firstly, remove the skin from the tomatoes, now there's a lot of ways to do this but I like to scar the tomatoes with a knife and roll them around in a pan of olive oil over medium heat. It's fast and flavours the oil in the process.

Diced the skinless tomatoes and throw them back onto the pan along with the onion. Make sure you use plenty of olive oil. Cook for a little while then put in the fish along with the herbs. Season well and mix.

To get maximum flavour, and to show off, I season with these. Call me a snob, but fleur de sel is definitely superior than your everyday kitchen salt, flavour-wise and health-wise. Plus they're completely affordable so there are literally no excuse not to convert to natural sea salt, people.

Kusamba Fleur de Sel

Where were we?

Ok, next just pour in some water and let the whole thing simmer for an hour or two. When it's done, taste and season some more. Spoon into a bowl and squeeze half a lemon over individual serving.

Soup simmering with parsley stalks.

what life? what life? what life?

When I was young, I used to think that your life begins in your twenties. I used to picture myself living in condo by the beach while people in roller skates whizzed by my front door only slowing down to admire my shiny mini cooper. Now you might think that these are the absurd delusions of a 12 year-old girl but I can honestly tell you that these thoughts lingered until at least the last year of high school. I blame Will Smith of course, as you do. Specifically that one song in which he says miami a lot.

Real life is much more mundane, yes? Two years into my twenties, I've yet to graduate from college, find a job that doesn't require me to drink 10 cups of coffee just to get through, or be in possession of a mini cooper. NO MINI COOPER. Where did I go wrong? Why do I have so little to lose? In the quest of having it all, I really have nothing at all. If I die tomorrow, the only thing I'd be remembered as is as my parent's smart ass daughter. Which is not a lot, since being that is practically a birthright. See ma, I know my impudence doesn't amount to anything.

I sound like I'm complaining again. Well, I'm not. In the likely scenario that I'd be alive tomorrow, life would actually be pretty good. It's getting there. Not that I know where there is, but it's like when you're going down a really long country road, let's say on a bike. It's hilly and quite bumpy, but as you go along the view gets nicer and nicer. So by inductive logic, however frowned upon by your team-deductive college professors, you can only assume that you're going somewhere awesome. And you don't even mind the bike, cos you know your ass will be nice and sculpted by the time you get there. This is how I choose to see it. 80 percent of the time. The other 20 percent I'm not going to mention, since it's quite dreary, but lets just say it involves a very large and constantly swirling black hole.

Anyways, poorly constructed analogy aside, why the sudden cognizance of things impending you ask, my dear imaginary friends? Well, I just turned 22 a couple weeks ago. It was a good one. We had mexican. I saw some people I haven't seen in a while, some longer than others, overall a nostalgic week. I've come to realized though, now that I'm older,not having expectations for birthdays, makes it extra nice when they turned out to be good.

my partners in crimes and me

And this one reminded me, maybe my life haven't quite turned out the way I expected but maybe that's not a bad thing? I mean, I used to love S Club 7 and mcDonalds ice cream. What the hell did I know?

a little relapse..

Okay. I'm afraid I've been a little reluctant about writing here today. See, I know the only recipe I have up my sleeve this week directly contradicts my last post (scroll down for a reminder). I know this. But I just can't help myself. It's like they say, once you go black you never go back. But like, replace black with desserts and you'll have a much more diplomatic, albeit less catchy, sentence.

Will you hear me out anyway?

You will?

Thanks.

So I set out looking for a great steak & kidney pie recipe just because I use to love them as a child and you know I have that thing for nostalgia and childhood longings, but as it happens, this recipe, like all things great and urgent, came through one of my rss feed. It was of the very humble and sorely underrated crumble. 

It came courtesy of one of my favourite british food writer, Mr. Nigel Slater. If you love heartfelt cooking and childhood memoirs, you will adore him as much as I do. Trust.

Strawberry Apple Crumble served w/ Cold Vanilla Custard

I decided to do this recipe in two parts. One for the crumble another for the custard. I know a custard recipe seems a bit redundant at this point, but this one sets just a touch firmer than your usual pudding.

Strawberry Apple Crumble

adapted from Tender Volume II by Nigel Slater

Obviously you're going to have to make the custard beforehand to have it ready when the crumble's done. So lets start with that.

Vanilla custard:

• 1 vanilla pod, scraped
• 1 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 3 egg yolks
• 4-5 Tbsp sugar, depending on how big of a sweet tooth you have of course.

Firstly, heat the cream in a pan, per usual do not let it boil or bubble in any way. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks along with the sugar and vanilla until all are well incorporated. This might take longer than you'd think. Pour the hot cream into the yolks in a slow steady stream, all while still whisking the yolks. When all the cream is well mixed into the yolks and sugar mixture, pour them back into the pan and heat once again.

Now this is where you need to be careful, use super low heat and just keep stirring until it starts to thicken. If you see the mixture starts to separate, it means you've left them on the heat for too long or the whole thing is too hot. If this happens, don't fret. Just pour the mixture in a food processor and blitz until they're silky smooth. Pour them in a bowl and let them cool before popping them in the fridge.

For the crumble top:

• 95 grams butter
• 150 grams all purpose 
• 45 grams sugar

For the fillings:

• 50 grams butter
• 75 grams sugar
• 3 Granny Smith apple peeled, chopped and seeded
• 200 grams fresh strawberries, chopped
• Juice of 1/2 lemon

Put the butter in a hot pan until nice and melted before adding in the apples and the sugar. Stir and make sure the apples are all sitting in one layer. Turn the heat down to low and leave them to cook for a while. The juice from the apple should have the consistency of syrup and when your apple starts to color a little, you'd know its done.

Put the apples in a baking dish then place the strawberries right on top, nice and evenly. Sprinkle some sugar and squeeze your lemon over the whole thing.

To make the topping, put the butter and the flour in a medium bowl, and rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs (you could do this in a food processor, but be careful not to over blitz them).Distribute the topping evenly over the apples and strawberries. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until pale golden.

Yield: 1 9-inch pie plate

we have a winner..

I am happy to report that after consecutive weeks of disastrous Sundays we finally had a good one. The weather was nice, there were people, there were biscuits and crumbly deserts. All is right again. Of course it didn't hurt that my coursework was on track for once or that my boss has finally decided to cut me a break or the fact that my midterms score came out splendidly, oh and did I mention there were biscuits? and custard? and cakes?

Yes, cakes, in fact I was secretly hoping you'd notice the new addition by yourself, my dear imaginary friends, but in case you didn't, here it is. Not that you need any justification for adding cupcakey magic to anything but I've been baking them almost every week now that it'd just be a bit repetitive to post them on the main page every time.

Anyways, I've been thinking. This past few posts have all been about baked sweets of some kind and that was partly the reason I started this blog in the first place but you know there's only so much you can say about cakes right?.. wait what am I saying?? dear lord, such blasphemy. What I meant to say was I need to keep it fresh, for my sake, for your sake, for blood sugar's sake. So in that spirit, I present to you..

Bacon, Cheddar & Onion Biscuits

Okay, it's not a complete departure from my usual posts. Its baked, its brunch but baby steps people, baby steps.

Bacon Cheddar & Onion Biscuits

adapted from thepioneerwoman.com

• 2 cups All-purpose Flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• ¾ teaspoons Salt
• ¼ cups Vegetable Shortening (crisco, Etc)
• 10 Tablespoons Milk (whole Milk Is Best)
• 4 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
• 1 whole Egg
• 10 slices Thick Cut Bacon, Fried & Chopped into tiny little pieces
• 1 cup diced onion, sauteed.
• 1 cup Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Firstly, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt then using a pastry cutter, cut in shortening until all combined. If you don't have a pastry cutter, you can always use a fork. Just press the shortening bits into the flour repetitively until they're thoroughly combined.

Pour the milk, oil, and egg in a separate bowl and whisk it all together.  Combine flour mixture, milk mixture, bacon, onions, and cheddar cheese in a large bowl. Stir gently until all combined.

Spoon batter into greased muffin tins. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes on 190 C ( 375 Fahrenheit) until golden brown. Remove from pan and serve warm.

Yield: 12 biscuits.

to be or not to be..

Kids, stay in school. I mean it. Stay in school; as long as you possibly can. Because, trust me on this, when you get out you will be expected to get and keep a job which is hardly as glamourous as you might imagine and when I say you I mean me. Ok, I didn't mean to sound like Bob Saget prologue-ing an episode of How I Met Your Mother, but this whole having-a-job thing is really stressing me out. Specifically the part where I'm supposed to do university all at the same time. See, I have this new job. It involves a lot of web design and programming which I love so it's an awesome position. The pay is good. My boss is great. But, and that's a big but, the honeymoon phase has hardly began and already I'm faced with a dilemma. Midterms are coming up next week and I've just been informed that I will be working on a site which has to be up by the end of that same week. Whut?

Sigh. So that's that. I have no idea what I'm gonna do. Do you think sleep is a necessity or more like an optional kinda thing?

On a happier note, I've started getting orders for my cupcakes & cookies this past 2 weeks. So stoked about that. Maybe that's what I should do. Give up on this whole computer nerd thing and open myself a pretty little bakery or cupcakery. Is that a thing, cupcakery? it should be a thing.

see cookie, eat cookie..

These past couple weekends have not been kind to me. I've looked forward to them being nice and relaxed and so far this has not been the case. It's no one's fault but my own of course, I'm a crammer. I fill my weekend itinerary with way to much stuff. Stuff, that on it's own, can be fun and relaxing but when crammed with a myriad of other "fun and relaxing" activities mutates into quite the stressful monster. One of those activities is baking. Besides being marred by my unrealistic expectations, these past few weekends had also been the love children of various special occasions for which baking was called for. The endless birthday cycles of friends and family members, not to mention the lunar new year this last weekend, my oven was logging in some serious overtime.

Sufficient to say, at the end of each and every one of those occasion I was exhausted and could barely look at my oven without cringing at the thought of undertaking another baking project anytime in the near future. But then, divine intervention... a friend of mine has stumbled upon a chocolate chip recipe and thought of me. How kind. The next thing I know, sitting in my inbox was an email, describing in excruciating details, all the wonders of this recipe and before I knew it, I was sold. The strong yet misguided contempt that I had for my oven, so five minutes ago.

Chocolate Chip Cookie

adapted from the New York Times

Now, you should know that this is the best homemade chocolate chip cookies recipe ever. I know I said that quite a lot around here but what can I say, I am an awesome recipe hunter. 

• 2 cups minus 2 Tbsp. (241 gr) cake flour
• 2 cups minus 2 Tbsp (241 gr) bread flour
• 1 ¼ tsp. baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
• 1 ½ tsp. coarse salt (if you absolutely can't find coarse salt, such as kosher salt, then I guess you can use ordinary sea salt)
• 2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups; 283 gr) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 ¼ cups (10 oz.) granulated sugar
• 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. (8 oz.) palm sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 500 gr bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks, preferably about 60% cacao content.

Firstly, combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Whisk well; then set aside.

Using a mixer, whisk butter and sugars until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low; then add dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. Add the chocolate chips, and mix briefly to incorporate. Press plastic wrap against the dough, and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. The dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

Now, I can't stress enough how important it is to let the dough sit for at least 24 hours. Give the dough enough time to let all the flavours really bond together and I promise you it'll be worth the wait.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F (180 Celsius). Remove the bowl of dough from the refrigerator, when you first took it out, it'll be quite hard so again give it about 20-30 minutes to soften slightly.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

You can use an ice cream scoop to mold the dough into individual cookie, it'll generally hold about 85 grams of dough, which makes for a 5-inch cookie but I find this a little big for my liking. I usually just do about 40 grams of dough per cookie and roll them into a ball, which can be a little bit messy but if you don't mind getting your hands dirty then this is the way to go. Another thing is while shaping the ball, you want to do it as quickly as possible, otherwise the dough will go all gooey in your hands.

These cookies need to enter the oven nice and cool, even verging on cold, so after shaping them if you feel they've melted a little bit, pop them back in the fridge and let them chill an additional 5-10 minutes.

Bake them for 15-20 minutes depending on the size of the individual cookies. When they're done, let them cool before putting them in an airtight container.

Yield: 48-50 individual cookie.