Dotty Chocolate Smarties Cookies

I've been eating a lot of junk food recently. Smarties are my current favourite.

The switch from "healthy greens with every meal" to "Pocky sticks and coffee for breakfast" wasn't intentional. I believe it to be a symptom of the overall unstructured nature of my life recently. Without the structure of university lectures, hospital rounds, and group study sessions, my research year has quickly degenerated into a seemingly endless and timeless continuum of number-crunching, data-manipulating, and journal article-perusing. Most of the time I walk around in a semi-asleep state. It doesn't help that I only interact with other human beings (who are not family) maybe once or twice a week. That's the thing - I miss people. I miss social interactions. I miss the hustle and bustle of the hospital environment, the beeping of machines, the charts, talking with patients, listening to hearts and lungs...all those things about my clinical placement which overwhelmed me last year, I miss with an almost painful intensity now.

Not that I dislike research. A few days ago I realised that I had recoded the variables in my dataset with the wrong values, and that was why the results weren't making any sense. I corrected the values, and suddenly, there were trends and correlations and associations. Not just any associations, but significant ones. As in, 'p < 0.05' significance. I got a massive high out of the findings. If research was all about ground-breaking discoveries, then I may very well consider it as a long-term career. However, the reality is that most of it is number-crunching, data-manipulating, and journal article-perusing. But when you do make that discovery, it's all the more rewarding.

Anyway, the fact that I don't have to see my peers on a regular basis has meant that I've kinda...let myself go. Not in the sense of gaining huge amounts of weight. Just...very out of shape. Compared to last year, where I was eating a lot of protein and fibre and exercising almost every day, my current lifestyle is ridiculously unhealthy. I feel breathless walking uphill to the shops, where as last year I could have sprinted the entire distance and not broken a sweat. I can't even run 2km anymore, let alone the 14km that I did for City2Surf last year.

Moreover, I've found myself getting quite moody around noon, and quite predictably so. I suspect it has a lot to do with crashing from the refined sugar highs induced by my junk food breakfasts. My cognition has also suffered a lot. I had such brain fog one day that I couldn't remember how I got from one place to the other. It felt like I'd suddenly materialised at the shopping center, and I had very little recollection of the actual trip. What mode of transport had I taken? How long did my journey take? It was a very disturbing sensation indeed.

Therefore, I've made a pledge to myself to go back to eating proper, wholesome foods from now on. These cookies are my way of using up the last of my Smarties stash, while also acting as a remind that there is nothing inherently wrong with refined carbohydrates and these so-called "empty" calories. I admit it - while I was actively trying to lose weight, and for the first few months of maintenance, I was very neurotic about food. I could eat this, but not that. Some foods were "bad" and should never be consumed. Protein bars were okay, but chocolate bars were not (even though the former was probably just as lacking in real nutrition). I didn't allow myself to have any junk food, and as a result of that I went nutso and ate EVERYTHING once I couldn't stand my restrictive, "healthy" diet anymore.

Since then, I've learnt moderation, and that junk food doesn't make you gain weight as long as you don't overeat in calories. It's how it makes you feel that should make you think twice about consuming it in excess. I want a good-looking, healthy body, but a healthy mind also. I don't want to have a depressive slump every afternoon. I don't want my brain to be so fogged over by high blood sugar levels that I can't interpret lab results, or fall asleep over my textbook. The point is, by all means eat junk food, but don't use it as a replacement for real nutrition. It's common sense to most people probably, but it's taken my own experiences to make me actually believe it.

Healthy or no, these cookies are delicious, and oh-so-adorable. I love multi-coloured dots, whether it be in fashion or food. They are super-easy to make. Just combine the ingredients for the cookie dough, pop it in the fridge to firm up a little (so that the cookie doesn't spread too much while baking), shape it into small discs, then press on the smarties. They take around 8-10 minutes to bake. The texture is a little harder than cakey, but not quite crunchy, I suspect that if you bake it for an extra minute, you'll end up with a crisp, chocolatey cookie.

Dotty Chocolate Smarties Cookies
Makes 32 palm-sized cookies

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter, softened
300g white granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
350g plain flour, sifted
50g cocoa powder, sifted
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Smarties to decorate (enough for 5 per cookie)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Place baking rack at the bottom 1/3 of the oven.

2. In a dry bowl, stir together the sifted flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with an electric or hand mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla extract, and continue to mix until fully incorporated.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter mixture, and mix at low speed until just combined. Do not overmix or your cookies will be tough. If necessary, use hands or a wooden spoon to finish mixing together the dough.

5. Wrap the dough in cling wrap, and chill in fridge for 30 minutes.

6. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Grab a ball of dough slightly smaller than the size of a golf ball. Roll it into smooth ball, then flatten into a disc. Place onto baking paper, and press 5 Smarties on top of each disc.

7. Bake in oven for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven, and allow to cool slightly and harden before transferring onto a wire rack to cool completely. But, by all means, eat them while they're still warm and soft! :D

Black Forest Gateau

Some recipes are just too good not to share, and this is one of them. This Black Forest Gateau was made for a dinner party I threw for some friends last night. It was such a hit that my siblings, who are usually only mildly interested in my baked goods, actually squabbled over the left overs.

Black Forest has long been my favourite type of layer cake. And what's not to like? Cherries soaked in kirsch (or some other liquer), sandwiched between layers of intensely chocolatey sponge cake, and the whole thing smothered with freshly whipped cream. The contrast of textures and flavours - plump, juicy cherries against soft, yielding cake, the dulcet creaminess of the fresh cream against the bite from the alcohol - makes a well-made Black Forest a true pleasure to eat.

The key, as always, is to use the best base ingredients possible. In this case, the chocolate cake involved copious amounts of insanely expensive Ecuadorian cacao powder. A slight overkill? Perhaps. But these were very good friends that were coming over, and I like feeding the people I love the real deal in edibles. And also because this was the only cocoa powder I had lying around. Just avoid the nasty cheap stuff that doesn't even smell like chocolate (which, embarrassingly, I have used before in thriftier times) and you should be fine.

Just so you don't end up broke by the time you're done making this cake, you can cut some corners when it comes to the cherries and opt for fresh ones soaked in a liqueur of your choice instead of going out of your way to acquire maraschino cherries. I know it's not traditional, and some people would argue that it's not Black Forest unless it's soaked in kirsch (a cherry liqueur), but as long as it tastes good, right? I myself used a mixture of vodka, schnapps and rum. Add the amount to taste. Drain the cherries when you're ready to assemble the cake, but don't throw away the liquid! You'll need that for brushing onto your cake layers.

A nicely assembled layer cake is a thing of beauty, but it takes a bit of fussing around with levelling the cake layers, and applying a crumb-coat (as seen in the picture above). Since this was to be served amongst friends, I didn't go nutso on the decorating. Just a bit of piping, and going around the edge with a comb tool. You can see bits of the cake showing through the cream frosting, but I quite like the effect.

For the cake itself, I consulted my beloved copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes and went with the chocolate cake recipe used in her German chocolate cake. True to her word, this chocolate cake does indeed remain soft when chilled in the fridge, but has enough structural integrity to lend itself well to carving. The texture is a thing to marvel at - fudgy, almost like mudcake, yet the recipe requires only cocoa powder, not melted chocolate. I think I've found a winner in this recipe, and can see it becoming my default choice for future birthday cake bases.

Recipe for Black Forest Gateau

Makes two cake layers, around 23cm (9 inch) in diameter

Ingredients

For the chocolate cake:

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (66 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup (118g) boiling water

1/2 cup (108g) canola oil

4 large eggs, separated, plus 2 whites

1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3/4 cup (75g) cake flour

2/3 cup (75g) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups (300g) caster sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

For the liqueur-soaked cherries

Around 30 medium-sized sweet cherries

5 tablespoons liqueur of your choice

For the whipped cream filling and frosting

600ml thickened cream, suitable for whipping, chilled

6 tablespoons confectioner's (icing) sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

For decorating

6 medium-sized cherries, with stem attached

Chocolate block at room temperature

Method

1. A day before baking the cakes, remove the stones from the cherries. (I used a specialty cherry de-stoner which allowed me to keep the cherries whole, but you can also cut the cherries in half and pry the stones out that way.) Douse the destoned cherries with the liqueur and toss everything around. Place in an airtight container, and keep in the fridge overnight.

To make the cakes:

2. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Place the baking rack close to the bottom of the oven. Grease two round cake pans, both 22cm in diameter and 8cm high.

3. Mix the cocoa powder with the boiling water in a bowl until a smooth paste forms. Cover with cling film to prevent the mixture from drying out. Set aside to cool slightly. Add in the oil and egg yolks to the paste, and beat with a hand mixer or stand mixer until it becomes the consistency of a soft buttercream. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add in the vanilla. Beat for another 30 seconds.

4. In another bowl, whisk together the cake and all-purpose flours, sugar, salt and baking soda. Add half of this dry mixture to the cocoa mixture from step 3. Beat on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Add in the rest of the dry mixture and beat on low speed until everything is moistened. Increase mixer speed to medium, and beat for 1 minute, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally. Turn down mixer speed to low, and add in the egg whites. Gradually raise speed back up to medium, and beat until mixture resembles a thick soup. Scrape half the batter into one pan and the rest in the other. 

5. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean. Take out of oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes in pan, before unmolding and letting the cakes cool completely on cooling racks.

To make the whipped cream filling/frosting:

6. Pour the chilled thickened cream into a a bowl which has been chilled in the fridge. Add vanilla extract and sifted icing sugar. Beat with a whisk or electric beaters until soft peaks form.

To assemble the cake:

7. Drain the liqueur-soaked cherries, reserving the liquid. Set aside.

8. Divide the whipped cream into two portions. One portion will be used to fill and crumb-coat the cake, and the other for decoration.

9. Using a cake-leveller, (or just a serrated knife if you've got a good eye and steady hand), slice off the domed tops of the cake layers. Brush the bottom layer with the liquid from the cherries, then top with a layer of cream, the cherries, and another layer of cream. Brush the other cake layer with the cherry liquid, then place on top of the filling, brushed-side down. Brush the very top of the cake with some more cherry liquid.

10. Using a spatula, crumb-coat the cake with whipped cream. Chill the crumb-coated cake in the fridge for at least four hours, before using the remaining cream to decorate the outside of the cake. Complete the decorating with the chocolate curls (made by scraping the chocolate block with a potato peeler) and fresh cherries-with-stems-attached.

11. Return to fridge to chill. Take out from the fridge 20 minutes prior to serving.

'Festive' Cranberry-Pistachio Shortbread Rounds

We were gifted with a huge bag of craisins (i.e. dried cranberries) a while ago. My mind immediately started racing with possibilities for its use: cranberry and white chocolate chunk cookies, plumped up with rum for a fruit cake, and...well, the cranberry and pistachio combo is always a good one! Particularly during the festive season. I mean, just looking at these red and green-studded shortbread rounds conjures up images of Christmas-time.

The most fiddly part in the recipe is making sure the dough doesn't break apart when you slice through the pistachios. Once the dough is made, it is rolled up into logs, wrapped in cling film, and chilled in the fridge for an hour or so, until hard. It is then sliced into discs approximately 1cm thick, arranged onto a baking tray, and stashed into the freezer for a final firming-up. The reason why it is so important to have the dough frozen solid before baking is because of the high butter content of these cookies. If you try baking these right after making up the dough, the cookies will spread and you'll end up with palm-sized mounds, instead of nice shortbread rounds.

I think these would look lovely packaged in clear cellophane bags tied up with a golden ribbon, to be given as party favours or used as table settings. I simply cannot get over how pretty the colours are!

Recipe for Cranberry-Pistachio Shortbread Rounds

Makes 22 cookies, approximately 5cm in diameter

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (or 175g) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup shelled pistachios
1/2 cup dried cranberries

1. Make the dough by stirring together all the ingredients, until a soft dough forms.

2. Divide the dough in two portions. Roll each portion into a log, and wrap each log with cling film.

3. Place the logs into the fridge and chill for an hour, or until solid.

4. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Don't put the baking rack too close to the top, because your cookies will burn!

5. Take logs out of the fridge, and slice into round 1 cm thick. Put the dough rounds on a lined baking tray, and stash that away in the freezer for around 15 minutes, or until the dough is frozen solid.

6. When ready to bake, take the tray out of the freezer and put into oven immediately. Bake for 13-15 minutes. Don't wait for the cookies to brown, otherwise the colours won't be as pretty.

7. When done baking, take tray out of the oven. Allow cookies to cool on tray for 5 minutes, before transferring cookies onto a cooling rack. Let cookies cool completely before packing it away in an airtight container (that's if you don't eat them straight away!). Cookies will keep in an airtight container in a cool part of the house for around 5 days.

Easy not-at-all-dry Panettone!

I'm back!!! Back to updating this blog, back to catching up with friends, and back to waking up each morning without the imprint of a medical textbook across my face. I'm done with uni for the year, and the first thing I did once I got back home from my final exam was to assemble the ingredients for this Panettone.

I love seasonal baking, and there is no other time in the year as euphoria-inducing as the Christmas season for bakers. Christmas cookies, fruit cakes, mince pies, gingerbread houses, and...panettone! Baking funsies all around. Panettone is a fruit-studded bread loaf, enriched with eggs and butter and leavened with yeast. It has its origins in Milan, Italy, and is traditionally prepared for eating at Christmas and New Year functions. I've seen them being sold all year round at small grocers, and recently popping up at the bigger supermarkets.

I baked this panettone at my brother's request. He studies Italian at school, and they must have been learning about the country's cuisine at the time, because he came home one day with an empty panettone box (a learning tool from his teacher, I presume), and lamenting over the fact that he didn't actually get to eat its contents. My grandmother offered to buy him one the very next day, at which point I intervened with the promise to make one from scratch. Homemade always tastes better!

Even though I've accumulated somewhere upwards of fifty baking texts, it was to the internet I turned for a panettone recipe. The keyword in the search box? "Easy". An easy panettone recipe was what I wanted; one which didn't require a sourdough starter, or 16 hours of proofing in the fridge. I found this recipe, and as you can see from the pictures, the result was fantastic! It still took me around 5 hours to make, but for panettone, that really is nothing. Especially considering how good it tasted.

Most of the sweetness of the panettone came from the dried cranberries and raisins, which I'd soaked in rum for two days (you can omit this step). The bread itself was buttery and soft. I was very happy with the texture of the crumb, and I give all the credit to my KitchenAid mixer, which transformed the lumpy wet mixture into a satiny, elastic dough in no time at all. I used to knead all my bread dough by hand, and I can tell you that it is almost impossible to achieve the "gluten windowpane" manually. So for y'all without nifty mixers or bread machines...just try your best :D


Recipe for Raisin & Cranberry Panettone

Makes one panettone, around 15 cm high and 10cm in diameter

Adapted from Maison Cupcake

Ingredients

7g dried instant yeast
400g strong white bread flour
75g white granulated sugar
2 large eggs plus 2 egg yolks at room temperature
3 tablespoons lukewarm water
half teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons of finely grated orange zest
half teaspoon salt
175g softened unsalted butter
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup dried cranberries
2 tablespoons rum diluted with 2 tablespoons water
40g butter to finish
1 egg for the egg wash

Method

1. (optional step) Two days before making the panettone dough, soak the raisins and dried cranberries in the rum+ 2 tablespoons water mixture in an airtight container. Store in fridge. Take out of fridge and bring to room temperature 30 minutes before incorporating it into the dough.

2. Mix 125g of the strong bread flour with the yeast and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add two whole eggs and 3 tablespoons lukewarm water and stir until thoroughly combined. Sprinkle a little dry flour over the surface (to stop a skin from forming). Cover the bowl with cling film, and leave in a warm place for an hour.

3. Once the hour is up, stir in the two egg yolks, vanilla extract and grated orange zest. Gradually stir in 175g of strong white bread flour until a soft sticky dough (more like putty!) is formed.

4. Transfer the putty-dough into the mixer bowl and, using the dough-hook attachment, mix on medium  speed for 30 seconds. Add in the softened butter, and mix on medium speed for 1 minute. Add in the remaining flour and mix for another 6 minutes. You may have to stop the mixture and scrap down the sides of the bowl now and then. Dough is done mixing when you can stretch it out so thinly that light can shine through (as seen in this image).

5. Cover the mixer bowl with cling film, and leave the dough in a warm place to rise for 2 to 2.5 hours, until doubled in size.

6. Uncover the dough and punch it to deflate it. Add in the dried fruit (if you've soaked them in rum, make sure you drain and dry them with a paper towel before adding). Using your hand, incorporate the fruit into the dough by mixing and folding.

7. Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a panettone tin (or some other deep round tin) lined with foil. Using a knife, cut a shallow cross into the top of the dough. Cover the tin loosely with cling film, and place in a warm place to rise for 1 hour, until doubled in size.

8. 15 minutes before you put the dough into the oven to bake, turn the oven on to preheat at 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit). Put the baking rack towards the very bottom of the oven. When ready to bake, brush some melted butter over the top of the dough, and put a 2cm x 2 cm knob of butter at the centre of the cross.

9. Put the panettone dough into the oven and bake at 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit) for 10 minutes. Turn oven down to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit) and bake for another 40 minutes. You may have to cover the top of the loaf with a piece of foil 20 minutes into baking to stop it from burning. 10 minutes before you take the loaf out of the oven, quickly brush the top of the loaf with egg wash, and remove the foil covering the top so that the heat will turn the egg wash into a nice, bronzed glaze.

10. When panettone is done baking, take it out of the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes, before tipping it out onto a cooling rack and letting it cool completely before slicing into it.

Apple pie: go homemade, or go home.

Happy Sunday, everyone! I'm feeling quite sedate at the moment, owing to the fact that I did the City2Surf this morning! 14. freaking. kilometres. With 2 kilometres of continuous ascent up 'Heartbreak Hill' *faints*. I think the few slices of apple pie I had last night won't cause too much damage in the waistline department, wouldn't you agree?

Apple pie is one of my favourite desserts, and despite what the title of this post may suggest, I'm no pie-snob. I'm a sucker for all kinds of apple pie. The one from the Golden Arches with the thin, tacky crust and the gluey insides? Love it. The pre-made, frozen ones that go all soggy when you reheat it at home? Love those too. I haven't had the privilege of trying the sky-high 'pie that ate Newtown' version from The Pie Tin, but just looking at pictures of it is enough to elicit a Pavlovian flood of drool outta me. 

When it comes to pies, the thing which people seem to obsess over is the crust. More specifically, that it be "flaky". Personally, I don't mind a doughy or soggy crust on a meat pie, but when it comes to dessert pies, I like a crumbly, buttery, so-flaky-it-shatters crust as much as the next pie enthusiast. 

I do believe I've mastered the art of the flaky pie crust with this apple pie. The bakers out there would have heard this a million times, but for those who are looking to make the pie crust from scratch for the very first time - here are a few pointers for the perfect, flaky pie crust:

1. Keep the butter COLD. I took mine out of the fridge right before I incorporated into the dough. It's probably easier to use a food processor to "cut" the butter into the flour, but I just used my fingers to rub it in. Cold fingers help! Or just use one of them fancy hand-held pastry cutters.

2. Do not overwork the dough! After you add in the water, you will need to knead the dough slightly get it all into one heap, but kneading it too much isn't a good idea because it 1) encourages gluten formation, which will make your crust hard and tacky and 2) all the handling will make those precious lumps of butter in the dough melt, which leads to my next point...

3. Visible lumps of butter in the dough is good! It means that, when you bake it, the butter will melt and leave distinct layers of pastry behind (manifesting as the "flakes"). 

4. Lastly, adding in a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar per pie crust helps to prevent gluten formation. You learn something new everyday.

For the pie filling, I forwent the usual Granny Smiths and opted for Fujis instead, as we have a whole box of those to get through from when we visited the Flemington Markets a fortnight ago. Contrary to popular belief, those are not too sweet to use in an apple pie. If an overly sweet pie filling is what you're worried about, simply add less sugar to it. The Fujis yielded a good texture once baked - soft, but not mushy. I used Joy the Baker's recipe for the filling (I love her site!), and it turned out great. 

I had to roll my pastry out very thinly because the recipe I used was for an open-faced pie (should have thought of that beforehand!), but I managed to get everything sealed, and even put some decorative markings along the sides. The love heart cut-out ended up looking apple-shaped by the time it was done baking, which is just as well! :D

Classic Apple Pie, with the perfect flaky crust

Makes one 29cm pie

Ingredients

For the pie crust: (adapted from The Purple Foodie)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons white granulated sugar

170g cold butter, cut into 2cm cubes
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup ice water

1 egg yolk (to glaze the crust)

For the pie filling: (adapted from Joy the Baker)

800g apples of the baking variety (Granny Smith, Fuji, Pink Lady, etc,), peeled, cored and cut into 5mm slices

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/3 cup white granulated sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon cornstarch

Method

1. Start by making the dough for the pie crust. Stir together the flour and sugar. Add the cubes of butter, and using your hands/pastry cutter, rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture looks like coarse bread crumbs, with a few odd chunks of butter here and there. Add the apple cider vinegar. Add the water spoonful by spoonful (using your hands to gather together the dough) until the dough forms one cohesive mass.

2. Divide the dough into two pieces: 2/3 of the dough for one piece and 1/3 for the other. Flatten both pieces into discs. Wrap with cling wrap, and put it into the refrigerator to chill for at least 30 minutes.

3. To make the pie filling: In a large bowl, combine the apples, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, allspice and salt, and stir to mix. Cover the bowl and and let it sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. After that time, there should be a puddle of juices at the bottom of the bowl. Strain the apples (keep the juice!). Put the juice in a small saucepan with the 2 butter, and heat it over medium heat until it starts to boil. Turn down the heat, and let it bubble away until you have about 3/4 the original volume. Take off heat, and set aside.

4. Toss the apples in the cornstarch until well-coated. Pour in the reduced butter and juice mixture. Stir to coat.

5. (You can start this step while the apples are still straining): Take the large dough disc out of the fridge, and roll it out to around 3mm thick. Transfer it into the pie dish, and push the dough into the edges of the dish. Return the dish to the fridge for about 10 minutes.

6. Take the pie dish which has been lined with dough out of the fridge, and pour in the apple filling. Take the smaller dough disc out of the fridge, and roll it out to form the top crust. Cut a hole in the centre, or make a few slits along the sides so that hot air which builds up inside the pie during baking can get out. Drape the top crust over the apple filling, and seal the edges. Use a fork to make some decorative markings. 

7. Cover the unbaked pie loosely with cling wrap, and return to the fridge to chill for an hour.

8. At least 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit). Place the baking rack towards the bottom of the oven. Take the pie out of the fridge, remove the cling wrap cover, and brush the top crust with egg yolk. Place in oven, and bake for 45-50 minutes. Halfway through baking, you may have to cover the top of the pie with a piece of foil to stop it from burning. The pie is done baking when the apples are nice and soft.

9. Remove pie from oven, and allow to cool on a cooling rack for at least 4 hours before serving.

Best Banana Bread recipe!

I love banana bread. Always have, always will! And no matter how many times the health-conscious out there remind me that its sugar and fat content qualify it more as "cake" than any recognisable form of bread, I still prefer to call it by its alliterative moniker.

The humble banana bread has seen me through some stressful times indeed: a particularly taxing day at school (i.e. PD/H/PE classes!) would be incomplete without a trip to the canteen for a thick slice of warm, toasted banana bread. And because calories simply didn't matter when you're a grubby teenager like I was, I would ask for it to be spread with margarine. The margarine (far inferior to butter, but that was what was available) would melt and seep into the airy pores of the fragrant banana bread, and I would savour it bit by bit from the greasy paper bag, breaking pieces off with my fingers.

I unashamedly consider myself to be an expert on banana bread, having eaten and indeed baked so many different versions. I've encountered some truly disgusting permutations (apple sauce! oatmeal! flaxseed!) to an absolute gem like this recipe. I can say with confidence that this is the best banana bread I have ever tasted. No, really, I've made this recipe three times now, and each time it has gone like a flash! And, despite my best of intentions, this banana bread has been the reason why I keep falling off my 'diet'. One taste of it and I'm a goner. I won't scare you with how much of the most recent loaf I ate by myself, but suffice it to say that the only reason I'm holding off on the next loaf is because I'm, er, running out of pants that fit ;D

I should mention that I used coconut oil and macadamia oil to bake this loaf of banana bread. However, I have also made it using only coconut oil. And they've all turned out great. The subtle scent of coconut was present only in the loaf made with purely coconut oil. What I'm saying is that please don't go out of your way to purchase coconut oil especially for this recipe. Any oil will do, and you may even experiment with stronger flavoured oils like hazelnut or olive oil. Do let me know how they turn out :) It's the proportions of ingredients in this recipe that matter.


Best Banana Bread recipe


Adapted from Served with love

Makes one 22cm x 12cm loaf

Ingredients

2 cups mashed bananas (use overripe ones)
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup of oil (I used 1/4 cup coconut oil and 1/4 cup macadamia oil)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used vanilla bean paste)
3 cups cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line the loaf tin with greaseproof paper or aluminium foil.

2. Mix together cake flour, ground cinnamon, baking powder, and salt.

3. Beat together the eggs and sugar until fluffy and a pale yellow in colour. Whisk in the mashed bananas. Sprinkle the baking soda over this mixture and whisk it in.

4. Drizzle in the oil and mix it well into the batter. Whisk in the vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste. Fold in the flour mixture in three additions.

5. Pour batter into the lined loaf tin and bake for around 1 hour and 45 minutes, checking with a skewer for doneness around 1.5 hours into baking, and every 10 minutes thereafter (since baking times vary with ovens). If you find that the top of the loaf is browning very quickly, you may have to cover it with a piece of foil an hour into baking to stop the top from burning. The banana bread is done baking when a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean (no wet batter).

6. Remove from oven and cool slightly in tin before cooling completely on a baking rack. For best results, wrap with cling wrap once completely cooled, and let it sit for two days before serving in order to allow flavours to fully develop.

Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake

All the bakers out there - have you ever made something that looked fine and smelt fine, but disappointed in the taste department? I had one such experience with a caramel cake. The darn thing looked perfect, all nicely risen and golden on top, and had that titillating and irresistible smell of caramelised sugar and butter. It held such promise...I took a bite, and disappointment set in as the cake was so depressingly bland. It tasted nothing of caramel. Indeed, it didn't even taste sweet, an impossible situation given how much sugar (and vanilla sugar at that!) I had invested in the thing. And even though I knew from that first bite that it was a total flop, I kept going back for more, hoping that the taste would improve on standing. All those wasted calories...which could have been spent on this Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake instead.

I had a good feeling about this cake as soon as it came out of the oven. The intoxicating scent of lemons  permeated the whole kitchen, and even though it was the dead of winter and near midnight, I felt like I was swathed in a comforting blanket of warmth and sunlight...*ahem*, yeah creative writing and figurative expression have never been my forte; why don't I simply let the pictures do the talking?

I have made many-a-pound cakes before, and I've had consistently better results with a combination of cream cheese and butter, instead of a "pure butter" pound cake. Problem is, cream cheese is so expensive. And it seems such a waste to use it in anything except a cheesecake, where it can truly shine. And this is where sour cream comes in, because it produces a result indistinguishable from that made with cream cheese - for less than half the price! A quick search on the interweb found a pound cake recipe involving sour cream, courtesy of Cooking with Tanya and Epicurious.

The recipe makes a lot of batter, which is why you should use the 16-cup tube pan that both recipes recommend. I went with a loaf pan, and had about 2 cups of batter left over. One cup I put into a smaller pan and baked for 45 minutes, and the other I microwaved for 3 minutes. The microwaved version was...interesting. Good to eat straight away, but became very dry almost immediately afterwards.

The baked version, on the other hand, is very moist, and will probably stay moist and improve in flavour over the next few days. Simply wrap it with a few layers of cling wrap, and leave it at room temperature for 1 or 2 days before eating. The fragrance from the lemon juice and peel is very pronounced, and goes perfectly with the tang from the sour cream. Serve as is or toasted, with a tall glass of cold milk on the side.

Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake
Recipe adapted from Epicurious and Cooking with Tanya

Makes 1 10-inch cake (in a bundt pan or chiffon/angel cake pan)

Ingredients
3 cups cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
250g unsalted butter, softened
3 cups white granulated sugar
6 eggs, room temperature
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
Finely grated peel from one large lemon
300ml sour cream

Method
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius (325 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Grease and dust the pan with flour.

3. In a separate bowl, beat the butter with an electric beater until creamy. Gradually add the sugar, and continue to beat for 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat until incorporated.

4. Stir in the lemon juice and grated peel.

5. Fold in the dry ingredients from step 2.

6. Mix in the sour cream.

7. Transfer the batter into the greased and floured pan. Alternatively, you could simply line the pan with foil.

8. Bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted near the center comes out clean. You may have to cover the top of the cake with a piece of foil an hour into baking to stop the top from burning. Remove from oven, and allow to cool in pan for 15 minutes before turning onto a cooling rack. Let it cool completely before serving. I recommend wrapping it in cling wrap (once it's completely cool!) and letting it stand at room temperature for 1 or 2 days before eating it, to allow the flavours to develop.

Margaret Fulton's Apple Crumble Muffins

Guess who is now officially on holidays! That's right, yesterday was the last day of uni for this semester. You'd think I'd be out there partying like an animal and getting inebriated, but the embarrassing truth is that my idea of the perfect end-of-semester celebration is watching random Youtube videos in my "slob" clothes while mindlessly chowing down on Lindt Excellence 85% dark chocolate. And reading cookbooks! I am currently making my way through one of Margaret Fulton's, and indeed, this was where I got the recipe for these awesome Apple Crumble Muffins from.

The recipe looked so promising that I simply could not wait till the holidays started to try it out. Which was how I ended up lugging more than a dozen muffins to share amongst my colleagues in the middle of the week. From the way they rapidly disappeared, I'm confident to pronounce these a success. The sour cream (which the recipe calls for in lieu of milk) and the ample amount of apple chunks in the batter made these muffins extremely moist. The crumble on top was crunchy like a cookie, and deliciously buttery.

There are so many recipes in Margaret Fulton Baking that I want to try over these holidays, including the sour cream chocolate cake, and the Bienenstich (German bee sting) cake. I went on a cookbook shopping binge a few weeks ago, and came home with an impressive array of texts:

Whee, fun times ahead!

The apple crumble muffins are extremely easy to make; no need to get out the electric beaters or mixers. In fact, you don't even need to leave the butter out to soften in advance. The beauty of making muffins is that you can pretty much dump all the ingredients in one bowl (although some texts recommend mixing the dry ones together first, the wet ones in another bowl, and then combining the two). The butter can be melted in the microwave, and then stirred in. The most time-consuming part was chopping the apple into chunks, but even that didn't take very long. The crumble requires that you work fast in order not to melt the butter with your hot little hands while you rub it into the dry ingredients (ala. making a shortcrust pastry dough).

The muffins before baking, with the crumble mixture sprinkled on top.

The muffins can be eaten hot, straight out of the oven (or with a few minutes to cool out of consideration for your tongue), with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Unsurprisingly, it tastes like an apple crumble xD However, I would recommend you to allow them to cool, and then store them in an airtight container at room temperature for a day in order to allow the flavours to develop. And then if you want to have it hot, just zap it in the microwave for 20 seconds. Instant pudding!

The muffins, fresh out of the oven.

Apple Crumble Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

For the muffin batter:

1 1/4 cups (185g) plain flour

1/2 cup (110g) white granulated sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

60g butter, melted

2 large Granny Smith apples, roughly chopped to 1cm chunks

For the crumble topping:

3 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons plain flour

2 tablespoons cold butter, diced

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius (375 degrees Fahrenheit). Line muffin tin with grease-proof cupcake liners.

2. Into a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, allspice and salt.

3. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, sour cream,  and melted butter until blended. Stir in the apple chunks.

4. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and fold until combined, but do not over-mix. Fill the lined muffin tin.

5. To make the topping, put all the ingredients into a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the muffin batter, dividing the crumble mixture evenly between the 12 muffins.

6. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until browned. Cool on wire racks, or eat it warm with ice cream!

Super Moist Carrot Cake

Could it be that "retro" is making a comeback in the baking world? Maybe it's the influence of a recent delightful visit to The Tea Parlour for a friend's 21st (review soon to follow, hopefully!), but lately, I've been craving simple tea cakes, scones, and slices - basically, the stuff you find in a Australian Women's Weekly cookbook. And so it was in the spirit of "everything old is new again" that I made this delicious and super moist carrot cake.

The carrot cake and I go waaay back. In fact, it was the first cake that I baked from scratch, as the final assessment for a Design and Technology course in Year 8. I remember that class very clearly. In the weeks leading up to it, we'd been put through the paces in basic cookery with various old-school Aussie favourites: chocolate chip cookies, butterfly cakes, etc. For our assessment, we were given an hour and a half to complete a recipe of our choice, working in groups of threes. Come to think of it, it was kinda like a Masterchef team challenge!

Anyway, the carrot cake turned out fantastically, and the cream cheese frosting left so deep an impression on my naive palate that it remains my favourite type of frosting to this day. My fellow team members and I proudly presented a generous slice of cake to the lovely ladies down at reception. The rest we split between the three of us. As I recall, it was a GINORMOUS cake that we made, and my share lasted for days.

And so I have very fond memories of the carrot cake. This particular one wasn't frosted due to time constraints, but I imagine that the maple cream cheese frosting I made for my browned butter apple pound cake a while back would have been perfect for this. The recipe I used for this carrot cake utilised ghee instead of the usual vegetable oil. I do believe that either choice would be fine in the cake. I would describe the texture of this cake as extremely moist; almost pudding like. I was worried that it would be too sweet when I tasted the batter (raw eggs don't scare me! xD), but the baked cake was not very sweet at all. Which means that you can pile on the cream cheese frosting extra thick!

Recipe for a Super Moist Carrot Cake

Adapted from Guilty Kitchen

Recipe yields one 22cm x 12cm loaf AND 7 cupcakes, OR one 9-inch two-layer cake

Ingredients

2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 cup ghee, melted
1/3 cup buttermilk (or 1/3 cup whole milk + 1 tsp apple cider vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
2 1/2 cups finely grated carrot (I used five carrots)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Grease and flour a 22cm x 12cm loaf tin, or line it with aluminium foil. You can reserve leftover batter for another thinner loaf, or make cupcakes out of it.

2. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Stir in the brown sugar, white sugar, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, powdered ginger and salt. Use the back of the spoon to break up any lumps formed by the brown sugar.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs into the melted ghee, one by one. Whisk in the buttermilk, vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste. Stir in the grated carrots.

4. Combine the dry and wet ingredients, and mix until incorporated and smooth. Be careful not to overmix.

5. Pour the batter into the loaf tin, filling it 3/4 full.

6. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, or until skewer inserted into centre of the loaf comes out clean. If the top of your cake gets too brown, cover the cake loosely with a piece of foil for the final 10 minutes of baking.

7. Once done baking, remove from oven and allow cake to cool in tin for 10 minutes. Remove from tin, and let cake finish cooling off on a cooling rack.

To make cupcakes:


1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Line muffin tray with cupcake liners.

3. Fill liners 3/4 full with batter.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

5. Allow cupcakes to cool in tray for 10 minutes, before attempting to move them onto cooling racks.