more bread!

Earlier this week, my relatives from Malaysia made a brief stop over in Melbourne and I took them to DFO (shopping outlet) after class where they shopped until they were kicked out! Instant A+ if shopping was an actual subject. In between waiting and running errands, I spent some time in a book store and picked up Bread Revolution: Rise and Bake by Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan. I initially wanted it for the bagel recipe, but the more I read it in store, I liked how simple everything was explained. 

I baked two potato and rosemary loaves and was pretty happy with my first attempt! It was soft and had a slight bite to it and was exactly the same the following day despite not adding any additives to it. It had a thin crust straight from the oven but became soft when it cooled. This was my fault because I was careless and forgot to lower the temperature to suit my oven and fell asleep when it was baking (!) Thankfully, a friend messsaged me at the right time saving my bread from being burnt. Flavour wise, I'll need to put more rosemary and roasted garlic because I could barely taste it.

Whilst waiting for the bread to prove, I also made the dark and white mini muffins using salted dark chocolate instead of chocolate chips. Interestingly, the picture in the book was different to the recipe. I was surprised it contained no sugar because natural yogurt was used and it's quite sour. I did make a few amendments to it but l will try again with the original recipe next time. 

Edit: 03/11/14 The bread stayed soft for 3-4 days and made a great toast as well. I tried the original muffin recipe today and didn't like it. Possible misprint error??

taking a breather

Ploughed through eleven hard weeks and finished three assignments back to back to be rewarded with a sweet, break of twelve days for recovery (thought I wish it had been earlier). I've compiled a list of things I wanted to do during this break and getting my Ls is definitely one of them! Inspired by this post I read at the beginning of the year, I want to try making all the components I need to bake this choco moo cheesecake. These will include the milk jam (condensed milk), cream cheese (!!) and ganache. I am not sure if homemade cream cheese will work for this, but it is worth a shot.

To get the gears running again, my sister and I chose an easy chocolate chip cookie recipe from cookpad to bake. She was hoping it would turn out chewy, but it turned out kind of cakey, like a muffin top (yum!). The inclusion of rice flour gave it a nice texture too. I'm not a big fan of chewy cookies, so these worked in my favour but looks like we'll hit the drawing board again to find something she likes.

Oh, by the way - on my last day of placement, I was able to run a cooking activity with some of the students at the Language Centre! As we did not have access to a kitchen, we made chocolate truffles (the crushed biscuits type) and these coconut waffles which were hungrily gobbled down by everyone! It has always been a little dream to teach food tech so I was glad I was given an opportunity to do so.

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chocolate chip muffin tops    makes about 12

adapted from cookpad

I recommend you eat these whilst they are still warm so you get the gooey chocolate centers.

1 large egg
60g caster sugar
60ml cooking oil
100g plain flour
50g rice flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g dark chocolate with sea salt*, chopped into small pieces

Whisk egg and sugar until well combined. Add cooking oil and whisk thoroughly. Sift in flours and baking powder and mix. Fold in the chopped chocolate. 

Allow cookie dough to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. 

Place 12 equal sized blobs** of dough onto a lined baking tray. Leave 2-3cm of space between each piece to allow room for spreading. 

Bake in a preheated oven at 200 degrees celcius for 10 minutes or until golden brown. 

*Or just plain dark chocolate with a couple of pinches of sea salt
**I used a small cookie scoop

banana walnut muffins

Baked this while waiting for my pizza dough to rise. Didn't want to bake a cake because the margarine at home isn't good for creaming so decided to bake muffins instead. Bought a small bag of Californian walnuts for this and ended up using up the whole bag xD Yup, I'm a walnut freak, but I only like them in cakes and muffins.

***

banana walnut muffins

oven:

170 degrees Celsius

fan forced

ingredients:

makes 12 muffins

• 1 cup + 1 Tb self raising flour, sifted
• 1 tsp baking powder, sifted
• 1 tsp bicarbonate soda, sifted
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  (plus extra for topping)
• 2 sugar bananas
• 1/3 cup sugar/ brown sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup margarine, melted

method:

1. Combine the dry ingredients (self raising flour, baking powder, bicarbonate soda, salt, walnuts) in a large mixing bowl.

2. Slice the bananas and mash them with a fork.

3. Whisk all the wet ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, melted margarine) into the mashed bananas. (I just did it one/two ingredients at a time for photo purposes.)

4. Pour the wet mixture into the flour mix. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until everything is just incorporated. DO NOT OVERMIX!

5. Spoon mixture into a muffin cup and top with chopped walnuts.

6. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden and comes out clean when poked with a skewer.