Easter Apple Cupcakes

Today I was lying on my bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling (procrastinating) and thinking, “Why do things in life have to be so difficult?”

Conventional wisdom has it that if everything in life was easy and happy, we would never know satisfaction because we never had to work for our success. But is that really true? I don’t see many billionaire offsprings declaring that their wealth is not bringing them satisfaction and giving it all away so that they can enjoy the “process”… In fact, they seem pretty darn happy to me.

If I could achieve success without much work, I will be equally satisfied than if I had worked my ass off. Maybe even more because it cost me less heartbreak and effort. (i’d be like, “In yo face! A+ from studying the night before!” ) I am a firm subscriber to the belief: Work smart, not hard.

Saving time gives you more time to spend on those important to you.

Chocolate and Butterscotch Chip Cookies

It’s been a long time ol’ baking blog of mine. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you baby. It’s just been a tough few months.

Okay, maybe not ‘few’. It’s been a long 7 months.

Quick summary: Did an internship with Coke, went through a bad breakup, left Singapore to study for half a year Hawaii, mended my broken heart in Hawaii and fell in love with the place.

I’m currently in Hawaii, definitely the most beautiful place I have ever been. It’s like living in a dream. A beautiful dream that I never want to end.

Yuzu Chocolate Cupcakes

The next few weeks are going to be very exciting. Singapore is holding its next general elections and my generation is going to be voting for the very first time.

Maybe it’s a self-centered point of view but it feels like we are living in a time of change. The rise of social media and the internet have helped to level the political arena. It helps too that Singaporeans are generally well educated and (hopefully) able to make logical macro type decisions that will benefit the country. (or am i just deluding myself?)

Yet, there are still my peers living around me who remain steadfastly apathetic and live with their eyes closed. They are too content with the world that surrounds them. When everything is going well in your life, it becomes easy to forget about the less fortunate who are working harder than ever just to put food on the table, or the ones who fall through the gaps and are forgotten by society.

Be it for the ruling party or the opposition, I hope everyone will vote very carefully because this is a responsibility that should not be undertaken frivolously.

In this climate of severity, the cupcakes that I made this time round feel somewhat more mature than usual. It might be the bitter tang of the yuzu fruit, or the heavy texture of the chocolate cake, but everything about it screams “adult”.

The (not so secret) secret to chocolate chip cookies

I cannot believe that the secret to good chocolate chip cookies is something so ridiculously easy. It seems unfair that after everybody’s frantic tweaking of ingredients, the addition of strange things like mayonnaise and such… in hopes that they would be the ones to stumble on the holy grail of perfect cookies… the trick was so simple. And why did it take us so long to figure out anyway? Tsk. I lose hope in modern science. It took a newspaper named The New York Times to famous-nise the technique..

Just chill the dough for 36 hours before baking it. Like that. The end. oh yeah, and eat immediately out of the oven… (like we ever could wait)

It seems that cookies just like people need time to mature. Thank goodness these cookies only take 36 hours. Although, i can think of many people who behave like they’d need to spend 36 years in my fridge before they should come out and interact with society. It seems that the time they have to reflect on their actions in the fridge helps the flavors to better permeate the cookie and yada yada, I wouldn’t worry too much about the “how” if I were you, but more of the “yum”.

I found these Mature Cookies to have an interesting layer of “skin”, it’s a little hard, like caramel and really quite fun to eat. It’s difficult to describe… you should probably try baking them yourself.

Another good trick to awesome cookies is to make them big. Use an ice-cream scoop to measure out your cookie dough and you should be safe… Unless you’re like me, surrounded by people worried about their weight. Then you just have to compromise on the texture and make them small, like those in the picture *sad face*. Making them big will help them to maintain the mix of texture within the cookie, from the crisp edges to the chewy middles.

I didn’t actually use the official Jacque Torres recipe, because who has bread flour lying around at home?  Or expensive high end chocolate for that matter. I did use the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe that I baked a while back (complete with ugly photos. =( ) just to prove that the technique works with all cookie dough recipes! No need to run out and buy bread flour and expensive chocolate! Oh joy oh rapture!

Thanks mel for spreading the good news and convincing the patience-challenged. =)

Multifunctional muffins!-Wholemeal Mocha Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins!

I am a child from the generation of multifunctions… where phones can’t just be phones anymore but have to be able to take photos, film videos, host games and access the internet… Where cameras can connect directly to the printer or to the internet or anywhere…. and where muffins can’t just be one single flavour anymore…

I love my generation! Whee~!

I think that if you’ve read other posts in my blog, you’d have realized that i’m quite health conscious. (I need to fit into my jeans! Help!) But i also have a crippling weakness for sweet stuff and yummy food… It’s the balance that makes things fun!

Presenting the perfect yummy breakfast! Tastes unhealthy, but is actually pretty low fat and good for you! Awesome stuff.

Wholemeal Mocha Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins!

adapted from allrecipes.com (i made a few changes…)

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup wholemeal flour
• 3/4 cup raw sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup extra light olive oil
• 1/2 cup low fat milk with expresso dissolved into it (how much you put is really up to you! If you need a big kick at breakfast or a little kick)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix well!
2. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, milk and vanilla.
3. Dry ingredients into wet until just moistened. Don’t overmix or your muffins will be dry.
4. Fold in bananas and chocolate chips.
5. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full.
6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.
7. Enjoy for breakfast!

(i gave in to the temptation and started eating even before i finished taking my photographs… oop)

Unpretentious cookies- The Chewy

There’s something special about chocolate chip cookies. It’s a crowd favourite and nobody can say no to a chocolate chip cookie… at least not honestly. It’s unhealthy, and yet oh so irresistible. You can dress it up with expensive dark chocolate, or dress it down with normal baking milk chocolate… and yet no matter what, it remains so unpretentious and true to itself.

I was chilling with a girlfriend the other day, and she was telling me how there were people who automatically judged her as a pretentious bitch based on her accent. Although she’s indian, the words that flow from her mouth naturally take on an American accent. And yet, that’s just the way she is. Born and bred in India and Singapore, she probably watched one to many American sitcoms as a child…

But the point is, none of those people know who she really is as a person. If they don’t even know who she really is, how can they judge her to be pretending?

Thank goodness chocolate chip cookies are naturally unpretentious… thus saving themselves from the heartache of being harshly judged by the uninformed world. These are cookies that you can safely bring for a gathering or to give away, without people deeming you as a show-off or something mean. Because as much as we wished that the world was made of puppies and sunshine… it’s not.

But no fear, ugly as the world may be… at least you still have chocolate chip cookies to eat. And they’re really good too. Although not as good as the Neiman Marcus cookies that I did the other round…but then again…I didn’t strictly follow the recipe, maybe if you do, they’ll turn out superb!

Alton Brown’s The Chewy

Ingredients

• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 2 1/4 cups bread flour (I had no bread flour! So I subst with all-purpose)
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom medium saucepan over low heat. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.

Pour the melted butter in the mixer’s work bowl. Add the sugar and brown sugar. (The butter must be REALLY hot at this step so that it can help in melting the sugar, don’t burn yourself!) Cream the butter and sugars on medium speed. Add the egg, yolk, 2 tablespoons milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Chill the dough (this step is VERY IMPT. Don’t skip it! Chill for min. of 5 hours) then (scoop with an ice-cream scoop) onto parchment-lined baking sheets, 6 cookies per sheet.

Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown, checking the cookies after 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet for even browning.

Cool completely and store in an airtight container.

Overcoming my fears- The Chocolate Domingo Cake

The first time in my life that i baked a cake, it was a HUGE FAILURE. It looked beautiful, smelled beautiful and tasted like bitter cardboard.

That was the last time that i ever attempted cake baking…. until the other day, when my friends turned 21…

In junior college, we were a tight bunch and it seemed so cold to just purchase a cake from the bakery for them. So i swallowed my pride, and choked down my fear, and set about conquering The Cake.

To make matters worse, the place where we were meeting for their birthday was far from home and a normal cake with frosting/a cheesecake would never keep over the long distance. Travelling via public transport would also entail jostling and outright violence. Not a good cake carrying environment at all.

So i decided to bake The Chocolate Domingo Cake. Hailed as THE ONE by certain websites… i was banking all my hope on its amazingness…

Interestingly, this cake uses the reverse creaming method, and instead of just mixing it barely enough to moisten the dry ingredients, you have to beat it hard and beat it long. Much better in my opinion.

Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Chocolate Domingo Cake

Ingredients:

42g Dutch cocoa powder
160g sour cream
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
156g sifted cake flour
200g castor sugar
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
200g unsalted butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 180′C.

In a medium bowl whisk together the cocoa, sour cream, eggs and vanilla until smooth.

In a large mixing bowl combine all the remaining dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 30 seconds to blend. Add the butter and half the cocoa mixture. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed and beat for 1 1/2 minutes to aerate and develop the cake’s structure. Scrape down the sides. Gradually add the remaining cocoa mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients and strengthen the structure. Scrape down the sides.

Scrape the batter into the prepared tin (23cm diameter greased and lined springform tin) and smooth the surface with a spatula. The tin will be about half full.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until a tester inserted near the centre comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the centre.

Let the cake cool in the tin on a rack for 10 minutes. Loosen the sides with a small metal spatula and invert onto a greased wire rack. Reinvert so that the top is up and cool completely before wrapping airtight.

Decorate with icing sugar, no frosting needed!

And it was well worth the effort. =)

Chocolate chip cookies- Staple of a chocolate addict.

The past week has been insane, what with sundown marathon over the weekend and results released on Monday. Thank God that it all went as well as it could and…

I’m just really glad it’s over. (phew)

So on monday night, to kind of celebrate the release of uni results (yay!) and to use up my excess butter, I decided to bake chocolate chip cookies! The Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies are the stuff of myths and legends. There is a story, that there was once a poor sucker who paid $250 for the neiman marcus cookie recipe… apparently this is untrue but the company did come up with a cookie recipe which it shared foc with the world… This is the cookie recipe on the website!

Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened

1 cup light brown sugar

3 tablespoons granulated sugar (I cut this out because my chocolate was fully-sweet and not just semi, it turned out good. )

1 large egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1-3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 teaspoons instant espresso coffee powder (I only had 3 in 1 coffee so I substituted with cocoa powder)

1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

1.	Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Cream the butter with the sugars using an electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy (approximately 30 seconds)
2.	Beat in the egg and the vanilla extract for another 30 seconds.
3.	In a mixing bowl, sift together the dry ingredients and beat into the butter mixture at low speed for about 15 seconds. Stir in the espresso coffee powder and chocolate chips.
4.	Using a 1 ounce scoop or a 2 tablespoon measure, drop cookie dough onto a greased cookie sheet about 3 inches apart. Gently press down on the dough with the back of a spoon to spread out into a 2 inch circle. Bake for about 20 minutes or until nicely browned around the edges. Bake a little longer for a crispier cookie. (I made my cookies too big, they were terribly potent and we all ended up with a sore throat after 1 cookie. =( Try and make them smaller!)
Yield:	2 dozen cookies

Tip: I cut little rounds out of my used baking parchment to lay the cookies on to prevent them from sticking to each other. For some reason, my baking chocolate tends to remind liquid even after the cookie has cooled down. It tastes awesome but it tends to get messy, the little placemats help alot with this problem. =)

Black bottomed cupcakes: Celebrating diversity

I love black bottomed cupcakes. I always bake these when I have cream cheese to clear or if I need some cupcakes to bribe my way past something. (I’m always late for meetups. When I bring food, I get forgiven more easily)

So the other day, I was baking these cupcakes to clear off the remnants of cream cheese from my cheesecake 2 posts away… and I got to thinking how black bottomed cupcakes are essentially a realistic representative of how important diversity is in our world. The cupcakes would taste (frankly) like crap if it was only the cheese part or only the chocolate part. It is the marriage of the two vastly different tastes that makes it quite so awesome.

Black Bottomed cupcakes I

adapted from allrecipes.com, I normally halve the cheese mixture which I have calculated in the recipe below.

Ingredients

• 4 ounce cream cheese, softened
• 1 small small egg

• 1/6 cup – 1 tbsp white sugar
• 1/16 teaspoon salt (i just leave this out)
• 1/2 cup finely chopped white chocolate (I have tried this with dark chocolate and stuff but white chocolate gives it the best taste.)

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup water (I use milk)
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line muffin tins with paper cups or lightly spray with non-stick cooking spray.
2. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese, egg, 1/3 cup sugar and 1/8 teaspoon salt until light and fluffy. Stir in the chocolate and set aside.





3. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, 1 cup sugar, cocoa, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt.





4. Make a well in the center and add the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Stir together until well blended.



5. Fill muffin tins 1/3 full with the batter and top with a dollop of the cream cheese mixture.







6. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes.