Tuesday 29 January 2013
chocolate truffle swirl cookies
Been feeling rather uninspired and lacklustre of late, which unfortunately has translated into increasingly poor photography. Hopefully I'll snap out of it soon.
In other news, I have been wanting to try out this chocolate chip cookie recipe since I first chanced upon Kathryn's blog. I've been in awe of Heston Blumenthal since watching the first episode of Heston's Feasts. And having been fortunate enough to snag a table at The Fat Duck last June, I'm thoroughly convinced the man is a genius. While I'll definitely never be able to recreate his amazing dishes, this chocolate chip cookie recipe seemed manageable enough. (Though I'm sure his end-result looked and tasted a million times better.)
Technically it's a chocolate chip cookie made with bits of chocolate truffle. Unfortunately, mine turned out to be chocolate swirls rather than chips, hence the re-christening. I guess I should have anticipated the weather might be an issue and chilled the ganache for longer.
The last time I baked cookies was about 2 years(?!) ago so I had some difficulty gauging the doneness. Baked these in 3 batches and every batch turned out different. While you can't possibly use the skewer method like for cupcakes, I've learnt that, like cupcakes, you can tell they are done by the sudden burst of aroma issuing forth from the oven. Pretty intriguing stuff.
When baked evenly through (i.e. golden brown), these cookies are nice and crisp. Kind of like the Famous Amos sort. I preferred my cookie to be slightly undercooked (i.e. a little pale in the middle), such that it's crisp around the edges but soft and chewy in the middle. I liked that the little swirls of truffle gave the cookies a pleasant hint of bitterness (I used 70% dark chocolate).
Chocolate Truffle Swirl Cookies -- makes ~35 (6cm-diameter) cookies
(adapted from Kathryn's Heston's Chocolate Chip Cookies)
Chocolate Truffles:
Ingredients
10g light corn syrup
70g whipping cream
65g dark chocolate (I used 70% cocoa)
pinch of salt
Directions
- Place chocolate in a heatproof bowl and melt over a saucepan of simmering water. Set aside.
- In a separate saucepan, pour in whipping cream and corn syrup and bring to a boil.
- Take off the heat, add salt, and pour cream mixture into the melted chocolate, 1/3 at a time, stirring well.
- Leave to cool to room temperature then pour onto a tray/baking sheet lined with baking paper
- Freeze for 4h (or overnight if you're from my sunny island).
- Remove from freezer and and cut into small pieces. Put back into the freezer until required.
Cookies:
Ingredients
220g plain flour, sifted
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
5g salt
¼ tsp instant coffee
115g unsalted butter, cubed and kept cold
250g caster sugar
1 egg
1 vanilla pod (scrape out the seeds and discard the pod)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 190˚C.
- Using a whisk attachment, cream together butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
- Add in the egg and vanilla seeds and continue whisking
- Change to paddle attachment, add in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and coffee and mix well.
- Gently stir in the frozen chocolate chips with a spatula/wooden spoon until well distributed.
- Using a melon ball scoop, place small balls of dough onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. The balls of dough should be spaced well apart (leave a radius of at least twice the diameter of the dough).
- Bake for about 15min until edges are golden brown (or until all the pale cookie bits turn golden brown, if you like them more cooked)
- Leave to cool on the baking tray. The cookies should start to harden as they cool.
Thursday 10 January 2013
spicy red pepper bread
Sometime during the festive week we finally went on a picnic. I say finally because we had actually been intending to go on one approximately 9 months ago and had been constantly postponing it because, well, the weather here just makes staying indoors a much better option. But the temperature cooled considerably with the December rain so we filled up the lovely picnic basket he bought 9 months ago, and went in search of a nice patch of grass to set up camp.
I don't know about you, but at every picnic I've been to, we usually end up with a huge amount of leftover food. Thankfully, this time round our calculations weren't too far off and we only ended up leaving with an unopened bag of chips and a small tub of spicy red pepper dip. We bought the dip from the supermarket and it tasted pretty good so I was quite reluctant to see that go to waste. The elf mentioned that it would taste superb on bread and I thought, "why not put it in bread?"
So that's what I did! Naturally, I used the Japanese milk bread tangzhong method again, having been so impressed with the results. To be honest, I don't think I can go back to making bread any other way. Perhaps one day when my palate and masticatory muscles have developed well enough for me to start appreciating the tough, chewy, funky-looking kind of bread so highly favoured by my parents.
The thing about using pastes which you don't make yourself is that you have no idea what went in it. I got a bit nervous when my dough turn a lurid orange hue and even more so when it did not seem capable of rising. I was fervently hoping it was due to the lower ambient temperature brought about by the torrential downpour that started just as I was about to proof the dough, and not some secret antifungal in the dip that killed my yeast. Come to think of it, the same thing happened the last time I made my olive herb loaf. I assume it must be the rain because that's the only common variable? So after the skies cleared I quickly brought my dough out to sunbathe and it eventually rose. Lesson learnt: avoid baking bread during the monsoon season.
The bread is sufficiently tasty on its own but I prefer to eat it warm--either fresh from the oven or toasted--and with a generous chunk of salted butter.
Spicy Red Pepper Bread (makes two 21cm x 11cm x 5.5cm loaves)
Ingredients
295g bread flour
40g caster sugar
4g salt
5g full cream milk powder
6g instant dried yeast
1 tsp garlic powder
1 egg beaten (and 1 more egg, for eggwash)
30g whipping cream
27g milk
92g tangzhong (instructions here)
25g melted salted butter (cooled to room temperature)
100g spicy red pepper dip (I bought mine from Cold Storage's deli section)
Directions
The bread is sufficiently tasty on its own but I prefer to eat it warm--either fresh from the oven or toasted--and with a generous chunk of salted butter.
Spicy Red Pepper Bread (makes two 21cm x 11cm x 5.5cm loaves)
Ingredients
295g bread flour
40g caster sugar
4g salt
5g full cream milk powder
6g instant dried yeast
1 tsp garlic powder
1 egg beaten (and 1 more egg, for eggwash)
30g whipping cream
27g milk
92g tangzhong (instructions here)
25g melted salted butter (cooled to room temperature)
100g spicy red pepper dip (I bought mine from Cold Storage's deli section)
Directions
- Add bread flour, sugar, salt, milk powder, yeast and garlic powder into mixing bowl.
- Pour in the egg, whipping cream, milk and tangzhong.
- Knead using a dough hook attachment on speed 2.
- When ingredients start to come together, add the melted butter.
- Add in the spicy red pepper dip and continue kneading for ~20min until dough is smooth and elastic. (You can add more flour if the dough appears too wet. This varies according to the consistency of the dip you use.)
- Place a damp towel over the mixing bowl and leave to proof in a warm place until dough doubles in volume (mine took about 1h).
- Transfer dough to a clean, floured surface and punch it down.
- Divide dough into portions weighing ~70g.
- Shape it as instructed here.
- Leave to proof again.
- Preheat oven to 180˚C.
- Brush tops of risen dough with eggwash.
- Bake for ~20min or until golden brown.
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