a millygram of sugar

chronicling an oven affair

Friday, 22 March 2013

banana cupcakes with bailey's buttercream

My grandmother lives in Australia and whenever we go to visit, she would always make a banana milkshake for me. I love her banana milkshakes! I don't know whether it's the bananas or the milk there, or perhaps the heartwarming feeling of eating grandma's cooking, but her milkshakes always taste so much better than if I were to do it myself.

One time my uncle decided to add a splash of Bailey's Irish Cream to the milkshake and it was so good I've come to associate Bailey's with bananas. Hence this recipe.

Banana Cupcakes with Bailey's Buttercream Frosting (makes ~12 cupcakes)

Banana Cupcakes

Ingredients

160g plain flour

110g caster sugar

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

125g unsalted butter

3 eggs

½ tsp vanilla extract

3 small bananas or 2 large ones (the riper the better)

Directions

Mash the bananas in a bowl and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 175°C.
Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
Add in the vanilla extract and mix well.
Add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and eggs and mix until well-combined.
Add in the mashed bananas and continue mixing.
Fill cupcake liners with mixture until ~¾ full
Bake for 15-20min until you can smell the cupcake aroma from the oven, the tops have turned golden brown, and toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean.

Bailey's Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

2 egg whites

60g caster sugar

84g unsalted butter, softened

30-40ml Bailey's Irish Cream (or to your liking)

Directions

Pour egg whites and sugar into a clean, heatproof bowl and heat over a saucepan of simmering water, whisking the egg and sugar constantly so it does not curdle.
Continue whisking until mixture reaches 70°C.
Remove from heat and transfer to a mixing bowl with whisk attachment
Whisk until soft (not stiff yet), glossy peaks form and mixture has cooled to room temperature.
Add in the Baileys a little bit at time, whisking well between additions.
Change to paddle attachment, add in the butter and beat until it reaches frosting consistency. (Refer to this post for greater detail)
Taste the buttercream--you can still add in more Bailey's if you wish.
Frost as desired.

Additional:

I decorated my cupcakes by sprinkling some Banana Nut Crunch cereal (finely crushed), and topped it with a banana slice coated in honey.

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

(not quite) black forest cupcakes

For my Valentine's Day baking project I was hoping to do something a little edgier than the usual trite heart-shaped confections. Looked to the supermarket for some inspiration and was delighted to find cherries at the offer rack. [Truth be told, I spend more time at the supermarket than any other retail outlet. Which is a bit sad for a woman who is not yet married with children.] I love my stone fruits and cherries are tied for first place favourite with peaches. Cherries in their natural form, that is. I cannot stand maraschino cherries. Or indeed, any type of "cherry"-flavoured foods, which I automatically associate with cough syrup.

But I digress.

The original intention was to do a Black Forest cupcake inspired by the excellent BFG (Black Forest Gateaux) we had at the Fat Duck which I still dream about from time to time. Sadly, I didn't manage to find kirsch so I substituted it with rum, which apparently is commonly used in the Austrian version. Brandy might have been a better alternative but I was rather reluctant to use the Cognac at home.

I also switched the whipped cream for a cherry-rum-infused cream cheese frosting as the cherries I used were rather sweet and I wanted something tart to complement the richness of the chocolate cake.

So yes. There you have it! My Valentine's Day project which my valentine was rather pleased with.

(Not quite) Black Forest Cupcakes (makes ~24 cupcakes)

A. Cherry Filling
Ingredients
12 cherries, pitted and halved
1 cup rum (or just enough to soak the halved cherries in)

Directions

Place the cherries in a bowl and pour in the rum, making sure that the cherries are immersed.
Leave to soak for at least 3h.

B. Chocolate Cupcake
Ingredients
1¾ cup plain flour
1½ cup caster sugar
¾ cup cocoa powder
1½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup strong black coffee (steaming hot)

Directions

Place flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking power and salt into a mixing bowl.
Add in eggs, buttermilk, oil, vanilla extract and coffee.
Mix well using paddle attachment.
Preheat oven to 175°C.
Fill cupcake liners with batter until ¾ full.
Bake for ~18min or until skewer inserted in centre comes out clean.
Leave to cool on wire rack
When cool, use a sharp knife to core out centres of all the cupcakes. Do not discard the 'lid'.
Stuff in a rum-soaked cherry half and ¼ tsp of cherry-rum (from A.) into each cupcake and replace cored out cupcake lid

C. Cherry-Rum-Infused Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
240g cream cheese, softened at room temperature
120g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
~1 cup confectioner's sugar (This is arbitrary. You can adjust the amount according to your preference for frosting sweetness.)
2 tbsp of cherry-rum (from A.)

Directions

Mix cream cheese and butter together until well-combined.
Add in sugar ¼ cup at a time until desired sweetness level is achieved
Add in cherry rum and continue mixing until fully incorporated.
Frost as desired!

Monday, 18 February 2013

pineapple jam

We are about a week into the Lunar New Year and as tradition dictates, I am down with the flu. There's something about the frenzied activities that just kills your body. Or it could the daily gathering of lots of people in confined spaces that facilitates the spread of germs. Or it could be the "heatiness" from all the LNY goodies, as the older generation would say.

LNY is a time for feasting. Snacks are practically shoved in our faces whenever we enter someone's home (which is rather often, if you've got a big family like mine) with the end result being a lot of grumbling from people about burgeoning waistlines. I generally don't have a problem with weight gain during LNY. Not because I am secretly dieting like most people believe, but because I am just not very fond of LNY snacks. The only exception being Mrs Lim's pineapple tarts. (Mrs Lim is the mother of my binge buddy. How appropriate.)

Having been fortunate enough to get my hands on the recipe a few years back, I've been religiously making my own tarts every LNY. My family and future in-laws love the tarts so much, I have to make 4 large batches to keep everyone happy.

I prefer making the closed kind of pineapple tarts because it has a more favourable pastry to jam ratio for me. But then again, this can vary according to how thin you roll our your pastry and how big a dollop of jam you use. There was one year we tried these closed tarts at my grandparents' which had such an appalling amount of filling we couldn't bring ourselves to finish the thing. "Pineapple bomb", my cousin called it. I suppose it wouldn't have tasted that bad if the pineapple wasn't candied to the extent that it was.

For the past few years, I've been using the store-bought pineapple paste to make my tarts. They work well enough but I've always wanted to try my hand at making my own jam so my tarts would be 100% home-made. So that's what I did this year! And now I can't go back to using store-bought pineapple paste. As my elf puts it: "You don't know what you're missing until you've tried pineapple tarts made with home-made pineapple jam." They make you realise that store-bought pastes just don't taste of pineapple.

Pineapple Jam
(adapted from Table for 2... or more)
Ingredients
2 large pineapples* (mine were about 1.2kg each, 600g after peeling)
[opt: 20ml water (if your pineapples are juicy you can leave this out)]
1¼ cup sugar
1 small cinnamon stick

*note: the sour, fibrous variety of pineapples is preferred.

Directions
Cut out the core of the pineapple, chop it up and and place it in a blender.
Blend until you get a fine puree.
Chop up the rest of the peeled pineapple and place the chunks (and any juice) into a blender.
If your pineapples are not very juicy, add 20ml of water.
Blend to a fine consistency while still maintaining a bit of chunkiness.
Place in a wok or heavy-based pan together with the cinnamon stick, and reduce over medium heat until at least 80% of its fluid content has evaporated.
Add in the sugar. (This will cause the mixture to turn watery again.)
Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens to a paste.
Increase to high heat and cook until desired colour is achieved.
Remove from wok/pan and leave to cool, which will cause the jam to thicken further.
If the mixture is still too wet, you can either return it to the wok/pan to continue cooking, or strain the syrup out.

**Sorry I can't disclose the recipe for the pineapple tart pastry without permission from Mrs Lim.

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

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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