Sometimes you just need butter

Sorry for the previous terribly sad post. I promise I'm all sparkly again. Dedicating one day a week at least to baking sometimes I want to eat, I've decided that this week's should be the cashew recipe that I saw on CookieMadness a while back. It's been on my mind for awhile-I mean anything that combines sweet and salty is a winner by me. It's sad how there isn't sweet popcorn here in Melbourne. The people here are definitely missing out, there's nothing better than ordering a bucket of popcorn and having it half sweet and half salty. The best part is rummaging through the layer of sweet to get to a salty popcorn cluster which gets you started on that sweet sugar trip all over again. CAN YOU SAY YUMMY? Too bad, they know not of such pleasures in life. =)

BACK TO COOKIE...
It was from the Betty Crocker round up and while I don't have photos to show because mine are so unfortunately UGLY, you can head over here to take a look. I halved the recipe and made it gluten free and omitted a whole lot of things because I'm such a freak when it comes to 'fat'. I suck the fun out of cookie eating don't I? I wish Anna would send some over so I could try it in all it's glorious yumminess. I like my version, don't really miss the chocolate or the pretzels I left out to make it G.F. I'm not sure but I think I shouldn't have added the baking soda, or maybe halved the already-halved amount because it became too light for me. It is definitely also due to the gluten free flour used. Sometimes I miss normal baking. And I didn't use butter either in an attempt to cut out diary. OHWELLS. here's my version.

1.5 cups raw/dry roasted cashews
2 tbsp white sugar
1 tbsp egg white
2 tsp salt
>The method is all on Anna's blog.

1 cup white rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1/4 potato starch
2 tbsp almond meal
1 tsp baking soda (I might try 1/2 tsp)
1/2 tsp xanthan gum

>Sift all together, set aside

4 tbsp expeller pressed virgin coconut oil, softened
4 tbsp natural peanut butter
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1.5 eggs

75g dark chocolate, chopped

>Cream the coconut oil, peanut butter and sugar together, until veryvery well combined
>Add in the eggs and vanilla
>Mix in the dry ingredients with a very sturdy spoon, drop by rounded tbsp on a cookie sheet. This part is VERY tricky, because the batter is VERY STICKY. But it puffs up well, and doesn't spread much.

it matters, only when
you think too much
too little about what you have
too much about what you don't
otherwise, it doesn't.

because it doesn't bother them
and you're all alone if
you do. So it doesn't
and then i'll never be alone.

besides. I have everyone else.

I might bake later on, because right now I suddenly lost all inspiration. Silly me.

Sugar High Friday: Drunken Apples

I hardly drink alcohol and what I've got lying around does not directly belong to me. Let's see...I've got Kahlua but it's my sisters (yet I use it) and I've got Vodka, the remnants from a girls night in some 4 months ago? And it's still sitting there, in all it's half-drunk glory, untouched since then. So when this SHF rolled around, I was practically spoilt for choice. Vodka or Kahlua? =P And I wasn't about o go out and buy more alcohol only to use 1/2 cup at most and leave the rest of it sitting on top of the fridge. There's a war going on there-and right now the cereal boxes are winning. 4:1.

So I typed in 'vodka + apples' and did a little google search for possible inspirations. All I got was apple flavoured vodka, not much luck there. Sat around and thought about buying some other form of alcohol, cointreau maybe, or maybe a little wine but decided against it when I chanced upon Smitten Kitchen's Boozy Baked French Toast. I could work with that!

I went to the market after uni and got me some apples and craisins. Got home, took my gluten free bread out of the freezer and warmed it up on the jaffle maker. Ever notice how bread never turns crispy in there, only the edges, while keeping the middles moist and squidgy? Might be because of the steam created by the icy bits on the frozen bread, which is a good thing for this sorta 'lazy-i-just-cant-be-bothered-leaving-my-bread-to-thaw-slowly' things. So I decided to halve the recipe, used 2 eggs instead of said 1.5 and hid apple slices & craisins between the bread layers. Left it in the fridge overnight and this morning I had a no-effort-sweet-as brekkie. YUMS! I don't know if I'm drunk yet, but I think you could definitely add more Kahlua (3 tbsps maybe?)

The french toast bordered on the line of bread-and-butter pudding but a lot alot ALOT less fat and alot less sweet, which is why I suggest maple syrup or maybe a kahlua syrup? I tried but failed, luckily I didn't need it too sweet. I reckon gluten free bread soaks up alot more liquid so if you were using normal bread I suggest you stick to Smitten Kitchen's quantity of ingredients. Otherwise, It's really yummy. =)

Baked Drunken Apple French Toast (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

Ingredients:
6 slices gluten free bread
2 eggs
2 small apples, sliced thinly (I used Sundowner, just because.)
handful of Craisins
1 tsp cinnamon
1.5 cups fat-free soy milk (that's all I had on hand)
2 tbsp raw sugar + 3 tbsp extra
3 tbsp Kahlua

Pyrex Loaf pan

1) Whisk the eggs, sugar, milk, kahlua and cinnamon together
2) Line 2 slices of bread in the pan, and slice another up to fill in the gaps
3) Place the sliced apples onto the bread and sprinkle with craisins, top with one tbsp of sugar
4) Top with remaining bread and pour egg/milk mixture over
5) Let sit for 3 hours or overnight in the fridge. Sprinkle remaining sugar over the top before baking
6) Bake at 190 degrees for 25 minutes and drizzle with maple syrup if desired. YUMMERS!

Fresh Strawberry Tart

I did it, after whining all week about how I missed baking non-fat-reduced treats and delicious traybakes and whatnots, I decided-I love baking too much to care. Seriously, all this no fat this and less fat that and I will get fat things are sucking the fun out of EVERYTHING! And nothing makes me happier really, except a good shopping spree oh and going home.

On another happyhappy note, I got my birthday present (albeit 2 months late) from the girls! 'Breakfast, Lunch, Tea- Rose Bakery' by Rose Carrarini. The book is a striking green with the title in bold right down the middle. No extra fancy schmancy photo or 'melted chocolate dripping down the side of the jar' shot. Just green and black. =) I love the book so much I hugged it to sleep in lecture (SHHH...the video was boring). I was ever so inclined towards this book because it was all about my three favourite meals-breakfast, lunch and tea! No dinner for me, dinner is my least favourite meal-I have issues with it, don't get me started. =) It just goes along the lines of the fact that I really dislike going to bed with a full stomach, makes me feel...heavy.

Back to the tart, I was inspired by the many blogs I have been drooling over and decided that I should bake one myself. I used to have problems with pastry and what's more, this was gluten-free, which made it alot more daunting. Ariana Bundy's book made it simple though and I felt composed and confident which probably helped. Most things go wrong when you're running around the kitchen for ingredients like a headless chicken.

I adapted the recipe a little and instead of using 1/3 cup of margarine, I used 2 tablespoons of Melrose spread, left in the freezer for 10 minutes to harden a little, and 3 tablespoons of expeller pressed coconut oil (from the fridge so it was hard) and blended all the ingredients in a food processor. The flour mix I used was 1 cup white rice flour, 1/8 cup tapioca starch and 1/8 cup potato starch.


The strawberries I got were from Driscolis and being the end of the strawberry season, the strawberries weren't very strawberry-y or sweet but they were big and so I just added a little more glaze to sweeten it up. The crust was pretty good, obviously lacking that rich buttery taste but I'm sure it can be fixed with a butter flavouring (?). It was flaky which could possibly be due to how I rolled it. I rolled it out then folded it in and re-rolled. It was pretty sturdy and didn't crumble too much. OVERALL I say, I'm glad I changed my mind about baking. Else I would be a sad little person. =) Also, I'll be submitting this to Sweetnick's ARF/ 5-a-day roundup so head there to check it out on Tuesday!

ITCHYITCHY

My sister got me my icecream maker for my birthday 2 months ago, and I made one batch of coconut icecream and left it packed on top of the refrigerator since. I feel terribly guilty. Problem is, I find using 5 egg yolks in my icecream slightly excessive and to be honest, a little scary. Needless to say I had been rummaging through countless vegan blogs hoping to find something dairy free and egg free. Might have been me being fussy but I didn't want a sorbet and other recipes I found asked for soy cream and fancy soy milk powders but I didn't know where to get them. Frustrated I declared- I GIVE UP!

But you know there is a cookbook about practically everything out there now. A book all about fish, a book all about chocolate (no, make that MANY books all about chocolate) and whatnot and Vice Cream is probably the IT book I needed. =) Decided to just close my eyes and pick out a recipe, I ended up making a 'raw' strawberry ice cream and mmmmmmm, it's pretty darn good. Different from what I expected since there was no sugar that was used instead, pureed dates stood in as a sweetener. Needless to say the icecream tasted like dates and strawberries which somehow made the flavour deeper. The texture was somewhere in between an icecream and a sorbet. Next on my list is peanut butter with chocolate. Gotta be good huh.

Here's the recipe (modified) from Jeff Rogers' Vice Cream, short sweet and simple.

1 vanilla bean
1.5 cups almond milk (I used fat-free soy milk)
1 cup organic pitted dates
1.5 cup packed hulled organic strawberries

1) Place the dates in boiling water to cover and let sit overnight (I chucked mine in the microwave for 4 minutes since I'm not fussed about being 'raw')
2) Remove the skins off the dates if you mind the specks in the final product, else leave it.
3) Blend the dates with the milk and the strawberries and vanilla seeds until silky smooth
4) Chill well before preparing according to ice-cream machine manufacturer's instructions.
5) Serve immediately or freeze and thaw 10 minutes before serving.

stickydate weird pudding

Today's the sort of day that you want to stay indoors- no going out for lunch, no going to get some groceries and definitely no going to the Melbourne Show. Luckily I've already done that on Monday so there, no dreadful 'i-wasted-a-good-day' feeling. =)

I spent the better part of yesterday tossing ideas in my head. I had a baking itch and since I haven't baked for a week or more (I was in Sydney on a girls trip!), I felt slightly guilty I had been neglecting the oven. So was it going to be coconut macaroons or stickydate pudding (more like a cake if you ask me) and I went with the stickydate, just because I had been wanting to bake it for a while now and if you ask me, I much like baking things that take a wee bit more effort. Makes you feel all sorts of happy and contented, none of that 'whip it up in 10 minutes' for me. Besides, my theory is that if you wanna bake, do it properly. So i used this gluten free recipe from Women's Day and was hoping for the best. I was attracted to it because it used such a wide variety of flours and I really wanted to try out the soy flour I had gotten awhile back.

So after I got back from dinner (INDIAN!), I decided to do the first bit which was to cook the dates and water for 5 minutes then add the bicarb soda and let sit for 20. After i did that, I went to get DVDs (Tuesday night special at videoezy) and came home to do the rest. It looked good in the mixing bowl, looked good rising in the oven but taste wise, it was really off.

I might blame it on the fact that I used Melrose instead of butter (I'm trying to be dairy free) or that I added cinnamon instead of nutmeg. Whatever it was, the texture was good, soft and sticky and today it remained moist even though I just left it sitting on the counter top. I don't know about this one...I suppose a large part of the problem MIGHT be that I didn't make the butterscotch toffee sauce to drench it in but hey, shouldn't a cake taste good on it's on without the added fancy schmancies? =( BUGGER. Now I feel like my baking itch hasn't been well satisfied. Oh well, I've got a few more days til school starts so til then, I'll think of something new to bake. =)

Holy...

Holy! It's been a full month since I've blogged. I have good reason for missing out on the world-uni! Oh wells, I haven't stopped baking, if that's what you're wondering. I have just been everywhere at once, just not here =)

Siew and I have embarked on our multimedia project for uni and we had huge plans for it. Started with using Director to make me a cake catalogue, then decided that we should do an aesthetic piece about food and friendship and we ended up with a interactive photo collage thingy. Don't ask. I'm confused myself. Good thing though, I got some nice photos out of it! =) Here's some...

and more...

Allrighty, now it's back to working on my presentation! I promise I'll have more brownie photos up soon! =)