Mouldy and Moth-eaten...

It had been a day of mild successes for Girl...

Girl had a friend come over for dinner tonight and was told that the dishes she had made (fried eggplant with dried shrimp and shrimp paste and lemongrass chicken) was delicious.

Score: Girl 1: Blah 0

Girl had, in the course of the last 24 hours, made a pear cake, honey & hazelnut muffins and banana muffins with walnuts...Girl's friend loved the pear cake that she was served and did not complain when Girl packed away a substantial amount for her to take home along with some muffins

Score: Girl 2: Blah 0

When Girl's friend got home, she tried a honey hazelnut muffin and used the words 'superb' and 'so good' to describe it

Score: Girl 3: Blah 0

Girl had minor success with making fondant this afternoon...

Score: Girl 3½: Blah 0

Girl tried to make fondant animals and produced these mouldy looking beasties...

Score: Girl 3½: Blah 367

T.K.O.

Girl retires for the night...she knows when she's defeated...

Do You Know The Muffin (Wo)Man...?

This morning, Girl's flatmate was awakened at some ungodly hour to the clatter of Girl's whisk against the sides of her metal mixing bowl once again as Girl whisked eggs in her quest for light and fluffy muffins.

That in itself would not be anything extraordinary as some beings do take delight in rising early on a weekend and cooking a luxurious breakfast for themselves.

However, the last thing that Girl's flatmate heard last night was probably the clatter of Girl's whisk against the sides of her metal mixing bowl as she made more muffins...

The last thing Girl remembered last night was ingesting a deliciously nutty muffin...

Girl's first batch of muffins was a close approximation of Clotilde's recipe for Honey Hazelnut Cake, which actually started out life as a muffin but got genetically re-engineered into a cake...Girl was merely returning it to what nature intended it to be...a light, deliciously nutty, honey-soaked muffin.

The second was a walnut banana muffin that Girl made up as she went along, incorporating some of the techniques she had used while making Clotilde's recipes...Girl was a little worried that the walnut banana muffins would be abject failures but they came out of the oven, looking plump and niely browned. Cautiously, Girl tried one...and then to make sure that the whole batch was alright and that the one she had just eaten was not merely a fluke, she proceeded to eat another two in quick succession...


Girl's Walnut Banana Muffin recipe...(Note: Girl used very imprecise measurements when making the muffins...feel free to alter if you think you have to!)

Ingredients:
2 eggs
honey
butter (50gms)
1 mashed up banana
70gms chopped walnuts
1½ cups flour
1½ teaspoon baking powder


Method:
Whip up the 2 eggs with either a hand-held mixer or a whisk. Whisk for as long as you like/can...
Add in the mashed banana and whisk again...
Melt the butter and the honey together in a bowl and add into the mixture...whisk again...
Add chopped walnuts and whisk...
Sift flour and baking powder into the mixtureand whisk again...
Spoon into muffin papers/a well-greased muffin tray and bake at 180c for about 15-20 minutes..

Honey Hazelnut Muffins and Banana Walnut Muffins

Pear Cake

Girl was suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Girl was craving the hype of removing a perfectly baked, scrumptiously browned cake from the oven. Girl just had to have her cake-baking fix!

So even though it was getting late and she was a little tired after her jaunt to Red Square, Girl just had to try the Pear Cake recipe found on Chocolate and Zucchini.

Girl was a little concerned that the batter she produced by following the recipe (which seemed to be predominently butter and eggs and very little else!), seemed to be a little bit on the watery side...

However, having learnt from experience that one must follow the recipe despite some misgivings, Girl decided to put the cake into the oven and was rewarded with an aromatic, eggily custardy cake densely studded with tender pears...

Heavenly!

The grainy pictures do not do the least justice to the delectable Pear Cake...

Red Square

Thanks to a generous family member, Girl got a bookful of restaurant and entertainment vouchers for her birthday and boy! has Girl been making use of it...!! ^_^ Girl and a friend decided to visit Red Square, a Russian restaurant, tonight and thoroughly enjoyed the experience...

The dramatic red and black decor of the restaurant appealed to Girl's aesthetic sense and the friendly and attentive Asian girl (who impressed Girl by speaking Russian or Ukrainian to the cooks) who manned the front of house and attended to customers' needs, made the atmosphere extremely warm and inviting.

In fact, the only grumble Girl had was that she was hungry and her food was awhile coming. However, when the dishes arrived, it was evident to Girl why they had taken so long in the making...

Girl's friend ordered a salmon and blini starter followed by the Chicken Kiev...Girl had refrained from ordering a starter due to financial constraints but she wished she had thrown financial constraints to the wind when the gorgeous plate of tender, almost melt-in-the-mouth blinis, generously filled with smoked salmon arrived at the table. Girl was hardly able to refrain from gazing enviously at her friend while he ate the starter with evident enjoyment...

The Chicken Kiev did turn out a little disappointing from Girl's point of view as it looked a little dry and came served only with peas and mashed potatoes. However, Girl's friend seemed to find nothing amiss and ate everything on his plate...

Girl had decided to take the plunge and ordered the Beef Shashlik, not quite knowing what to expect. A skewerful of chunks of perfectly grilled beef covered with an onion relish accompanied by a large helping of vegetables and a thin pancake was what it turned out to be...

Girl loved the combination of grilled meat, fresh veges and wafer-thin pancake...three of her favourite things all on one plate...Luxury!

Girl had been told by a family member that the honey cake had received glowing reviews from previous diners at the restaurant but Girl decided that she was, unfortunately, too stuffed to eat another thing...

...perhaps next time *^_^*

The Prerogative Of A Woman...

One of the absolute prerogatives of being a woman is the right to change her mind without eliciting much surprise from the people around her...

Another is being able to own numerous pairs of shoes in varying shades and styles without inviting much ridicule...

Therefore, Girl invokes her ancient right to change her plan to make fondant covered cupcakes to trying out a tempting recipe for Honey Hazelnut Cake found on that delectably ravishing French food blog Chocolate & Zucchini. Girl is looking forward to Friday night when she will be left in solitude to bake delicious cakes to her heart's content...

In fact, Girl may not stop at one cake! Girl may try two, maybe even *gasp* three of the enchanting recipes found on Chocolate & Zucchini! At that point in time, intoxicated with her seeming prowess, Girl may just lose her tenuous grip on reality and begin living in a delicious fantasy of being a Domestic Goddess...

Let us leave Girl in her pleasurable illusion...Disillusionment comes, often far too soon, to all of us...

Marshmallow Fondant

Girl has found a recipe for MMF that looks quite easy here!! :)

So that will be Girl's weekend project...

Friday Night: Go get ingredients for MMF; Bake a batch of plain cupcakes; make MMF...

Saturday Morning: Decorate cupcakes; Gobble down half the batch of cupcakes...

All Day Sunday: Regret rash and greedy actions the day before; Regret lack of self control; Eat more cupcakes to make self feel better...

Girl can't wait for the weekend! But now, Girl needs to go do her Korean homework or face the wrath of her Seon Sang-nim

An Nyeong-hi Ka Sey Yo!!

Pinky Boo!

The mere sight of gorgeously pink cupcakes decorated with colourful bits and bobs are enough to gladden Girl's heart...

And this is even before the sugar rush from the marshmallow icing and the hundreds and thousands and chocolate shavings kick in... >o<

Pictures of Girl's incredibly amateurish attempts to liven up plain 'ole buttercake cupcakes...

Girl went out and got a packet of cake icing today from the supermarket...Girl isn't entirely sure whether it will pass off for fondant or can be used to sculpt things the way sugarpaste can...once more, only experience will tell!

Moussaka...

Girl set out to make the Greek dish Moussaka, or rather, a bastardized version of it. She grilled eggplant steaks, cooked a mince sauce and...blanched spinach. The national dish of Greece had taken on a rather Italian flavour! Girl layered the eggplant, spinach and mince in a dish and covered it with feta cheese and then grilled it for a few minutes. Girl omitted the bechamel sauce, firstly because she didn't know how to make a bechamel sauce and secondly because she had heard rumours that it contained eggs, cream etc and she was just trying to watch calories...

The dish turned out OK for a home-made dish...no restaurant standard here; it was gobbled up by Girl, who absolutely adores eggplant, and a friend.

A portion of Girl's home-made Moussaka and a horiatiki salata sans olives, peppers etc...

Think Pink!

Girl's first cupcake covered with marshmallow icing!





Girl actually meant to make marshmallow fondant but she found that if she melted the marshmallows and then covered the cupcakes with the liquidified marshmallows and waited for it to set, it formed a smooth, shiny layer on top of the cake...


Now it seems that all Girl has to do is figure out a way to make the fondant properly so she can decorate the cupcakes...However, Girl is slightly concerned that the marshmallow icing will not be strong enough to support the weight of any fondant decorations or other bits and bobbles that she may use to prettify the cakelets and that they will all collapse into a gooey mess. Only time and experience will tell! *Girl shrugs philosophically*

G.R.E.E.D

Girl is thinking of renaming her blog G.R.E.E.D.

Whatsit stand for you ask? Girl Rapaciously Eats Every Day...That's what it stands for...

And while I am aware that the grammar of that sentence may be somewhat iffy, it is an unescapably accurate description of Girl's almost constant intake of edible foodstuffs at the moment...

Today for breakfast, Girl had leftovers from dinner, a few chicken puffs that Girl had whipped up first thing in the morning and a few muffins which were meant for the neighbours and friends...

Actually, the last was an act of pure altruism...

Girl was merely checking to see if the condition of the muffins had deteriorated overnight and whether they were still fit to be given away as presents to Girl's nearest & dearest. Girl does not want to poison her friends...oh no!

When Girl came back from doing a few chores at about 11am, she was assailed by a sudden craving for banana muffins...so she just had to whip up a batch! She found a jar of aromatic coffee and was overwhelmed by a curiosity to see what would happen if she added it into the batch of banana muffins...

An hour later, Girl's kitchen was filled with the aroma of baking muffins and when the little beauties came out of the oven, Girl just HAD to try one to see if the addition of coffee had completely ruined her muffins! So Girl had one (ahem! two)...

Now, feeling incredibly bloated and uncomfortably like a satiated python, Girl will now take a N.A.P. *nana style*

A few hours later...

Instead of taking a Nana Nap, Girl went out and got herself a block of Philly Cream Cheese *drools* and made Cream Cheese Frosting (sans butter) for her Banana Coffee cupcakes...

Here they are..

The Visitors...

Girl had visitors for a few days this week...

Witness the dinner one of the visitors casually whipped up for us one night!

Left to Right: Rendang, Fried Asparagus with dried shrimp and Shrimp Paste, Thai Vermicelli Salad with Cucumber.

Steamed Broccoli

Salmon in a Tamarind sauce; the fattiness of the fish is complemented beautifully by the sourness of the sauce...

Ironical situation...

OK...so Girl decided to start learning how to cook so she would eat healthier and also save money...

The truth of the matter is that Girl is now so obsessed with cooking that she spends all her free time (and money!) on her new hobby and even worse, has to eat up all the fruits of her labour! Girl is starting to feel the pinch!

Yoghurt Cake...

Girl was re-reading the blog post for the Lemon Yoghurt cake that had been such a disaster for her the last three times she made it (burnt outside, oozy insides and funky texture) and decided (in her pigheaded, bull-doggish way) to attempt it one more time, since far more accomplished bakers that herself had used the recipe and produced fantatic cakes...

So, this time, she was extremely careful to measure all the ingredients out accurately, to omit the Limoncello that had been added in the last three times she made the cake, and to lower the oven temperature to 160c instead of the recommended 180c, with the intention of baking the cake for a longer time.

This time, having carefully combined all the wet ingredients with a hand mixer and sifted in the flour and baking powder and baking soda and then combined them gently by hand, she poured the mixture into a 23cm baking tin and baked it at 160c for about 40 minutes. It was then that things started to get a little tense...

The outside of the cake was starting to brown and yet tester after tester that was pushed into the belly of the cake came up still showing traces of cake batter. In addition to that, it was getting quite late and Girl was getting decidedly cranky as she had counted on getting a lemony slice of yoghurt cake before bed. She cranked the temperature up to 180c. The outside of the cake got browner. Girl decided that she would bake the cake for 15 more minutes and if it still wasn't done then, she would give it up for lost.

...

But lo and behold! At the end of the 15 minutes, there reposed, in the depths of the hot oven, a beautifully browned cake. But the hardest test was yet to come...Girl tremblingly inserted a tester into the centre of the cake and when it was removed, it was magically clean!

Success!

Girl was so excited, she cut a slice of the cake straight away and devoured the tender morsel within minutes. She then fell asleep, savouring the sweet taste of victory...

PS/ Girl decided that the next time she made this cake, she would also make a glaze of Limoncello, sugar, lemon juice and grated lemon rind...yumminess! Au revoir!

Messy, Gooey Chocolate Cake...

Girl was in need of a decadent dessert...and, as usual, was broke...

So she turned to her only true friend in such times of need...

Who, as expected, rose to the occasion...to produce such a messily, gooey chocolatey cake as would satisfy the cravings of the most hardened chocoholic and at the same time, still the protests of the stingiest misers...

For $1.99, Girl purchased an Edmonds "Sure To Rise" pre-mixed chocolate cake and voila!

Vermicelli Salad

It was one of those scorching hot summer days...Girl felt in need of sustenance but could but bear the prospect of eating anything hot and heavy. A pantry raid revealed a packet of vermicelli squirreled away behind the pasta and egg noodles and so Vermicelli Salad was had by all for dinner that night...


Vermicelli Salad
Ingredients: (Amounts are very dependent on how many people you are wanting to feed or how hungry they are *^_^*)
Vermicelli, Cucumber, Tomatoes, Carrots, Turnip (raw), Garlic shoots/ Chives/ Spring onion...plus whatever vegetables you fancy!

Dressing Ingedients: (Make the dressing to taste)
Vinegar, Soy sauce or salt, Sugar, Sesame seed oil, Lemon juice & Chillies (last two are optional)

Boil some water and soak the vermicelli in a large bowl. While it is soaking, chop or dice or grate or slice up the vegetables however you fancy. Mix the vinegar, soy sauce and other dressing ingredients in a bowl and pour over veges. When vermicelli is soft, mix in with the veges...Eat!





Girl served the scrummily sourish salad with grilled chicken breast meat that had been coated with a salt, cumin and sesame seed oil marinade. Girl loves her George Foreman grill!

Iffy pictures!

Girl apologises to the handful of friends that may be reading this blog for the iffy pictures. All pictures on this blog are taken with Girl's 1.3megapixel camera on her cellphone and Girl cannot admit to being the world's greatest photographer either!

Saturday Lunch

Girl loves sitting out in her sunny garden with a lovely lunch. Today's lunch was quite a heavy one for a summer's day but Girl was feeling more than a little peckish. And greed did play more than a small part in the decision to make pork chop with a fresh salsa on the side.

Grilled pork chop with tomato, cucumber and avocado salsa and salad leaves.

The pork chop was coated with cumin, curry powder, salt, sugar, sesame oil and the smallest splosh of black vinegar. (Girl does not know where she picked up this penchant for adding black vinegar to her dishes...) The lovely, juicy chop was then grilled in Girl's George Foreman grill. Lovely...

While the pork chop was grilling away, Girl chopped up tomatoes, half an avocado and some cucumber into a bowl and seasoned it with lemon juice and a little salt. Yumminess!

Eureka!

As stated in a previous post, Girl googled a new recipe for yoghurt cake...and this time, Girl's efforts produced a beautifully golden loaf that had no icky, oozy insides.

(Lemon) Yoghurt Cake
Ingredients:

1/2 c plain yogurt

1 c sugar

3 eggs

1/2 cup canola or olive oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat oven to 350º. Butter your cake pan well. Mix the yogurt, eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla in a medium mixing bowl. Add the flour and baking powder and mix well. Pour into the pan, and bake for 25 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Let it cool for 10 minutes and then turn out of the pan. Let it cool more before slicing.

(Source: What Geeks Eat)

Girl would have sploshed in some Limoncello (as usual) or squeezed in some lemon juice and grated in some lemon rind if she had had some. Oh well...there's always next time...

This morning, Girl woke up early, went to the supermarket to buy a few ingredients and came back to make chocolate puffs and chicken puffs.

Girl used a packet of defrosted puff pastry for the chocolate puffs and cut rounds out of the pastry with an old jar. Girl put two squares of chocolate in between the pastry rounds and squeezed the edges together. As usual, the puffs were baked at 180c until brown. Choice!

Innocuous looking puffs full of devilishly delish chocolate *evil chuckle*

Chicken puff recipe courtesy of Su Yin over at The Journal of a Girl who Loves to Cook. Marvellous!

Long Weekend

This weekend will be a long weekend for Girl. Wonder what I should do...

The weather's looking pretty good at the moment...looks like perfect picnic weather!

Yoghurt Cake

Girl was browing some food blogs and websites the other day and came across a recipe for Yoghurt cake from a website called Chocolate & Zucchini.com. The instructions looked pretty simple and Girl already had most of the ingredients in her cupboards, save for yoghurt. So she decided to try it...

The mixing of the wet ingredients went smoothly. Girl even managed to substitute the rum required in the recipe with a splash of Limoncello and a squeeze of lemon. However, doubts began to assaile Girl when the dry ingredients went in and the batter started looking a little thicker and doughier than expected. However, there was no help for it but to spoon the dough into two loaf tins and bake at 200c.

20 minutes later, Girl realised the importance of sticking to the exact temperature given in the recipe (180c for 30-35 minutes) as she stared at two well-browned loaves with squishy insides...ick! The two loaves were returned to the oven to be baked at 150c for awhile in the hopes of drying the insides out while not browning the crusts any further...

The cakes turned out OK...(despite the cock-up). They were light and not too sweet and most importantly, almost 100% fool-proof, now that Girl has learnt a valuable lesson about baking temperatures! This Yoghurt cake looks set to become the base recipe of many variations of cake in the future...

On a further note...Girl and Kalosha ate the two cakes up yesterday...actually Kalosha ate most of it. Girl thought the cakes were a little on the dry side (not surprising) while Kalosha thought they were OK. Kalosha suggested Girl put in carrots and sultanas into the cake in future. Bah! Philistine!

On an even further note...Girl has tried recreating the cake again and this time, had the same problem! Very brown outsides and damp inside! :( This time, Girl baked cake at 150c for longer. Maybe its not Girl's cooking abilities...maybe is recipe *frowns and rushes off to Google another recipe*

Puffing On...

Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients: One cubed chicken breast, one potato (peeled and cubed), one sliced onion, half a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, a packet of instant soup mix (Mushroom) and a sheet of puff pastry...

Girl started out by frying the onion in oil and then adding the chicken, potato and frozen mixed vegetables to the pot. While they were cooking away, she mixed the packet of instant soup mix with some water and whisked it to ensure that all lumps were eliminated. When the chicken was cooked, she added the soup mix to the pot and mixed all the ingredients together thoroughly. Salt, soy sauce and black vinegar was added to the pot to season the mixture. When the mixture was done, Girl filled up casserole dishes with it. Puff pastry was used to cover the casserole dishes and excess pastry was trimmed away. Holes were poked in the pastry and the pies were baked for about 15-20 minutes at 180c-200c.

No Pajeon Purist...

In addition to learning how to cook, Girl is also trying to learn Korean in order to facilitate her Korean Drama watching habits...

Sometimes when Girl goes to the Korean restaurant near her house, she is served a crispy pancake with bits of squid, shrimp and veges in it as a side dish. Yumminess! So Girl decides to try to make Korean pancake (Pa Jeon 파전) herself. She gets herself a bag of pancake mix from the Korean shop (Buchimgaru 부침가루) and follows the instructions on the back of the bag religiously...

Her pancakes turn out awful...

Girl is deeply disappointed at her Pa Jeon making failure...She re-reads the instructions and yes, her Korean is crap, but they are accompanied by pictures and those she understands. Girl is a little puzzled and gives up making Pa Jeon, thinking them beyond her abilities. Until one day...she stumbles across a blog which features a Korean making Pa Jeon with...*gasp* eggs! Eureka!!! The mystery is solved! Eggs, Girl's Pa Jeon lacks! (BTW, eggs do not feature in the pictures on the back of the Buchimgaru packet)

Now, Girl chops up spring onion and garlic shoots with renewed zest, slices fish cake and sausages gleefully, grates carrot and cabbage and tosses them together in a bowl with some salt. She tips in some flour, cracks two eggs into the bowl and puts some water into the mixture. She stirs for a few minutes to combine the ingredients and then fries spoonfuls of it in a screaming hot frying pan.

The result? Pa Jeon that satisfies Girl's cravings for something oily and fried and yet is at least 50% vegetables to still her conscience.

Girl is no Pa Jeon Purist...

Approaching baking with trepidation...

Girl is a hopeless baker...

Surrounded by people who churn out biscuits, pies, cakes shaped like Louis Vuitton purses and Mille-feuille in their sleep, Girl feels at a distinct disadvantage. Girl decides to rectify the situation and level the playing field...a little (i.e. so much so that only an ant would feel it).

So, when she spies pre-mixed cake mix at the supermarket on sale, she buys two boxes...a plain butter cake mix and a chocolate one with an icing pack included in it. She decides to save the chocolate one and use the butter cake mix to make little cupcakes.

She mixes the contents of the box with two eggs, 50gms of butter and three-quarters of a cup of soy-milk (not having any milk). She spoons the mixture into cupcake paper cases and tops off her babies with frozen berries (defrosted in the microwave) and chopped chocolate.

Berries for a luxurious touch...

...enjoy the sight of them while you can...

Girl anxiously watches her little babies as they rise and brown and drown their berry toppings...

The chocolate topping fares better, being not quite so plump and weighty. Girl later finds the berries at the bottom of the cupcake, their tartness a perfect foil to the shocking sweetness of the cake, although aesthetically, they are a failure...

However, there is always a silver lining in every cloud...

Enough cupcakes to last me a month of bad-weather weekends or when all I want to do is stay indoors, watch mind-numbing TV and eat junk food.

All Puffed Up

Girl will begin by demonstrating the ways she has used a packet of basic puff pastry from the supermarket. For someone on a budget, there are an endless variety of puffs, sweet and savoury, that can be made with a sheet of pastry, imagination and a few other cheap ingredients.

PUFF 1: Apple Puffs

Ingredients: A packet of puff pastry and a can of diced apple.

If Girl had really been in full on Health-Nazi mode, she would have peeled, cored and cut up into chunks some apples and stewed it in a saucepan. But Girl was in Schultz mode and so, canned diced apple it was.


Girl thawed out puff pastry (always the hardest part), cut the white sheet into squares, placed a portion of apple in the middle of the pastry square, folded the pastry over and secured edges by pressing it together with a fork. Puffs were baked at about 180c for about 15-20 minutes (Girl checked every so often by peering into the oven) and when the puffs were deemed brown and crisp enough, the oven was turned off.


The end result...beautiful puffed pillows of appley goodness...

PUFF 2: Tuna Puffs

Ingredients: A packet of puff pastry and a can of tuna (sweet thai chilli).

As before, Girl thawed pastry, cut it into squares, placed tuna in the middle of the pastry squares, squeezed edges together and baked them. This time, the bottoms came out a little iffy (because of the liquid from the tuna, Girl suspects...). The choice of sweet thai chilli tuna could have turned out so bad but instead, Girl had savoury, triangular puffs of spicy tuna for dinner. Very filling and cheap!

And yes, this time, Girl screwed up the baking time a little...check it out...