Last week my cousin said he wanted a dark chocolate tart, so I made one. I looked in my cookbooks but only good ol' TJOC had a recipe. So I looked online for variations and came up with this

Chocolate Tart

recipe, purportedly by Gordon Ramsay. I liked it better because the ingredients were measured by weight, and I didn't have to cut in butter for the crust. So I made it. This week's crust behaved alot better than last week's, partly because I learned from last week and rolled it out and placed it on the tart pan as fast as possible, before the dough became impossibly soft.

On Saturday I made two orange-based things. I made the filling and crust dough for the

Bitter Orange-Blueberry Tart (from How to be...)

then needed to refrigerate the dough, so I made

Orange Bread with Dried Cranberries and Mangoes (from TJOC)

with modifications, since I've made this multiple times. I added dried mangoes because we had some in the cupboard, but they were so dry I decided I should plump them up by soaking them (and the cranberries) up in lemon juice. I put more orange juice than necessary (someone said eating the cake's like drinking orange juice). After that went into the oven, I worked on rolling out the dough for the tart, but wasn't very successful because in the end I needed to patch up many many holes. 

I was also silly and filled the tart with the very liquid filling before I put it in the oven, and managed to spill lots of the filling in the oven, thus I had to clean up the hot oven first (thankfully most of the spill was on the door and not in the oven itself). The ironic thing is the cookbook actually told me to full the tart by placing the shell in the oven first and filling it up in the oven, but I had happily skipped over that tip. And I still put too much filling in that it bubbled over, so the baking tray I put the pie on had to be scrubbed. Hard. Plus the sticky filling made the tart dough stick to the pan, so I had to hack the pie out of the scalloped tart pan and this made the pie lose about 1/3 of the side crust.

Since I still had time, eggs, and passionfruit juice, I made passionfruit curd, only I underestimated the number of fruits used to make the juice, so I ended up two jars of horrifyingly watery curd which are now in the fridge waiting for me to come up with brilliant ideas to use them.

At times like this I wonder if doddering around the kitchen's worth it.

For some baking goodies that I bought in America...

My Microplane grater! Which makes zesting twice as fast as it used to be! So I'm less bothered while making citrusy baked goods. It's a box grater, but really easy to clean because one side slides out.

Also, I used my Silpat mats for the first time today, and they are good too! I don't have to cut baking paper to size, but just slip the non-stick mats onto the trays and lump the cookie dough on them. Ah, life becomes easier.

I also splurged on a tart pan and a silicon bundt pan today, but I think it'll be a while before I use them. Somehow, I'm craving gloopy berry things but I'm not making them yet. I think it's all those cherry/raspberry strudels that I'm missing (among other things).

So, just some goodies for the week:

Lime & Orange Syrup Cake (from How to be...)

Which was a success. It's soaked in syrup so it has to be moist, and also has copious amounts of zest and juice. The small group ate up the two-thirds that I didn't eat. I really like Nigella's recipes: not only is she a good writer, the recipes are also easy (or it could just be that I'm only trying the easy ones), and she's British, so the ingredients are measured by weight, so most of what I do is place the bowl on the digital scale (thank you Dorcas) and dump in stuff. I think I need more British cookbooks.

Orange Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies (from Rosie's...Cookie Book)

These smell great but they seem to be more like little cakes than cookies. I also think they're supposed to more substantial, but I used quick-cooking oats instead of rolled oats, so the oats disappeared into the dough.

Blueberry Crunch Coffeecake (from TJOC)

I don't think it tastes very nice (somehow the nutmeg is really strong) and it looks even worse. The dark brown sugar/almond crunch thing didn't really work (I should have used the molasses sugar instead- at least it would taste good) and the cake's texture is rather weird. Sigh. May the blueberries be its saving grace.

Over a week has passed and I must mention the food fair, since that activated my baking. I made 5 trays of

Marbled Cheesecake Squares (from Big, Soft, Chewy Cookies)

and 4 batches of

Citrus Slices (from Bake It!).

I thought of making brownies at first so I tried Patty's recipe, which I like because it's super fudgy and squidgy, but it was disastrous. The recipe has instructs the baker to dunk the tray in ice-cold water once you take it out of the oven. So I tried to do this, only I was balancing the cold water tray on the sink divider, and after I had put the brownie tray in, the whole contraption flipped and water covered half the brownie. Only half gone. So I put out more cold water and put the entire set-up in the sink instead. Only to have my mum inadvertently switch on the tap, not realising that the brownie covered the bottom of the sink. More wet. In the end I just hacked more than half away, and of course the brownie never travelled out of my house.

But darling Patty offered to bake brownies for the food fair anyway even though she didn't have to be involved. And they were the first things to sell out. There was even a man who tried some, and bought some, then came back and told us that he bought more coupons expressly to get more brownies. Sadly, by the time he returned, there were no more brownies!

on-the-spot icing of citrus cookies at the food fair; a very marbled cheesecake! I was even impressed with myself. 

To round off the selection of baked goods available this year, Chloe baked 

Earl Grey Muffins

till 3am (I might have been in the same boat, but my parents were in, so they took pity on me and helped me cut and bake cookies, and weight out ingredients for cheesecake.)! And she filled them with nutella or IXL jam. And they were very nice and tea-y. We brought some to family dinner and there were people who ate 3 muffins! After dinner! 

I also must extend my thanks to San Mei and Diane, who gave up part of their Saturday morning to be genial salespeople, make signs, cut cheesecake and hear me whine and worry about selling the boxes of baked goods. Ah yes Dorcas who came and sat!

There are more ponderings over on the other blog, over food fair and other things.

I guess this will become the food blog, away from my other musings. Although I admit that my musings often will cross into food territory. I did bake soon after I came back. There were

Tea Cupcakes (from some food blog that Clo found)

with Clo, which tasted pretty nice hot out of the oven but became dense after a while. We made green tea, earl grey and black tea versions; my favourite was the black tea one. We had some extra batter so we ended up swirling passionfruit pulp into batter for

Passionfruit Swirl Cupcakes

but there are no photos here. This is the food I did not make:

overly-iced cupcakes from some thai + dessert place at rail mall. I wouldn't eat these, I think; here's ice-cold lemon juice from a corner coffee shop to refresh us after a jaunt to the bird park.

There was a late-night batch of baking

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies (from TJOC)

where I didn't do the creaming/stirring/folding because there was someone else who wanted to do it!

And, cashing in on the current craze for passionfruit and the availability of the fruit in my house, I made

Passionfruit Curd (from How to be...)

but it turned out rather watery because my father happily offered to use his juicer to get tons of juice out of the passionfruit, whereas the instructions only required you to press the pulp through a sieve, which I surmise would have yielded less juice. It said the final amount would be 350ml; I got something nearer to 420ml. It's rich, and I could do with it slightly more sour, but it does go down well as a spread on white bread. But to have another thing to eat it with, I baked

Lemon-Blueberry Muffins (from How to be...)

which was actually a lemon-raspberry recipe but I didn't have raspberries. And hurray, they were nice with crunchy tops and tart blueberries. Filling the the center of the muffin with curd, we have the following:

I like the glossy, oozy curd, though it was thinning out really fast because the muffin was still warm (couldn't wait to eat it, huh).

Did I ever say that this is on hiatus?

Visit

http://mark4-37.blogdrive.com

instead. Thanks!

gingerbread cookie

Well Christmas is over and I've got a new camera. This blog is going to be on hiatus for a while because I won't be in my kitchen for 6 long months. And I don't know how much cooking I'll be doing over there.

I will try to update my other page once a week (on average) for my family's benefit and also for whoever else might want to see. Even though I don't know how interesting it'll get. Maybe all I'll talk about is the weather. I'm not really realising I'm leaving; I'm telling everyone I will be back soon. I will be.

Because we don't know where to go for breakfast, Chloe suggested that I bake breakfast for tomorrow. I shall bring it over to her house so we can eat

Orange Cranberry Loaf with Walnuts (from TJOC)

and

Double Chocolate Muffins (from TJOC)

which are things I know I like, but maybe she'll say it's too sweet. I know I haven't baked in a while, and we have some plans for Christmas. But we're both busy and out of the country at different times! And time is ticking away.

muffins in progress; muffins in tilted rows; aerial view of orange cranberry bread.

What's next?

Today was my mummy's birthday, so I made her a

Lemon Meringue Pie (from TJOC)

after I came back from school. I was impatient with the lemon filling and made the flame too hot, so I actually burnt some of it and paid for my impatience by having to scrub the saucepan afterwards. But it still tasted nice, and the important thing is that my mother enjoyed it and had two slices before dinner. :) I still haven't mastered the art of getting a nice fluffy meringue top, as you can see: after the pie has been left out to cool, it deflates.

 
just out of the oven; after a couple of hours.

So what, really, does a lemon meringue pie look like inside? Mine looks gloogy and the filling was more runny than usual. The only other such pie I've had in Singapore, the one from Cedelé, has a remarkably firm (okay, it's not runny at all) lemon centre and huge white peaks of meringue. Sure looks better.

But I think mine tastes better. The lemon is tart, the crust is buttery and the top is spongy (is the top supposed to be spongy or crusty or what?) And it's fresh. I'm quite satisfied, I guess.

runny insides.

Why aren't people commenting any more? :P

I didn't have any event on this Saturday- first time in a long time-

I guess I could have done some schoolwork, but I didn't. So I baked

Peanut Butter Cupcakes (from TJOC)

swabbed with

Chocolate Satin Frosting (from TJOC),

as well as a

Madeira Loaf (from How to be...)

which I had been wanting to make since I have fond memories of the first one I made. Nigella Lawson really got it right (hallmark of a good writer?) when she said that "it's one of those plain cakes that you can't see the point of until you start slicing and eating it". It's just a plain loaf cake with some lemon tang but no frosting, no chocolate, nothing interesting- but I still want to eat some more.

I brought the cupcakes to family dinner, where so many got eaten up! I wasn't really expecting that, so I came home and made another batch, with a new frosting recipe

Semisweet Chocolate Frosting (from TJOC)

because I didn't have any more heavy cream. Oh, the other batch is for people in church- if they want to eat it. 

the cupakes with not very artistic dabs of frosting; the madeira loaf with the crunchy sugar crust (if you look carefully you'll see that I had already eaten the entire middle strip of crust, and this was about 10 minutes after it had come out of the oven)