The entire Decemeber had been one super enjoyable month with all the parties, work and my prom night going on (reaching home as late as 4am!). Great time with my dearly missed schoolmates, but I also managed to bake Cuppucino Cheesecake, Torta Caprese, Brownies, Apple Crumble & Jelly Cheesecake (5times!!! My all-time favourite). I love baking :D (didn't update because my DSLR was brokened)
This morning I made these Banana Muffins w chocolate chips. Awesome, I say! I love them because they are so homey and fragrantly sweet. In fact, Banana Muffins were memories of my first baking experience! I was only 14years old then. You might want to know more about it here. It is seriously funny and interesting :P
RIGHT. So.... Does muffins taste better using butter or oil? My hypothesis was that oil would be a better option and this morning, I divided the same muffin batter into two, half using butter and the other half using oil!
The results wasn't apparent so I could barely tell the difference! (the picture below: those w topped chocolate chips are baked using oil. those without topped chocolate chips are baked using butter) The 'oil' muffins are just really SLIGHTLY lighter than the 'butter' muffins. Besides this, they are equally moist and soft. Very tender and light! Not oily at all!! But if I have to make a decision, I think I'd still use oil in the future which I believe is only a personal preference :D
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The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.
Tomorrow will be Christmas Day! Merry X'mas to all the bakers and foodies! ^o^ I believe most of you are in the festive mood of this special occasion! For me, though, I might admit Christmas day was only considered another 'date' in my childhood. My family never celebrated it and I grew up knowing Santa Claus does not exist. But maybe because I don't have much impression or any opinions towards Christmas, I actually don't feel that 'I have missed out a damn lot of things' either! Hey, I suspect I haven't even eaten a roasted/baked turkey before. LOL.
Until I celebrated my first Christmas Countdown with my basketball teammates (I was already 14 by the way), I realised that Christmas is a beautiful and extremely lively festival. (a bit slow right) That was certainly a wonderful experience for me but if you ask me, I think I'd still prefer to avoid every area that is heavy in human-traffic. Haha. I believe I am somebody who treasure peace a lot!
Staying at home to bake or just drinking under the tree with my small group of buddies suit me more :) We can still have our christmas countdown happily! You know, the extent of my displeasure for noise includes the noise sound of my mixer at speed 10! That is also why I decided that my husband-to-be should not be over-ly talkative....! LOL
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On the 18th was the birthday of one of the loveliest girl I know in school :) We were from the same sportsclass during our lower secondary - she plays badminton! And she is really so sincere in everything she does. She writes card and buy donuts for me! HAHA She loves media & photographs-editing too. If I had 3 hands, I'd have given her 3 thumbs up for all the videos she'd made for our class and sports performance :D
Anyway the images of the cake is a little lacking because there's something wrong with my DSLR's focus. I took all these using the manual mode because photographs taken by the Auto mode is worse! Arghs, sent it for repair already though. I miss having it and capturing all my baking moments =\
So one of my buddy came over to my house on a RAINY morning to get her cheesecake done (she loves cheesecake. she loves coffee). Therefore, we made Cuppucino Cheesecake :) Brilliant. Whipped Cream on top of the cheesecake because she love cream, too. And I like watching her eating sweetened whipped cream on its own (at Starbucks) LOL.
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My post title says it all. Are you laughing at my pathetic & thin layered cheesecake? :( I don't have a smaller cake pan and since it's not my plan to use an extra package of cream cheese, I decided to just go ahead with my 'budget cheesecake'. Laughs!!
Cream cheese are ridiculously expensive if you don't buy them from suppliers, but then again, even if you get them from suppliers you end up with blocks of cream cheese weighing at least 2kg. I agree 2kg for cream cheese is not a lot, but with the limited space for pastry items in the fridge, I can't buy 2kg of cheese at a go!! o_O
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It has been another hectic week for the beginning of this December! There're so many things I want to do with the very little time before and after work. No worries though, I can sacrifice my sleep time (am doing so now LOL). I really wish to update my food blog twice a week :)
Anyway, two days ago was the craziest day of my life. My kitchen chefs & I were having a farewell 'party' for F who'll be leaving us for good (he's going back to Philipines). I hate to see him leave because he's a nice guy. I mean it! Yeah and you know this farewell party began after the kitchen closed (at 10.15pm) It lasted for 45 minutes (long enough to make the kitchen stink and anybody present to feel naseous LOL)
We actually threw lots of thrash at each other like: sage oil, milk+flour+breadcrumbs batter, leftover food from customers, eggs (chef gave us 2 trays to enjoy ourselves), squid INK, garlic butter. Well, it's anything you name in the kitchen were all regarded as weapons for the night. It was the worse farewell party at the kitchen according to them, and since this wasn't the first time such a crazy thing took place, we covered every corner of the kitchen shelves and switches with trash bags + cling wrap before the game started!!
Oh and the game started really funnily - we were told that we should take picture of ourselves clean first. Obviously I believed!! But 2 seconds after I stood next to all the chefs..... They had their eggs in their hands smashing on my hair already. HAHAHAH. Eventually our weapons ran out and the only way for us to survive in the mess was to pick up more GROSS stuffs on the floor or, to simply grab the trash in the dustbin to throw at each other. Ok, very good bonding. LOL.
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Two weeks ago, I joined my second baking community Chocolate with Francois which is just like The Daring Bakers, Tuesdays with Dorie, etc. But what appeals to me most is the fact that they hold monthly challenges (like the Daring Bakers) and I find it much easier to cope with, especially with the extremely long list of things I'd wanted to bake or a loooong time! The recipes we use are all from Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard. I ordered mine but it will arrive only after Christmas.
Anyway, for this month, the recipe we made are Flourless Chocolate Cookies, chosen by Karen of Karen's Cookie's Cakes & More! They were fantastic (for me!!) Ok, did you just raise your eyebrow?
My initial opinion was: how good can a cookie be when it does not contain butter?! Just egg whites, cocoa, icing sugar, nuts & vanilla. I've to wow at that now.
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