WHERE'S MY DREAM?

This was a birthday present from my aunty and I've been using it as a reward for completing homework. I know you shouldn't reward yourself with food but this box will be all gone if I don't. Anyways I was choosing one today and I felt like having a Dream (white chocolate) since its my favourite!! But there WASN'T even ONE in the box!!!! I tipped the entire box out to try and find one but there wasn't any =[ Unless someone ate them all without me knowing....can't believe it. Very upset.

Cooking: Failed Macaron Tower turned into Macaron White Chocolate Crepe Layer Cake

Blogger finally works at school!!! It has been blocked for a while for some reason but now they must have unblocked it, probably because I spend a lot of my spares reading food blogs =]

So on the weekend I tried to make a Macaron Tower for my friends birthday except after piping out 120 shells which looked fine and baking them, they all decided to be mean and stick to the baking paper and break when I tried to peel them off. In the end I ended up with 20 acutal macarons =[ absolutely devasted. Since 20 macarons were definitely not enough to feed my group of friends at the mini party we were going to hold, I decided on making a crepe layer cake with the failed white chocolate ganache I made.

I assumed that white chocolate ganache proportions would be similar to normal chocolate ganache proportions and how wrong I was. Normal chocolate ganache is 1:1 (meaning 100g chocolate, 100ml cream) white chocolate however as I discovered is 2:1 (200g white chocolate, 100 cream) and as I had a limitation of white chocolate it wouldn't set, hence a failed white ganache.

Decided to make a crepe layer cake instead since it was the quickest thing to make without a baking time, and I guess somewhat impressive but not as impressive as a macaron tower. Lesson learnt from making the crepe batter, add melted butter into the flour before adding eggs and milk, otherwise the cold milk will solidify the butter and you end up with a horrible looking batter. However it doesn't really matter as the butter melts when you make the crepes and self oils the pan....so I guess it's not too bad.

P.S I spend hours staring at my computer trying to type out an english essay but when I blog I just type like there's no tomorrow, effortless thinking....why can't writing essays be like writing blog posts?

Cooking: Sponge Layer Cake

Made this with my bestie for my other bestie's birthday. Had lots of fun making it, although many mistakes were made it still turned out half decent.

Recipe from Masterchef Magazine (the one with the Macaron tower on it).
Things I learnt: Don't fridge the ganache. Pay more attention when slicing cake so the layers are even(not my fault Masterchef grand finale was on). Get a palatte knife to spread not a spatula.

I think I should bake more cakes as my cake baking skills are pretty fail.

Macaronssssssss

This morning mum decided to try and make macarons. Unfortunately I still had a bit of holiday homework to complete so I couldn't help out. By the time I had finished mum was about to pipe the shells so I helped her pipe them.

The mixture was grainy for some reason. And piping is very messy and it's tricky to keep them the same size which is important otherwise the macarons look funny when squished together.

After they came out of the oven. Looking half decent. Except didn't bake them for long enough.

Piped them with the left over durian curd from mum's birthday cake.

Chocolate macarons with durian filling.

Super super super sweet

Back to school tomorrow =(

Cooking: 3 course dinner for Mum

It was mum's birthday yesterday and I made her dinner on Sunday because we went out to eat yesterday, more on that later.

Started cooking at 10:30am and went all the way through till 8:30pm. With a break for lunch.

Smoked trout pate with homemade flat bread

I've been meaning to make this pate for a while now, found the recipe in the paper yonks ago and I finally had the opportunity to make it. It tasted very smokey but creamy at the same time. The spring onion gave a very nice subtle oniony flavour and the lemon cut the richness. I think it's a well balanced pate/dip. Hardest part of this dish was deboning the entire smoked trout. It was an absolute pain, the bones are so small =.="

Simple flatbread, very crispy so it went well with the pate.

Pan fried quail with gnocchi  and pumpkin

Matt Moran's signature dish. This dish took forever to make. Deboning the quail was a massive pain in the ass but I guess it was worth it, must a whole piece of meat without having to worry about bones. The gnocchi didn't turn out very well as I ran out of flour. Overall it was an alright dish. One word, interesting.

Chocolate Mousse

Relatively simple to make. Didn't use dark chocolate and used milk chocolate instead, as a result it turned out very sweet. Although the slight hint of coffee was nice and may have kept me up at night.

Took me about 6 hours to make just these 3 courses. But I enjoyed it, minus the stressful part when you realise dinner will be served an hour or two later than planned.

Chocolate Chip Cookies AGAIN =)

Sudden craving for warm chewy cookies whilst watching Masterchef on Wednesday. So I made 4 big warm chewy chocolate chip cookies whilst watching. Took about 30 mins to make whilst watching Masterchef. Put recipe up before.

I was very happy after eating this XD

Cooking: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sudden craving for chocolate chip cookies afterschool on Friday. Recipe from Tiff =) Tad modified though.

Ingredients: 2-3 tbsp margarine. 2 tbs sugar. 2 tbs condensed milk. 1/2 cup sifted self raising flour. couple of tablespoons of milk. Couple of tablespoons of chocolate chips.

Method: Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cream margarine and sugar (use margarine because it's already soft :), how lazy) Add condensed milk.  Add in sifted flour. Mixture probably won't come together. Add a tablespoon of milk at a time until it comes together like cookie dough should. Add chocolate chips and mix. Make into either small cookies or a couple of large ones. Bake for 12-15 mins for big ones. 10-12 for smaller ones.

Left mine in for too long and they got too dry and burnt. Don't try to keep an eye on cookies and make bolognese at the same time. One has to suffer, or both.

Cooking: Chocolate Muffins *drool*

Sudden craving for chocolate muffins hit last night however I had a mound of hw to finish off (stll ain't done) but I decided to make muffins xD They were awesome, had a crunchy crust, melted chocolate on the inside. Only a few left cos I ate them for brekky.

Ingredients: 1 cup self raising flour sifted. 1/6 cup (40ml/2 tbsp) cocoa powder sifted. 1/3 cup white sugar. 150ml milk. 1 egg. 50g butter melted. 5 tbsp of chocolate chips. (these are rough measurements, I'm really lazy when it comes to measuring)

Method: Mix dry ingredients together. Make well. Pour in milk and egg. Stir until semi combined. Pour in butter (don't pour butter into milk as the milk is cold and will solidify the butter). Mix in chocolate chips. Make sure u stir gently and don't beat it otherwise u get a tough muffin. Scoop into greased muffin tray. Bake at 180 for about 20 mins or so, until skewer comes out clean.

Look at the chocolate goo inside, soooooo yummy.

So simple, so yummy

Made in about 40 mins including baking time.