May 20 2011

A Thing for Strictly Pancakes

Considering that I blogged about this place two posts ago and here we are again really says something about this place called Strictly Pancakes. It’s good. I think about it a lot. I don’t hafta wait til Shrove Tuesday – or days of staring at eggs, milk, flour and a buttered hot pan willing it to just work by a twitch of a bewitched nose – to have pancakes.

The first pancake café in Singapore. It’s got me hooked. And it’s so legit I nearly cried when I ate my stack of pancakes.

I sat through 3 hours of class today grumpy as shite because I was hungry and deprived of viable options of food. It came to the sorry point that I made a (disturbing) passing comment to a girlfriend of mine, ‘I’m so hungry right now I could sink my teeth into your shoulder blade.’ She was wearing a bareback top. She now thinks I’m weird beyond weird. But that’s fine. We went halves over a plate of pancakes and I think we’re still the coolest pals as gal pals can be. We all find reasons to be amiable with each other in this world, now don’t we? If it involves food, I suppose. Let’s just all try to accept this fact of life and live with each others’ idiosyncrasies.

I’m so glad that pancakes don’t take a million years to whip up so food gets put on your table fairly quick. Three baskets of mysteriously spiced and seasoned chips glide onto the table. Then six cups of iced tap water. A bout of thumb twiddling, of utterly awkward silence and staring at mobile phones willing someone to beep or ring you so as to give you something to do to fill this ridiculously useless and unwelcome period of waiting. ‘Hi I am hungry and waiting for my food and I don’t want to do anything else like talk stupid when I just want to wait for my food.’ Other tables are noisily clanking their knives and forks, cutting up fluffy clouds of pancakes heavily and indecently doused with maple syrup, participating in unimportant sometimes polite chatter between mouthfuls of deliciousness, every bit of movement and noise pisses me off. I am HANGRY. Gimme food!

Then the sound of footsteps, and ka-ching ka-ching. It’s flipping pancake jackpot. I’ve never seen a more beautiful plate of pancakes. Mine don’t even come close, possibly because I never make chocolate pancakes. It’s almost unmentionable in my house. Pancakes must be pancakes, white and fluffy, uncorrupted by what we know as cocoa powder. Oh bugger that. These were glorious. Chocolate sauce, dripping custard, dusting of icing sugar, mini chocolate chips and wet juicy pneumatic and squidgy brandied dark cherries. Hello beautiful, come to Mama! The glorious Blackforest stack. I finally got to have a taste of this notorious babies. But what a shame that Strictly Pancakes had a bad day with their freezer and so, NO ICE CREAM. 20% off though. Yea okay. I’m easy like that.

Across the table, a friend was tucking into Lemon Curd for Nerds which looked suspiciously similar to our Blackforest stack minus a few key ingredients. Chocolate pancakes + lemon curd which resembled, in aesthetics and taste, wet custard but was delicious nonetheless. Would’ve liked the lemon curd to be a little more tart and lemony but figured it might not have worked too well with pancakes that generously rich in chocolate!

I’d love to share what the others ate but I was so busy inhaling my half of the Blackforest (I don’t think I looked up from my plate, okay maybe twice just to check the progress of others around me) I didn’t give two flying fish about getting clicks of their pancakes. But if you wanted to know what they ordered, you can check back to the first post of this café here.

What a great close to the week. The goblin in my stomach is appeased. Until the next food adventures, peace.

TGIF.

8 comments | posted in American, Singapore, cafés, chocolate, pancakes

Nov 28 2010

Irresistible Hazelnut Coffee-Spiked Brownies

I find it hard nowadays to keep up with foodblogs unlike when I first started browsing the net for my usual favs 5 years ago. There’s a whole plethora of blogs, be it food, fashion, beauty, music, art, etc. out there. So much to read, to catch up and be distracted with. I’m afraid to admit that it’s quite an effort. And old-school folks like me do not like using funky gadgets like Google reader and all that. I’m still using bookmarks or little scribbles in my diary to remember good blogs, posts, etc. I think I suck. I’m a bad person. But I promise you I do make an effort to stay up-to-date with fellow foodblogger’s sugary dalliances. And The Daily Spud’s Hazelnut Brownies very recently got my full attention (and drool-covered laptop….kidding).

I don’t recall when was the last time I made brownies. Yes I know I’m being outrageous yet again but being without an oven and having to deal with academia, somehow brownies just kind of got forgotten. And with things like brownies, I’ve never followed a recipe loyally and there have been occasions where I’ve let family and friends talk me into letting them use a brownie mix! Nevertheless, they’ve made a comeback now. I think this time, the comeback was a real event and a very welcome guest in our house, welcome to stay forever. I’ve sealed such a proper relationship with these brownies because I doubt I’ll ever go galavanting down other brownie paths and I’m sure everyone will be very happy about it.

This recipe’s gold! Brownies sit very well amongst my sisters and my dear old paps. We like a nice slab of warm (sometimes fudgy) brownie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of it to round up a meal. But my mother dislikes anything chocolatey, rich and slightly difficult to swallow. Brownies, a bit of the forbidden dessert, aren’t her favourite thing. Actually, let me correct that. My mother hardly likes anything I bake and she’s the toughest out of the lot to please. You don’t have to ask, she’s the trickiest critic I’ve come across. Not to mention that using her kitchen (I’ve claimed the oven as MINE and I don’t care what anyone else says. It’s MINE MINE MINE!) is kind of like sleeping with the last dragon.

I won’t go into the soppy boring details of how I started baking at a young age, religiously experimenting, practising and perfecting my still shitty skills every weekend and having to be yelled at to clean up, stop baking, stop wasting good ingredients, etc. I mean, it was hell. But all that has allowed me to use the kitchen very freely with good trust from the mama today. And yesterday. {pause} FINALLY. an event to behold…(that includes these bloody brownies), ma mère was hanging around til midnight for me to cut these warm babies up. Please note, she picked up even the crumbs to nibble on. And she said that these brownies were good. They would give the other bakers she knew at church a run for their money.

It may seem like nothing much but that means a lot. Mama’s stamp of approval. I think I’m glowing. I have to agree, however, that it had nothing to do with me but everything to do with this recipe. A very rich, thick, warm and aromatic (bet it’s that coffee!) brownie with toasted hazelnuts. Anyone who can eat it and go ‘ew’ I would send straight to the quacks to have their brains checked. Ridiculously good. Will be making this again and again.

Mum’s requested for the next batch to be made with macadamias. I’m all for that, and more (think pistachios and other tweaking).

Ending this week on a high. Hope it’s the same for you guys too! Happy weekend y’all.

**Photos in this post today are from both my usual Canon Powershot G10 and a special guest Canon DSLR. Yea I borrowed my little sister’s and fiddled around with it!

Here’s the recipe from The Daily Spud. I followed it exactly except that I doubled the recipe to get 2 batches and used instant coffee granules instead of ground coffee.

Hazelnut Coffee-Spiked Brownies

    Ingredients
    100g whole hazelnuts
    1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
    175g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
    275g soft brown sugar
    1 1/2 tsp finely ground coffee
    3 large eggs
    75g cocoa powder
    75g plain flour
    1/4 tsp baking powder
    1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 160d Celsius. Grease and flour your baking pan. You can line it with baking parchment as well.

Toast hazelnuts in the oven for 10mins or in a greaseproof large frying pan with no oil for a few minutes over a medium fire. Allow to cool then finely grind about half the hazelnuts. Chop the remaining nuts roughly.

Stir vanilla into melted butter. Add the sugar and ground coffee to a large mixing bowl and pour in the melted butter. Mix well and ensure that no lumps remain in the sugar.

Beat in eggs one at a time.

Then sieve together the cocoa, flour, baking powder and salt. Fold this into the sugar mixture. You’ll get a thick, dark batter.

Stir in ground and chopped hazelnuts. Now scrape the batter into prepared tins and bake until just set in the middle. Daily Spud estimates her baking time to be about 30mins. Because I baked 2 tins at the same time at 160d Celsius, mine needed a little bit more time but they came out perfect after 35mins.

Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Be careful when turning out the brownies as they can be fairly fragile towards the middle.

16 comments | posted in brownies, chocolate, coffee, nuts

Nov 14 2010

Plum, Toblerone White & Cinnamon Muffins

I have something to announce. No, I’ve not got a boyfriend, or gotten a car, or won a courtesy/good citizen award or struck the lottery. Really, nothing fancy at all. I’ve merely started running. Yes, around the neighbourhood huff and puff and sweat and go red like a beetroot I go. Truly, I’m exuding glamour and thoroughly enjoying it, NOT. But for health and fitness reasons I have decided to put my running shoes back on. For the sanity of my clothes, belt buckles and zippers, out of kindness to my poor mirror, I’ve made this big decision.

And then guess what happened after a week of running? The soles of my running shoes fell off. Right off, cleanly. And then my black and white spotted dog (one of out 5 hungry buggers) thought it would be fun to pounce on it and rip it to shreds. The story of my life. What did I think then? Ah what a joke. Even the world is bent on getting me fat!

fresh out of the oven

The pair of destroyed shoes are by now probably on its way to the recycling dump or something. No hard feelings. I’m moving on to my mama’s running shoes and let’s see if those get destroyed by my out-of-these-world feet. On the lighter side of life, I ventured into the kitchen and baked. Whoever needs rubber soles and running shoes when I can equip myself better with wooden spoons and mixing bowls? Let’s get to that then…

Ottolenghi has some serious reputation in London. And although I lived in the Hoxton/Shoreditch area, it was just too easy to wander up to Islington for a takeaway of Ottolenghi cakes, a lunch with friends or a special candlelit dinner with visiting family. I don’t think anyone ever has anything bad to say about Ottolenghi – the food is clean, honest, simple, modern and utterly delicious. I am a fan. And I know many others who are too.

Similarly, anything that comes from the Ottolenghi cookbook is rumoured to be good and never a letdown. Out of the recipes I’ve tried, it’s so far been beyond good: great, brilliant, sublime, mindblowingly reliable, success rate 100% and also fairly idiot-proof. Moreover, most of their simple baked treats can double up as a dessert course in both the looks and taste department, as this one proves with a sexy compote topping. I love getting the best of both worlds. Maybe I didn’t win the lottery, but I felt like I’d pulled out trays of sweetened gold from my oven.

I especially love making things that produce deep, dark shades of red like a good Chanel lipstick. This compote had me charmed completely. The amount of baking time for it will depend on the ripeness of your fruit. Mine was just ready to eat, firm to bite and slightly tart. Hence, I added another 15 mins to the bake time. On second thought, I should also have increased the amount of sugar for the compote as it was a little too tart for some. Nevertheless, these muffins were gone within a day.

Food in our house either gets left over forever with a poltergeist of unwillingness to eat it lingering in the house, or it disappears in a flash. Thankfully, these muffins belong to the latter group, compliments to Ottolenghi.

a plum compote that simply smells like Christmas!

And the only thing it’s missing is a lovely cuppa tea. If you’re a tea lover and fancy some good leaves, or wish to try your luck at winning a flowering tea diva set from JING Tea, don’t forget to check out my previous post here.

The original recipe calls for marzipan rather than white chocolate but I overestimated my local supermarket and the state of our pantry cupboard. The substitute of Toblerone White chocolate wasn’t so bad and it meant the muffins weren’t as sweet as I was worried they would turn out to be.

Yields 10-12 regular sized muffins.

Plum, Toblerone White (Marzipan) & Cinnamon Muffins
(Original recipe from Ottolenghi Cookbook)
Ingredients

    For the muffins:
    480g plain flour
    1 tsp baking powder
    1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
    1 tsp ground cinnamon
    a pinch of salt
    200g caster sugar
    2 free range eggs
    110g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
    280ml milk
    grated zest of 2 oranges
    120g Toblerone White (marzipan)
    icing sugar, for dusting
    Plum Compote:
    700g ripe dark red plums, stoned and cut into quarters
    60g caster sugar
    1 cinnamon stick (or 2 short ones)

Make the plum compote first. Preheat oven to 170d Celsius. Place plums in a shallow baking dish and add the sugar and cinnamon stick to it. Mix together. Place in the oven and bake for 10-20 minutes, until the plums are soft and their skin starts to separate from the flesh. Cooking time will vary significantly, depending on the ripeness of the fruit.

When cooked, remove from oven and set aside to cool. (MY NOTE: The plums might still appear fairly whole and of their initial raw colour. Mix it around and ensure that it is coated in its juices. The process of cooling will cause the plums to break down further into a compote and deepen in colour)

For the muffins:
Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon and salt into a bowl.

Place the sugar and eggs in a large mixing bowl and whisk together. Add the milk and cooled melted butter. Whisk to combine.

Grate the marzipan or chop the Toblerone and add this to the batter, together with the orange zest. Now add 80g of plum compote (pulp & juices) and stir together. Set the rest of the compote aside for later.

Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the flour mixture into the wet ingredients until just combined. A lumpy mixture with pockets of flour is ideal.

Line your muffin tray with paper cases and spoon in the batter, filling them all the way to the top. Bake for 25-30 minutse, until a skewer inserted comes out clean. When cool enough to handle, take the muffins out of the tins and leave on a wire rack to cool completely.

Just before serving, dust with icing sugar and top with plum compote.

17 comments | posted in chocolate, cinnamon, muffins, orange, plum, sweets