The Sugar Bar

A very long time ago, a dazed darling decided to make summer berry crumble (check the archives). But by some supernatural and unfortunate twitch of the hand, she bashed the crumb topping in such that it formed a flat surface with random nobbly bits and crack lines, that resembling the parched grounds of a desert. It was like she’d been hypnotized and only came to realize her mistake right before baking them. What a ditz. She never got to photograph or document the subsequent (and finally, geeez, took her a damn while – successful) crumble attempts.

But. WHEY! Here it is. Another successful apple crumble. And flip. Isn’t it one of the easiest, no brainer, no-recipe things to make? How the heck did I go wrong ages ago? Well – and here I’d like to add one of the longest sighs in the world – strange things happen to me. I’m a strange person of wacky circumstances. I take pride in my quirkiness. I can carry out intelligent conversations, hold my own ground when it comes to cussing and dirty jokes with the boys of my crew. But sometimes I’m just totally not with it. And pardon moi, but if I’m stressed in the kitchen too, things get awful. If I’m in a daze, the food begins to look a little funny.

Today’s a public holiday, it being Singapore’s 44th National Day yesterday; and it’s wonderful to see families out strolling about, shopping, slurping up cones of melting ice cream, etc. It’s awesome. Loving the relaxed state of mind I’ve been in all day! To match this lazy, rainy day, Mum decided to prepare quite the autumn dish: takikomi gohan (mixed rice) with one of my favourites – pumpkin and shimeji miso soup! Honestly, I was looking forward to getting away with not helping. I’d just had ice cream for lunch and a pot of very lovely dragon pearl & rose oil tea. The body was telling me to jump back into bed and get sucked into the seductive land of sleep. Damn those ideas to the darkest corners of a rottin refrigerator!!

Mum gave me the dessert task. But I was lazy so all the fancy stuff when flying out the window and I stuck with the all-time favourite, rustic crumble pudding. And yes, no other fancy fruit to marry with the apple. Just apples, cinnamon and some granola because Mum was kicking up a fuss about pudding being well plain. Women!

Everytime I think apple crumble, I think of Hannah’s mother’s crumble. She honestly makes the best crumble: apple, rhubarb, plum. They’re all good. I don’t know how she does it but she’s a crumble goddess. There must be some sort of weird secret or trick of hand or it might be spiked. But whatever it is, it’s love at first sight with her crumble. I’d like to, however, stand up for my own cute crumbles (is there a plural to that?) and declare that my own mother loved it. And that says a lot because she’s not a pudding person and definitely not a pudding-made-by-own-daughter sorta person.

So, yay. Happy birthday Singapore. And cheers to finally getting the dessert-spoon thumbs-up from my own mother. Apple crumble, I love you.

Granola Apple Crumble
Ingredients

2 medium cooking apples, cut into chunks (you may peel them if you prefer)
1/2 cup granola
50g brown sugar
1 tbs plain flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon

For the crumble topping:

1 cup flour
1/4-1/2 cup granola
1/4-1/2 cup unrefined golden caster sugar (depending on your preference)
3 tbs unsalted butter, cold and cut into chunks

I served these in ramekins but you can use a square baking dish.
Grease ramekins and set aside.
Preheat oven to 180d Celsius.

To prepare the crumb topping, sift the flour into a large bowl. Add the butter and rub into the flour. Lift and toss the mixture as you rub until the mixture begins to resemble crumbs. Don’t over crumb it as I like to have big and small chunks of crumb rather than an evenly crumbly one. Stir in the sugar and granola.

In a small bowl, toss the apple chunks with 1 tbs flour.
Spoon 2 tbs of granola into the bottom of each ramekin and even it out. Then spoon in the apples and pour over them the brown sugar and cinnamon.

Now top with the crumb topping. Just pour it on without fussing too much with it. Placing the ramekins on a cookie tray, bake in the oven for 40-45mins til the crumb topping is golden brown.

Serve with custard, fresh cream or vanilla ice cream. Delish.

It feels like centuries since I had homemade cookies or been on the non-receiving side of these aforementioned cookies. I think the last one I had was consumed a little after Christmas, storebought, as good as Divine cookies get but didn’t quite ring the bell for me. The realization that there’s only another 24 hours and counting before the weekend vanishes once again made the need for cookies all the more intense. Felt kinda like being almost on the verge of a life-changing moment that would write itself down in history. Weekends for me, since I began baking, have always been Cookie Weekends. At the end of every week, my family would begin to get slightly queasy from having to face burnt, underbaked, queer-shaped cookies. Every baking attempt was a batch of oddly shaped masses of sweetened batter, to me at least. To the rest of the family, it was either sugar highs or experiences of unpleasant experimentation.

Getting up at about half 7 this morning – groggy and smelling of sleep, I trudged down in scruffies and knee-high woollen slippers – to bake, without first having breakfast or a cuppa coffee, really brought me back to those days. I haven’t felt this good on a Sunday for some time now. I mean, dissertations, seminar preparations and thoughts of the impending future always leave me Sundays a little empty, a little grey, kinda moribund. But a foodie pal once reminded me that baking is one of the best cures and I agree, although I put that a little after shopping. Eating comes next. I’m not anywhere near done with my dissertation, and I haven’t prepared nearly enough for my morning seminar tomorrow but I’m determined to spend my Sunday in a different way. Besides, I have a phone interview with Birkbeck University for my masters application in a little over 2 weeks. EEEK! I can’t afford to lose my life force right now, can I? Did someone say get psyched with cookies?

So cookies it is. And with one of my best-loved ingredients. I’m on Lent, and I’ve given up quite a lot this year – chocolate included. Therefore, nope it is not chocolate. But oats!

I have a real weakness for oats. I have oats at least twice a day – for breakfast, sometimes lunch in granola, muesli or flapjack form. And sometimes I can’t help sneaking a little as pudding after dinner. It’s just soo good. I love the crunch if they’re granola; love the smell of oat porridge with honey and bananas; and have a habit of nibbling each bit of oat very slowly, squirrel-style. Irresistible. I went in search for an oatmeal raisin cookie recipe because I don’t actually have one on me. When it comes to baking, I have a select few of foodblogs and food websites I go to for inspiration and very trusty recipes. Smitten Kitchen is a place I love to get recipes from because they’re always reliable and gosh, the pictures just drive you mental! I’m just a little gaga over this foodblog.

This recipe was very easy to follow and the ingredients uncomplicated. It was actually a half-recipe and I found it just right as I too didn’t want to be swimming in a cookie-filled kitchen. I like making just enough. Overdoing really isn’t necessary (so says the over-achiever, snort!). I’m definitely keeping this recipe for life – it’s just perfect. Crispy on the outer edges, and soft chewy on the inside. It’s got the right thickness. It looks like proper homemade cookies. I’m in love! I might, however, up the amount of salt and rolled oats in the future. I like my cookies a little salty and for this particular type, I love having a truckload of oats in these. Might possibly try this in the future with oats (the non-rolled type) for extra bite. I can so imagine myself going into shock aka oaty-heaven from just a bite of that. Bring on Cookie Sundays – that’ll definitely chase away any sort of impending Monday Blues.

(recipe link below)

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Recipe yields about 2 dozen regular cookies. Thank you Smitten Kitchen, these were great!!

*p/s. You might’ve noticed that the layout has changed. Please forgive any messy bits as I’m still in the process of editting the template and so forth. It’s about time The Sugar Bar upgraded and matured!

Update: Comments now working. Apologies for the delay in fixing the blog layout, etc. but it’s all up and running now (I hope) so do feel free to leave me a message!

Just last week, we went to see the new Underworld film – The Rise of the Lycans. The boys and I are avid fans of the film and of Kate Beckinsale. Violence, vampire action, good soundtrack and a fine woman – no one can resist that, now can they! Although she doesn’t appear in this one, the prequel, we were still pretty excited about it simply by association. I enjoyed this one thoroughly since I really liked the Lycan dude anyway, even in the previous film. The army of werewolves in the film, however, somehow brought ideas of creating an army of my very own. What did I think up?

Mating Anna’s black persian cat Mortie with my cocker spaniel Fifi. That sounds like the most horrid, sick thing to do. Please don’t be offended but Anna and I pissed ourselves chatting about this and decided a cat and a spaniel will create an army of, not Lycans, but Spatz! How cool does that sound? Someone’s gonna say ‘Maybe to a stoner’. Chances are, he’s right but man, do I think my little army of Spatz will be great fun to have around. Nonetheless, this really just stays in my head. I’m really not that into inter-breeding of animal species.

So anyway. Someone turned 21 yesterday (actually 3 people I know share the same birthday on 27th Jan) and Kid Diva did her duty and baked the birthday cake. The last time I made carrot cake for a friend’s birthday was years ago and it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to. Melting in the summer heat, it was greasy, squishy and simply pathetic. This time, I truly believe I have outdone myself all thanks to Ina Garten’s recipe. This woman is a godsend! The cake was orgasmically good – dreamily moist and the flavours were fantastic. Considering I had hardly any of my bakeware from home, no sieve to sift the flour or icing sugar, ancient scruffy-looking cake tins and a shitty garbage of an oven, this cake turned out a hit. The birthday boy was grinning from ear to ear and it wasn’t strange to spot our party-goers dipping their fingers as discretely as possible into the cream cheese frosting between gulps of vodka.

The whole evening was as posh as student life can get. The recent credit crunch, however, prevented us from making a pleasant trip out into the country for a relaxed pub lunch as Sam would have wished it. Instead, we organized a nice little dinner, table cloths and all. Redecorated the kitchen, lit some candles, whacked on some posh jazz music and placed a green sign on the door that read ‘Bistro Gamper’. The whole thing was Anna’s brainchild and kudos to her. She did an amazing job preparing the pork, potatoes and vegetables, and a to-die-for redcurrant and cider gravy which I’ve already nicked the recipe of. I’ll never forget the taste of that gravy and I’m eager to give it a go myself. In fact, there’s some left in the fridge. I could possibly drink the whole bowl of it. It is that mindblowing!

Stuffed, about to pop, and feeling slightly woozy from too much food and champagne, we braved on towards pudding and the birthday song. My family’s quite the group of conservative eaters. At family meals, I’m always the only one gasping and moaning away if something tastes great. It takes quite a bit to stop me from banging on about how good it is. Last night, however, I am very pleased to say the whole table was gasping and moaning away to no end. What a fan-fucking-tastic experience that was! I am so relieved and glad that the cake was a success, thrilled that it tasted like sex and delighted that our dearest Sam is 21 and lovin’ it.

I have altered Ina Garten’s recipe just slightly – adding more spices and substituting half the amount of vegetable oil for applesauce. This was recommended by a lot people who had attempted the recipe and thought I might as well try it their way. Can honestly say this cake wasn’t greasy like the one I made years ago. It was wonderful – perfectly moist and the flavour was well balanced. I might’ve reduced the amount of icing sugar in the frosting as well. I rather enjoy tasting more butter and cream cheese then just sweetness. Come the summer, I will be making this again. It’s so beaten my infamous Guinness Chocolate Cake.

I’ve noticed a trend though. I happen to make the best cakes on days where I know I’m going to get absolutely battered that evening. I suppose alcohol doesn’t just give you a head rush huh?

Carrot Cake
Adapted from Ina Garten
Ingredients

For the cake:
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
3 extra-large free range eggs
2/3 cup Bramley applesauce
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2cups + 1 tbs flour, divided
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 pound carrots, grated
1/2 cup crushed pineapple

For the frosting:
300g cream cheese
1 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup icing sugar, sifted

For the decoration:
anything you fancy really OR
strips of carrot, peeled with a peeler lengthwise
some red chard leaves

Preheat oven to 180d Celsius.
Butter and flour 2 8″ round cake pans.

Beat sugar, oil and eggs together until light yellow. Add vanilla. In another bowl, sift together 2 1/2 cups flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Toss the raisin and walnuts with 1 tbs flour. Fold in the carrots and pineapple. Add to the batter and mix well.

Divide the batter equally between the 2 pans. Bake for 55 – 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool completely in the pans set over a wire rack.

For the frosting:
Beat hte butter til light in colour. Add the cream cheese and beat. Add the vanilla. Beat till just incorporated. Add the icing sugar and mix til smooth.

Assemble cake and decorate as you like it!