The Sugar Bar

The girls and I fancied getting a cuppa after a birthday lunch yesterday. Since we were at the Esplanade, The V Tea Room (a liqueur teacake boutique) would’ve been the perfect location to do that. It still looks as grand as when it first opened, the menu still as preciously designed and printed. The only difference I suppose would be the name of the boutique and the ease at which we can be seated as a walk-in customer without the hassle of booking a table days in advance. Now known as The Cookie Musuem, a wide selection of delicate handmade cookies are now offered (seasonal or no) – from the popular Berry Lite organic cookies, to rose or lavender flavoured cookies, to cookies that cater to more international tastebuds like Shizuoka green tea cookies and Fragola e Cioccolata which is carefully made with hand-delivered Japanese strawberries. Whether you’re a Singaporean food fanatic or curious visitor, The Cookie Musuem offers some scarily adventurous local flavours such as Heh Bee Hiam (spicy shrimp), Laksa and Nasi Lemak. In this savoury range, we managed to taste some parmesan flavoured cookies and an American Breakfast that was a flavour brought back by popular demand. Despite the daringness of such flavours, these gung-ho cookies aren’t too heavy on the palate and the tea ladies are more than delighted to recommend an appropriate tea to accompany your chosen cookies.

My personal favourites were the Rose flavoured cookie (I don’t recall it’s name – just its taste which was quite phenomenal) and the Shizuoka one. Watch out too for their Salmon Quiche which is beautiful with a melt-in-your-mouth texture and a well-made pastry. Best thing about this tea room is that it offers customised cookie hampers, tea and cookie parties, cookie appreciation workshops and corporate orders. The beautiful royal-like design of the tea room also sets you at ease, making you feel very pampered and taken care of by the attentive tea ladies. Please note that other than that gorgeous pot of luxury tea, designer hot chocolate or specially crafted cup of coffee you’re sipping away, you can have a whole pushcart of cookie samples to taste-test with your friends; always with a cheerful tea lady to guide you in the flavours you may or may not like. If they’re too irresistable, you can pick a box up for friends and family at S$35, albeit a little pricey but so good it doesn’t seem too massive a sin to commit.

For interested parties, here are the details for this precious jewel of a tea room rated 6th amongst all the world’s tea rooms:

The Cookie Museum
The V Pte Ltd
Esplanade Mall
8 Raffles Avenue #01-02/04
Singapore 039802
Tel: 65 6333 1965
Email: comments@thecookiemuseum.

Inspired by this visit, my cookie bone within was starting to ache with the intense heat of the last summer months and the lack of baking in my life recently. The cookies at The Cookie Museum are handmade with as little sugar as possible, flavoured to the max with only natural ingredients and is egg-free. This reminded me of my Black Sesame Shortbread recipe which contains a small amount of powdered sugar and no egg – although beware of all that butter which comes up as the foundation of its flavour.

I thought to replicate one of my favourite cups of tea as a cookie – earl grey laced with the tiniest trace of lemon and cheekily sweetened with dried cranberries. Honestly, I had a little more trouble with the dough this time round as compared to the black sesame one. I believe this is due to the disparate climates. The end result was pretty enough (haha) and tasted fairly good. Why I say this is that I could smell the earl grey but it’s aroma wasn’t as strong as I thought it would be. I’d used a rather shrivelled up, old lemon and so the lemon’s flavour was rather weak as well. In the future, I would increase the amount of earl grey tea leaves used and possibly substitute the lemon juice for some sort of natural lemon essence of flavour whilst increasing the amount of zest used. The dried cranberries were a fantastic idea not only for aesthetic reasons (I like the red of cranberries) but reminded me very much of Bea’s White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies she used to make in junior college. Good times.

The cookies were a fantastic idea. It feels great to be back in the kitchen. After a tearjerker film that left my eyes swollen to the point that they suspiciously resembled pink radishes, savouring the cookies was a great pick-me-up and an after-bathing-the-dog relaxation method. My only complaint is the washing up. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t happy washing up (yes I’m quite the strange kitchen chick and have never had anything to say about washing up other than ‘I’ll do it, please!’).

This recipe yields 18 cookies and is actually a recipe I’ve halved due to insufficient butter. I recommend doubling the ingredients and splitting the dough into 2 before fridging for greater satisfaction and yes, greater yield.

Alright then. It’s hand cream, another cup of tea and an earl grey cookie for me now.

Lemon Earl Grey & Cranberry Shortbread Cookies
Ingredients

1 cup flour
114g salted butter, softened
1/4 cup powdered sugar
2 – 3 tbs dried cranberries
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/3 tsp earl grey tea leaves
caster sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 170 d Celsius and grease cookie tray.

Place all dry ingredients,except lemon zest, in a large bowl and whisk together.
In a separate bowl, beat butter till its colour lightens and creamy. Add lemon juice and zest. Next add the dry ingredients and mix it carefully in cutting motions. Bring dough together with hands, banging it altogether to form a ball.
Flatten into a disc, wrap in clingwrap and fridge for 1 hour or till firm enough to handle with hands.

Roll out flat on floured surface to about 1.5cm thickness. Cut out cookies using a cookie cutter and place on greased tray. These cookies don’t spread much but leave at least 4cm space between cookies. Sprinkle generously with caster sugar.
Bake 15 minutes then remove and let cool completely on a wire rack.

I remember the first time I tried a Chocolate Chip Cookie, I couldn’t stop popping them into my mouth. I had a great fondness for Chips Ahoy cookies. I think my sis and i were such big fans of Chips Ahoy and OREOS that my mom really started to worry bout our teeth. Of course, now that I am such an avid baker and still a great lover of chocolate, i’m more worried bout all the pounds i’m putting on. I think i’m already resembling a rice sack. The 48kg body has been chucked away in a closet i can no longer find my way back to. (sounds like Narnia) Pity pity, quoth Brutus. Anyhow, I haven’t exactly found the perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Every time i bake one, it just seems that there’s something missing. Either it’s too chewy for my liking, too crispy, too ugly, too mountainy, too tasteless or sth. :S
In my quest for the perfect cookie recipe and in my foray into the world dominated by the chocolate chip ladies, I experimented with this recipe from chocolate AMERICAN STYLE by Lora Brody. It’s actually the Toll House Cookies recipe, inspired by the innkeeper Ruth Wakerfield who experimented with buttercookies and chopped chocolate chunks in 1937 at her inn the Toll House, Whitman, Massachusetts. I must say I can’t really tell if the recipe was good because I tweaked it up and about but I should think so because this book is just amazing! I’ve decided that after i return it to the library, I’m gonna head down to Kino and buy it, along with Alice Medrich’s Chocolate Holidays and maybe Lisa Yockelson’s Chocolate Chocolate. Sucker.
Anyway, I turned this Toll House recipe into a Supersoft Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookie recipe. I didn’t expect it to be supersoft but my sisters loved the softness (which is extremely rare because most ppl i know prefer crispy cookies to soft & chewy ones) so no harm done i guess.
I’m still on the lookout for the perfect chocolate chip recipe but no worries! It just means i’ll have to keep baking to find out. (but golly, there goes the figure again.)

Ingredients
2 1/8 cup plain flour
1/8 cup (about 1-2tbs is fine too) unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened (i tried a new brand. Anchor butter. didn’t really like the smell…)
3/4 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup dried cranberries (preferably non-sweetened)

Directions
Preheat oven at 190dCelsius.

Place sifted flour, cocoa powder, soda and salt in a bowl. Give it a light whisk.
Place butter, sugars in a bowl and mix. Add vanilla. Beat well. Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the flour mixture and beat. Lastly, fold in the chocolate chips and cranberries.
The Toll House recipe actually uses 1 cup toasted walnuts. I took this out as my family isn’t too thrilled bout walnuts like i am and besides, i didn’t have any lying about the house. But I would really have liked to throw in the walnuts because it would have given the cookies that extra urmph and crunch!
Drop the batter by rounded tablespoonfuls, be generous. Bake for 11 minutes or until the cookies are just a nice golden brown. Leave to cool on the baking sheets on a wire rack for 10 min. The cookies will continue to cook on the sheets and in the process, turn a darker brown.

According to Lisa Brody: For chewier cookies, slam the baking sheets on the counter once or twice before placing them on the wire racks to cool. Interesting. I’m not too sure how that works but I think these cookies are chewy enough.

It’s a Friday and there’s barely anything left in the kitchen to eat. What’s a girl supposed to do for lunch then? I couldn’t possibly sit around and let myself starve, especially since the day i graduated from college I haven’t exactly been allowing myself to diet much or for that fact, mind how my body has been ballooning horizontally. But have you heard muffins for lunch! Golly. I’m so glad i’m living my world. Or at least living lunch my way when mom’s out.

I really liked these muffins. I’m a chocolate lover up to my toes so i really am not such a big fan of things with fruit in them, with the exception of cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and all the other berries that i can find. But these muffins tasted very REAL to me. I guess it’s cause of the low amount of sugar used and the use of orange juice and milk to make up for that lack of sweetness. I also threw in some orange pulp and nibbling on them in the muffins was quite an experience. Honestly, I never did like fresh oranges. I didn’t like the acidity of oranges, or the fact that they tended to make your nails orange and the bitter aftertaste if i bit too far into the peel. Until last year when i decided it was more worthwhile and fun (with all that juice squirting into my eyes) to eat a fresh orange than vitamin C pills.

This recipe is a Nigella Bites one. Orange Breakfast Muffins. But i’d recommend you add in some dried cranberries cause they give it an added sweetness. Remember watching Nigella on TV and she saying something like how muffins to her are a type of bread. Just break it open whether warm or cool and eat it with cream cheese or jam and that’s how i ate mine. The muffins may seem to some to be a little bland (to a chocolate lover, definitely) but i guess you really have to get used to the fact that this recipe called for freshly squeezed juice so it tastes less sweet, but tangier and of course healthier. The smell of butter and milk is still wonderfully strong from these muffins and so, it’s really yummy to eat it with strawberry cream cheese, homemade marmalade or really just simple strawberry jam. Best thing was I had this for lunch while watching Jamie Oliver dearest on Discovery Travel&Living-perfect afternoon. Makes the dreaful heat livable.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

Ingredients

75g unsalted butter

1 2/3 cup flour, sifted

1/4 cup ground almonds

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

zest of 1 orange, washed and dried

juice of one orange (abt 1/3 cup)

1/3 cup milk

1 egg

Preheat oven to 200dCelsius.

Melt butter and set aside to cool.

Combine flour,almonds,soda and baking pwder, sugar and zest in a bowl and give a little stir with a fork. Measure juice and milk into a jug and whisk in egg, followed by the cooled melted butter.

Make a well in the dried ingredients and neatly pour in the liquid ingredients into the well, mixing carefully but swiftly with a fork as you go until just incorporated and mixture starts to resemble yellow custard.

According to Nigella, if batter is too dry, add either a tbs of juice or milk. Bake for 20min and no longer. Once out of oven, transfer to wire rack to cool and while still slightly warm, crack open muffin and serve with jam! Voila!