The Sugar Bar

Christmas kind of came and went real quick this year. The big ol’ traditional feast cook-up this time round was a little more stressful. For what reason I was so frazzled I know not, but in my book, the means justifies the end. And if the end is the pudding, then whatever comes before that is allowed to go by in a blur. I’d like to think I save my best card for last and I play that card best in sweet treats rather than the savoury. Just for the record, I can whip up a mean Christmas roast and yorkshire puddings. I just take more joy in beating up eggs, butter and flour.

Cherries mean big Christmas business for me. Of course, there’s the whole medley of dried fruit soaked in rum or brandy overnight and made into the usual fruit cake shebang schmang but sometimes that all gets a bit boring. Christmas pudding is a tad bit too stodgy for my liking and my all-time favourite bread and butter pudding probably would not have gone down well either with a weight-conscious family. The current monsoon season we’re experiencing has also resulted in extreme levels of humidity. The air is so thick its almost chewable! We’re pretty much live bread and butter puddings ourselves: thick, pneumatic, sticky piles of flesh which don’t sit too well in a steamy bubble of heat. Ew (in relation to ourselves and our general appearance). Delicious (this time, I refer to bread and butter pudding), but really just too hot to handle in this heat.

Something (deceivingly) light, something flavoursome and still a sweet round-off worth your calories was what I wanted. That of course is when Nigella comes in handy (not so much her love for big knobs, oh I meant slabs, of butter). Flipping through a cookbook of hers I received from girlfriends on my 21st, the page which had a recipe sporting dark natural-coloured juicy fat sweet cherries got me at first sight. Hello, goosebumps. And so my Christmas sweet was sorted. Just like that. You’d say this was more of an afternoon teacake and yes it is, but that works since the leftovers get gobbled up for breakfast and lunch on Boxing Day.

I have swapped a few ingredients (natural-coloured glacé cherries and almond essence – they’re not well-liked by the family) and added a granola crust just to pretty up the surface of the cake. Plus, I’ve always loved that gorgeous golden brown hue, the texture and rustic feel granola can give to a loaf cake. Can’t resist a bit of granola any day! And it seems neither can the hungry fools around the Christmas dinner table.

Hope everyone had a joyous holiday season. We’re stuffed Tellytubbies at the moment with barely enough time to recover before the Lunar New Year hits us right smack between the eyes. Oh geez. Time to brace ourselves.

Cherry Almond Loaf Cake
Recipe adapted from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess
Ingredients

200g dark pitted cherries
250g self-raising flour, sifted
225g unsalted butter, softened
175g caster sugar
3 large free-range eggs
2 drops of pure vanilla extract
100g ground almonds
6 tbs milk
about 1/4 cup mixed granola, for crust (optional)

Preheat oven to 170d Celsius. Grease and flour a long loaf tin.

Drain the juice of the pitted cherries in a sieve, halve them and pat dry a little with a kitchen paper towl. Toss them in some flour and shake well to get rid of the excess.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating in between each addition. Add the vanilla, beat.

Gently fold in the flour and ground almonds. Fold in the cherries and milk. You will get a thick and heavy batter. Spoon this into the prepared loaf tin and using a rubber spatula, even out the surface. Sprinkle the granola (use your favourite brand of granola, mine’s Dorsets Cereals, or homemade granola) over the surface and gently pat down into an even layer to secure the bits of oats, nuts, etc. to bake in the cake.

Bake loaf for 45mins-1 hr or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Mine took 1hr 5mins to cook perfectly.

When it is cooked, remove from the oven and let cook in its tin on a wire rack until completely cooled.

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.

Kid Diva’s back in the nest. And joy to the reunion with her oven, finally. Living without one was not only upsetting me, it was making me almost allergic to the thought of surviving without one. The things I could normally roast and bake had been reduced so drastically it wasn’t a surprise that I found myself relying more on cereal and rabbit food than ever!

The past month has been very hectic too, what with balancing a Masters and part-time retail work at American Apparel, there really wasn’t much time left to do any sort of fancy cooking. It was simple, easy-peasy, bang bang type of cooking. And sometimes, there wasn’t even any cooking involved except for re-heating or microwave blasting the damn thing. I can’t tell you more how glad I am to be home for Christmas, to smell dinner cooking at half 7, to be able to flip through my recipe books very (and I stress that word ‘very’) leisurely whilst planning some sweet treat to bake the next day. I admit I am procrastinating and not giving my essays the appropriate amount of attention and care as I do my cookbooks, but it’s all worth it after being forced into oven abstinence the past few months.

I may not be able to fit as many recipes as I intend to attempt into the remaining few days I’m home for Christmas, and I’m constantly reminding myself that the reason for this is the heffer of an essay I have to tackle next. Yes, I’ve just about finished the 1st one I kept bitching about on Twitter and now have to haul ass on the next. Wish I could laze away another day doing nothing (except baking) but that’s really not likely at all. And it’s a real shame since returning to London means living without an oven for another 9 months – that’s madness. Pure torture. I don’t know how I’m going to cope. Might have to eat myself to death as a way to console my aching heart.

I find that I have recently crashed into a state of poverty which is a really awful time of the year to realize your purse has become as dry and unfertile as the Sahara desert. Fortunately, all my Christmas presents have been sorted out and I managed to (with help from the Mama) purchase some Christmassy ingredients for a bit of baking this week. So not very much left to worry about I suppose in terms of spending (she says). But before I start waxing lyrical about this babe of a recipe I found scribbled in a very old recipe book of mine, let me share with you this bit of shopping I thoroughly enjoyed today – RIBBON SHOPPING. Might have overshot my tiny miserly budget I set out for ribbons today. I’m still waiting for guilt to set in but it seems it’s gonna take a few more years for it to hit me.

Pretty, chic, Laura Ashley-type ribbons in lovely pastels (my favourite is duck egg and mint green) are quite hard to find. I often purchase mine online from that Cakes Cookies & Craft Shop I talk about quite a lot. Although they’ve got quite a range of plain ribbons advertised on their retail shop, it’s pretty much a race against other eager customers as the colours I want are always sold out. Purchasing by the metre pisses me off too as I hate having to estimate how much I’m going to use or how large my ribbons tied will look like, etc. For Pete’s sake I’m just buying ribbons not attempting to plan a conspiracy act against the Senate or something like that. Just give me my ribbons! Moreover, it’s even more difficult to find ribbons in pretty but not garish, childish patterns. After reading about a fantastic cheap ribbon find in Singapore via Evan’s blog Bossacafez, I knew I’d finally struck gold. When Evan posted a post Really Cheap Ribbons II, I snapped, threw caution to the wind and nicely asked Mum for a lift to Arab Street to check out this ribbon treasure chest.

I wasn’t disappointed. Polka dots? Oui. I love ‘em. Duck egg shades? Awesome, bung it in my basket. Mint green and contrasting baby pink dots? Holy smokes, isn’t that simply adorable? Yep. Gotta have it. Ladybugs? Geeez, you’re killing me, mate. Chocolate brown ribbons, mocha coloured ones, milky latte types, fuschia strips with white lace edges, cut-out-heart ones for the soppy lovesick ones, baby pink/blues with milk bottle patterns for baby showers, etc. They’ve got it all! After deliberating for quite some time, I managed to come round to 5 rolls, paid and left grinning from ear to ear.

Happy days.

Don’t you like how sometimes you purchase things you know you don’t need at the moment, but like an investment, you’re buying for the future? Some people think that’s foolish and so self-indulgent. I, on the other hand, would like to argue (in defense of us eager shoppers) and say we’re stocking up for the winter. In times of need, when you just can’t bloody find any ribbon about the house, or need an emergency gift for a friend, may be in desperate need to put your hair up on a hot day when all hair ties have decided to go missing or rip at the very last second which counts the most, you’ve got ribbon.

How comforting does that phrase : ‘You’ve got ribbon’ sound? Surely you agree!

And on to moi Christmas cookies. I know cranberry, white chocolate and walnut combo can be pretty normal, unexciting and predictable at this time of the year but surely a little stereotyping, a little cliché at Christmas time is totally forgivable? I love this combination of flavours (even if I dislike white chocolate. It’s weird but with raspberries or cranberries, I’d eat the white crap) and cranberry white chocolate was a duo I fell in love with in high school. Funnily enough, I liked it so much it was what inspired me to start baking and make truckloads of cranberry white chocolate cookies to last me a lifetime. Besides I thought it was pretty apt to return to my beloved oven with a favourite recipe of mine – and at that, one which I’d left to drown in the back of a very old recipe book forgotten behind newer, fancier celebrity chef cookbooks.

These cookies may not look great. They’re not as chunky, as fat, as voluptuous as I’d like them to be but I’m sure I’m to blame for that. Nevertheless, I think they taste great. A little on the sweet side so might have to reduce the amount of white chocolate buttons used in this but the flavours meshed together brilliantly and the cookies turned out nice and chewy in the middle and perfectly crunchy on the outer edges. I used cheap vanilla essence and that wasn’t as delightful as it would’ve been with a better quality vanilla extract but not complaining since they still quite scrumptious, evidence thanks to my elder sister A.

Mum: You’re baking tonight? Right now?
Me: Nah. Gonna head upstairs and do some work first (in my head, really I’m going to be blogging and twittering). I’ll bake a little later tonight. I’ll make another loaf cake tomorrow (after our Christmas eve roast dinner) for the family gathering on Christmas day.
A, my elder sister: You’re certainly attacking the oven with a vengeance, huh.
Me: Yea.
A: These cookies are delicious. Your best I think.
Me: They’re a little too sweet, no?
C, my younger sister: Yea! They’re so sweet.
A: Where? If you tell me where it’s sweet, maybe. But I don’t think they are. They’re good.

Feel really good about that vote of confidence. It’s always so rewarding to see the people you love enjoy the things you make. Okie dokie, I must be off to get working on these essays even more before I tackle my carrot cake for tomorrow’s dessert. Went to bed at 4am this morning trying to tie up all my arguments and have a feeling that it will be done again tonight so that I can both enjoy my holiday and meet my uni deadline.

To all those furiously baking and working away like Silas Marner in their kitchen dens, I salute you all. Happy Christmas! I can’t wait to catch up on all that Christmas food blogging soon.

Cranberry, White Chocolate & Walnut Cookies
Ingredients

1 1/4 cup plain flour
113g unsalted butter, cold & cut into pieces
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1 cup white chocolate chips or chunks
1 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Preheat oven to 150dC.

Beat sugars and butter together til light and creamy. Mix in egg, vanilla and baking soda. Sift in flour, add salt and mix into batter. Fold in chocolate chips, cranberries and walnuts.

Drop rounded tablespoonful of batter onto parchment-lined cookie trays and bake 2″ apart. Careful as these cookies will spread a bit and some of mine stuck together. If it does, use a small butter knife or spatula to separate and reshape cookies.

Bake 18-20 mins or until pale golden brown. Leave to cool about 2-3mins on the tray before transferring to cool completely on a wire rack. These cookies will firm and crunch up as they cool.