The Sugar Bar » nuts

Cherry Almond Loaf Cake

diva — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:31:51 +0000

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

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.

Irresistible Hazelnut Coffee-Spiked Brownies

diva — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 08:45:19 +0000

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

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.

Christmas Fussin’: Pretty Ribbons and Cranberry, White Chocolate & Walnut Cookies

diva — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:34:26 +0000

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

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.

Pear and Cranberry Upside-Down Cake

diva — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:49:53 +0000

The pear is a particularly humble fruit often forgotten in my house or outshone by the more appealing apple,the milkshake-worthy banana, the stunning golden kiwi or the refreshing watermelon. If it were a game of ball, the pear would be the last to be picked onto the team. It may be its delicate flavour, subtle sweetness and generally modest but spotty complexion that causes it to be overlooked, to fade into the background of other more colourful, juicy, sweet and tangy fruit. Nevertheless, I have a special fondness for this bottom-heavy fruit, especially the conference and packham variety; I love them on its own, in salads or poached and served with cream or custard. They’re quite the versatile fruit and cooking them releases its delicate honeyed flavour all the more.

The last upside-down cake I made (years ago, geez) was a recipe from Bill Granger and I remember using heckloads of maple syrup in it. I’d used bananas in the base and so the cake was pretty rich and intensely sweet. Mindblowingly so in fact. I believe the post-cake sugar high lasted for bout half an hour or so, which isn’t quite a good thing for sugar-maniacs like me. But this recipe – Bill Granger’s Banana Maple Upside Down Cake from Bill’s Open Kitchen – is still gorgeous if you aren’t too calorie or sugar-conscious. Instead of using this same Granger recipe, however, I wanted a recipe that wouldn’t have too many flavours working in the syrupy base so as not to overpower the pears. I found one from Ottolenghi and was really excited to give it a go since many have raved about Ottolenghi. Because I have yet to taste their gorgeous food for myself, I simply cannot wait to be in London next year to taste Ottolenghi amongst other equally, if not more, amazing restaurants like Maze, Nobu and dans le noir?. Reckon I should start organizing a list of restaurants to visit with my future flatmate (if she’s nice and amiable!). Someone pass me my diary please…Diva’s got an important restaurant visit-list to note down! Figures I’ll have to work doubly hard to earn a wage that’ll support my shopping, my desire for shoes and that insatiable hunger for yum yummy food.

I’m really pleased with this recipe. I admit it’s a lot of work since you’ve got to poach the pears, make the caramel topping from scratch and basically make sure nothing burns and that you don’t burn yourself, but the results were fantastic. The recipe uses cranberries which I thought would be quite a wonderful marriage with pears, giving it a sweetness boost and a light touch of tanginess. The cake batter incorporates lemon and orange zest amidst spices like ground star anise, cinnamon and nutmeg. The ground almonds also gave it a lovely fluffy texture. Any recipe that uses ground almonds I love. Something about ground almonds that gives all baked goods a special x-factor. So anyway, this is sort of an autumnal cake which I found delightful especially since September is finally here and we’ve gotta say goodbye to summer. I might add a little more cinnamon and nutmeg to the batter in the future as I quite like a bit more spice in cakes like these. The pears which were poached in lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar and spices tasted wonderful with the caramel topping and cranberries soaked in the pear poaching water. Together with the cake, served warm, it was lush! I loved the lemoniness and laces of orange together with the cinnamon-sweetness of the pears and cranberries. I’m not that great at describing how good food tastes to me but honestly, this was good. Moist, very tasty and not overly sweet such that you couldn’t even taste the pear.

Gorgeous.

One problem I had with the recipe, aside from all my kitchen accidents which I’ll get to in a bit, was the baking time. The recipe states that you bake it for 35 mins but I had to bake mine in the oven for nearly 50 mins. I’m not too sure why that was and I have a nagging suspicion that my oven wasn’t preheated long enough to get to the right temperature for baking the cake and thus, required a longer cooking time than advised in the recipe. Any ideas?

I chose not to glaze the cake with jam a little watered down in a saucepan as I felt the caramel topping was sufficient and the cake moist and pretty enough. Like I’d mentioned before, I wanted to keep the recipe simple so I’d stay true to the pears. Any other jam, apricot, strawberry or marmalade would just be unhelpful.

Right, so some of you might be wondering about those kitchen accidents and if you’ve kept up with me on Twitter, you’d have some idea of the silly things I’d done to myself. I guess today’s just one of those days where hand-eye coordination totally fails you. On days like that, I usually ruin everything and by the end of the day, I feel exhausted and emotionally drained. Ie., I feel like a failure. The upside down cake gave me hope but the process of making it was utterly chaotic. Whilst preparing the lemon zest, I’d grated my thumb into the zest as well. Quite a mess I created with the blood streaked across the white sink. Yes. My kitchen’s got a white, dark brown and silver theme to it. All the table tops are marble white and mum loves to keep it absolutely spotless. She’s anal. And I’m OCD-ed. Great. Picture me freaking out and washing away all the blood, picking out the bad zest and all – don’t worry. It didn’t really get onto the lemon but totally irked me out.

So what happened next? Yes, there’s more. The caramel was a successful event. As I stirred the butter into the melted sugar, the itchy-fingered bit of me suddenly stuck a finger into the beautifully browning (and still, bubbling) mixture. Yep. I burnt my finger through and through. It’s now red, sore and still throbbing. To top it off with the cherry on the icing, I’ve got a bulbous white blister on the tip of my finger that really gets in the way of typing, washing my hair, etc.

Wally brain in the kitchen. Stay away.

I’d like to stop here and end your pain. I mean, seriously, you can hurl me some verbal abuse and I wouldn’t mind. Haha. Getting my cake out of the oven was interesting as well. As I’d placed my cake tin on a cookie tray to prevent any accidental spillage, I had to get the cake out of the oven with oven mitts by grabbing the cookie tray and pulling it out. I gather my brain had executed complete shutdown or just decided a simple act like this didn’t require complex thinking – I turned 90 degrees to my left without moving my right arm away from the oven and seared the flesh of my upper right arm with the cookie tray. WOW. The skin’s kinda like welded down where I’ve burned it. A burn line of about 1.5 inches. If anyone asks, I’ll just say I was in a fight or something. My life’s way cooler than ‘Whoops. I burned myself with a cookie tray.’ Oh no. I can already imagine the looks on their faces when they find out the truth. Scarred for life I am, pun not intended.

Right. But the cake was good so I’m a happy chappy. Off to go reap the rewards of my efforts today. If you’re looking for that recipe, check it out over at Ottolenghi’s website. They’ve got loads of other cool recipes as well.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

diva — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:01:40 +0000

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!

Clementine Salad Bowl with Wild Crayfish Tails, Fresh Basil, Raisins & Walnuts

diva — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:19:46 +0000

On campus, we have a limited choice of greasy, boring places to eat. I’m not really complaining since there’s a place we usually stop by on Mondays after our lecture for yummy jackpots, aka jacket potatoes or pots. Whatever weird combo you fancy (eg. tuna and cheese, sweet thai chicken and beetroot, etc.) they are more than willing to cater to your odds and ends for a jackpot topping. In terms of healthy eating, we’ve even got a little healthy snack bar under the University Centre that offers gluten free soup, salads, a range of vegan and organic sandwiches, drinks, fresh fruit and a range of rice & corn crisps and snacks. Thing is, to get your money’s worth, you’d order a Salad & Protein which offers you 5 salad choices and 1 protein from £2.45. Your choice of protein can be anything from feta cheese & sundried tomatoes to a chicken breast to shrimp to marinated chicken breast to poached salmon. If you’re the type who can’t go without a salad dressing, the lady behind the salad counter is more than happy to squirt a ridiculous amount of mayo, vinaigrette, soy sauce and other weird sorts of liquids on your salad. Fresh salad, tasty, generous portions, affordable.

Sounds good so far, don’t you think? The downside of this is the long queues, the slow service, the lack-lustre expressions of the salad people. You’d think healthy eating could be made more ‘healthy’ with healthy, chirpy people offering the food. No. You’ve got druggee-types, grumpy types, dazed types, clueless types. Honestly! Also, if you happen to go into the snack bar with a 10 pound note, about 90% of the time you’ll have the salad lady fretting about chatting with her mate about not having enough change, etc. etc. It can get très annoying if you’re a pretty impatient-from-hunger type of person.

It’s cold. I’m hungry. Don’t piss me off. Now, give me my food dammit.

So anyhow, ranting done. I have realized that the saying ‘If you wanna get it right, do it yourself’ rings true. Salads are dead easy. Salads are quick to make. Prepare a massive bowl in the morning and you’ve got a satisfying lunch to bring with you to work, to a picnic – it’s great! You can throw anything in it so use up that almost-rotting vegetable at the back of the fridge quick! This said, why am I getting frustrated in a healthy snack bar when I can whip up something even better for less, minus the frustration and the queueing?

Diva has been silly. From now on, I’ll be taking a packed lunch with me to university. Probably will start getting up early and bento it up as well. Oh, I’m getting little eager shivers just thinking about how the others will watch and envy my adorable little lunch sets. Haha!

Clementine Salad Bowl with Wild Crayfish Tails, Fresh Basil, Raisins & Walnuts
Ingredients

1 serving your favourite mix of salad leaves
1/3 cup wild crayfish tails, ready to eat
5 large fresh basil leaves, roughly shredded and broken up
2 tbs raisins
2 tbs walnuts
drizzle on your favourite vinaigrette, or some lemon/orange juice

Salads are easy. Put it all in a large bowl. Mix together. Drizzle on your dressing. You don’t need much dressing for this as sweet clementines make up for all the flavour! Now toss wildly. Serve.

I’ve served mine in a lousy glass casserole dish out in the cold on ice or melting snow…Eccentric huh?

Happy Smashin’ 21st Sam G.: A Bloody Amazing Carrot Cake

diva — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:55:39 +0000

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

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!

Pan-Seared Pork Steak with Apple & Pecan Risotto

diva — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:27:16 +0000

Earlier this week, one of my mates said to me, “I’ve just realized how funny you are. Every damn thing you say is Facebook quote-worthy.”

Obviously flattered, the topic of the worthiness of my witty banter soon passed and things got right down and dirty – the topic of food, chocolate, Sunday roast and Christmas mince pies. Indeed, I am often less bothered about what I say really than the yummy concoctions I put in my mouth. I mean, I get totally psyched about that!

One good thing about my pals and I are that we are easily teased by food. Apart from friendship, this is the strong bond that brings us lot together. Think of us as a Knighthood of Glorified & Appreciative Eaters, if you like. So anyway, everyone got properly jittery when Starbucks released their Christmas red cups, considering the fact that among us we have people who have either worked/works at Starbucks and/or are just generally unadulterated Starbucks junkies (and unafraid to admit that we are). So, still satiated and buzzing from an afternoon Christmas special drink (with the roof of my mouth tingling a little from burning it on a dark cherry mocha), feeling nice and toasty in my new slipper socks as my room is slowly infused with the scent of burning mulled wine candles, I plot my Sunday lunch.

And blimey, was this Sunday lunch very brilliant on the flavours! Just last week, I’d popped two beautiful pork steaks into the freezer in an effort to save them for a time when I was better prepared ingredient and energy wise. Today was just the perfect day for tasty steaks and what better to pair pork than with apples? The advent of winter also means making use of wintry flavours in fruit and nuts. Instead of chomping on that next bar of Aero chocolate, I was beyond delighted to deck myself in my black sugarbar apron and get working within the comforts of a heated home on a hearty meal.

I found an interesting recipe on goodtoknow.co.uk incorporating Chinese ingredients for a pork marinade. I was a little worried on how that might work with a fruit risotto but my fears were put to rest once I put a fork of meat to mouth. The flavours were gorgeous! Chinese 5 spice and the garlic was just wonderful, making the meat so juicy and succulent with a nice lacing of oriental sweetness. I adore this marinade and highly recommend it. In fact, I’m hoping to use this recipe again next week for another friend of mine, in hopes of wowing his socks off and showing him what a stunning cook I am. Actually, it’s also because I owe him a meal after he whipped me up some amazing chicken fajitas about 2 weeks ago. This man, I swear, is some sort of god of fajitas.

The apple risotto too was quite amazing. Word of advice, don’t pick sweet apples such as Royal Gala or Pink Lady. As much as these apples are tasty and beautiful to look at, I find that choosing a rather tart apple like Braeburn or maybe even a Cox just perfect, especially since it’ll go well with a dash of white wine.

This recipe serves 2.

Pan-Seared Pork Steak on Apple & Pecan Risotto
Ingredients

In a small bowl, mix together ingredients for the marinade. Place pork steaks in a large plate and pour marinade over the tops of the steaks. Rub gently into the steaks, flip over and cover the clean sides with marinade. Make sure to pat the chopped ginger in the marinade onto the steaks. Cover plate tightly with clingwrap and let sit in the refrigerator overnight or for at least an hour.

For the risotto, make sure you start on it about 10-15minutes before pan-searing the steaks as this will take about 5-7minutes to cook completely.
Heat the butter in a saucepan. Add the risotto rice and fry for about 2 minutes. Add the shallots and fry a little longer. Ladle about 2 ladles of vegetable stock into the saucepan, lower heat and let simmer. The arborio rice will slowly absorb the liquids in and be careful to only add a ladle of stock each time, stirring now and again as the rice cooks – you can add liquid to risotto but not take it out!
When all the liquid is nearly absorbed, add another ladle and continue this cooking process. This will take about 10-15minutes to cook. Once the risotto rice is cooked through, add the white wine and stir. Once the consistency of the risotto has reached the desired thickness, remove from heat and add 1/2 the prepared grated parmesan, thyme, apples and pecan. Stir with a quick and firm hand until all the ingredients have just come together.
Add the rest of the grated parmesan, saving a tiny bit for sprinkling over the tops. Season with black pepper if needed.

For the pork steaks, preheat the oven to 200d Celsius and prepare a hot frying pan. The pan has got to be very hot but not overly hot. Grease lightly with cooking spray. Remove steaks from refrigerator.
Place steaks on hot frying pan and let sear for about 7 seconds (you will have to judge this by eye). With a pair of tongs or a spatula, flip the steaks quickly to sear the other side for another 7 seconds. Now remove and place on a grill, then slide into the oven to cook for about 5 minutes. Once cooked, serve quick on a bed of apple & pecan risotto with a sprinkle of grated parmesan.

Pasta with Caramelized Onions, Goats Cheese, Streaky Bacon, Cashews & Greens

diva — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:29:24 +0000

The clocks have turned back, the temperature’s dropping lower and I’m discreetly reaching out for that next bar of chocolate. Kit Kat’s latest release – Kit Kat Senses is quite the treater. I say go try it if you haven’t. Huddled under the duvet in a giant fleece hoodie with a Kit Kat as I watch Hellboy then Hellboy II, my Sunday is going by quite well actually if you don’t consider the fact that I’m seeing my dissertation tutor tomorrow who is a practicing psychoanalyst — she’s terribly intimidating and I shit marbles from fear when I’m talking to her one on one!

Shitting marbles ain’t exactly the best expression for me to be putting onto the intensely parent-controlled world wide web, or a food blog that has no scatological relations whatsoever, but it’s the appropriate way to describe how freaked out I get when I’m around her. She’s amazingly intelligent and seems nice enough. There are people with big personalities; there are some with very dominating presences and some who just get forgotten by others even when standing right next to that ridiculously coloured punch bowl; some who light up the room; some who are really messed up or eccentric or hilarious. And there are just some who FREAK THE HELL OUTTA YOU – who seem to see right through you, through your eyes and into your brain then right out through the back of your head and then down your spine into your stomach and intestines. That’s right. I feel like she’s even in on what I ate for lunch. As I chatter on away nervously about Jeanette Winterson and Luce Irigaray and these big ideas on phallogocentrism, I gather she’s analyzing everything about me — my black patent Dr. Marten’s, my pseudo curly ‘bed’ hair, my shiny dark-coloured nails and the woolly tights I’m wearing that I saved from my laundry basket that very morning. Her gaze is so piercing and intense, being in the same room as her is near suffocating. Suffocating because the air that I breathe out she breathes in and holds it in and I’m like a skanky hungry rat being held from its tail by its captor, unable to run away or do anything except squeak in fear and twist its body into weird contortions in hopes of loosening its tail from those unforgiving fingers.

Yea. Yea, so…she’s not that scary, huh?

Think it’s definitely a glass of water, a couple of deep breaths before I knock on her door tomorrow. I don’t even know if I’ve got her office hours right, either. Seems I get it wrong every week. As I did last week, which resulted on me waiting patiently outside her office listening in on some sort of odd group seance.

That’s the story of my life this week. A build up of anticipation and nervousness which shall either combust into flames of stutterings or coat itself in a glossy exterior of placidity. Hence, the chocolate, cookies and Jelly Babies. I’m not stress eating! Absolutely not! Well…some might dispute that. But I don’t stress eat. It’s just about the time of the month and sugar makes me properly drugged. Sugar and chocolate get me giggly and funny in the mind. Which also seems to be telling me something – I’m addicted to the drug Sugar!

However, it’s bad that I’m consuming that much sweetie junk for lunch and so I decided to whip out the chopping board and cooking utensils to fix myself a proper lunch, which also decidedly chased away some of my stress devils. I’ve dreamed about the caramelized onions and goats cheese pizza from Pizza Express a couple of times now. Knowing I’m a little skint, I’ve recreated the flavours into a simple and rather cheap pasta dish. Honestly speaking – best bowl of pasta I’ve ever made! The caramelized onions were beautiful and a recipe I’ll definitely be coming back to for as a pizza topping, addition to burgers, etc. The choice of greens were very limited since I didn’t really do a proper shop for this and the addition of runner beans were quite random. Not complaining though since it all tasted great, made the stomach happy and filled up one of the slots for my 5 a day.

Wonder if my tutor will be clairvoyant enough to know what I ate for lunch today, tomorrow?

This recipe is just perfect for 1. Increase the amount for caramelized onions and store in fridge for later use if you like!

Pasta with Caramelized Onions, Goats Cheese, Streaky Bacon, Cashews & Greens
Ingredients

Prepare caramelized onions about 20 minutes before.
Melt some butter in a saucepan. Add olive oil. When butter is all melted, add onions and let it sauté and then, sweat. Once it starts getting softer and translucent, add spices and sesame oil. Once most of the fats has started to be absorbed into the onions, add water to saucepan to loosen up the sauce that’s starting to solidify at the bottom of the pan. Reduce heat to low and let it simmer, stirring now and again. This should sit on the hob for about 5-10minutes.
Most of the water should have reduced by then. Add HP brown sauce and season a little to taste. Set aside to top the pasta later.

Toast cashew nuts on an un-oiled frying pan or on a baking tray in a preheated oven.
Boil some water and cook the pasta. In a separate saucepan of boiling water, cook the runner beans.

On another frying pan, heat some oil and fry bacon strips. Once pasta is cooked, mix the bacon strips and some of its grease into the pasta, not forgetting the runner beans and spinach leaves. Mix well so all the pasta is covered with the lovely bacon juice.

Pour out into a bowl. Crumble goats cheese over the top, spoon the caramelized onions on the top and finally the toasted cashews. Serve.

Dragon Beard Candy (龍鬚糖)

diva — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:26:13 +0000

When a woman’s feeling blue, hitting the hair salon’s always the best medicine. Finally got my hair professionally coloured and highlighted today by the ever lovely Maeda stylist. One reason I’m in a much better mood – yes, my hair looks pretty good. Not as radical as I wanted it to be, but natural looking and easy as a base to style punkish, posh, nerdish looks which I suppose is the whole point of having a good and versatile crop on your head. The trim also got rid of all that nastiness we know as split-ends and dry ends, etc. Two, I’ve waited so long to get my hair done by Maeda it’s a dream come true (yes, he’s that hot)! It’s bad when you totally fancy your stylist.

After washing off all that painted dye on my head, here’s what happened during Maeda’s inspection: (pardon my attempts at typing a Japanese accent…my thoughts are in brackets)

…time passes…after the second dying attempt and many attempts at forcing the dye into my hair with space-age alien-looking heat machines:

So much for fantasies. Good thing my stylist has no Mel Gibson What Women Want psychic abilities! Anyway, thought I’d put that little embarrassing excerpt up there since it’s about hair and would relate to this awesome childhood sweet of mine – Dragon Beard!

This Chinese candy is essentially sugar that’s been spun like thread, stretched and pulled till it resembles very fine strands of hair and rolled up to look like a silkworm. I mean, you gotta admit that it really looks like a small plate of worms doesn’t it? What’s inside this wrapped sugar threads is a mix of sweetened peanuts, sugar crystals and sometimes sesame seeds. It’s easy to find this popular candy at traditional sweet stalls in Chinatown or night markets in this country. Other than that, it’ll be pretty hard to find authentic dragon beard candy but always try your luck when you hear a ‘ding ding’ sound as it’s quite often that you’ll find the Dragon Beard Candy man working next to a Ding Ding Tang (ding ding sweet) candy man.

This candy is really soft and delicate and once you bite it, all that sugary fluffiness (and by golly, it’s well fluffy) of the insides comes pouring out. It’s never easy to eat this ladylike but no one really bothers that you’ve got white sugar threads all over your lips and some random peanut bits at the corners of your mouth. It’s just too good for anyone to care about the way you look.

It brings good memories having these guys around. They’re such odd-looking sweets but yet they remind me of the times when money could buy so much more (before inflation), especially my pocket money which was all spent on junk food and sweets. These bad-for-your-teeth snacks of course led to greater rate of socialization amongst the school bus pals. Sweets are always a great bonding technique! Too bad most kids just can’t practice responsible eating or self-control and so things like sugarfree, dentist-approved sweets have been created to quell the hearts of parents. It’s not that I don’t fancy such sugarfree whatevers now and again and definitely have nothing against healthy snacks, but what’s happened to just the good ol’ candy?

*Note: I bought this candy from a nice toothy-grinned old man from the market. I don’t personally know the traditional technique to making this sweet so apologies in advance to those who are curious for a recipe.