strawberry fields forever

Getting straight down to business, it's all about luscious strawberries today. First up is a modified buckle recipe from Simply Recipes which I substituted the blueberries for strawberries. The texture of the cake didn't really look alike to the original one perhaps due to the strawberries being used giving it a different type of texture, albeit still tasting great.


The crumble topping was very good and addictive to eat so it was very dangerous to have around the house by your lonesome especially.


Next we have a strawberry bread with a strawberry glaze drizzled liberally on top after it's cooled down. I halved the original recipe and came out with a small loaf and a small pie sized cake. The batter became a shocking pinkish and redish colour when I added the crushed strawberries which brought that much needed sunshine to this cloudy Easter morning.


The glaze I made with some of the juices leftover and used about a half cup of the crushed strawberries mixed with about a cup of icing sugar or till you get the desired consistency you want. I decided to make it a little bit more liquid than usual and left some small chunks of the strawberries in there.


Overall, I am very satisfied with the results of these cake/bread/buckle and will make them again soon with some variations next time.

blondie in the kitchen

I love blondies!

The edible, sweet and chocolatey type of course. This new type of blondies is a modified version from this website. It's full of chocolate chips and coconut goodness all filled in a generous square sized portion. They're sweet but not so overpowering that the coconut can't be hinted at and the edges are really crumbly that they remind me of shortbread cookies.

Chocolate Chip and Coconut Studded Blondies

1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips plus some for studding
1/3 cup desiccated coconut plus some for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Prepare greased baking tray.
2. Cream butter and sugar till fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and mix.
3. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt till batter comes together.
4. Add chocolate chips and coconut till well combined.
5. Spread the batter onto prepared baking tray and top with the remaining chocolate chips and coconut.
6. Bake for about 25 minutes till browned on top.
7. Let cool and slice into squares. Makes about 12 squares.

if you can't stand the heat

Get out of the kitchen! Top Chef kitchen that is.


Yes, it is latest season of Top Chef that I'm talking about and it's already the second episode down and second contestant out.


So far I'm currently rooting for "Kiwi" Mark, "Fauxhawk" Richard and "Tulan" Dale. It's not strange that they're all guys by the way and that the two persons eliminated first were women.


I'm looking forward to more kitchen disasters, tasting nightmares and of course dining divine. Hopefully my favourites will last long and well into the competition and so far they're doing quite alright provided they don't screw up something big.


Someone make some dessert! And no I'm not talking about some tiny looking banana bread cocktail thing.

poppers

I've made these babies twice before already now but they didn't look as impressive and pretty as this time when I finally made them to almost perfection as I can possibly get them to be.


The two recipes that I got the basic recipe from is here and here. The two of them are basically the same but I just thought that the pictures looked pretty darn fantastic. I couldn't exactly get my popovers to rise and create that hollow bit in the middle like they did but they still tasted great with honey drizzled on top when still fresh and piping hot from the oven.

Basic Popovers

1 tbsp melted butter plus more for buttering the muffin/popover tins
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup flour

1. Preheat oven to about 230-250 degrees. Liberally butter 10 insides of the muffin or popover tins if you have them and place inside the oven in the middle rack to warm them up.
2. Melt the butter and let cool a bit. Warm up the milk and let cool as well.
3. Mix butter, milk and eggs in a bowl till well whisked.
4. Add the flour and salt and mix well till you get a rather smooth batter.
5. Take out the muffin tray and spoon the batter into the buttered tins up until 3/4 way through.
6. Place the tray back inside the oven and bake for about 20 minutes. Resist the urge to open the oven door to get the most rise from the popovers.
7. Lower the temperature to about 180 degrees and continue baking for about 15 minutes more or until you can't stand the temptation any longer.
8. Eat them piping hot out of the oven with honey or fresh fruit jam!

I halved the original recipe and made five brown babies. I think making them fresh and eating them on that day itself would give the best results instead of heating them up for later. But then again who can resist these, when they look this great, taste fantastic and takes as little as ten minute to get the batter made! They came out so invitingly hot and smelled intensely good and tasted even better! I can imagine how good these would have tasted with roast beef and gravy and mash, just like a traditional English pub supper. Yum!