When Life Gives You Broken Cakes..

.. (or more aptly, when you turn out way too many cakes that fall out of their pan before you were too impatient to wait for them to bake completely or too lazy to grease the pans), you make rum balls.

Cookie Love.

Recently, I have somewhat earned myself a reputation of being a bit of a cookie monster at work. Something, they say, about a tinful of cookies disappearing an alarming rate.

Well, if you ask me, it’s not entirely true.

I have had some help in a form of a colleague who eats maybe one cookie to every four I have. But for most of it, I can’t help it the cookie tin calls my name every time I walk past it with a steaming cup of freshly brewed coffee. Before I know it, the tin goes back to our little pantry a lot lighter than when I walked away with it.

What can I say? I do love my cookies.

If there’s one thing that could make me love cookies more than I already do, it’s a chewy cookie with a slight crunch round the edges- which was exactly what I got with these moreish espresso chocolate chip cookies I made because, um one can never eat too many cookies.

With a generous dose of dark chocolate chips and just a hint of espresso paring off perfectly with the shot of caramelized sweetness that comes through with every bite, these made the perfect accompaniment to my morning cup of unadulterated liquid gold.

Ah, between these and my gorgeous new Nespresso machine, I’m pretty sure even if I don’t make it through my next three weeks of study leave and the terrifying, looming exam, I’ll die a happy girl.

Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies [adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours]

Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
250g butter, chopped
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tbsp instant espresso powder
2 eggs, at room temperature
2 cups chocolate chips

1. Sift the flour, salt and baking soda into a medium bowl and set it aside. Line two baking trays with baking paper and set aside.
2. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars till creamy and well combined. Add the vanilla extract and espresso powder in, stirring well. Beat the eggs in, one at a time, until the mixture comes together.
3. Stir the flour mixture in and fold the chocolate chips in until well combined.
4. Drop tablespoonfuls of the dough onto the prepared trays and place the trays in the freezer for at least twenty minutes.
5. Preheat the oven at 175C. Bake the cookies, one tray at a time, in the middle of the oven for about 12 to 14 minutes, until the edges are golden brown. Remove the tray from the oven and let the cookies cool for about ten minutes before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely. Makes about 30 cookies

Going the Italian Route.

From making roasted tomato soup and penne pasta with seafood to gnocchi with roasted tomato sugo, I suppose it was only in due time that we tried our hand at making some thin crust pizzas.

So that’s pretty much in short how GT and I found ourselves in the kitchen on Saturday morning, covered in flour as we prepared our ingredients and rolled out pizza discs between laughing and teasing about our very amateur rolling skills.

As it tends to be with me and my having to make everything myself (I mean really, if I’m gonna make pizzas, I might as well make it all from scratch right?), I insisted that we make our own tomato sauce (glurgs of white wine stirred in some tomato paste, minced garlic, fresh rosemary and thyme) and barbeque sauce for our mixed mushroom and barbeque chicken with red onions pizzas.

The trick we found to rolling out the crusts as thin as possible, with much thanks to Peter Reinhart, was to work with a small amount of dough. We chose to take the easier route out and used rolling pins instead of tossing them in the air, like Peter Reinhart very impressively demostrates in the book, and pressed the dough gently with our fingers to stretch it even further.

Also, another thing that I think helped us get that crackly, paper thin crust we were after was baking the crust on an inverted baking tray, much like a pizza stone.

And that was in short how we came about to have two glorious thin crust pizzas, that between GT and my brother just flew off the plates, for lunch.

I’m truly pleased I can now have thin crust pizzas whenever I want, however I want.

Pizza Dough [Taken from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice]

Ingredients
4 1/2 cup bread flour
1 3/4 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 3/4 cups iced water

1. The day before baking Combine the flour, salt, yeast, olive oil and water in a mixingg bowl. Stir well until a dough forms. Using an electric mixer with a dough hook, knead the dough on medium speed until a smooth, sticky dough forms. The dough should stick to the bottom of the bowl but should clear the sides of the bowl. Add more dough if the dough’s too wet or more water if the dough clears the bottom of the bowl.
2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Shape the dough into a flat disk and divide the dough into 6 equal portions. Place the dough balls in a lightly oiled pan and cover the pan with clingwrap. Place the pan in the fridge overnight. To freeze any excess dough balls you might not need, lightly coat the dough balls in oil and place them in individual freezer bags. They will keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.
3. On the day of baking Remove the pan from the fridge 2 hours before baking. Turn the dough balls out to a lightly floured surface and shape the balls into small, flat disks. Let the dough disks rest for 2 hours.
4. Preheat the oven as hot as it will go. Invert a baking tray and line the tray with baking paper. Roll the disks out to about 9 inches in diameter, making sure to loosen the base of the disc from the work surface regularly. Transfer the pizza dough to the lined baking tray. Lightly top it with sauce and toppings of your choice. Bake the pizza in the centre of the oven for 8 to 10 minutes until crust is lightly browned and toppings are cooked. Makes 6 thin crusted 9-inch pizzas

Cupcakes To Celebrate.

I first made these banana cupcakes for my best friend’s sister a couple weeks ago to welcome her back to our sunny island for the Singapore leg of her wedding ceremony.

Since then every time I’ve seen her, she has asked me for more before quickly changing her mind seeing as how she actually has an upcoming wedding dinner.

So no surprise what I delivered to her place the day after the wedding- her cupcakes with a special message, which were received with much delight and happily eaten within minutes.

Now all I need to do is actually give her the recipe so she can make them herself when she’s back in the US with her new family. Unless of course, she wants to fly me up to make them for her then I would be more than happy to oblige