.. (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.

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

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

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 

Much as I love the idea of cooking over the weekends, it very rarely ever translates into a reality.

My typical week goes something like this- I start the week dreaming of having the luxury of sleeping in over the weekend, rolling out of bed and into the kitchen where I spend a couple of hours chopping and stirring before sitting down to a nice, relaxing lunch. All sounds really good and optimistic right?

As the week progresses, I find my energy level sapping so much so that by the time the weekend actually arrives, that dream becomes a very distant, hazy dream that takes a backseat of my other pressing priorities like sleeping and hitting the books for my looming examination that I’m nowhere near prepared for. Before I even realize it, the weekend has flown by and it’s back to work.

Reality, pfft, what a killjoy.

But last week, oh I knew last week was gonna be different from the moment I laid eyes on this site (thanks to the magical wizard that is Google and seriously, have you seen the daylight robbery prices the local butcheries are charging for the tiniest of quails?). I knew come hell or high water, I was gonna be cooking that weekend.

So last weekend found GT and I in the kitchen.

Within an hour- most of it roasting time- we had ourselves rosemary (fresh from the garden!) and garlic marinated roast quails (with the pan deglazed with white wine to make a sauce), crisp roast potatoes  and a salad of sorts (basil, carrots, cucumber, lettuce and cherry tomatoes, tossed in a light vinaigrette) ready for lunch.

It really wasn’t much and certainly didn’t require much effort but with the clean, simple flavours and my sweetheart for company, it sure made for a really nice weekend lunch.

And hell, it really did feel good to be back cooking in the kitchen.

Next up? I’ve got my eye on that Japanese cookbook that has been by my bedside forever.

]]> http://eatandbehappy.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/for-the-love-of-quails/feed/ 5 thecoffeesnob Roast Quail with Potatoes and Salad http://eatandbehappy.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/the-birthday-cake-or-how-plan-a-isnt-always-the-best-plan/ http://eatandbehappy.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/the-birthday-cake-or-how-plan-a-isnt-always-the-best-plan/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:02:48 +0000 thecoffeesnob http://eatandbehappy.wordpress.com/?p=3012 ]]>

When I thought about making an ice cream cake for my best friend’s birthday, one of my first thoughts I have to admit was that it didn’t seem so hard. I mean all there was to it was to make two cakes, sandwich them with ice cream and frosting. Really seems pretty easy doesn’t it?

Boy, is ignorance bliss.

What I completely didn’t factor in was the weather. I literally couldn’t take the filled ice cream cake out of the freezer two minutes before it melting over the sides of my cake and threatening to turn into an absolute mess on my hands. Long story short, a lot of cursing, swearing and wishing I had a walk in freezer later, I decided to just chuck it, run back to the supermarket to grab another tub of ice cream and fall back on Plan B.

Thankfully, Plan B- hollowing a sponge cake and filling it with ice cream before putting the top back on and frosting it-  was a lot easier and less painful- and really should have been Plan A had I been a little wiser. But that’s how we learn right? Or at least that’s what I tell myself to feel a little better.

So yeah the next ice cream cake I do (if ever), I’ll either have invested in that walk in freezer (and probably churning out ice cream cakes for a living) or go with Plan B. Plan A shall forever be damned in this weather.

In the meantime though, I’ll be enjoying what’s left of it in my freezer.

Happy birthday babe with tons and tons of love.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a morning person by any means. I’m more likely to be crawling into bed in the wee hours of the weekend than jumping out of it.

Lately however,  I have been all about slow leisure breakfasts on weekend mornings. Which I suppose should really be what the weekends are about- taking things slow, recharging and refuelling for the looming week.

So magical to me are the weekends that I often find myself starting to dream of the things I would accompolish over the weekend during the mid of the workweek.

This weekend, in particular, was a cause for celebration for two reasons- a. there was no need to go back to the office over the weekend like I initially planned to and b.  GT was finally back from the trip he took to Melbourne for his convocation. So waffles were naturally the order of the morning.

It was a first we were having waffles made with a yeast batter. I have heard good things about yeasted waffles but when I found a recipe in the Cake Bible, I knew it was time to get off the ledge and actually make the waffles.

In typical Rose Levy Beranbaum style, we weren’t let down. Even with our experimental issues with the new waffles machine, (the top of the waffles doesm’t crisp up as well as the bottom side does if there’s not enough batter), the waffles were really light and mostly crisp.

Much to my amazement, they stayed crisp throughout the good twenty minutes it took to cook all the waffles and even while drenched in maple syrup. If that isn’t a sign of a good solid waffle recipe, I really don’t know what is.

As icing on the cake, the recipe is incredibly simple. The batter (sans the egg and baking soda) has to be mixed up the night before and left to rest overnight. So come morning, all you really have to do is whisk the egg and baking soda in and you’re good to go. It doesn’t get much easier than that, does it?

So here’s introducing my new favourite waffles recipe.

There are no prizes for guessing what I’ll be making for weekends to come (hey after all, someone has to kink out our batter issues right?).

Yeasted Waffles [adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible]

Ingredients
1/4 cup warm water
1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/8 tsp active dry yeast
1 cup warm milk
60g butter, melted and cooled slightly
Pinch of salt
1 cup plain flour
1 large egg
1/8 tsp baking soda

1. To be done the night before Combine the warm water, sugar and yeast in a large bowl. Whisk in the milk, melted butter, salt and plain flour. The batter will be very thin. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the batter rest in the fridge overnight.
2. The morning itself Whisk the egg and baking soda into the batter. The batter will be very thin.
3. Preheat your waffles maker till it’s hot enough to sizzle a drop of water. Pour the batter onto the centre of the waffle plate and cook till golden brown. Makes about 7 five inch square waffles

]]> http://eatandbehappy.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/waffles-on-the-weekend/feed/ 10 thecoffeesnob Yeasted Waffles Yeasted Waffles II