Category: Cakes and Cookies

Bread and Batter, Cakes and Cookies

Buttermilk Biscuits

7shasha7

From the same page I got my Buttermilk Fried Chicken, I made these fabulous biscuits this morning. It’s my first time ever making biscuits and I was disappointed with the result because I obviously didn’t understand what “roll to 2 1/2″ thick”. I’m horribly bad at Math and if I had understood what that meant, I would know that 1 inch is about 2.5 cm and hence 2.5 inches would be slightly more than 5 cm. Well.

The result was a tasty flavourful biscuit (what with the butter and buttermilk in it) but it looks flat. I served these with Buttermilk Fried Chicken for today’s lunch.For added flavour, I ate the biscuits with margarine.

Recipe

1. 2 cups plain flour

2. 2 tsp baking powder

3. 1/2 tsp baking soda

4. 1 tsp salt

5. 1/4 cup shortening (I used butter)

6. 3/4 cup buttermilk

In a dry bowl, stir to mix all the dry ingredients. Add the butter and rub it in till it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Pour in the buttermilk and lightly knead to a dough. Flour the work surface and roll dough out to 2.5 inches thick (do the Math please) and cut using round cutters. I had The Little Girl to do this, and she did a mighty fine job, cutting rounds till there was no more dough left to cut. She rolled and cut the leftover dough three times. Wonderful. Oh, and then bake in the hot oven till golden and cooked in the centre.

Notice that incomplete round dough? That was when The Little Girl cut too close to an earlier round. But I used that as the tester biscuit to check the doneness.

 

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts

No Bake Simple Cheesecake

7shasha7

I was surfing on the internet again and got reconnected with cheesecake. More specifically, the no bake variety and I discovered it’s simply cream cheese mixed with whipping cream. And what do you know? I have a whole packet of whipping cream that needs to be used before it expires. Furthermore, I learnt that my trusty food processor is able to whip up some cream in no time.

The original recipe calls for two packages of cream cheese but I only used one. With that one, I creamed it with half a cup of icing sugar and put that in a bowl. After which, I whipped up some cream and then folded that into the cream cheese mixture, adding in two teaspoons of honey.For the base, I used apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies and they were divine. The end result? Not very cheesy, definitely fresh creamy and altogether not too bad. Something I’ll definitely make again, especially when time is short. I made this in less than 20 minutes. Of course, the chilling takes hours.

Blitz this with about 100g of cold butter.
Press evenly into a small (9inch) springform pan. Chill.
Whip whipping cream till soft peaks form.
Put whipped cream in the bowl together with the whipped creamed cheese and icing sugar mixtire. Add honey.
Stir the mixture well. Little Girl insisted I take her photo.
Pour mixture into the pan. Spread well.
After it's completely chilled, carefully remove. Enjoy!

I finished one big slice!

I forgot to mention I used about 500 ml of whipping cream. The next time, I’ll use 2 packets of cream cheese so it’ll be cheesier. Overall, I was very happy with this simple recipe.

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts, Sides

Cream Cheese Centred Herb Muffins

7shasha7

Now, this is a recipe I created. It’s not yet perfect (still sweet for my liking). I wanted to bake muffins and I wanted cream cheese. So I thought, why not do like what those people at Mr Bean do? You know, those circular pancakes with cheese or other filling inside? Tokiwado, I call them.

It’s easy to make muffins when you set everything up neatly.

Using Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Chocolate Muffin recipe as a base, I started improvising. And then, these were the results:

I added some batter, and a triangle of cream cheese (Laughing Cow)
Top it up with some more batter.
Bake till golden and fluffy.
Eat warm so that the cheese is nice and melting.

I still think the batter is sweet; I wonder if I can completely omit the sugar. I will try this again. For now, it’s wonderful enough. If you want to make these, try using 1/4 cup sugar instead of my 1/2 cup.

Shasha’s Cream Cheese Centred Herb Muffin

Dry

1. 1 3/4 cup plain flour

2. 2tsp baking powder

3. 1/2 tsp baking soda

4. 1/2 cup sugar (use 1/4 cup instead)

5. 2 tsp dried herbs (I used Provence Herbs)

Wet

1. 3/4 cup and 2 tsp olive oil

2. 1 cup milk

3. 1 egg

Cream Cheese triangles for the centre. Enjoy! 😀

Cakes and Cookies, Desserts

Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies I

7shasha7

I suspect I’ll have many different versions of this cookie. I got one from a colleague already but since I already tried that one, I thought I’d try another recipe. I googled and came to quite a few sites. I went to one, and followed the recipe somewhat. You see, the reason why I can’t stand following recipes sometimes is that they don’t cater to our butter. I mean, what in the world is 1 cup of butter? Our butters come in standard 250g blocks. American measurements come in ‘sticks’. A stick of butter here a cup of butter there…Agh.

So anyway, I improvised. The cookies are supposed to be soft and chewy and when not cooled enough, they turned out rather cake like. It turned out fine but still not perfect. I will continue experimenting till I find the correct recipe…

Recipe

1. 1 Singaporean-sized made in Australia salted butter (250g)

2. 1/2 cup castor sugar

3. 3/4 cup brown sugar

4. 1 T vanilla essence

5. 1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk

6. 21/2 cups plain flour

7. 2 tsp baking soda

8. 1/2 tsp salt

Cream the butter, both of the sugar, vanilla and eggs. Then add in the dry stuff. Add chocolate chips to your heart’s desire and then drop rounded ice-cream scoopfuls onto a baking tray. Bake at 170C.

I only bake cookies for Raya so this is the first time I baked Supersize Me Cookies.
Remember they're soft cookies so the texture is a bit cake-like.
The actual reason why I baked these cookies..to fill up my cookie jar! I had no idea The Hubster and The Kids had been reaching into the cookie jar for cookies...

If you, like me, have only been used to the small crispy cookies, then give these soft chewy ones a go. The Americans love them to bits. I’m going to google for Mrs Field’s cookies recipes next and try them. Will keep y’all posted on how that will turn out!

Cakes and Cookies

Easy Sugee Cookies

7shasha7

This year, I decided to bake all my cookies – all three of them. Ha ha. Every year, we’d traipse to the other side of the Causeway and buy all our Raya cookies. And every year, I’d throw many of them in the bin. Even when I baked my cookies this year, I still have plenty of leftovers. Nobody really eats cookies nowadays. Singaporeans really are health conscious. ;p

I made sugee cookies because firstly, they’re economical. Secondly, they taste good. Thirdly, they’re white. Or whitish. Why should this be a criteria? Well, I can’t have too many chocolatey cookies on my table – some ‘white’ cookies would be a good mix to my Raya cookie table.

Recipe

1. 2 parts plain flour

2. I part ghee (yes, GHEE!)

3. I part sugar

Use the container that comes with the ghee as a unit of measurement.

The mixture must be soft but easy enough to roll into balls.

Sugee in paper cups, unbaked.

I forgot to take an after picture but just imagine them a little browner. Some were of course too brown (that went straight into the bin). After that, I sprinkled the little rounds with powdered sugar. Easiest cookies in the world. I’ll never make them again (too fattening 😦 )