Mind you, some photos are better than others.
At least I'm making the effort right :)
OK, from the oldest to the latest....
Sam and I did this dinner ages ago for some of my family friends. Going clockwise: Top right is my famous sweet potato mash with mustard seeds, next to that, my famous potatoes twice cooked (boiled then baked with pork oil in the oven), Sam's famous slow roasted garlic-lemon-fennel pork shoulder with crispy skin, steak salad with feta cheese, avocado, spinach, grilled capsicum and grilled zucchini, and lastly, Sam's delicious spring chicken.
Passionfruit macarons and mini caramel-filled chocolate cakes (for a friend's surprise birthday) - I didn't make the macarons. A friends did, but eventually I learnt from her how to make them and you'll see my lychee flavoured ones towards the bottom of this post :)
Mmmmm 24-hour cooked steak, thanks to Sam. With grilled eggplant and sweet potato mash again. We just love grilling veggies. hehe.. and we love our mash!
Red velvet cake with orange cream cheese frosting - can't really see the red. Well it wasn't even that red, it was more burgundy coloured. haha.. still yummy though.
Sam and I had a break and stopped doing anything really.. for awhile. And after a long period of not cooking or baking. Sam did something!
He made fresh pasta! He flavoured one batch with chilli flakes and the other with ground pepper. Yummo! and so easy :)
This was the documented mess.
We continued to cook heaps but never took any photos. And they were really good food too.
Anyway, the following are most recent. I went on a macaron craze trying to do it but failed. So to reclaim some pride, I made something I missed eating and made sure that it was EASY and fail proof.
Sticky date pudding! I think I made them at least 3 times. I loooved the recipe I found online. I started putting instant coffee powder the second time on ward and I prefer it that way now :) Those are frozen blueberries in the picture and they go so well with the pudding.
So I finally decided to give macarons a try. 5th time lucky! But I really couldn't have done it without my friend's help and tips... such temperamental biscuits these ones. But so worth it :)
Lychee buttercream macarons! This was using Poh's recipe (yes the 1st runner-up from the first season of AU Master Chef! Google "Poh's kitchen macaron" and you'll find the recipe!)
I was so excited I could make macarons but they were not exactly "crispy" on the outside like macarons should be and a lot of mine stuck to the baking paper. So I made another batch the next day, letting them sit longer before baking, and preheating the oven at a very high heat but bringing it down as soon as I put the macarons in. This time I had yellow colouring on them, and I made salty caramel fillings.
*Sorry, no photo :(*
They turned out crispier - just what I wanted, BUT, most of them still stuck to the pan, and sticking to the pan means they were under cooked. Yet, the shells were starting to brown ever so slightly by the time I took them out. So, my analysis is, the heat is still too high, and I take them out earlier than I should.
Oh yeah, I screwed up the original recipe for the salty caramel too. First, I screwed up the method for mixing the caramel, and I had sugar syrup instead which I didn't know what to do with. I thought, keep, these are great for iced coffees! (lol) the cheap asian in me. Then I tried making the second time, and I screwed it up because I burnt the mixture. The colour actually looked alright. But when I tasted? not alright. BURNT. So I chucked them. Then I ran out of cream. A crucial ingredient to the caramel.
I panicked, then looked over at the sugar syrup. And thought, okay, I'll improvise with this and I did. I threw half the syrup away, but put in more butter and brown sugar (like what I do for the caramel of my sticky date pudding), and tada! Made my salty caramel.
Problem was, I didn't let it cool enough (too excited) and didn't beat/mix it enough (too excited) to make it the right texture to pipe as fillings. I piped anyway. But they couldn't hold shape and dripped everywhere.
AT LEAST, they were very tasty :p
(Ugh.. I wanna master these babies. And this weekend will be my opportunity to try again! muahah)
When I was done with the salty caramel macarons, I had a lot of left over caramel.
What did I do?
Baked sticky date pudding. Why?
Well why waste the caramel!
I bought more cream from the supermarket and started modifying the caramel, baked another sticky date pudding, ate the sticky date pudding (shared), and then...
I had left over caramel.
What did I do with the left over caramel!?
No, I never waste.
I made caramel buttercream for the cupcakes that I made for my brother's birthday!
Here is the prettiest I could do with frosting. By the way, I've been using those freeze plastic bags to pipe all the baked goods. So considering that, I think I did well ya :D
The caramel buttercream was yummo, BUT.... the actual cupcake had the texture of a muffin. They tasted great... even had white chocolate chips in them. But... they were NOT cupcakes. They were frosted muffins. A little sad, and disappointed, and dissatisfied. I started researching like crazy and was excited to try again asap.
I came across Nigella Lawson's recipe and was pretty confident they were the right recipe I was looking for (and they were!). So, without wasting time..... in the same week. I went to try her recipe.
Below are her "royal icing" cupcakes, aka meringue icing cupcakes.
I didn't have icing sugar which she recommended for the icing. So I used caster sugar and stupidly added the same amount as what Nigella would recommend for icing sugar. The "meringue" was gross. So I used my newly developed (and still developing) baking sense to correct it. I set aside half of the grainy and sickly sugary meringue, and beat two more egg whites on a separate bowl. I didn't add more sugar to stiffen the egg whites, instead I added half the failed meringue which I set aside to stiffen them. And TADA. Grainy sickly sugary meringue transformed! See picture above :)
I added yellow colouring because I had a twist to Nigella's recipe.
I added more lemon juice than the recommended amount and some lemon zest for lemon flavoured icing!
Then I had left over icing because I used extra egg whites to correct my meringue.
Again, I didn't wanna waste them. So I added MORE zest to the meringue, MORE lemon, and more sugar to stiffen it even more... and baked mini lemon pavlovas! and had them with mangoes and mango sorbet ^^ (yum!)
Then.....
Unlike Nigella's icing, the icing on my cupcakes never formed a thin crust. Maybe because it had different ingredients? I was unhappy with how soft it remained so I chucked my cupcakes in the fridge the next day to see if they would harden in a few hours.
They didn't.
Still unhappy... and MORE unhappy because my cupcakes were not cold and dense. I started thinking how I might improve them. Then, I thought about what I did with the leftover meringue the last night.
!!!!
I decided to add another twist to Nigella's cupcakes. And baked them in the oven for a few minutes to make PAVLOVA CUPCAKES!
I even added some white chocolate chips to decorate them.
Tada! Cold/hard cupcake with overly soft meringue icing turned hot pavlova cupcake with white chocolate chips! The pavlova top was just the way I wanted it to be.. crispy crust outside, marshmallowy inside.
This was only yesterday. But I was so happy I made cupcakes with the right texture, I wanted to make them again but wanted a different look and frosting.
So........ tonight, I attempted by first multi-coloured cupcakes!
Too much blue colouring fell in one of my batter :( so the purple bits weren't that nice looking. (All my cupcakes were topped with purple)
At least my piping is improving :D
And the insides. The pink and orange parts were too similar.. so they looked like one colour :( The frosting recipe was also Nigella's. But I added a shot of coffee because I wanted mocha flavoured frosting. In the end, even though they looked odd..... they tasted yum ^^!
Gosh this post took longer than I expected!
Anyway.... I'm gonna bake again very soon I can guarantee that.
Heheee good night!
