young zucchini, so lovely and crisp. the only way to do them justice was to toast them very simply! quartered, and then roasted with garlic.

did i mention my ambivalence towards showy, frosted-to-death, decorated and tall-filled-with-cream cakes? they're so often filled with the fluffy nonsense that is whipped cream that don't live up to the way they look.

no, the way i like my cakes is a little rustic, a little imperfect and yet oh-so-showy like the jane-next-door who stepped out in heels and knocked every boy in her neighborhood off his feet. i bring to you a slightly unconventional cake that while not exactly planned for the celebration of a birthday, was brought to life only because of a birthday.

oh let's cut the crap here. i just want to call it a birthday cake okay?

today, a brownie ate a blondie.

surely a most controversial and wrong-sounding sentence, and yet it happened. just not the way you think it did, you dirty fella.

the white version of a brownie, with no chocolate melted in the batter, nor cocoa sprinkled over for chocolate heaven. just butter, sugar, an egg and flour, filled with pantry staples.

it was pecans, dark and white chocolate today. mm-mmmm.

bake it up for 20-25 minutes, (always under- rather than over-bake), for a chocolate chip cookie with the texture of a brownie. kinda strange, and almost cloyingly sweet (oh who the heck am i kidding, it WAS cloyingly sweet. bring the milk.)

cool, and slice into tiny squares so you don't die of diabetes right now.

the simplest of cakes requires the least of explanations. the first cake we made, and now baked again at a different point. they mean so much, and yet with such different nuances.

the simple crumb of a pound cake, jazzed up with the tangiest of lemon syrups.

holes so full of air, so light with hope.

pork: the second of three ways to cook it! in a bid to to recreate that quintessential taste of home, he decided to whip up a batch of sweet and sour pork, even if we were missing some things, like pineapple and peppers. and due to my incessant nagging for a healthier dish that didn't include deep fried nubblets of pork, he came up with this one.

it sounds far more enticing to me, anyway.

pan-fried pork with sweet onions in a sweet and sour sauce.

as tiffy goes on her veggie adventure, i shall show you a bit of the porky adventures i've been having. because my dinner companion enjoys meat and is keen to try making some of his favorites ourselves, we've tried to make charsiu and siewyoke and gulu yoke, or roast pork done three ways for you anglophiles.

(i say it like im not one, heh heh.)

these are the pictures from our recent crispy roast pork experiment. there were so many schools of thought on how to roast the pork, in particular these three styles:

1. high heat to crisp the skin before low to cook the pork through

2. low heat to cook the meat through, before grilling/frying to crisp the skin

3. stove-top to sear the meat and skin through, before roasting to cook it thoroughly.

this girl cannot deal with so many choices. ultimately, i did it my style.

here's how i did it. first up, i scored the skin, and rubbed in wine, five-spice powder, sugar, salt and cinnamon into the top. after placing it on a pan, i left it uncovered in the refrigerator overnight (nearly 24hours) to dry it out so it'd crisp over night. also, i sliced garlic thinly to lay on the skin in the pretty pattern you see below, because he can't take the strong taste of garlic and i would have to pluck the garlic off before cooking.

first time making pancakes, with quite some help cooking them. i very nicely made the batter, which was SUPER easy, just dont over-mix them. and also took photographs of the followinglovely poppy seed pancakes (yes, i do love them):

we had lovely honey we bought from a small shop in a park somewhere in eastern europe. the shopkeeper was selling quite a few types of honey, and as you can see the honeycomb was inside the jar as well. this was realaly rather lovely honey.

i still have no internet available at home (tilll wednesday!) which would explain the long hiatus in blogging. devoid of pretty things and eventful days i have picked up baking with a vengeance once again, and this time using my favorite poppy seeds.

i bring you poppy seed sandwich cookies.

these are very simple in conception: a nice plain-ish cookie, sandwiched with filling of your choice. this was off 101cookbooks, which by the way is a blog that inspires me to cook a lot healthier and try out new and alternative flours etc., and was a simple cut-out cookie recipe with a simple melted chocolate filling.

mix up the easy batter, which came out very easily, chill it for at least half hour, cut out the shapes, and bake till golden brown. how much easier do you expect it to get?

i didn't deviate from her recipe because it looked so good and had just the right amount of poppy seeds: not so many that you couldn't enjoy the speckled look, but not so few that you didn't know they were there.

after baking and cooling, leave those pretty cookies on a plate and bring out your jar of nutella.

oh come on, you know you have one in the cupboard.

i used the jar of nutella i had as a filling so that i wouldn't keep eating eat it right out of the jar. heidi on 101 uses melted chocolate which i think would work great as well, but i haven't found anything that quite takes away the place nutella has in my heart.

and be generous with it.

place as much as you can without the nutella oozing out. although if it does, you could always just lick it off your hands.

when you have cookies this pretty, you almost don't want to eat them. almost.

i gave these away as a housewarming gift for a friend, and it was finished in 10 minutes. don't doubt the power of nutella.

i made biscotti! again, i know. i love the sheer crispness of it, and the fact that so little fat is necessary for baking (makes it easier when im just not bothered enough to warm butter, or even buy butter).

the original recipe was meant to make an immensely chunky, nut-speckled cracker with the dough serving more like gravel does to hold bricks in place, but i chose a less chunky version with sweet raisins because sometimes, i just plain like the cracker. toss the flour in a bowl and top with your assortment of goodies: here i chose mixed chopped nuts (always found that these were easier to use in biscotti because you didnt have to risk messing up your cutting when the nuts were just too hard oops i believe that was a sexual innuendo :x), sweet dark currants and poppy seeds. poppy seeds are AMAZING. i love the taste and smell of them, and miss them desperately when i can't get them in singapore.


if you would mix them all up, you get this thick dough. but persevere! halfway through i thought she had missed out adding the oil in with the egg, but if you continue, it does mix up to a very nicely thick dough that's easy to work with.



pat it into logs, or press it into a loaf pan. didnt have the latter, so i made these by hand. the dough was wonderful! i didnt even need to damp my fingers to work with it.


toss them in the oven and cook till done, and remove to a chopping board.



after slicing, toast them in the oven once more, a couple minutes each side, and you get WONDERFUL biscotti.


you can find the original list of ingredients on the link above, but here is what i used.

1 1/3 cups white whole wheat flour
1 cup currants
2 tbsp poppy seeds
2/3 cup chopped nuts
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup castor sugar

yes, i know the oil is missing from the equation. i didnt have a brush to use, and didnt think it would be necessary for my biscotti to brown, so i plain left it out. to your discretion, dearies.

and just as a treat! here is some castella cake that my housemate bought from japan. it's really a soft, lovely, butter sponge cake. i havent had it before, although i've been reading about it and i thought it would be denser, like a butter cake, and richer. but it really was rather nice and japanese, if that makes sense.

here's trying out a pie crust that i saw online and was intrigued by. david lebovitz's melted and browned butter crust, together with his recipe for a lime meringue tart tweaked to a lemon-orange one.


it's really fun! you mix oil, butter, water, sugar in a bowl, and place it in the preheating oven that you're preparing to bake the crust. after that, dump the flour in its entirety and watch it sizzle away. so exciting that i completely forgot the camera (largely because im a wimp and and didnt dare to leave in case the flour burnt or something drastic like that. rescue's are a no-no, im completely disgusting at them). then you mix it up very easily into a dough that leaves the sides of the bowl, and is malleable and easy to work with.


press the dough into tart pans ( i chose to use mini tart ones). OR you can get someone to do this sort of menial tasks while you get on with the filling.



dont press these in too thickly though, because you want a good mix between the crust and the filling, and because these crusts rise for some reason, although there isnt too much mixing or leavening.


prepare 3 eggs and 3 egg yolks in a bowl and omgosh look so pretty.


mix it in with lemon juice and butter that has been warmed in a saucepan, and whisk it in together.


see they rise and make a puffy biscuit. this was not expected, which is why the crust really was thicker than i might have wanted it. it tasted good though, but the crust was brittle and so cracked and broke a lot easier.


use the filling, and then bake this for another ten minutes to set the top. they look very aesthetically pleasing right now! and so tart and nice.


prepare a stiff meringue (although i didnt do this well enough, and the meringue didnt hold up nor hold onto the grooves when i piped them out). AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LEAVE A BOY WITH A PIPING BAG AND LEFTOVER MERINGUE.

dont do it, unless you're absolutely sure you dont want it anymore.


delegate work, and get someone else to do the piping if you're not sure about it yourself. bet you remember when earlier i said you could hence blame someone else this way (:



here's when i say the crust was brittle. tasted very good though! and here i burnt the meringue because i left it under the broiler for far too long ):

here's the recipe for the filling and crust, and just replace the lime juice with a mix of orange and lemon juice for a more interestingly-tasting one. adjust the sugar to taste, of course.

start with a hunk of bread dough. smash down and cut into strips with a pizza cutter (which you would have in your possession), brush one side with butter and dip into cinnamon sugar and bake.


make curly-wurly twists (only because the pan doesnt allow for full length twists).


or make elegant long sticks. that you could probably serve in a tall vase as an elegant starter.

ideas of savory versions with herbs, or sweet ones with other spices and or herbs.
make up your own!

how does that not sound nice to you? the formula is simple, and what's better: this cake is fat-free. which means less-guilt, since it's almost non-fat but for the chocolate, but not guilt-less, since there's quite a bit of sugar in there.


mash up three bananas to a pulpy mix. i dont usually have the patience to wait for them to ripen, so i always end up using just-ripe bananas for the bread. haven't found any problems with moistness in the final dough though.


mix this up with the usual suspects: flour, sugar, cinnamon powder and baking soda. mmmm, a one-bowl operation.


and look: i chopped up my own chocolate. the last time i properly worked with chocolate chips was a long time ago, and i have resolved not to do that unless i absolutely have to. i love having proper chunks of proper chocolate in my baked goods, and especially in cookies, where they swirl around in the dough. plus i find that many chocolate chips have this strange plasticky sort of taste to them. the hershey sort is alright, but i dont even like those. buy proper chocolate people, it's far worth it.


bake it, cool it, unmold it, cut it.

and be a good neighbor.


look at the chocolate in there! and a chunk of banana as well.
LOVE.

an auntie's favorite coconut macaroons.

nothing but egg white as binder, a bit of sweetener and coconut, these are easy and wonderfully coco-nutty.

guest-starring weiliang liew, who roped me in on his effort to build a multi-million-dollar pineapple-tart enterprise. soon to take london by storm, look out for it.


so the entire idea of pineapple tarts is simple. barely sweet pineapple jam baked in, or on, a crumbly buttery crust. they appear as covered up cookies, or thumbprint ones and can be as elaborate as you would suppose. only 2 parts to the cookies ultimately, pineapples and butter and as with most things this simple, it's very difficult to get it right, as you'll soon find out.


our pièce de résistance, homemade pineapple jam. a family recipes, so unuploadable. if you go search online though, you'll probably find a couple variations on sugar and pineapple quantities. just experiment! he made about three pineapples worth, and that's a huge (and very tiring!) batch of cookies. i would think start small.



our first try at the cookie dough. this turned out very crumbly, and difficult to work with because the dough didn't clump together. wl, oh master baker, mentioned that the unbaked dough could reflect the texture of the product after baking, but im not too sure. this worked out into a very nicely crumbly AND INCREDIBLY tasty dough, but with the quantity of pineapple paste we had to deal with, it just wasnt practical.

being of greater perseverance than i could ever aspire to be, he managed to gather it into a soft dough to wrap around pineapple jam. see how soft the dough is! it flops over the paste. dear lord i gave up on this while he went on.


oh great warrior, be strong.


subsequent scoring, and even that was difficult. this first experiment was very tumultous, but it really should teach me some patience. or teach me that i have none.
i think the latter, that's easier.

but i moved on! i made a different dough in order to test out recipes as well. this one turned out so pretty and easily worked into a dough.

time to highlight something else! there are two schools of thought on rolling these pastries out. WEILIANG LIEW'S involves rolling out the dough into a rectangle and laying out a strip of pineapple jam in the middle before rolling them all together, cutting and then smoothing the dough over the ends to seal.

mine involves (and this is embarrassing): make balls from the dough, roll that out into a rectangle, place jam in the middle, roll that up into a cylinder and then cut that into smaller pieces, before rolling the dough into a ball again with the jam in the middle, then gently mould it into a cylinder, before reaching the same results as you would get with weiliang liew's. here is a pictorial:

male vs female methods, if one could be so shameless as to stereotype all women with my impracticality. choose the one that best suits you, but if you pick my method, make sure you're baking ALONE or with someone that indulges your eccentricities.


but look, they turned out so pretty!


but this is what is also known as a disaster. not mine. i love being able to shift the blame to someone else! (delegation of mistakes is what baking with someone else was meant to be like.) it looks positively tumor-like. young kids, if you ever see something like this be sure to tell your parents. it's a monster.

as you can see, the dough could not contain the pineapple and THEY MERGED INTO A MUTANT MIX.




our finished tarts and cookies. sho pwetty, really. they made quite a few and took us about 5 hours total perhaps to use up the jam, but they were worth it. bear in mind that i was playing with the dough while he was hard at work, so that probably added to the time.

goodness, i want one of these now.