Chocolate Chip Cookies

Made chocolate chip cookies as grace jie asked for it a couple of times today.. I was just planning to make the dough today and bake tomorrow since this dough tastes better after sitting 48 hours, according to the original recipe.

But since Cyn was in a snacky mood and finally decided she'd like some cookies, I baked a batch (12 cookies).

These cookies are larger than the normal ones I used to make. These are 20g each. I guess I may have made them 12-15g each in the past?

Cyn likes them big.
Dad likes them small (bite size).

Now now, what do I do? :P

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

I've made this once when I just started baking, with an allergy on my back. I lost the original recipe but recently (ok, like half a year ago), found a similar recipe with the same name! It has no dairy ingredients in it. JOY! Simply made with flour, sugar, cocoa powder, oil (I used grapeseed oil as I was out of olive oil) and it worked just the same (I think)! Well, hard to tell because this is the first time I've made this recipe.

But.. the reviews were generally good because it's a chewy cookie, with a slight crust around it. More cakey than cookie, in my opinion. Dad would have loved a crispier crust but it was good still. 

My 3 year old niece loved it, as did her mom..

All in all, great! But tad bit too sweet if you eat more than 1 in a row, though I cranked the amount of sugar down almost 30%.  

Till next time! 

Green Tea Chiffon Cake

First product from my birthday present :)

Love the way the cake goes tsssss when I press on it. Moist! )

French Apple Cake

Made a recipe by Baking Bites 

Review
Dad: Apples very mushy (think I need better apples?). Prefers apples on top (maybe they will dry out as you bake?). Still ate half the cake anyways. Best when hot.

Me: not too bad.. But agree with the mushy apples. I almost thought the cake wasn't cooked yet. Maybe to make another cake layer at bottom, and fill middle with apples, or place the top layer as the base and put apples on top? Or just make a normal cake / tart and place sliced apples on top. Or bottom (that's how Nadia in Sienna did hers!)

Mandelbrot

Essentially cinnamon flavoured biscuits that are like biscotti.

Cyn thinks they are weird as a cake, so biscuits they will be!

Mom agrees.

Dad and I eat both. :)

Earl Grey Tea Chocolate Chiffon

After a long long break from baking, tested out a new recipe from Anna Olson at foodnetwork.ca.

I didn't make the icing cos I was rushing out of the house.

I also took an hour to get the cake into the oven due to lack of practice. Haha!

Anyways, the cake is nice. Light, soft, yet slightly chewy. I think it would taste heavenly with the maple syrup icing.. Maybe I'll make that tonight and see how it tastes! ;)

Mid-Autumn Festival : Snowskin mooncakes

It's time again! I wouldn't have made it this year if not that I wanted to make some for my grandma.. :)

Took me a total of 5-6 hours across 3 days to prepare the ingredients and eventually make the mooncakes today.

2-3 hours just making the "skin", wrapping them over the prepared lotus paste balls and shaping them.

A total of 22 pieces for the family :)

Cranberry Biscotti and Green Tea Kasutera

Blueberry Coconut Muffins

Vanilla Bean Chiffon

Orange Bread with Chocolate Chips

Ever since I saw this post at BrownEyedBaker on an Orange Bread (it's actually called "Italian Easter Bread" on her site), I've wanted to try it... So finally, this weekend, while making bread (for my daily breakfast over the week), I decided to try some orange bread! Well, I had to fill it with chocolate chips because:

1. no one in the house will eat it without the chocolate chips (and they will eat/taste anything that has chocolate in it), and 
2. I imagined a bread with only orange flavour could be too plain which meant I may have to put some jam on it, which I don't have time for on weekdays!

So, armed with my personal favourite recipe, I modified it - instead of 3/4 cups warm water, I used juice of 1 orange (which came up to about 1/2 of the 3/4 cup) and filled it up with hot water (so all in all, it became nice and warm for the yeast).  Also used the zest of 2 oranges.

Referencing against BrownEyedBaker's version, I realised that due to the amount of flour I used, I only needed to use 0.73 of an orange. But alas, too late! They've already gone into the mix! And, you can't really get enough of orange right? :P

Well, it came out fine (in my opinion)! I liked it, now I've got to hear what the others say...

Brownies

The colour seems funny in the photos.. anyway, these are brownies from Finecooking.com.  I reduced the amount of sugar by about half as someone commented that it was too sweet.  So, with 150g of sugar, it is BITTER. :P Grace jie loved it though. 

So well, reviews follow...

Reviews: 
Grace Jie - loved it. Fudgy and not too sweet. Would be perfect with vanilla ice-cream. 
Me - slightly bitter.
Dad - found that it could be slightly sweeter. But also felt that if put sugar on top (maybe icing sugar) may be ok. Agreed that would be nice with icing. Liked the texture of the brownie as it doesn't crumble.
Cyn - Not sweet enough. (doesn't like bitter choc)

Conclusion: Great brownie recipe for Grace Jie. For others, can increase amount of sugar.  Think cyn liked the prev brownie I made which was super fudgy  - so fudgy that you can't cut it without first chilling it in the freezer.