The Lasagna Challenge, A Spicy Makeover!!

my God I didn't know the date was changed to the 27th. opps. but then again, posting at the 30th is still LATE for the initial reveal date! Arghh!! blame the poor management skills and uni work! huhu.

anyway,

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

Okay,

this is my first time ever making a pasta from scratch! It was almost a disaster *again!*

I was chopping through the spinach very finely (and very very slowly) when my mom enters the kitchen.

"why don't you just use the chopper if you want it to be THAT fine"

ahaha, I don't know what i'd do without her! make it so much easier than slicing and chopping bit by bit. So into the chopper machine it goes. A few buzz later and tadaa!! nicely fine chopped spinach ready to be inserted to the dough.

As I have learned from the previous challenge, I just put the whole flour into a bowl instead of a flat surface to avoid messy goey masses on the floor (danish bread challenge), make a hole in it and pour two great eggs.

Flour well with eggs

next is a mountain of spinach! weeee~ ever so healthy!

mix it up till it form a ball... OMG, just look at the lumpy-ness! haha!

and knead!!

err, wait, why is it all sticky?? urgh!!

maybe it'll be smooth (as stated in the recipe) after the kneading.

with a sticky-monster-green-hand ten minutes later (hence the absence of pictures depicting the sticky pasta ball from goey hell) i thought of adding more flour to the dough.

I have been making bread for a long time and dough is not really my enemy. thus when I make bread, or anything to do with dough, I'll follow my instinct and feel for the texture. But I was trying to follow the recipe to the dot since it is my first ever pasta making (and people say you have to follow every single thing within the recipe) I hesitated to add any flour. It was like committing a sin every time I add another tablespoon of flour (yes, ppl I added by tablespoons, hahaha) I kneaded patiently and the dough keeps on sticking.

there's this Malay saying; "sikit-sikit, lama-lama jadi bukit"

literally means little by little, it (the amount) will pile up.

after adding ONE whole cup of flour by tablespoons, I say, to hell with it! I'll just add acorfing to my taste and feel!!! I ended up adding a one and a quarter cup extra flour to the dough before finally giving it a rest(read; giving up) for about one hour.

and since I've modified the recipe, i was in the mood for another chaotic mess with the ragu. there were saute' onions and garlic, throw in the minced meat, cumin, oregano, more herbs and spices poured (in malaysia, this is called rempah campak, literally you throw in a number of random spices in unmeasured quantities) into the pan and finally some tomatoes plus a bit of tomato puree. Simmer for some time and it's done! I know, not exactly a ragu for a lasagna but I was exhausted with the dough :P

the bechamel sauce was modified too. I boiled three potatoes, mash it up and stir into the bechamel sauce to thicken it up and give it some texture. Yumm~

If only the Italians knew, what blasphemy!!

hey it's all the dough's fault!! It triggered some neurotic change

anyway, back at the pasta dough,
looking at the videos provided in youtube, the pasta was perfectly rolled on without sticking together. how i wish I could get a hold of a long rolling pin too!! knowing mine was rather unconventional, I laid a huge piece of plastic sheet on the table, pour some more flour (actually it was a LOT more) on the sheet, my hands, and the rolling pin before proceeding with the rolling :D

cut the dough to quarters and rolled away till what I presume was paper thin cause I can't see through the pasta no matter how thin it was. The only thing I could see was GREEN all over the table! then i cut it into loooong pieces before drying it off. Owh btw, there were some that stuck to the plastic sheets (imagine that!!) and end up with holes here and there! hahaha!! something like what Lisa had!

the rest was a synch! boiled some pasta, arrange the layers and pop into the oven.

err wait... my mom walk into the kitchen again

"so, is the lasagna ok?"

"nope, the ragu's not red enough!"

"here, put some of this squid sambal in"

"but, it's spicy!"

"yea, the spicer, the better!!"

and I plonk in a GENEROUS amount of sambal into the lasagna in between the sea of cheese. In case you people don't know what sambal is, it's actually a mixture of herb, spices and lots and lots of chilies! And this time around, the sambal was extremely spicy! Hah!! A spicy lasagna! But it was gone in an instant! My mom loved it to bits. she ate like two plates right after it came out of the oven. Hehe~ the whole family liked it too.

The Final Product ~ abit burned (on the top) since I went upstairs and forgot about it for a good 30 mins, hey, I was TIRED okay!

Thank you, thank you, thank you Mary, Melinda and Enza for hosting this challenge! I'd never try making pasta from scratch before. Now I know I can do it!! Next time I'd make ravioli too :)

check out what others did here

Daring Baker's February: For the love of Chocolate!!

Okayh, first of all, I apologize deeply for the lack of blogging here and not participating in the last two Daring Baker's challenge. After a glitch in the first one (French yule log) during the posting, I thought I could just wait another day to post it. Unfortunately, I never could get back to it (or even continuing blogging) due to some catastrophic events. It wasn't sudden. I could almost sense what I was getting myself into. And it wasn't continuously bothering me, but at the end of the day, I was so mentally drained, I could not bare looking at my blog or others'. For the last one and a half month, I'd open the internet, check through the emails and that's it. (sometimes I'd wander through some of Martha's site tho) But I digress. Hello? I thought this is suppose to be a Daring Baker's post? hahaha.

Our challenge for February is a flourless (and almost sugarless) moist chocolate cake.
The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.


So, anyway!

wow, a Chef Wan recipe. I have always admired what he could do. Baking and cooking while throwing out mouthful of jokes and cooking tips at the audience. I had tried some of his recipe and it worked. And that's why when I say there will be no sugar in the recipe, I remained calm... ...okay, so I panicked a bit. the recipe was so simple with only three ingredients!! there were no sugar or flour in sight!! Usually, I'd pop cake/biscuits/tart in the oven and then walk away to do other things. But this time around, I was there in front of the oven, looking intently through the heat for it to rise and see if, at any moment, it's going to burst apart or crack open one hell of a mess! Hahaha. I can be so paranoid sometime. the cake was very good. My mom loves it (as it was not sweet at all) since I used bittersweet chocolate. And eating it with ice-cream was d~i~v~i~n~e!! Argh, Thank you Wendy and Dharm for this months challenge. Recipes for both cake and ice cream can be found at their site.


let's start with the ingredients. there were only three; Butter, Chocolate and Eggs

Melted butter and chocolate (I used Hershey's Bittersweet)

Egg white Meringue

Egg Yolks

Essentially, you mix everything together to get this mess, haha

Didn't want it to deflate too much, so I just leave it be at this stage.

For this recipe, it stated that a real chocolate Valentino is made either in a heart shape pan or a round cake cut into a heart. I was feeling a bit crafty (ouh-oh) at the time and bought these origami-heart-thingy for baking.


tada! but the drawback is, every single instruction was in Japanese!! I'm learning Japanese but to translate word by word using a dictionary would take me AGES!! So what did I do?? I just slap on the border onto the base with water. FREAKING WATER!! I don't know what I was thinking.


here's the 'mould' after I glued it with water. keep in mind that the paper were something like parchment paper (like hell the water would hold it!!) So after careful consideration (my brain seems to began functioning back at the time) I only poured half of the recipe into these mould while the other half was poured into a round tin. Just to be safe. :P



while it was in the oven, the cake rose beautifully! I could almost not believe the mould was working!! and then when I decided it was done (don't want to over bake it) took it out, and these is what I get.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! the mould have lost it's shape in the proces and it now a freaking blob! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! I'm never trusting that damned paper again!!! (but there's still like 30 of them in the drawer!) aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-hahahaha!!



the round tin had better result, but it deflated after a while. Then it was devoured before I could say anything. It was that good! hehe.

Hot, off the oven, nice eh?

It deflated!! but it's still moist as ever!!

After a 3 minute of yelling and cursing, I sat down at the cake (the crooked one). took a blade and began carving out a heart by using the minimal-ist cut. the heart shape paper mould was about 3'' so imagine how small it would be if i just cut it normally. It would be TINY!! luckily, I was able to cut it without losing too much. hehe :)

Chocolate Valentino with Berry Ice Cream

Check out other daring baker's here. I can't wait for next month's misadventure! haha!!

An Early Celebration

haven't been updating again have we?

malas, malas...

anyway,

I went back home last weekend. katelah my elder brother was home too!! for the past two weeks!! they were keeping it quiet from me, just to surprise me. Ceh... huhu.. he brought back a lot of stuffs and spices. Weird ones, even for me!! the only spice I could recognize are bay leaves. all the other spices was definitely strange. there were even sticks with tiny white hairs on it. And my brother (who brought it back home) also didn't know how to use them! So we're stuck with some unidentified spices now. Through my mum said the soup made with two of the spices was delicious. Well, that's a step. I'll try something next week!

Wanted to bake something in Saturday, but by the time I woke up (read: 11 am) my younger brother is already halfway mixing through a butter cake. Using my ingredients. Shyte.. Ah well, he never done it before and I was in a happy mood as well. So I just went to shower. after showering, he is still not done yet with the cake and I took over. See, I can be nice.. So, later, he put in some essence;

me: what did you put in?

brother: orange essence

me: orange?

brother: duh. this is orange buttercake!

me: is that really orange essence? the smell is different la..

brother: (reads the bottle) shyte, it's banana's essence!

me: wuahahahhaha *evil laughs*

we still throw in the orange rinds and orange juice. So it's an orange-banana cake. Hahahaha.. then while I was putting the cake into the oven, the other family memebers are so busy ordering pizzas. I was like; heih? are they organizing a party? what for?

then it hit me.

it's my birthday this coming 30th July!!

and I just baked (well, half way through) my own birthday cake!

I was laughing all the way.

Owh well, at least I baked something. My mum put in some frosting and stars from my leftover ingredients when the cake was baked. Cut the cake and we had a large lunch :)

So, where's my hadiah, mum? huhuhu..


p/s: I made hibiscus jam from the flower petals my brother brought home (from Egypt) Will post about it later.

Going Back to Terendak!!

well, tomorrow's the day.

My one week holiday have finally come to an end. Starting tomorrow, we'd be prepping patients for surgery and on Monday, we'd start the class. The holiday started with four objectives in mind. Through, only one objective was completed and even that was barely successful. Ah, well, I can try again next time to increase my weight ;P

anyway, here's what I've made throughout the week.

Danish Braid for DB

Dorie Greenspan's PP cake

Strawberry Parfait

Chicken Pie

Chewwy Chocolate Chip Cookies

The cake and the danish bread took the whole day each. It was exhausting. But really WORTH it. For those who got to sample them, thank you for your comments. You guys really are my wonderful testers (read: guinea pigs) these recipes are definitely a keeper. I'm going to make them again in the future for sure. Just wish I could get some pictures before everything was finished.

Goodbye holiday, Hello SURGERY (takot)


EDIT: this was supposed to be up like 2 weeks ago! hahaha.. well, will update next week. Promise!

Daring Bakers; Fresh Out of the Oven

Another one completed, in the nick of time!!


I contemplated on when to make this challenge. And before I realized it, it already 28th of June and I'm racing against the clock to finish this one in time (typical procrastinator!) haha. well, yesterday, I finally made the dough and learned quite some tricks. Had been browsing the net for some instructions on how to make the danish dough. I never knew it was so simple to make those complicated designs!! I learned a lot on liquids too.

In almost all of the videos I saw, they used the same technique of making a flour mountain before pouring the liquid into a hole. well, being me, I made a mountain of the flour the table surface (at the edge of the table). made the hole and pour down the liquid. I underestimate or should I say overestimate the thickness of the mountain. Suffice to say, the liquids made it's way down to the floor, on my shirt and pants (now, where's that darn apron I'm suppose to wear) and I had to make another one.

I know, know, I'm helplessly clumsy!

After that everything moves smoothly, despite some of the butter block got sqeeze out from the dough between each rolling. I did 4 turns with one of them had 4 folds. The final turn was great as there were no longer any spilling or oozing of the butter. the dough was quite hard to work with in the first two turns but after the second one, I let the dough rest a bit (as per indicated in the recipe) before rolling it out, and it turn out better.

Check it out, this is really fresh from the oven!





And here's the little one plus croissants still in the oven as I'm typing this :)

Aahh, croissants!!

I made one with the apple filling, some with mango filling, mango cream and plain croissant.

The apple Filling

Do check out the blogroll to find out how everyone's doing. Thanks Ben and Kelly for hosting such a wonderful challenge.

Shoot, I have to check on the croissants now.

Here's the recipe:

Danish Braid, inspired by Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking:

Makes 2-1/2 pounds dough

For the dough (Detrempe)
1 ounce fresh yeast or 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/2 cup whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
Zest of 1 orange, finely grated
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped
2 large eggs, chilled
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
3-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

For the butter block (Beurrage)
1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour

Dough:Combine yeast and milk in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on low speed. Slowly add sugar, orange zest, cardamom, vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, eggs, and orange juice. Mix well. Change to the dough hook and add the salt with the flour, 1 cup at a time, increasing speed to medium as the flour is incorporated. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes, or until smooth. You may need to add a little more flour if it is sticky. Transfer dough to a lightly floured baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Without a standing mixer: Combine yeast and milk in a bowl with a hand mixer on low speed or a whisk. Add sugar, orange zest, cardamom, vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, eggs, and orange juice and mix well. Sift flour and salt on your working surface and make a fountain. Make sure that the “walls” of your fountain are thick and even. Pour the liquid in the middle of the fountain. With your fingertips, mix the liquid and the flour starting from the middle of the fountain, slowly working towards the edges. When the ingredients have been incorporated start kneading the dough with the heel of your hands until it becomes smooth and easy to work with, around 5 to 7 minutes. You might need to add more flour if the dough is sticky.

Butter block: Combine butter and flour in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and beat on medium speed for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the paddle and then beat for 1 minute more, or until smooth and lump free. Set aside at room temperature.
- After the detrempe has chilled 30 minutes, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into a rectangle approximately 18 x 13 inches and ¼ inch thick. The dough may be sticky, so keep dusting it lightly with flour. Spread the butter evenly over the center and right thirds of the dough. Fold the left edge of the detrempe to the right, covering half of the butter. Fold the right third of the rectangle over the center third. The first turn has now been completed. Mark the dough by poking it with your finger to keep track of your turns, or use a sticky and keep a tally. Place the dough on a baking sheet, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes. - Place the dough lengthwise on a floured work surface. The open ends should be to your right and left. Roll the dough into another approximately 13 x 18 inch, ¼-inch-thick rectangle. Again, fold the left third of the rectangle over the center third and the right third over the center third. No additional butter will be added as it is already in the dough. The second turn has now been completed. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
- Roll out, turn, and refrigerate the dough two more times, for a total of four single turns. Make sure you are keeping track of your turns. Refrigerate the dough after the final turn for at least 5 hours or overnight. The Danish dough is now ready to be used. If you will not be using the dough within 24 hours, freeze it. To do this, roll the dough out to about 1 inch in thickness, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and freeze. Defrost the dough slowly in the refrigerator for easiest handling. Danish dough will keep in the freezer for up to 1 month.

Danish Braid:
Makes enough for 2 large braids
1 recipe Danish Dough
filling of your choice

- Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. On a lightly floured surface, roll the Danish Dough into a 15 x 20-inch rectangle, ¼ inch thick. If the dough seems elastic and shrinks back when rolled, let it rest for a few minutes, then roll again. Place the dough on the baking sheet.
- Along one long side of the pastry make parallel, 5-inch-long cuts with a knife or rolling pastry wheel, each about 1 inch apart. Repeat on the opposite side, making sure to line up the cuts with those you’ve already made.
- Spoon the filling you’ve chosen to fill your braid down the center of the rectangle. Starting with the top and bottom “flaps”, fold the top flap down over the filling to cover. Next, fold the bottom “flap” up to cover filling. This helps keep the braid neat and helps to hold in the filling. Now begin folding the cut side strips of dough over the filling, alternating first left, then right, left, right, until finished. Trim any excess dough and tuck in the ends.

Proofing and Baking
- Spray cooking oil (Pam…) onto a piece of plastic wrap, and place over the braid. Proof at room temperature or, if possible, in a controlled 90 degree F environment for about 2 hours, or until doubled in volume and light to the touch.
- Near the end of proofing, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Position a rack in the center of the oven.
- Bake for 10 minutes, then rotate the pan so that the side of the braid previously in the back of the oven is now in the front. Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F, and bake about 15-20 minutes more, or until golden brown. Cool and serve the braid either still warm from the oven or at room temperature. The cooled braid can be wrapped airtight and stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, or freeze for 1 month.

The Case of the Single Note Opera

Firstly, I'd have to apologize for so late to post this challenge. truth be told, I ran into some unforeseen circumstances, I'm forced to postpone making the cake. Hope I can still make it.

On to the cake,

I had been looking forward to bake this one in years ever since I saw them in the bakeries! I even secretly wanted to propose the recipe for the upcoming challenges, but it seems like Ivonne and Lisa have already thought of it first, huhu... and Fran and Shea is the hosts too. :)

the whole mess :)

I halved the recipe provided and wanted to add orange and mango flavor to the cake. however, mangoes seems to be unavailable this time of year so I proceed with only oranges. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, instead of two flavors infused into the cake I just used one contrary with most of the other bakers :)

clearer one

The orange buttercream was certainly very intense!!
It turn out so good, even my mother liked it (and thats something as my mum hates buttercream) I reduced the syrup to minimize the sweetness as I don't want the cake to be too sweet. through we are still left with some excess after assembling the cake. I just used it like a jam preserve on white bread and it was awesome! the cake was what I had expected. a bit spongy and a bit dry to absorb all those syrup.

here's a list of what I used

Jaconde
115g ground almonds
15g sugar
3 egg whites
3 eggs
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup flour
3 tbs butter

Buttercream
100g butter
1 egg
vanilla
1/4 cup orange juice
zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup sugar

Syrup
zest of 1 orange
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 sugar

chocolate ganache
3 bars (150g) white chocolate
50 ml cream


The assembly of the cake was easy enough through I had a bit of a problem while spreading the white chocolate mixture. iIt hardens as soon as it touches the cake!! Well thats exaggerating, but yea, I didn't manage to spread the chocolate evenly on the cake. I will learn from this. this challenge have been a great one. I got my chance to make one creamy buttercream and even learn a bit about the spreading technique. Through the batter was really hard to spread to begin with. It was so thick, I thought it won't ever rise. Thank God it did. :) Maybe should add more orange juice or another egg??

and definately I should make more buttercream to practice spreading? hmmm.. :P


----------------------------------------

something I made to release some stress. Baking is so therapeutic!

Cleansed

UPDATE: since it was frustrating to change all those horrible htmls, I reverted back to blogspot classic templates.. hahaha... owh well, let the baking begin!


So,

while other people are studying and/or working their butts off on the assignments, I'm in front of the lap top screen trying to solve the puzzle that is htmls. It have been days since i wanted to revamp the whole thing. tried to turn it into a more foodie-like blog. Tough luck through. i was halfway through the templates when i suddenly don't have any ideas anymore. it's like the inspiration just went through the door without warning. so it took a while again. however the total foodie blog idea never did came back to me. Owh well, I could just settle with this interface for now. at least its clean and crisp (yeah right). So, anyone knows how to make the blue blogger bar to appear again in my page?? *in begging position*



on another note, I've been baking. yeah, baked non-stop in the one week holiday. I even served my mum's student some mini pizzas (a nightmare I tell ya). Almost faint from all that oven heat and kneading for two days straight.



then there's also the picnic with two crazy women.

-------------------------------------------------

bake some chocolate-almond moist cake last week for some post-traumatic-stress disorder I had. Baking had always been therapeutic for me. well, cooking just about anything is good too. If there was any bumps in my life I'd turn to cooking to cool off. However, on that particular Sunday, i burnt 1/4 of the cake while mind wondered off. It was just a first degree burn I tell ya, but the cake wasn't as moist as it was meant to be anymore. Edible, yes. But it was still burnt and not moist. I hated it.

It was not my finest moments.



---------------------------------------------------

Just Knock Me Off

Huhu.. haven't been updating again have I?

well, right now, I'm considering to turn this blog into a full fledge no nonsense baking/ food blog. How does that sound? of course, I'll only be posting on weekends as thats the only time I can bake or cook and take pictures.




the last two weeks;
baked sugee biscuits and almond rings

the last call

tried one recipe from Don Yong, but I failed miserably!! God!! I have never encounter any problem baking bread before and this is my first time baking a 'bantat' bread. sheesh..

the rock hard carrot and honey bread

so anyway,
I have loads of overdue reports to be done, and thousands of recipes to try (hehehe)





p/s: I don't have any of the sugee biscuits pictures as it was finnished as soon as it was done!! even the ones I brought back

New Toy to Play With!!

so,

let's forget the endless lament for a moment, and focus more on other things, like cooking! err.. BAKING!!! haha

I got a new oven to play with last saturday. So, being the baking enthusiast that I am (berangan kan?) I baked three things! A cake with some muffins, a pie and a tray of hot buns. Huhuhu.

The new toy! haha

cornflakes banana cake

buttermilk lemon pie

buns

Penat woo! I didn't know I could do that much in a day. Baked them one by one. Sampai sakit pinggang dok tenun pintu oven tuh. hahaha.

I think the oven is great, just that I'll need to adjust the temperature a bit. Lari sikit arr.. Now I have another solid reason to go back every week!! :)

Next Week:
Beefy Lasagna (maybe I'll do a lasagna roll!!)
Sugee Biscuits

-------------------------

owh, btw,

Happy (belated) Birthday to Mr. Solution!! (solution apekah ituh??) hehhe
the cake was actually baked for you tapi tak sampai ke sane, jauh sgt lah.. hahaha... next year la yek? :P