Congo Bars

My last post is a bit too depressing to read. I was having one of those days; feeling cranky and frustrated. So I am going to take that down.

I’ve been itching to bake in a while, but I’ve been having issues with the trip going off suddenly at my place. This happened when I was in Malaysia for a week and everything; I mean EVERYTHING that I brought from Oman and the rest of what I had in the fridge was rotten by the time I got back. I think I’m still a bit upset about all that cheese that got ruined. It kept happening over and over. Each week I had to throw out most of my groceries until I changed my fridge and things seem to be okay so far. Good thing the chocolates survived it or I wouldn’t have chocolate chips for this. 

I baked yesterday which made me feel really good. I’ve been watching some Korean drama lately, (Do not ask me why) so I put the tray in the oven, cleaned the kitchen and sat down for an hour of Lee Min Ho and for once after a very long time I felt calm and quite happy. Honestly it felt great because I’ve been feeling awfully stressed out lately because I do not have time for anything. 

I made Congo bars! These congo bars were for my awesome new colleagues at work.  Congo bars are in between a chocolate chip cookie and a brownie. As bakerella calls is; a ‘brookie’. These guys pretty much combine the best of both worlds. They are super chewy which the best part of it all! Who doesn’t like a big chewy cookie? I’ve been searching all over for a nice chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I think this is way better because it is also a brownie! Sigh..... I was so excited I kept on eating raw batter the whole time I was making it till I felt a bit sick once the bars came out of the oven. I didn’t even taste any till I tried one at work. Thank goodness Bakerella’s recipes have been amazing so far or I would have been feeding rubbish to everyone at work. 

I picked up a few pointers from Bakerella’s post. I did all the mixing by hand as suggested because the texture would be better. I didn’t do another batch with the mixer to see the difference but I am super happy with the texture of the bars so I think I’ll stick with mixing by hand. When I read that I should mix by hand I felt a bit lazy, but it wasn’t hard at all. It is nothing like having to mix dough with a big wooden spoon until your arm hurts. This is merely mixing the ingredients together and if I used a metal tablespoon to do I’m sure it would be much easier with a wooden spoon/spatula.

Also I am using a new oven! I love my old oven, I honestly do. But being in Sri Lanka means I had to buy an electric oven and this was my first time using it. I had a few issues but nothing too serious. It took longer than 30 minutes to bake until I finally had to cover the tray with foil and let it bake for 10 more minutes. Notice how the top of the Congo bars are a bit too brown?   

 

(please excuse this bad photograph.... had to rush to take these just before heading to work) :p

I borrowed an aluminium tray from my cousin and so far I have to say I miss my good old non stick pans. I’m probably going to have to keep baking in these aluminium trays while I’m here and I hope I have some positive reviews to relay to you guys soon.  Getting used to a different kitchen without any of your trusty utensils and appliances is a bit daunting but I suppose this is how it is to have to be a student, never in one place constantly shuffling between countries. You start missing a lot of things and have to make do with the temporary. I suddenly thought of this long story about moving from country to country that I should probably keep for next time.  For now I’m going to bask in my good mood.

If you want the recipe for the congo bars I made you can get them from Bakerella. 

OOOOOOOH OHHHH I also got a new phone!!! Since I do not have my brothers DSLR here I’m going to experiment taking pictures from my phone for a while. The fact that I can take pictures and share them immediately is sooo exciting!! Yes is know this has been around for ages -_-  Do not insult! Like I said let me bask in my good mood while it lasts :D

Mango Mousse Cake

Sometimes I try to get away with doing stupid things in the kitchen. For example the time I tried to make fondant without a thermometer or the time I put sugar syrup into the blender and it got rock hard. Most of the time, this is when my dad walks into the kitchen and asks me what on earth I’m doing. Truth is sometimes I just like to cheat hoping at the back of my mind that I can get away with it and everything will work out just fine. 

Take you back a month, I wanted to make individual lemon mousse cakes. Buuuuuut I didn’t have cake rings. After reading a few articles, I found out that I could probably use transparent plastic sheets and roll then into make-shift cake rings. Boy was I wrong!! Not a minute into pouring the mousse in the whole thing started dripping; all the mousse was on the tray. I had to serve something! So I scooped the mousse into little ramekins and got away with it... sort of... :D

I’ve had my fair share of failures in the kitchen and from what I’ve discovered I really need to learn to stick to the recipes! Especially when it comes to deserts. 

But sometimes you never learn :D

  Leaving Oman is making me all sentimental. Also it means finishing up all the ingredients that I’ve bought and till remain in the pantry. Got a tin of mango pulp and here goes mango mousse cake. 

I was trying to find a recipe for mango mousse and I couldn’t find one that I really liked so I decided to combine a few recipes into one makeshift recipe fuelled by a really informative article I read about using gelatine. I probably should have just stuck to one recipe but I didn’t anddddddddddddddddddd it turned out fabulous! Haha 

The reason I’m excited is that I was expecting

1.  The mousse to start dripping
2. The mousse not setting 
3. The whole thing collapsing when I took off the spring form cylinder 
4. The mousse breaking off when I removed the parchment paper

But none of that happened! So you see!! I deserve to be happy :D I suppose you could argue that a mousse cake is super easy to make bla bla but let me just bask in my happiness will you? :P

Mango Mousse Cake

For the cake

2 eggs

½ cup milk

1 cup sugar

1/8 cup butter

1 cup all purpose four

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

Beat the eggs in an electric mixer for about 2 minutes. Then add sugar and vanilla beating for another 3 minutes until light and fluffy.

Sift together all dry ingredients and add to the egg mixtures. Beat on a low speed till combined.

In a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter until the butter is melted. (Do not boil)

Add to batter and combine.

Pour into two 8” round cake pans

Baked at 160 degree Celcius for 15 minutes. 

For the mousse

3 cups mango pulp

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp lime juice

5 tsp gelatine bloomed in 50ml water

2 cups whipping cream

3 small ripe mangoes

Combine mango puree, sugar and lime juice.

Place bloomed gelatine in a small saucepan and dissolve over low heat. DO NOT boil

Refrigerate for half an hour

Whip cream until soft peaks form

Reserve 1 cup of the puree and folds in the rest of the puree into the whipped cream 

To assemble

Cut out a circle of parchment paper for the bottom of the springform pan (I did this because I was afraid of the mousse dripping).  Also cut a strip of parchment paper wide enough to line the inside of the pan extended 1 inch above the rim.

Place one cake at the bottom of the pan

Carefully pour onto the cake half of the mousse mixture.

Cut mangoes into strips and place over the mousse

Cover mangoes with the other cake

Spoon over the rest of the mousse and place in the refrigerator for about fifteen minutes*

Take the cake out and carefully spoon over the reserved mango puree forming a thin layer and place back in the refrigerator for 8 to 24 hours.

Once set remove the springform pan and slowly take off the parchment paper

·        

        *I placed the mousse in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before spooning on the topping as I was afraid the puree would sink into the mousse. I’m not exactly sure if this step is necessary but it worked well for me

 

Cake Pops

Those of you on Facebook may know that for some time now I've wanted to make sweets for a baby shower. Not that I suddenly have the desire to be surrounded by all things baby, but mostly because I am intrigued by making all things miniature. Having followed Bakarella's blog for so long I finally got around to making cake pops! I probably should have made them a long time ago but other than the cake ball itself it is impossible to find the rest of the ingredients here in Oman. There is no way you'd come across candy coatings, funky sprinkles or even ready made fondant...... other than Dr Oetkers's White Regal-Ice Ready to Roll Icing! Now I came across this very recently and I solemnly hope that I continue to find it here. At least there is this and compared to reliving my horrible attempt at making pouring fondant, this is a life saver! Oh the effort and the mess.... no definitely NOT making fondant again!!

I used a white cake and mixed in classic chocolate icing. Now that I think of it, I probably should have used velvet cake, as it would have looked much nicer to bite into. However when I was making the cake I had no idea what the outside was going to look like so chocolate cake it was!

see! cute little baby girl pops :D

Making these cake pops have completely been based on me using what ever I could find. Didn't have Styrofoam so I used a white pizza box :D.... Didn't have any molds so I used a cookie cutter for the flower and cut the bows out with a knife. To add the tiny details I used..... pottery tools!! Im not saying that having the right tools is unnecessary, but if you are going for something super simple like these you wont need a lot.

What I initially wanted to do was make white and pink polka dotted pops, but that was almost impossible without the right cutters. So there you go. If you can find them buy the right tools and surely you'd be able to come up with really creative and neat my father keeps pointing out that my pops are irregularly shaped x) cake pops!

I told the sister-in-law that I needed her to hold the cake pops so I could get some pictures. She got super excited as you can see, got all dressed up :D earrings and all 

I've got some marzipan left from a pound cake I made sometime back so I think I'm going to try and make more cake pops before I leave.  I want a duck mold to make duck pops.. Has anyone seen one around?

 

Happy cake popping!

Chocolate Espresso Mousse in Chocolate Cups

Chocolate cups!!! I can't describe how excited I am that these worked out so well!
Edible cups :D
I don't think I'd ever eat mousse or ice cream in normal cups again!

Chocolate cups can be made by tempering chocolate or using candy coatings. I've read a lot of articles where people use balloons to create a more round bottom chocolate bowl but I used silicone cupcake cups instead. I would advice you to use silicone cups because they are ridiculously easy to use. From what I've read you can make these using normal foil cupcake cups. I don't exactly know how because it seems a bit more complicated.

Now I've worked with a Dr. Oetker's scotbloc chcocolate before and it was a lot easier to use than ordinary chocolate especially to make chocolate decoration. The scotbloc melts faster but it cools down and becomes solid in room temperature which works perfectly for the decoration. To be quite honest I know that scotbloc is chocolate flavored cake covering but I don't know the real difference between this and a bar of normal chocolate. So if you do know.. please do tell me.

I melted the scotbloc in the microwave and painted on the chocolate onto the insides of the silicone cups using a normal pastry brush. Put it in the refrigerator for a few minutes and tada! Chocolate cups, how simple and fun!

A chocolate espresso mousse went in next topped off with a cherry pie filling. I wish I could say that I was super duper awesome and made the pie filling from scratch, but I didn't. Cherries are out of season in Oman right now and the Harley's Black Cherry Pie Filling is really tasty!

Chocolate Espresso Mousse and Cherries in Chocolate Cups

For the chocolate cups

•  200g Scotbloc Chocolate Flavored Cake Covering 

In an microwave safe bowl break Scotbloc into square and microwave for 90 seconds. Ensure that you stir the chocolate every 20-30 seconds
Dip a pastry brush into the chocolate and cover the insides on the silicon cup (as if you were painting with chocolate)*
Place cups in the refrigerator for a minimum of 10 minutes. 
Take the cups out and slowly run your nail between one edge of the chocolate and the cup. Once you have divided one edge if should be fairly easy to run your finger around the cup freeing it from the silicone. 


*While you are painting on the chocolate make sure that there are no bits dripping off the top of the cup. If it solidifies in this way, it make cause the cups to break while removing the silicone. 


For the Filling

• 130g milk semisweet chocolate
• 50 g butter
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp espresso powder
• 1 tin Hartley's Black Cherry Pie Filling

In a glass bowl set over simmering water, melt together the butter, chocolate, espresso and milk. Remove from heat and let cool for about 10 minutes and whisk in the egg yolk. 
With an electrical beater whip the cream to medium peaks and fold into the chocolate mixture.


To assemble


Spoon a bit of the cherry pie filling (without the whole cherries) into bottom of the cup.
Fill cup with about 2 tablespoons of the mousse and refrigerate. 
Once the mousse has set top with remaining cherry filling. 
Refrigerate til served. 

Baked Banana French Bread

Breakfast to go. That was what I wanted to make. Not that I am always running out without breakfast during my extremely un-stressful stay at home but mostly because my brother has been complaining about how lousy his daily breakfasts are. Day after day he’d grumble about how there isn’t anything other than a bowl of cereal that he can quickly gulp down at 630am. Every time we eat a good breakfast, he’d go on about how he wished he could eat like that every morning.

Now I love to cook, but I’m not waking up at 6am to make breakfast. I know I could go in the direction of muffins but I wanted to do something…… nice… different. I found these cute little heatproof boxes at Lakeland and I envisioned mini loaves of bread.

When I got home however, I came across Bakerella’s blog post on baked French bread and quickly changed my mind. The boxes were perfect for mini French bread squares! French bread to go! 

You can check the recipe out at bakerella's website. Feel free to change up the fruit and use different kinds of bread. I used a normal white sandwich bread cut into quarters so that they fit the mini boxes but I think a wholemeal bread would be nicer. If you are using sandwich bread I'd advice you to cut the crusts off. I had a bit of a problem with both batches I made as they got slightly burnt. A fresher bread might not have the same problem.

I had bananas so it was a bit iffy for me to make. I made one without bananas for myself but I did have a bite of the others and it was wayyy too banana-y for me. Next time I'm probably going to try strawberries. Thing is these boxes are so cute I feel like i sort of wasted them on mere french bread. What should I bake in them next?

Peach and butterscotch pie

This is a pie for my friend Simone. Simone and I love talking about food. Chatting with her from Malaysia, she'd always be on about 'What mom's cooking'; the never ending lists of tantalising, mouth watering savouries and deserts. She likes torturing me as I like bugging her. I spent a day with Simone and her family yesterday and had a lovely time as always. I finally learnt how to make quiche and sorta attempted to make a chocolate ganache cake.

This pie is extremely easy to make especially because I cheated and used the Betty Crocker pie crust box. I try not to cheat but this time I was short of time. Every time I make pies I remind myself how convenient a pie is... sweet or savoury.. the possibilities are endless. A few days later I quickly forget. This pie is completely based on me trying to put together something out of whatever was lying around at home. 

Butterscotch chips, check. Peaches, check. I even had corn syrup left over from my awful attempt at make pouring fondant. 

I bought a very large packet of Nestle Toll House butterscotch flavoured morsels sometime back and its been lying there in the cupboard for ages. I tried using them in cookies but it just was a bit too sweet so they have been there... waiting ... waiting for the perfect..... pie

I used this recipe for the butterscotch part of the pie. The only thing I replaced were the pecans and put chopped hazelnuts instead. I think the crunch is really important for this pie. If you don't use the nuts it'll be a big mushy pie and no one wants that. I should mention that I have to burst a few air pockets with a skewer during the baking process. The filling kept rising abnormally from different sides, so I poked them and it immediately went down. Half way through the baking process I took the pan out and put the slices of peaches on top. Over that went a quick mixture of butter (1/8 cup) , sugar (1/2 cups) and flour (1/4 cup).

Next time I'm going to try and make the pie crust :) What fillings do you suggest?

Apple and Rosemary Lamb Shanks

Lamb Shanks for main course.

To be honest I didn't have a recipe put down for these shanks. I was actually planning on making something else but the shanks at the butcher looked mighty fresh and yummy so here I was with 10 shanks and no particular recipe.

Now remember how I had those bottles of sparkling juice. I had three bottles remaining which I somehow had to drink or use up so I could fill them with the lemonade. I was browning the meat in the pan wondering how to make the sauce, when I decided to empty the bottles into the shanks. Sheer spur of the moment.

I cooked the shanks on the stove for about half and hour and then put them into the oven for about 2 hours till the meat was soft and falling off the bone. The veggies you can see in the picture are baby corn, beans, asparagus and enoki mushrooms wrapped with a strip of nori seaweed. The mash is a sweat potato and potato mash that I piped very unsuccessfully into a circle so that the shank would sit.

Apple and Rosemary Lamb Shanks

For the lamb

• 10 lamb shanks
• 900ml sparkling apple juice
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 10 cloves of garlic
• a bunch of rosemary sprigs
• rosemary and olive seasoning (i use the Ina Paarman one, you can use any other seasoning)
• a good lug of worchestire sauce
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 3 tbsp olive oil

Cut a slit on each lamb shank very close to the bone and stuff a glove of garlic and a sprig of rosemary inside. Sprinkle and season with desired seasoning. The seasoning I used has pepper and salt so I did not add more

Heat oil gradually in a large heavy bottom saucepan.

Add the chopped onions and sauté till translucent.

Place shanks in the pan and turn when required browning the meat evenly on all sides.

Add the worchestire sauce and chilli powder while browning.

Preheat oven at 180 degree C

Add the sparkling apple juice. Close pot and allow to simmer for half an hour.

Remove the shanks from the pot and place on a large roasting pan. Cover with foil and slow cook in oven for 2 hours.

Meanwhile allow the sauce to boil and reduce till it forms a thick consistency. You can sprinkle flour or use gravy granules to achieve this.

For the mash

• 1 large sweet potato
• 1 large potato
• dried basil
• salt and pepper to season

Peel and grate the sweet potato and potato.

In a large saucepan of boiling water, add salt and boil the grated potatoes.

Once boiled, drain and season to taste. Add the basil.

Using a sieve or a masher, purée the potato till smooth.

Spoon the mash into a piping bag and pipe a circle onto the plate. Place shank over the mash

For the veggies

For the veggies, all I did was just steam the veggies, butter and season them. I selected the veggies I mentioned earlier because I wanted thin long veggies that I could bunch up. You can use any veggies you have at home for this, keeping in mind that different vegetable table different periods of time to steam.

Serve with sauce poured over the shanks