Music is universal. I listen to music in many languages, some that I do not even understand but the rhythm and arrangement grabs me. So, to present one of my all time favourite Japanese artiste, Utada Hikaru (宇多田ヒカル). I honestly do not understand past 10 words of Japanese and find it hard to learn. But that has not deterred me over the years to enjoy fantastic Japanese music, with my favourite of favourites being M-Flo.

Still, This was Hikki's latest studio effort and was originally released back in March 2008. I am ashamed that I had only learnt of this track today, but better late than never.

Fight The Blues - Utada Hikaru (宇多田ヒカル)

Labels: Jpop, mp3, Utada Hikaru

OH! I so desire those streaming mp3 players on people's website.
Thanks to Mikey, I got a nice player, so whenever i am posting mp3s, you guys can listen before deciding to download. NICE OR WHAT????

*BEAMING CHEEK TO CHEEK*

i am happy. XXX Mikey! :D

Above was the process of making the "Pumpkin-Vanilla Soup". Recipe can be found in previous posts.


Also, I made some really yummy banana muffins too last Tuesday. Its so moist and was still moist even after a day in this cold Melbourne weather. I have been in a really shitey mood since last Thursday and very clearly unhappy.

When I am unhappy, I cannot bake. :D

Anyway, here is the recipe.

Banana & walnut muffins with crumbed choc chip topping.
This recipe has been modified by me.
Yield: 9 x 80g

1-1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 large bananas, mashed
170g sugar
1 egg
75g butter, softened
80ml milk
80g chopped walnuts

Topping
I have used a topping of chocolate chips and crumble.
For the crumble, there's 2 recipe for you. One is my own very simple crumble recipe, the other one is the topping that was with the original recipe.

My crumble recipe
50g cold butter
50g icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
100g flour

Crumbed topping
65g packed brown sugar
1/8 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour

Knead with fingertips until resembles coarse breadcrumbs


Preheat Oven 190C.
Line muffin mould. Mix all ingredients together. I measure the batter to 80g each for the muffin before pouring it into the mould. This is to ensure even sized muffins after baking. Top muffins with topping and bake in the oven for 19-20 minutes or until skewer inserted into the middle of the muffin came out clean.

I baked German Potato Muffin yesterday. Unfortunately, I can't share the recipe, because I do not have permission from the original author. Maybe, until I have modified the recipe beyond recognition. But till then, here's a picture to look at. :D

Labels: recipe

Twas a cold 6C Tuesday morning in Melbourne.

So much for a sunny day.

I had a long Monday yesterday, looking at chemistry the whole day. Actually, since Saturday, that was what I ever looked at. Still, long as it might, it was a really hilarious day studying chemistry with my friend, Casp. Honking at random strangers on the way home might not be my idea of random fun, but I had a great laugh.

Private joke: "Alooooone arrr wee?" :D

STILL, the fun did not start at around 1230 am. (Which was when I got home really). I planned to bake, but because of meeting with Casp for chemistry, my planned sort of got derailed a little. Nevertheless, bake I did.

I recently bought alot of ingredients, and is really on this baking itch. Having trawled the various food blogs and my recipe notebooks for recipes to bake. I am ready to bake-off.

Late last night, in 3 hrs I baked a batch of cookies, yielding I reckon almost a kilo or more of cookies. Mind you, it was not simple, it was not difficult either, but its a little bit more work than and I made several boos.

The cookies taste great. Honestly. I did a few tweaks to what I reckon when I saw the recipe, is definitely a keeper. But as a perfectionist and as a professionally trained chef, I should have known better to commit silly mistakes like this. LOL

Firstly, I bought the wrong kind of sugar, so now I am stuck with slightly less than a kilo of raw sugar. It called for light brown sugar and I bought raw sugar! =.= Then, it says to whip the butter with the 2 kind of sugars until fluffy. I pour the weighted caster sugar into the flour instead! ROFL
Still, as the first batched was baked, I forgot when did I put it into the oven, so, overbaked, the cookies was slightly burn round the edges. LOL
Ah, but when I check the cookies, to my horror, LOL, I got the wrong kind of chocolate chips! Mine melts as it bakes. AHHHHHH~~~~~

Must read labels properly. =.=
But I must say, its still taste great. :D

The recipe was originally a Nigella Lawson. Yep, you can always count on Nigella if you are looking for "sinful and decadent" food. I did some slight tweaks to the recipe. So, here's the modded version.

INTENSE CHOCOLATE COOKIES

150g dark chocolate
150g plain flour
30g cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
1/2 tsp salt
125g unsalted butter or margarine, softened
75g light brown sugar
50g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg, cold from the fridge
200g dark chocolate chips
100g chopped nuts (I used walnuts)


Preheat oven 170C.
Break the dark chocolate into pieces, and melt over a BAIN-MARIE. (A bowl over a simmering pot of water).
Whisk until chocolate melts, but be careful not to overheat, the chocolate might turn grainy.
Mix flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate soda and salt together.
Cream the butter/margarine and the two sugars together until light and fluffy.
Add the melted chocolate into the fluffy butter and fold well.
Beat in vanilla, crack in egg cold from the fridge and mix well.
Fold in the flour mixture in batches. Make sure well mix and scrap the bottom of the mixing bowl well.
Fold in chocolate chips and nuts.

Now, you can either use a spoon and drop them onto the baking tray lined with baking paper or you can roll the dough into a log, chill it and then cut them into shape.
Anyway, theres' no need to flatten them as you spoon them onto the tray, just make sure you keep them few cm apart as they might spread.
Bake for 18 mins. They will become hard when they cooled. :D

The other bake.

As the cookies was baking, I prepare the ingredients for another. This is a modded Genoese sponge with a glaze that IS NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED!

The batter for the cake was easy enough, I just mod a basic Genoese sponge recipe to include some coffee flavour and chocolate in it. The glaze though, as I wanted a reallly shiny ganache, I pick Oriol Balaguer. I know some might go "WHO??". but, if you do a google on him, or if you are already that keen foodie, you will already know who this amazing guy is.

But, it took me 3 attempts to get the ganache sort of right. You see, it requires you to melt sugar without caramelizing it. Easy you say, honestly, if its just sugar vs heat. It's not. Firstly, I got to simmer some water to make a reduced chocolate and coffee mixture. Because I was lacking saucepan, I had to pour the mixture into a little cup as I reuse the pot for the sugar. I can do that, but I didn't realise that it was important to keep the choc-coffee mixture warm.

Anyway, after a bit of mess, irritated that i caramelized the sugar TWICE, I decided I did not want to waste more caster sugar. So, the "smartie" me uses normal white sugar -which has bigger crystals! which means need more heat to break apart the bonds aka higher heat to melt! SMART! I learn chemistry all day and I uses WHITE SUGAR!!!!! Just goes to show how much I am using my brain. :D

Right, after about 20 mins the sugar finally melted and as I pour the cooled choc-coffee mixture into the melted sugar, it splosh, spit and bubbled! Yeah, its expected, so you got to be really careful not to get splashed by the mixture. Sugar can really hurt you. This is from first hand experience when I was working as a pro chef. But another pain here was that because my mixture was cooled, it immediately harden the bloody sugar! Oh!!! So I ended up with this biiiig chunk of sugar clumping the bloody whisk.

Well, massive whisking as I continue to heat the glaze somehow "saved" some of the glaze. And in the end, it turns out sort of, nice! I might have heat too much of the sugar, because in the end, the glaze when cooled became really fudgy like. But I love the end result of it. It just mean that now, I got to heat my cake before serving. :)

It might be a real pain. But I will do it AGAIN. :D

Here is the recipe.

CHOC-MOCHA GENEOSE SPONGE
-this is a modded recipe.

3 tbsp cocoa powder.
200g sugar
200g butter, softened and cubed
200g self raising flour
1 tbsp baking powder
3 eggs
3 tbsp espresso

Preheat oven 180C.
Grease a cake tin or a loaf tin. (I used a loaf tin)
Mix cocoa powder with 4 tbsp of boiling water into a smooth paste.
Cream sugar and butter until fluffy.
Mix self raising flour with baking powder.

NOTE: If you do not have self raising flour, per cup of the self raising flour, replace with exact amount of all purpose flour but throw in 1 to 1 -1/4 tsp of bicarbonate soda and 1/4 tsp of salt.

Beat egg into butter sugar mix one by one, making sure it is well combined before adding the next one.
Fold dry ingredients in batches, followed by the cocoa paste and espresso.
Bake for 25 minutes or until skewer inserted in the middle of cake came out clean.

CHOCOLATE GLAZE
-again i modded the recipe here.

20g dark chocolate
120ml water
4 tsp instant coffee powder
20g cocoa powder
70g caster sugar
pinch of salt

Break up chocolate pieces and set it aside.
In a saucepan, simmer water, salt, coffee and cocoa powder for 3 minutes. Set aside but keep it warm!
In another pan, melt the sugar over medium heat. KEEP AN EAGLE EYE ON IT! You want melted sugar, NOT caramelized.
Once the sugar melts, pour the coffee-choc liquid into the sugar! It will spit and bubble crazily at this point. BE CAREFUL.
Continue whisking until all the sugar are well incorporated over low heat.
Whisk in dark chocolate and continue whisking until melted.
Any bits of crystallized sugar can be sieved out using a fine sieve.

Once glaze is cooled, but still quite liquid, pour over the cooled cake.

GOOD LUCK! :D

Oh! After all that, I actually got my time wrong for class. 1130am for first class and I arrived at uni thinking my class was at 930am. WITH 4 hrs 10 mins sleep! :)

Just one of those days :D

Labels: recipe