Archive for 2016

GBBO episode 3: 'Lacy' heart pancakes

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So apparently GBBO introduced a new challenge this season, Batter Week! Yes, I was just as confused as you were when I saw the title, but apparently the only coherent thread of commonality running through all the bakes was that they were all some sort of batter fried (either pan, or deep) in oil.

Trying to redeem myself from my technical challenge failure in biscuit week, I decided to give Batter Week's technical challenge another go. I mean, how hard can pancakes be right?

Well, I'm here to tell you that pancake art is completely overrated. I took a basic pancake recipe (see below) and just added some more flour according to the challenge to make it stiff enough to hold it's shape. But because it's stiff now, the batter cooks to become a rubbery, tasteless piece of thing, not at all reminiscent of the fluffy pancakes we've all come to know and love. So I don't know what Paul Hollywood was on about in this challenge but I say forget the art and just make yourself some regular pancakes, if you're going to bother to get up early in the morning to make them.

Ingredients


  • 1 cup+ a few tablespoons regular flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 cup milk
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil 
  • 2 tablespoons sugar 
  • 1/3 tsp salt 
  • 1 egg

Method

  1. Whisk all the ingredients together until smooth. 
  2. Put batter in a squeeze-y bottle or a piping bag. I used a piping bag and it was very hard to control the flow of the batter, so if you have one, go with a squeeze-y bottle. 
  3. Oil pan with a paper towel soaked with oil. 
  4. Heat pan on medium heat, then pipe any decoration you want! 


Decorate with fruits, and serve with some honey or maple syrup.

Honestly, I made four or five of these artsy pancakes, then gave up, dilute the remaining pancake mixture with some milk to make it more fluid and like a regular pancake batter, and made regular pancakes. I infinitely prefer the regular pancakes. So give it a go if you have some kids at home who'd think this is fun, but for us lazy, jaded adults that don't wonder at the world anymore, skip this challenge.

GBBO episode 3: Chocolate and Cinnamon Twist Bread

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As you may or may have noticed, we've skipped an episode in between 1 and 3. Now, how could that be, you must be wondering? Surely there was an episode 2 in between, that's just how the logic of numbers work. Theoretically, you're right. In reality, the aftermath of my attempt was so disastrous, I get PTSD just thinking about it. Please never mention my attempt at the Viennese Whirls from the technical challenge of Biscuit Week ever again.
Not that bread week was much better, but at least the end result, although lacking slightly in presentation, was actually edible. I was tempted to give the technical challenge another go, especially since the bread type they challenged was the ubiquitous German Dampfnudel (weeelll, ubiquitous at the Mensa anyhow). But then I remembered how much I hate Dampfnudel. So down the drain that went. So I went with one of the signature bakes again this week, Val's Chocolate and Cinnamon Twist Bread! 
Yes, I know, it's more of a wreath than a twist really. And it looks a mess. And unlike Val's problem with the bottoms being under cooked, I may have slightly over baked it which is why it looks so chao tah (burnt). But all in all, the taste was pretty good (which is more important right???right???right?????) , so if you want to give this a go, you can follow my bread adventure below. There was no recipe on the BBC website for this, so I had to improvise on my own based on bits and pieces of information. 

Ingredients


For the bread

  • 1 3/4 cup Sonntagsbrötchen flour sifted with 1/2 cup dark Rye flour (or just use 2 1/2 cups of regular flour, I just needed to deplete my plentiful flour resources a bit) 
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 3/4 cup warm water 
  • 1 packet dry yeast
  • 1/2 tsp fine table salt 
  • 30 g melted butter
  • 1 egg yolk 
  • 100 g chopped dark chocolate 
  • Cinnamon and nutmeg (to sprinkle) 
For the Chocolate Spread 
  • 1/4 cup water
  • Sightly less than 1/2 cup caster sugar 
  • 1 packet of vanilla sugar (or vanilla essence)
  • Pinch of salt 
  • 100 g dark chocolate, finely chopped
  • 125 g softened butter, cubed
  • 1 tbsp pure cocoa powder 

Method

  1. Prepare the chocolate spread first so you can let it chill overnight. Trust me, you'll be thanking yourself for taking this step after you see what happens. Do this by heating water, cocoa powder and sugar (regular and vanilla) on medium heat until all the sugar is dissolved and the mixture starts to simmer. 
  2. Add the dark chocolate, salt and butter to the mixture and stir everything in until it forms a smooth mixture. Don't worry if it looks too watery, once it cools down it'll thicken into a gorgeous looking paste. 
  3. Pour into a container and leave to cool in fridge overnight, or until it's solidified. 
  4. Now to prep the bread. Place sugar, yeast and warm water into a mixing bowl. Make sure water isn't boiling because this will destroy the yeast, but if it's too cold the yeast won't activate. I'd recommend placing 1/2 cup of room temperature water and 1/4 cup of hot water if you're too impatient to wait for your water to cool to lukewarm. You'll know your yeast is activated if you wait a while and it forms this frothy mixture. You can also substitute the water with milk if you have some. This makes for a more tender crust, but I never drink milk so I always find it a waste since the milk goes bad from sitting too long in my fridge.
  5. Sift flour and salt over wet mixture, add egg yolk and melted butter and mix until a smooth dough is formed. 
  6. Take the dough and knead it until enough gluten forms. To check if you've kneaded enough, do the 'window pane' test by taking a pinch of dough and stretching it out in the shape of a window pane to see if can stretch thin enough such that light passes through. To make things easier though, follow Val's instructions and knead about 500 times. 
  7. Oil another large bowl with some vegetable oil, shape the dough into a ball and place in the oiled bowl to proof (i.e. let the yeast puff the bread up) for 1 hour. You should do this by covering the bowl with either clingfilm or a clean tea towel and place somewhere warm and moist. I normally proof mine in the oven with the light option turned on. It should double up in size like below. 

  8. Once the bread is proofed, roll out to about the size of a chopping board (sorry, I'm a bit of a rogue baker like Selasi and I never pay attention to sizes).
  9. Spread chocolate spread all over, then sprinkle chopped chocolate chunks (or chocolate chips if you'd prefer) and some cinnamon and nutmeg. Here's where I started thinking, uh oh, this could be a bit of a mess, because my chocolate spread hadn't cooled down enough and was as watery as hot sauce. But in the spirit of the bake off, I had to shoulder on because time was running very very short. 
  10. Roll it up like, and then cut in half length-wise, and then take the two halves and braid them by twisting them around each other, cut side up. 
  11. This was when the mixture started to look more and more like Private Ryan's guts. Chocolate spread was oozing everywhere, the chocolate chunks wouldn't stay in. Disaster. Chaos. Mayhem. Images of last week's failure started flashing in my head. I tried to salvage the look of it by pinching the ends to make a wreath. Great, now the bread started looking like that poop emoji on Whatsapp. 
  12. Proof again for about 35 minutes or until wreath doubles in size again. At this point, preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius. (don't proof in the oven this time round, obviously)
  13. I baked mine for 15 minutes, and then turned down to 180 degrees and baked for another 10 minutes. My bread turned out a little...more than mahogany coloured. I'd try reducing about 5 minutes bake time to see if it helps with the over-browning, although with the times I'd used the insides are nicely baked through. 
And that's it! Serve with leftover chocolate spread for extra deliciousness. 

GBBO Episode 1: Lemon and poppy drizzle cake

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Ah, summer. There's nothing that says summer to me more than the Great British Bake Off (GBBO). I've been off the baking ball lately, but now that GBBO is playing again, it's time to get back on the ball and start baking. Here's the challenge, for every episode of GBBO, I'll take a recipe from the show and try to recreate best as I can at home.

This episode, we're going to recreate Jane's beautiful and classic lemon & poppy drizzle cake. Now, since GBBO has already uploaded the recipes, I won't bother reposting the recipe, but I'll link it here instead. The only differences were that instead of using ground almonds, I used some ground hazelnuts I had on hand instead, I didn't have any limoncello on hand so skipped that, and instead of using poppy seeds, I used some ready made poppy spread from Dr. Oetker's.

Quick tips:

  1. For the drizzle, use 2 -3 lemons instead of the 4, either that or increase the amount of sugar to match, because with the lemons I used, I ended up with much more juice than anticipated. 
  2. To get the pattern on the icing, place icing into a piping bag and pipe in and out of the circle. 
  3. To avoid making a mess, brush the lemon syrup on with a pastry brush instead of spooning the drizzle on the cake.
  4. If you don't have self-raising flour, simply use regular flour and add 1.5 tsps of baking powder and 0.5 tsp of salt to achieve the same effect. 

I don't know how they do it within the time limit in GBBO, because the entire process took me about 2.5 hours ರ_ರ. More props to Jane for completing this cake within the time, and making it look so effortless as well!

Mandy Travels: Seville x Madrid III

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Last post for my Spain trip! Click for part I and part II. 

Not that anyone was waiting with bated breath, but sorry if you were and it took so long. My delay in posting was mostly a combination of being busy with travelling and getting some documents ready for a job, as well as mostly laziness. :D 

Day 4 : travelling to Madrid

This time, we didn't miss our train back to Madrid and got to Madrid on time. Our Airbnb was smack in the centre of Madrid, but to get to it we had to walk past a couple of pretty shady alleys where there were some ladies of the night working in the day (lol). The place itself was alright, my only peeve about it was that the toilet wasn't the cleanest. We didn't really have much of a plan for Madrid, so we mostly just walked around and shopped. 
At this point of time, another tourist asked me to take a photo of him, and afterwards he asked me for directions to a park at which point I responded that I didn't know (because I'm a tourist obviously), and he was like "What?? How can you not know??". Oh, the people you meet while travelling. 

 Pretty fountain near an craft festival. 
Museo del Jamon! Not really a museum but a restaurant/ bar place that's super crowded, but if you can get a seat the prices are really worth it. You can get some ham and cheese platters for around 3 euros, and more filling plates for around 7-10 euros.
Statue of the Bear and Strawberry Tree. The name confuses me though. As far as I'm aware, strawberries don't grow on trees??? 
Quick tip, a lot of museums across Madrid have free entry after around 5-6 pm! I think this was the Prado museum?
Had dinner at Pez Tortilla around Calle del Pex. The restaurant has a great selection of tortillas and craft beers, and if you like your tortillas runny, this place is the place to go. I personally liked the tortilla at the bar near our Airbnb better, called Jota Batela. The bar owner LOVES Johnny Cash and the whole bar has kind of a rustic Western feel to it. 
 I think my craft beer was called Panda Beer Sex Museum! Cray names, I know. 
 Everything in Europe comes with bread. God. SO much bread. Every day. 

Day 5
 The Plaza del Espana in Madrid is notably less impressive than the one Seville.
 But these kids (and a dog!) had tons of fun with the fountain there. 
Apparently the day of Plazas because our next stop was the Plaza Mayor. Fast fact, there's an artisan nougat store on the way to the Plaza Mayor that has the most amazing selection of nougat that you've ever seen. 
 Probs my favourite place to go eat in Madrid, the Mercado San Miguel! Admittedly, the food in here is pretty overpriced, but I just love the fact that everything is all under one roof, and the seafood! There was a store selling colourful, tiny hamburgers that I swear looked like the Krabby Patty's on that one episode Spongebob Squarepants. 
So disappointed by the sea urchin! It was filled with mostly mashed potatoes I think, and there was barely a hint of sea urchin inside. Okay, I guess I couldn't have expected much for 5 euros but still. 
 I had to start dancing around the table to work off the Asian glow from my Cava lol. 
Milhojas de Merengue! We bought this back to the Airbnb from La Mallorquina, probably one of the most famous pastry shops in Madrid and it has one of the most amazing varieties of sweets and pastries. I was a little disappointed because this was a little bit too sweet for me from the powdered sugar on top, but if you're a fan of meringue, you might like this. Afterwards we headed to a random bar to try to catch the Spain vs Italy match (remember, this was during the Eurocup) and tensions were hiiiigh. The bartender was so mad that Spain was losing that he was banging his fists on the bartop and shouting at the tv. Not an experience to forget lol.
Literally had a mini panic attack because I could not for the life of me remember what this tapas bar was called, but I just did a google search and it's called El miniBAR. I can't remember what this was called, I think it was the Tapa Breton, but the waiter recommended it because supposedly, it won best tapas dish in Madrid of 2013 or something like that. It was tomato based with some kind of melted cheese on top, balsamic vinegar and coriander oil. I can see why it won the award because it was a literal explosion of flavours in my mouth. Plus, I'm always partial to cheese, so 10/10 would recommend. Also because the sangria here is really good. 

Day 6
Finally having my churros in Madrid! This was at Chocolateria Valor, the hot chocolate wasn't bad but it just took FOREVER for service to come. Plus they forgot my friends order of churros so she had to go hungry.
Temple of Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple that was transported stone by stone from Egypt and reconstructed as it was in Madrid! The temples are pretty small, so don't plan too much time around it, but it's still gorgeous to look at and take pictures of. The only thing that kind of spoiled the moment was when a trio of American (teenage?) girls literally screamed at me to get out of their photo when they were taking it at the exit of the museum where I'd just come out from. This is why the world hates Americans, people. Just kidding, I'm sure they were just an exceptionally rude bunch, I know many others that are perfectly polite and lovely.

Next stop was El Retiro Park, where Shweta and I basically just followed a troupe of musicians playing middle eastern sounding music like a bunch of groupies and took random photos of dogs and ponds and what not. I wish Pokemon Go had come out when I was here, imagine all the Pokemon I could have accumulated by now! 
 <3 Ngawww. 
Had a really late dinner at Gumbo, which serves New Orleans style dishes with a fanciness factor of x10. Nevertheless, really friendly service and the food is pretty good. The gumbo here (below) wasn't really filling for me so I ordered an extra portion of chicken wings, not seen here because I was too hungry and tired to take anymore photos. 
 Shweta's Timbal, made of aubergines, tomatoes and cheese. 

Day 7: Last day! 

Since it was our last day, we really didn't do much except walk around and eat more at the Mercado San Miguel, so I'll just let the pictures do the talking. 
 Tbe Almudena Cathedral, next to the Royal Palace of Madrid. 
 Taken through the palace gates because we were too cheap to pay for tickets to go in. Free for EU (and I think also some South American countries) citizens to go in though! 
Our last meal before leaving. :'(. Pretty good tapas at the Mercado for a euro a piece. From top left clockwise, it was cod with tomato, cod with honey mustard, some kind of crab thing with lumpfish caviar, and octopus Galician style. 

And that's it for Spain! Probably one of my favourite places so far, culinary wise but I may be biased just because I've been here more times than most of the rest of Europe. 


















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