Enjoying the moment

Some things are encouraging. Like when readers of my blog try out my recipes and then feedback on their results and then it makes me think on why some problems occur and what we can do about it. I learn a lot, and I thoroughly enjoy the whole process.

I am especially touched when a reader of my blog went to a muffin stall I mentioned, bought some muffins for me and wanted to pass them to me! Unfortunately, when I saw her email, it was too late and I was not in the vincinity of the area. She did not give up, she wanted to get a durian cake from a famous hotel for me, but unfortunately again, the smell of durians can make me sprint like a world record holder. But I really wanted to say that it feels wonderful to know that through my little journey, I am able to share knowledge and information with others. The amount of knowledge I gained from others' blogs is immensely invaluable....so knowing that what I write can be useful to others, mean a lot to me. It not only makes my day, it makes my whole month. :D

The other day, a colleague asks if I am still baking muffins at home. I used to bring some muffins to office whenever I try a new recipe...I have stopped bringing my bakes to office. The few of us there do not have the habit of eating in between meals, so sometimes I feel like I am putting them in a spot..they may be shy to reject me even if they did not feel like eating. Besides, which female likes to pile on calories? So, my guinea pigs are limited to my family only right now.

So, because I used to bake muffins most of the time, they think that I only bake muffins. Little do they know that Ms Bimmer here has been trying a lot of other things! I told her that my latest bake is Pineapple Tarts and she said that well, they can order from me next time! It would be a little dream of mine, if they would think it's nice enough for them to order. Anyway, work on that pineapple jam first. Pineapple tarts is a New Year snack which everyone has high expectations of.

When I made my apple cinammon muffins lately, I had put in the wrong quantity of oil. Despite this, my guinea pigs said the muffins were delicious!? Not wanting to give up on that recipe, I tried the recipe again on Sunday, and here it is! This time, I remembered to write down the measurements instead of halving the recipe in my head (knowing that what's inside my head does not always function very well).

The end result? A nice breakfast item for the next day! Dear ate one the next day and said that I have improved a lot. Yeah!

The recipe is here.

Pineapple Tarts

Lately, I had been searching for Pineapple Tart recipes. I found 4 of them, and tried out 1 this morning. I made the dough last night actually, and made 5 tarts. But I decided the dough was too soft and left it to chill overnight. This morning, it was too hard and could not be rolled, so I let it soften a little, and while waiting, I made some muffins for my breakfast.

I love the way cinnamon always fill up the whole kitchen with its fragrance...it's irresistable...and they always pair up so well with apples and brown sugar. I had halved a Apple Cinammon Muffin recipe I found on the net...but I had forgotten to half the amount of butter!! It was too oily of course, but the muffins still managed to rise and were actually more fluffy and light than I had expected. The taste was good, except for the excess butter which soaked the paper liners. Therefore, I will only post the recipe when I make it correctly next time.

While they were in the oven, I went back to work on my pineapple tarts. I know I know, Chinese New Year is in January next year. I just want to see how my attempt will turn out, so that I have time to try different recipes and can plan to make some for family and friends.

For the pineapple jam, I use ready made ones since this is my first attempt, and they tasted not too bad, though a little too dry. Perhaps due to humidity, the dough soften easily and quickly, I had difficulty removing them from the mould without distorting their shapes. It got better as I continued the second tray of tarts. I guess I was too generous with the first tray of tarts, and the balls of pineapples look inproportionately big as compared to the tart base. When I look at them, the term C-cup boobies kept appearing in my head! Oops! When buying pineapple tarts from commercial shops, I usually prefer the open tarts, because there usually is very little filling in the closed ones. But I made 3 closed ones and fill them with a big ball of filling, just for the fun of it.

The tart shell was crumbly and melt in your mouth, with a slight buttery taste. Personally, I am very glad with this attempt and my chief guinea pig (aka my husband) agrees. I'll check the verdict with my other guinea pigs tomorrow. I also put them into the typical plastic containers with red lid, just for the Chinese New Year effect. I'll share the recipe once I have tried others and decide which one I prefer.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I have never celebrated Halloween in my life. The closest I got was many years back, when I bought a pack of ghost shaped chocolates from Marks & Spencer and gave them to my colleagues. Ok, that doesn't count as celebration.

In my world, Halloween is non-existent. My knowledge only goes as far as knowing that pumpkins are always been carved, pictures of cats, witches, ghosts, spiders are always associated with Halloween....that's all.

But I could not miss joining SSB's October Bake of Spooktacular Halloween Cupcakes, because I did not have to have a celebration to eat the cupcakes. The cupcakes came out very nice (as with all previous SSB's chosen recipes). Everything about the cupcake was just nice - the sweetness, the amount of butter, the soft texture.

I frosted them using Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMBC)...instead of my usual icing-sugar-added-to-butter buttercream. Goodness, I didn't know I was missing out this much before! I had always wondered how bakeries can make their buttercream so light and yet not overly sweet. Now I finally know. I'll never go back to using buttercream made from only butter and icing sugar.

Though I had good fun frosting the cupcakes, you can see that creativity is not something I am born with. It's the first time I work with black colouring, and though I seemed to have added so much colour, I still could not get the shade that I wanted. I eventually decided not to add too much colour, which is why the spider (if you could make it out as a spider!) and the spider webs are not black. I had planned to decorate 2 'eyeball' cupcakes with white frosting background and some red jelly lines as red veins. But I completely forgottten about them, until I realised that dear and I had eaten 2 unfrosted cupcakes..oops. The "BOO" words were supposed to be in darker colours, but I had added a lot of colouring yet the colours remained pale, so I let them be.

Dear was the first to try to unfrosted cupcakes, thumbs up! He tried them again after they were frosted, just as good! He couldn't exactly work against his conscience and gave me thumbs up for my designs, which hardly look spooky. In fact, they look comical. Mum tried the cupcakes and love them too. Not too many comments from her on the piping too, other than "is that meant to be a spider?" Haha!

This enjoyable bake is a first for me in a couple of ways:

- first time I use SMBC
- first time I use black colour (I did not know I have to add so much!). My cream was still not black, I stopped adding colour when it was dark grey.
- first time I pipe grass. Obviously I need practice. My grass looks like an abandoned patch in the forest.
- first time I pipe a rose. I used the remaining frosting to try piping a buttercream rose, based on the videos I have watched on Youtube. The first attempt was ok, though not exactly nice. The subsequent ones were disastrous and the piping was not stiff enough.

I spent a lot of time on the frosting and it was tiring but was good practice. All the cupcakes are already in our stomachs by the time you see this post!

The great recipe can be found in my Recipe Blog or SSB's website.