Coconut icing on pandan cake

It’s a little while ago since I made this pandan cake for a party, but I’m always late with things. And I feel the need to memorize and share this icing. I heard about the icing from some site, but forgot to write the recipe down. I just came up with something new myself and I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with the recipe I saw anymore, but it was delicious anyway. The pandan cake I made was from a package (add water- done!) since I wouldn’t know where to buy any pandan flavouring here or even how to make the cake to be honest. I like the smell and taste of pandan, so I decided my family was going to eat it on the party. Since just cake would be plain, I looked some icing up to go with it and that’s where I got the idea! So here goes:



Ingredients:
Coconut cream/milk
(Whole) Milk
Powdered sugar
Food colouring
A cake (like pandan)

1. Use as much coconut cream or milk as you like and add milk to make it a bit smooth and thin, only when needed. Add food colouring at this point if you want (especially since some coconut cream has such an undesirable colour).
2. Add the powdered sugar until it is as thick as you want (thick enough to spread, maybe to poor, don’t make it too thick!).
3. Use it on the cake! Done!

It seems fairly simple and contradictive. Perhaps I shouldn’t have added milk, but it was hard to add powdered sugar to something that was half solid anyway, so I used the milk to smoothen it up a bit first. For the simple part: icing should never be complicated. Once icing get’s too complicated to make, I’m gone. I mean, after all the time I spent on making a wonderful cake, should I seriously spend forever on icing? Don’t forget icing is important though. Cake without icing is like.. life without sweets?

What is it like anyway?

Peanut butter & Jelly bites

You know when sometimes it’s a nice day and you feel like you HAVE TO bake? Happens to me sometimes, and today was one of those days. Only, we were out of flour, which I needed the day before when I made crème brûlée. Plus it was already kind of late, so I wanted something easy to make. First thing to mind would always be cakepops, bonbons, or anything that’s little, chocolaty and sweet! I first thought of the peanut butter balls I made with christmas, then decided peanut butter and jam would be nice. And rolling them in chocolate sprinkles, cuz I didn’t actually want to go through the effort of melting chocolate. (I wanted to bake without doing something, you feel me?)
My first attempt failed miserably.



Then I decided to reorganize and make Peanut butter & Jelly Bites aka a layer of peanut butter-mixture, then jelly/jam, then peanut butter again, then more jam and on top loads of chocolate sprinkles! It didn’t turn out that bad..

Ingredients:
Peanut butter
Jam/jelly
Powdered sugar
Cookie crumbs (or just more powdered sugar)
Chocolate sprinkles
Butter (if needed/wanted)

1. Melt the peanut butter in the microwave in less than a minute. It’ll turn soft and liquid-like.
2. Add powdered sugar and cookie crumbs until the mixture becomes thick and knead-able. Add some melted butter if you made the mixture too thick.
3. Do the same with jam and powdered sugar. (I left this slightly more liquid)
4. Take little mini paper cup and fill it with peanut butter-mixture for the bottom layer. Then add a layer of jam-mixture, then more peanut butter-stuff and then more jam.
5. Last but not least, sprinkle it with chocolate sprinkles. Leave it in the fridge to harden, and done!



Unfortunately I can only tell you how I made them, and with what, and not with how many of that what. I just randomly took some ingredients and made the best of it, so I would have no idea how much you need. They tasted quite fun! Exactly like peanut butter and jelly would taste if it were peanut butter and jelly. It’s just too bad eating too many makes me feel kind of sick.



I added a heart to it as well! Because somehow I felt that would just make them a lot better. It reminded me of Valentines like that. Which reminds I should really say something about blogs that completely inspire me (and make me jealous but that’s a different point; also don't ask how valentines reminds me of blogs). Here are a few:
http://diamondsfordessert.blogspot.com/ - She’s one of the most creative bakers I know. Everything she makes looks so wonderful and cute! You’d almost not want to eat it.
http://gordongossip.blogspot.com/ - This blog is like a collection of all the heavenly things put together. I don’t know how the writer finds all these things, but I find myself drooling and hoping to have some about every time.
http://happyhomebaking.blogspot.com/ - I feel she’s been slacking lately, but this mom defintely knows how to cook/bake!
http://www.threebakingsheetstothewind.com/ - The last lady knows how to turn movies into food. She’s into food, beer and films and she knows exactly how to use ‘m (all at the same time)!
Hope you enjoy! ‘Til the next post!

Christmas Special 3: High Tea Party

It’s already February so let’s get this last Christmas Special done right before Valentines. After which I can dump straight into Valentines. I’m thinking of skipping that this year though, maybe making something small, but I feel way too busy to bake a lot.
Anyway, Christmas first! The last rant of mine about this will be the High Tea Party I organised. For some reason I actually volunteered to do this, and on my own at that. Together with my helper I started shopping and baking 2 days before the high tea and I was still busy like hell last moment and had to leave some of the things on my list out.



There you have about all that we made. As you can see we focused on sandwiches! A lot of it was just randomly getting things out of the fridge and combinating them, making things up along the way. A few things we used from my Sandwich Mania post from before. We ended up with these combinations:
- (Canned) Tuna with corn and lettuce
- Cheese/ham and cranberry jam
- Eggsalad
- Smoked salmon and herb spread
- Cheese and ham
- Port Salut (cheese) with cranberry jam
For the herb spread we bought a version of Philadelphia Basil or so, because I didn’t have the time to make a -way better tasting- homemade herb spread (which I called herb paste, but I believe herb spread is a better word for it).



Look at the cute little tree-details cut from cheese that we put on some of the sandwhiches!! I got a set of cutters from the Super Sweetest Loveliest Amazing Sexy Etc. person in the whole. wide. world. *love* Sorry I don't know what the name of the tree or bush it comes from is called, but the forestelf knows! (hence the forest part of forestelf, it's an elf that lives in the forest and knows it.)



Next to the sandwiches I also made sweet buns: Vanilla pans. I gave some of the buns a chocolate inside by making a whole into it, putting loads of chocolate in and closing it again. For the buns this time, I experimented with just a plain white flour, baked in the bread machine like normal white bread. Of course, before the baking I took them out, covered them and let them rise and put them in the oven. Saving myself a lot of time by replacing the making of the bread dough by hand by a machine process (if you can follow me here).
We added Cinnamon Butter and Cranberry jam in little bowls to go with the buns or any of the sandwiches. The third bowl contained more icing for the cupcakes I made. These were just simple vanilla cupcakes I posted before, to not make it too complicated. Also I made a Rich Fruit Cake, which is my most delicious specialty! A recipe of which I have, as of yet, still kept secret! *muahaha* I left the fruit for this cake to soak in cognac overnight. Apparently I took my dad’s most expensive cognac for this, but it resulted in a cake with a rich cognac after-taste which really suited it. I didn’t hear anyone complaining.



Of course we couldn’t stop after the sandwiches and some cake. To add up to the savoury part of the High Tea, we added Wraps and filled eggs to it. Here’s how you do that: (easiest ever really)

Ingredients for Wraps:
- Wraps (for Tortillas or so)
- Smoked Salmon or Ham
- Herb spread (Philadelphia Basil or something alike)

1. Lay out a wrap in front of you and spread a thick layer of herb spread on the bottom half.
2. Place a layer of salmon or ham on the herb spread, just the bottom half again.
3. Start rolling the wrap up, starting from the filled bottom half. Cut off any excess parts and make sure you don’t overdo the wrap. You should still be able to taste what’s in it, rather than that wrap.



Recipe for Filled eggs:
1. Boil the eggs, let them cool down a bit and cut them in half. Put the egg-yellow in a small bowl and then add (in whatever order you like, leaving out whatever you like): mayonnaise, ketchup, any sauces, garlic, chives, leek, basil, parsley and any herbs you like, salt & pepper and whatever else you can find in your cupboards that might be nice with it!
2. Fill the empty egg shells with your eggfilling!

There, now I managed to put a recipe in as well. Two even! Not that they might’ve been obvious, but regardless!
Then we also made more of the sweet stuff. We made little bonbons just like the Valentine’s bonbons I made before. Some of them though -and you can’t tell which- were Peanut Butter Balls. I’m telling you, these are DELICIOUS! Perhaps you need to like peanut butter a little before eating these, or peanuts in general, but you can’t not like these. Watch out with eating too much though! Here comes another recipe!



Ingredients for Peanut Butter Balls:
250 grams peanut butter (with or without pieces)
20 grams butter
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
150 grams powdered sugar
200 grams chocolate

1. Microwave the peanut butter and butter together slightly and mix them properly. Add the vanilla extract at this point too (after the microwaving).
2. Leave the butters to cool a bit, but it should still be stir-able. Add the powdered sugar and keep adding until you get a thick mixture (dough or knead-able thick).
3. Don’t knead the mixture and don’t touch it too much or heat it up, but quickly roll balls from the dough. You’ll notice if you keep kneading, the peanut butter will melt in your hands. Put the balls on a plate and leave it in the fridge.
4. After the peanut butter balls are set, an hour should do it, you can cover them in chocolate. Double boil the chocolate and dip the balls in, then leave them to dry on a plate, or the counter top. Make sure to cover these with cling foil or grease proof paper, so they don’t stick.

I’m not very sure about the measurements any more. I always buy a bit more than what I need and I might end up using it all, but it should work with this as well. If you wonder why we made both bonbons look the same: we simple had light and dark chocolate to coat them and used both for each!



And we didn’t stop there either, we also made meringues! This one is easy as well, namely mixing eggs till they turn stiff, then adding a lot of powdered sugar until you the mixture turns thick and then shaping them! It’s the same recipe as I used for the Coconut Delights, only not using any lemon or coconut and thus skipping steps 3,4 and 7. Although, covering these in chocolate, or dipping them in chocolate half, would’ve been a nice, but even more time consuming, idea. As we were short of time, we didn’t do this. I might also just not have thought of it at that time. Then we added some little chocolates, some my sis wanted to add and some filled chocolate covered in white balls that are my all time christmas favourite (we hang them in the tree).



I think that’s where we ended it. Hopefully I haven’t bored you with probably my longest post ever and if you ever decide to do this much on your own – GET HELP!
Enjoy!

Ps: Don't forget the tea! We have a nice teabox that I filled with over 20 different types of tea. My favourite of the day were Melon and Vanilla, Jasmin is also good! Whatever you like!

Apple and Cinnamon Bread

While wandering the streets of this country I stumbled upon a cute shop which happened to have a shelf with Apple and Cinnamon Bread Flour. Of course I was instantly made to bake it. Now these poor students for some reason couldn't afford a bread baking machine so I was bound to do this by hand. At this sort of moment, obviously, you realise that the package doesn't give any instructions but "put all ingredients in a bread machine and use basic bake program". I've looked up online on how to convert a baking machine recipe to a recipe by hand, but haven't found much interesting information but "it's the same process as other breads, do it like you normally do" kind of things. So I've done exactly that. All the bread recipes I've done so far had one mixing stage followed by a 1-1,5 hour rising stage, then kneading air out, greasing pan and putting it in, followed by anothing rising stage of 0,5-1 hour and then baking. I've used the Yoghurt Bread recipe I made before as an example and this works exactly the same. So once I had all the ingredients, I started the recipe:



Ingredients:
Bread flour (Apple and Cinnamon)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
7 grams yeast
2 tablespoons butter
300 ml water

1. Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix.
2. Add the butter and rub it in the flour. Add the water bit by bit, while mixing it in with a fork. Knead the dough when you have added (almost) all water. Add more water if the dough is too dry.
3. Leave the dough in a bowl to rise for about 1-1,5 hour till the dough has doubled in size. Grease the bowl and the dough slightly before leaving it to rise and cover the bowl either with cling film or a warm wet towel.
4. When the dough has doubled in size, knead it to push trapped air out. Don't overdo this stage, but make sure you don't end up with massive holes in your bread later. Shape it in the size you want it and leave it on a greased oven tray.
5. Leave the dough for another 0,5-1 hour to rise or till doubled in size.
6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Leave the bread in the oven for 20-30 minutes and done!



It somehow worked in my case. I might've used a bit more or less water as I didn't actually measure this out. In stead of greasing the bowl in step 3 I simple sprinkled a little bit of water over the top and covered it in cling film. I've also been a bit loose with the rising times. I left the bread under a heater, so it doubled in size fast enough. Mind I used the ingredients it said on the package, I'm guessing this might differ per bread. For instance, some might use milk in stead of water.
The bread so far is delicious, I ate a bit already before even taking pictures. Especially the bits of apple which make it taste very sweet are wonderful. Perhaps I should try something like this at home by adding white flour with dried apple pieces and cinnamon. Sounds like it can't go wrong! This bread at least didn't. I thought I hadn't left it in long enough and since Im using different materials, a different place, different oven and all that, basically I thought it was doomed to fail. Probably I haven't made a bread with a texture this good before. Perhaps I ought to blame the flour: Wessex Mill Apple and Cinnamon Bread Flour. You think this company might have a secret to it?