Hello Hello

Holidays are coming and I am already in holiday mode! Hooray for holidays! What do you guys have planned for the holidays? It has been a crazy weekend with all the partying and family gatherings, thankfully the weather is still a bit mild and not crazy cold yet. Although some snow would really bring out the Christmas cheer. 

Even though Christmas is just around the corner, this blog has always been in my mind. I am constantly trying to come up with new content to share and hopefully some dinner party experiences soon. This weekend my cousin was over and he loves cookies. He is such a cookie monster. I took this chance to really bond with him by making these beautiful, packer with flavour cookies.

The fun part about making these cookies is getting your hands on them. Forming snowball like cookie dough is always a good way to get into baking but I still don't like how the dough sticks on your hands though. Haha.

I have a great Christmas break coming up and for sure I am going to host a Winterlicious party. This time, I will bring to the table recipes that I have never blogged about before. Hopefully, I can manage. On top of that New Year's Eve is coming up and you know what it is, more treats!

Coconut Bailey's Irish Cream Chocolate Chip Cookies 
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup Bailey's original Irish cream
30 ml Kahlua Coffee liqour
60 ml dry shredded coconut meat
2 1/4 cup cake flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 (6 oz.) pkg. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven 375

Beat the butter with the sugars until fluffy and add egg.
Gradually add vanilla, bailey's, kahlua until smooth. Make sure you scrape the sides to get everything in the batter. 

Mix in the dry ingredients with the paddle mixer, adding a considerable amount at a time. Add the flour, baking soda and salt. 

Fold in dry shredded coconut meat and chocolate chips. Snowball the cookie dough on a prepared baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes until it turns brown. 

Cool in room temperature and enjoy! 

Looking forward to the holiday dinners! =D  

Hello hello!

Finally a post of some sort, sorry for being absent today. I had a crazy fun filled weekend and this dessert actually took longer than expected. Boy, am I glad to be back blogging and talking to you guys. Where to start, where to start. Ah, chocolate was on sale at No Frills these past few days. Boy, was it hectic or what. No Frills is having a massive one dollar item sale and it was jammed packed. I hate finding parking but I usually have one rule when finding a spot. Park as far as you can from other cars. You do not want to come back to find a missing door handle. Yes, that's right you heard me, a missing door handle.

So anyways, today I had a conversation with a stranger. He started to ask me about this book I was reading. The book is called The Power of Now and its one fantastic book. I couldn't put it down, I found myself drowning in the information and insightful thinking of the author. We talked mostly about the book and how it affects our lives and such. It was a cool experience.

Back home I finally got a chance to put together the dessert called Banoffee. This was adapted from the book chocolate by whitecap. Basically this is made out of graham crackers, sliced bananas, caramelized condensed milk and melted chocolate. Here's how it goes.

Banoffee
Ingredients:
14 oz canned condensed milk
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
3 bananas sliced
juice of 1 lemon
7 oz milk chocolate
10 ml baileys
whipping cream to serve

Make a small hole in the condensed milk can and simmering in low heat for 2 hours until brown. Remove from the pot and cool.

Mix the melted butter and graham cracker crumbs together. Pack it in a 3 inch diameter stainless steel circle.

Place sliced bananas on top and poor in the caramelized milk.

Melt the chocolate with the double boiler technique. Once melted, add the Baileys. Mix well and pack the chocolate mixture on top of the chocolate. Add whipping cream on top and Serve right away.

As I sat back and enjoyed the sweet joyous taste of chocolate with my Christmas tree, I realized that I didn't do any shopping yet. Eeekkkk! =( Oh well eat now, worry later.

Enjoy. =)

Hello!

It has been such a busy week with all the final finishing touches to this blog. I have to say, its always an one going process but so far I am happy with what I see. Improvements to come!

It was my little cousins birthday and she has asked me to bake her a chocolate cake since chocolate is her favourite. She has always been such the energy in the family, with all her smiles and laughter. Sometimes its good to have someone to remind you of such positivity.

Back on topic now. The only thing I had to keep in mind was, it had to be "grandma" friendly. That's right, what does "grandma" friendly mean you ask? Basically, from all the cakes that I have made, she likes cakes that are soft, moist and not that sweet. The chiffon cake that I had in mind was Anna Olson's and this was inspired/adapted from her. Time to show off my moist cake baking skills! Let's get it! =)

Putting this together was simple and easy. Here we have all the dry ingredient together all in one bowl. Remember to leave the egg and coffee at room temperature. You do not want to cook your egg yolks just yet.  

When the dry ingredients meet the liquids, it should come off like a chocolate mousse. I love working with chocolate, it just makes me so happy.

Heres how it goes:
Bailey's Chocolate Chiffon Cake

435 ml cake and pastry flour
250 ml icing sugar
75 ml cocoa powder
7.5 ml baking powder
1 ml salt
200 ml coffee
100 ml Bailey's Irish Cream
125 ml veg oil
5 eggs at room temp
2 ml cream of tar tar
60 ml sugar

Preheat the oven to 325F

• In a large mixer bowl with the whip attachment.
• Sift the flour, icing sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. 
• Add the coffee, Bailey's Irish Cream, oil and egg yolks, and whip on high speed until the mixture is thick and glossy. 
• In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites and cream of tar tar until they are foamy, then slowly add the sugar. Whip until the egg whites hold a stiff peak. Then fold a third of the whites into the chocolate batter, then fold in the remaining two-thirds. 
• Pour the batter into an ungreased angel food cake or tube pan. 
• Bake for 45-50 minutes. Cool upside down. Run a palette knife around the inside and outside edge to get the cake to slide out. 

Yes, yes, Christmas is just around the corner and I promise I will hunt for a better camera. I am looking for a good SLR to satisfy my photography needs. So bare with me and stop yelling at me through the computer screen. Haha, I am kidding. I hope you enjoyed it!

 Hello!

Like the new look? I'd figure that after a year and a bit of the old stuff, its time for a change. If you don't like it please comment and I will make sure I make this as user friendly as possible. I have been holding back on the posts for a bit ever since but today was my favourite woman or all time's birthday!

That means that I had to shake off the dust and work my butt off in the kitchen. The recipe that I came up with was inspired by Anna Olson and Jamie Oliver.

The filling was from Anna's side, her list of ingredient was just so perfect. With a little tweaking and modifications, I made a perfect adult dessert that will leave your hungry hungry hippos wanting more.

The crust was from Jamie. Every time I bake the crust, I always get punched in the face with "Oh my God, the crust is what makes me want a second piece."

Bailey's Chocolate Cheesecake

Filling:
6 oz bitter sweet chocolate
3 oz dark chocolate
3 pkg cream cheese
1 cup of sugar
125 ml sour cream
5 ml vanilla extract
4 eggs at room temperature
125 ml Bailey's Irish cream

Crust:
9 oz digestive biscuits
10 tablespoons of melted butter

Pre-heat oven to 350F

• Crush the biscuits and mix the melted butter in. 
• Pack it in a round 9 inch spring form pan, making sure you get the side walls too. Grease the sides and bake it for 10 mins. Set a side to cool. 
• Melt the chocolate with the double boiler technique and set aside to cool. Beat the cream cheese until fluffy and add the sugar, scrape the sides every so often. Beat in sour cream, vanilla, Bailey's Irish Cream. Beat in the melted chocolate, then add the eggs one at a time. Remember to scrape the sides. 
• Pour the mixture into the cooled crust. 
• Bake the cheesecake for 60 minutes, until the outside is set but the centre still has a little jiggle to it. Allow the cake to cool down fully before putting it in the fridge over night. 
• Garnish the cake with chocolate shavings. 

The balance between chocolate and cream cheese was just perfect. Everyone loves chocolate and I wanted the cake to be more chocolate dominant. The hint of Bailey's was sensational and having seconds was mandatory.

 I still feel that there could be some more improvements because as cheesey as it made sound, design is always a process. So give me a shout. =)

I have been meaning to update my blog for a long while but personal business came up and I had to deal with that first. So unprofessional, I know but here I am! And welcome to my utopia. Thankfully, I have the time to finish off the weekend with a nice post.

Sadly, I have been as active as I should but I did mange to spend some time in the kitchen. I baked a Bailey's chocolate cheesecake. I swear one day I am going to invest in a awesome camera but till then you will have to bare with me.

In order to make this cake a little bit more fun and personal. I mixed two recipes together, Jamie Oliver and Anna Olson. The reason being is that, I really love the way Jamie makes his base all you need is:

Base:
9 oz digestive biscuits crushed
11 tablespoons of butter 

Bake for 10 minutes at 350F

Every time I use this base, I get smiles and tears of joy all the time. Its packed with the aroma of butter mixed with freshly baked biscuits (drool).

For the filling:
6 oz semisweet chocolate
3 oz dark chocolate
3 pkg cream cheese
2 cups of sugar
1 cup sour cream 
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
60 ml baileys 

Olson always taught me that if I wanted to make a recipe more personal, add a little spice. ;) The baileys was seriously a nice kick and added the 18+ to the whole cheesecake experience.  The texture was very smooth, the sugar didn't over power the filling at all but instead the chocolate was very dominant which I loved. I got nothing but good remarks on this cake. Honestly, I was quite scared when it came out because the center was still very "jiggly" and the filling almost topped over the rim of the pan!

As a bonus, I baked a batch of macarons for the girls of the party. These are always "wow factor" desserts. Every time I bring them out, everyone would crowd around and they'd be gone in less than 60 seconds. I did spot a small error during the process of baking these. For future reference, I highly recommend you to process the icing sugar and ground almonds if you want a smooth and clean shell. Otherwise you will get a bumpy texture which is not pleasing to the eyes at all. Secondly, I tried my best to mix the colour brown but I didn't add enough food colouring and it turned out peachy. =( Which didn't go very well with the coffee cream filling. Blah oh well, now I know.

'Till the day I get a new camera, you guys will have lay your eyes on poorly designed apple cameras. =( Maybe I should have thought of that first instead of buying a new guitar. Oh well. I'll bake it till I make it if that makes any sense.

Keep on coming back for more. =)
P.S. That is my friends Husky. Her name is Holly. Say hi Holly, you are on my blog! =)