Bread and Butter Pudding

I was supposed to be packing my luggage and getting ready to head out to Seoul tomorrow. Unfortunately, my spouse was sick for the past few days. He was sick on and off since last week. Therefore, we decided to cancel our trip last night. He was supposed to be there for a short business trip while I just tagged along, and then spend the weekend shopping in Seoul. All these were not possible now. We took it rather optimistically though. We'll plan another trip later in the year. I was glad he has rested well today and had recovered.

Since I was home today, waiting for the timing to ferry my children, I decided to make Ann's Bread and Butter Pudding. I purposely made a trip to the supermarket to buy white bread since I've just ran out of them. I must say, the pudding tasted rather good even though it was slightly dry for me (as I only used 150g milk instead of 170g). It's like a comfort food (for not being able to go Seoul shopping!) LOL! Yummy!

Belgian Waffles

My eldest son loves waffles for as long as I remembered. Therefore, when ToTT had their waffle maker on sale, I convinced my hubby to go down and get the maker. Of course, the happiest person will be my son. That will mean he can have waffles anytime he likes it, without having to pay a pricey $10 for one with ice-cream in a cafe!

I must admit, the first experience of making the waffles wasn't very nice. I didn't brush the mould with oil as the salesperson advised not to. Gee, I spend about 20 minutes trying to get the batter off the mould. So, once bitten twice shy. I've learnt to be smarter. Hahaha... I begining brushing the mould with some oil, and the waffles turned out to be fantastic!

I adapted the recipe from Allrecipes, and modified it. The waffles was really crispy and was truly very fragrant even on its own! My son just couldn't get enough of it, and bugged me to make it everyday for him! I had to ration the waffles so that he won't over-eat them! If you have a waffle maker, I highly recommend you try this recipe, it's really one of the best I'd had! Even my sisters agreed that it was really very nice, despite the fact that I made it the day before, freeze them and re-toast them!

Recipe for Crispy Belgian Waffles, modified from Allrecipes.
Makes 6 waffles

Ingredients:
2 Whole eggs
60g Caster sugar
1 1/2tsp Vanilla extract
115g Unsalted butter, melted (I used cooking oil sometimes)
1tsp Salt
345g Self-raising flour
475g Whole milk


Method:

1. In a large bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar. Beat in vanilla extract, butter (or oil) and salt.
2. Alternately mix in flour and milk until blended well.
3. Let stand for 20 minutes.
4. Brush the waffle iron with cooking oil lightly. Pour mix onto hot waffle iron. Cook until golden brown and fluffy.
5. Serve with ice cream, or maple syrup according to preference.

Brioche Crown

I borrowed a bread book from the library called "Natural yeast 100% health homemade bread, famous store deco" (名店面包大公开). In Chinese, it means "Famous bakery's secrets" and it sounds good, isn't it? When I flipped through the contents, it has those step by step guide, and the chef was a Japanese. Don't we all adore Japanese foods?

Now, the flip side, the book is in Chinese. No English, just pure Chinese. And of course, I borrowed it because I saw that there are step by step guides, so it can't be too difficult right? Unfortunately, in most of the recipes, it uses 麦芽精. Now what the heck is that? Loosely translated, it is actually maltose extract. Where in Singapore can we find maltose extract? Well, not being disheartened, I realised that the portion of maltose extract used is only 2g for 800g of flour. So that means, I can safely omit this in my baking?

So I boldly proceeded with one of the recipe. I'm not one who dares to trent the unknown when it comes to baking actually. This is for fear that if it doesn't work out, I'll have to discard all the ingredients, which I view will be very wasteful. And so, I made my own translation of the ingredients and started to make Brioche.

According to Wikipedia, Brioche is a highly enriched French pastry, whose high egg and butter content give it a rich and tender crumb. It is "light and slightly puffy, according to the proportion of butter and eggs. It is made in the same basic way as bread, but has the richer aspect of a pastry because of the extra addition of eggs, butter, liquid and occasionally a bit of sugar."

Now, when I saw the quantity of the eggs and the butters used, I was shocked! But knowing that this is brioche I'm making, I went along and follow the recipe to the dot. I'll have to admit the last step of incorporating the butter was a total mess! Instead of mixing, the melted butter was splatting all over the mixing bowl and the dough was separately in lumps. It was a terrible sight. Then I tried using my hands to knead them for a while, but with no avail. Finally, I used a drainer to drain out the remaining butter. Then, the dough finally incorporated! Whew! For a moment, I thought there goes my ingredients!

It went through the normal proofing process, and finally had them baked! The brioche turned out to be really fragrant, soft and puffy! It was really nice on its own, especially when toasted lightly.

I'm sharing this recipe, and hoping that someone who had tried this, can share if there is anything wrong with the butter composition, or the method that I used. I checked through some brioche recipe and found that actually, the butter percentage (vs flour) was alright. Or it could likely be the way I mix it that it caused the butter to split from the dough.

Recipe for Brioche Crown, adapted from 名店面包大公开, pg 26.
Makes 12 large buns (recipe below is halved of the original recipe)

Ingredients

Pre-fermented dough
100g Bread flour
1.5g Instant Yeast
2g Salt
65g Whole milk

Method:

1. Mix milk and yeast first.
2. Then add flour and salt.
3. Mix well to incorporate into a dough.
4. Refrigerate it at 5C for 12-18hours. Otherwise, place it at 27C for 2 hours.

Main dough
400g Bread flour
50g Caster sugar
10g Milk powder
300g Whole eggs, beaten
10g Instant yeast
8g Salt
250g Unsalted butter, softened (I used up about 220g only, after I drained them out)

Method:

• In your mixer bowl, mix flour, sugar and milk powder together.
• Add the eggs (and 1g Maltose extract if you have) to the flour.
• Mix well. Leave it to stand for 30mins. At this stage, the dough is very sticky.
• Tear out the pre-fermented dough into small pieces and add it to the main dough, together with yeast and salt.

• Knead into a smooth dough.
• Then add in the butter. [At this stage, I add in all at the same time. Maybe it's good to add them in batches]
• Knead until it pass the window pane test. Then leave it to proof for 60mins. [Mine was ready after 45mins].
• Divide the dough into 12 equal portions. [Actually the size was really huge after baking. So 16 pieces might be just nice].

• Let it proof for another 30-45mins. [I proof mine for 45mins].
• Then use a scissor to snip patterns on the bun.

• Bake at preheated oven of 190C for 12-13mins, or until it turned brown.

Wholemeal Egg White and Cream Loaf Bread

I must admit, I'm really slacking in updating my blog. Well, actually not really. I have been baking the usual cakes and what-nots, therefore, I found no value add in updating my blog. Okay, my excuses. Pardon me.

I haven't been baking breads or buns for the longest time. I can only conclude that (1) I have other more important bakes (2) there isn't enough time for the bread process. Okay, enough of my excuses.

I'll just have to admit that this is a backlog. I made this Egg White and Cream Loaf Bread a couple of weeks back. Thanks to HBS for sharing the recipe. The bread was really soft, and there was a slight hint of cream/milk taste in it. To make myself less guilty, I used some wholemeal flour too!

[Pardon the colours on my photos. I'm still trying to find a suitable white balance for my lousy fuji film camera. o_o"]

I also want to share that quite sometime back, my dear friend, Doris, gave me some of her home-made chocolate pasta. Yes, it's chocolate pasta!! I really love the chocolate taste in the pasta, it's so chocky and it went well with the cream! It left a chocolate after taste, which made me think about it after I had them! I'll have to say, she gave me all the necessary ingredients, and I just have to follow her instructions to cook and eat! Thanks Doris! Now, I'll just have to convince my hubby to let me buy the pasta maker...  I shall make it my birthday wish, so that he cannot reject me! LOL!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I finally "threw in the towel" - I made Red Velvet Cupcakes (RVC). This was despite the fact that I knew how much red colourings it went into the cupcakes. The cupcakes were rather special. I can't really tell the taste of the cupcakes, except that it tasted rather good with the cream cheese frosting. Actually, it was a colleague who "inspired" me to bake this as he was raving about how great the RVC from Twelve Cupcakes were! I hesitated for a long time as the amount of colourings freaked me out!

The ultimatum to bake this RVC was when I watched "Chuck's Day Off" last week and saw how beautiful his RVC was! Initially, I wanted to bake using his recipe, however, as I do not have plain yoghurt on hand, I decided on Sonia's recipe instead. It's straight forward and simple!

So here it is. I made some modifications. As I wasn't able to find my cake flour, I replaced it with plain flour. I also used 2 tsps red colouring instead of 1 tbsp. I found that ChefMaster's colours are very strong. Just 2 tsps of red colouring made it so red! I shall reduce to 1 tsp the next time I try. The cupcakes turned out to be moist and yummy (if you will ignore the colourings). When I let my colleague tried it, he actually said it's as good as Twelve Cupcake's RVC! However, he commented that it has a bitter after taste. We concluded that it must be the taste from the colouring. Otherwise, I'm happy to know that it's good! Well, if you can convince yourself to bake RVC, then try this recipe. It's really good!