Daring Bakers - Challenge FIVE!

The challenge for September is ... *drum roll* ... Lavash Crackers!

...

*crickets chirping*

...

WHUT??

Haha. If that too was your reaction when you saw Lavash, then don't worry we're both similarly ignorant of Armenian-esque cuisine. I logged on to The DB forums after washing the chocolate pastry cream off my hands full expecting to be hit with another diabetes inducing round of chocolate, cream and butter, but was pleasantly surprised by my first savoury challenge!

More bready than cracker-ish but still tasty!

No lengthy pic-fest this time guys SORRY I'm too lazy to photoshop and prettify all the pictures like I usually do. I'll just leave you guys with a video of how you work your lavash dough in the true armenian way!!



Or maybe not.

Food Review: Patisserie Le Renaissance

I HATH BEEN REDEEMED!

LIFE ONCE AGAIN HAS MEANING!!

I was so upset that the Lindt macarons sucked so frakkin much that today after uni I caught the earliest bus to The Rocks and navigated the winding paths of the Old City area to find a little French patisserie French-Man told me was quite exquisite.

Yes. I take my food seriously.

This patisserie, Le Renaissance, which sounds amazing pronounced in the true Francais accent, is according to French-Man a very decent place for pastries, comparable to true Parisian pastries (he would know).

When I walked in the shop I was really nervous cos I knew this was where all the rich business dudes hung out for coffee and I was in full povo wear with not so much cash on hand. But I went in anyway.

The cakes were so beautiful! Oh! The presentation! Ah! The prettiness! What patisseries in the inner west (a.k.a. The Ghetto, i.e. where I live) so miserably fail to realise is that it is ALL about the presentation. And the taste too. Of course.

I bought an Opera Cake (just for the sake of all you Daring Bakers ;D I just had to!) as well as one of their resident creations, whose name I can't quite remember.

Not to sound too bitchy or anything, but the cakes were not all that great. I think I could have done better with alternate choices. Opera cake had a strangely high ratio of jaconde to buttercream and chocolate creme patisserie so the experience was too much of overwhelming greasy mouthfeel. Maybe it's meant to be like that. The other cake was amazingly well presented but the outer sponge was quite dry. They could have done much better.

And now, to the core of my post.

They had...

Macarons.

*Heart skips a beat*.

I bought 6 macarons. 2 chocolate, 2 passionfruit, one jasmine and one vanilla. I was out of the dreamy fantasy state. Like a divorcee who is no longer under the illusion of blind romance.

But I had hope!

I went home, and when it was time to break my fast, I tried the chocolate maracon.

Joy!

It was good! Full and chewy and strong and chocolatey and enjoyable to eat~! The shell was crunchy without being dry and the inside was soft yet chewy and not sickly sweet and smooth but with texture ah!

And then there was the passionfruit macaron! Ah! What a dance on the tastebuds that was. Amazing amazing AMAZING flavour. Vanilla was very enjoyable as well. Jasmine was a bit too floral and too sweet but still enjoyable in small amounts.

I am happy.

Food Review: Lindt Cafe Macarons...

[Due to popular demand I HAD to finish the story :P]

My brother works at the Reserve Bank in the city at Martin's Place and it happens to be right next to one of the Lindt Cafe's in Sydney. He gets to eat their tasty stuff often. Lucky!

Anyway, one day I found out that Lindt Cafe has MACARONS! Yes! Those evil little circular devil pastries that dance all over the internet and poke their creamy little tongues at me full knowing I'll never get to taste a real one any time soon. Did I tell you how I bugged my french-uncle/soon-to-be-boss to get me some Laduree macarons from Paris??

YES I AM THAT OBSESSED.

So one day I bugged my brother enough and he finally went and got some for me. Man I was like crapping my pants in excitement. I was like SO WET. I practically smashed the door down when I got home to taste one.

I carefully took one out of the box...

...and took a bite.

[Edit]

Where was I? Oh yes.

I took a bite...

And was crushed. So many hours of fantasising about wonderful flavours and Lindt's reputation and whatnot but unfortuntately only one word can describe the experience.

Meh.

Just so incredibly boring. The shell was so dry and felt very flaky and gross in my mouth. Not a pleasure to eat at all. Such an unfortunate texture. So hollow! It was like a air bag that once the shell cracked it just all fell apart in my hand.

Right now I'm consoling telling myself that it's just Lindt that sucks and that in Paris they'll taste like I fantasise but until I go there, we'll have to wait and keep trying to make them.

Sigh.

Like a magical child!

I made that blog post title just cos I felt like it.

And it feels bloody hot.

One of my uni friends is really pissing me off lately. Sigh damn emotional religious people! So bipolar!! Far out. And I'm totally allowed to make bipolar jokes mind you. It runs in the family. I'll tell you that story another time. ^^;;

Dude I totally didn't fail accounting. HAHA.

And I had an actuarial exam today. TOTALLY SMAsHED IT. Studying hours and hours straight totally works people. Try it!

Notice no theme to this post?

First Time Voting

I voted for the first time on Sunday. Local elections. I felt like, all important and stuff. And oh so democratic. It was really strange too. Like my opinion actually counted or something. And not having to vote the way anyone else voted or wanted me to vote, but voting for who I felt was the right candidate (or who I was fooled into voting). And all that other happy jazz.

It was funny cos I didn't know the policies of any of the candidates at all. People were crowding around me and everyone else handing me pamphlets of how to vote for Labor or Liberal or this particular independent or watever. I comtemplated voting based on how aesthetically pleasing the candidate was but then I realised that that was a tad bit too Fahrenheit 451 than I'd like to be comfortable with.

When people ask me who I voted for I say, "Obama".

It's so trendy isn't it?

US Financial Crisis.

Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch is bought by the Bank of America for $50 billion dollars. Who would have thought that within 6 months there would only be two of the Big 5 investment banks left. If something as big as Lehman Brothers can fail, who is safe? The gigantic farce of financial derivatives is slowly being unravelled! They always seemed slightly dodgy anyway. I would be quite scared if I was living in America. Nonetheless, exciting times for finance students!

LOLZ

L-O-L. Did YOU KNOW that MS TRUNCHBULL (a.k.a. the physical manifestation of ALL THAT IS EVIL) is actually Laura Thyme from Rosemary & Thyme?? LIKE WTF! Amazing what a bit of make-up can do haha!

From eating babies...

...to all Prim and Proper! LOL!

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Roald Dahl's novels?

Another language update...

Hello once again happy people! I have a macroeconomics quiz tomorrow that I haven't studied for but who cares! Blogging is fun! And I should do a language major instead! But enough wishful thinking. More language study! Maybe then I can fluently speak many languages like londongirl! Once again, my chosen 7 languages, arranged in order of increasing hopelessness!

Malay: I have done absolute nothing since my last post! And hence I know absolutely nothing more! I want to buy some Malay primary school textbooks, a Malay grammar book and a English-Malay dictionary. Same for Arabic, Japanese and French.

Arabic: Better, better! My Lebanese friend was speaking to his mum on the phone and I understood a few lines! WOOHOO! That was coolness. Except that slang Arabic is a bit different to the more formal Standard Modern Arabic I'm learning. Getting better. Learnt lots of pronouns and attached pronouns and stuff like that.

Japanese: Notice how Japanese has trumped French since last time?? HEHE. That's cos I learnt all my hiragana!! I had such a amazing turning point magical moment in Japanese. Remember these cool Japanese stuffed-toys I blogged about a while ago? Well, I was looking at them again recently and I realised that I COULD READ THEM:

Here's a picture of it posed conveniently in front of my blog.

ZOMG! IS THAT HIRAGANA?

TO-U-FU! Tofu! So they ARE called tofu-toys!

That made me so happy. Like REALLY happy. I went nuts for a while and no-one could understand my joy and everyone was making fun of me. But I didn't care! Epiphany! I have broken into a whole new world!

[P.S. Nothing new on French, German or Mandarin. Pew pew.]

On the topic of Japanese-ness...

I went to Animania '08 again!! Second round!! Woohoo! And this time I cosplayed! HAHAHA. It wasn't really that fun to be honest. But I'm an attention whore and people give you attention when you're dressed up as a snake demon so anyway. Here are my two entries for "Stare at Me and Take Pictures" a.k.a. "I Wish I Was On Project Runway":

"Orochimaru".

"No-Face".

And me! Being WAY too Asian!

Ramadan Cream!

Ramadan Cream! No, not a special desert made during this most auspicious of months, but rather how lazy people with bad Arabic pronunciation (i.e. moi!) say, "Ramadan Kareem!" which basically means, "Happy Ramadan!"

I've been meaning to make a post on this since Monday, but have been putting it off, but since I saw fellow Daring Baker pixxienix do a post I thought, "Darn it! Do it already!" And so I did.

Haha! Reading last year's Ramadan post made me laugh. Quote:

Once again, the holiest of months is upon us: Ramadan!

At this time of the year, Muslims (like me!) all over the world fast (sawm), and refrain from eating, drinking, sexual relationships, bitching about other people, and being naughty in general. 'Tis the month to be pure and holy. Amen.

Anyway, if anyone of your friends/acquaintances/family-members suddenly stops eating during the day for a month from sunrise till sunset, and has really bad empty stomach breath chances are they're fasting.

Make them really nice food! They'll appreciate it! ;)

Daring Bakers - Challenge FOUR!

And the challenge for August is ... *drum roll* ... Eclairs!

This month's challenge is Chocolate Eclairs, a Pierre Hermé recipe (GASP!) from Dorie Greenspan's book "Chocolate Desserts By Pierre Hermé" sexily hosted by Tony Tahhan and MeetaK.

You guys are in for a treat today! HEHEHE! Happy Ahmad had a lot of fun with this challenge. Especially with the photography too! I'm getting much better with lighting and whatnot and as you shall see, the pictures in this episode of The Daring Baker are probably the best I've done so far. This time around I'll not try to talk to much and let the pictures do the narration.

Anyway, time for obligatory background check, eclairs are basically choux pastry (read: shoo pastry) filled with a filling, in this case chocolate pastry cream, and optionally topped with chocolate glaze. Choux pastry is so easy to make, and its so amazing too since it puffs up insanely much using only its own steam (no baking powder! GASP.) Pate a choux, as it is also called, can go from this ...

... to this ...

... with only heat! Brilliant isn't it!? ^_^;;

But before you make your pastry shells, old experienced me suggests you make your filling first (especially if it is a pastry creme, since they need time to chill) to save yourself lots of heartache and frustration. Especially if your DAMN F*#%IN$ PASTRIES KEEP FREAKIN' COLLAPSING *Bashes head against counter-top*.

Ahem. Moving along.

Making Your Chocolate Pastry Cream:

The base of a good pastry cream is good fresh milk.

Stir continuously until it reaches a boil. Supposedly a "rolling boil" but I have no idea what that means. *Shrug*. Do you like my cool nifty whisk gadget? IKEA!

On the side, break some eggs and steal their yolks.

Throw some cornflour over them to stop their complaining.

Oooo! Pretty close up shot!

I should at this point in time, despite you having so much fun violating your eggs, remind you to keep stirring your milk, lest you end up with a nasty skin layer. Which has to be manually removed, and ends up looking ...

... slightly disturbing.

Whisk the egg yolks, and add them to the milk ...

... whisking continuously until ...

... it becomes thick and creamy-licious. Mmmm!

Melt your dark chocolate and pour it in (with one hand and camera in the other hand. Haha. My camera ended up so sticky by the end of this.)

Stir, then add soft butter...

Stir stir stir somemore and then you get the most delicious chocolate cream filling EVER. It's SO GOOD. I kept eating it with a spoon even though I hadn't even made my eclairs yet! Haha.

Be sure to chill. It's way tastier cold. Well, I think anyway.

Now for Step TWO!

Making Your Choux Pastry:

Melt your butter in your milky-water as quickly as possible to avoid water loss. Once I even melted my butter in the microwave and poured it in the milky-water. It was a good idea I think.

Then add your flour ALL at ONCE in one great floury flourish!

Stir over low heat until it gathers into a ball and unsticks from the sides. This little guy needs a bit more drying. Not quite together yet.

Add your eggs one at a time (LOL I really should practise what I preach haha) and use a mixer (or if your a masochist use a wooden spoon) until it becomes smooth. Here's where choux pastry gets a bit tricky. Because chickens are weird and can't make perfectly identical eggs all the time, you might not need all of the egg. You kind of need to make a judgement about how thick you want your pastry to be. I like to think the ideal point is where it can be piped and hold its shape with only slight drooping. But then again, I usually make things up as I go along.

Love this picture. And there you have your "dough".

Part Three!

Baking Your Shells:

By this point, I had generally made the recipe about 6 times (no exaggeration) and so besides knowing the recipe off by heart, I felt like experimenting with different shapes to see what kind of results I got. The first is with spoons, the second a regular pipe, and the third is a squiggly sort of shape I saw in some video on the internet. And the results are...

Wow. Fat. LOL!

Damn top heating element. Keeps burning all my crap! Never fear happy people, I bought a new oven and it's coming soon! Weee! The top heating element actually made the things crispier, which I really liked.

I cut them in half and glazed their tops.

And last but not least...

The Result!

I love how this looks. But even more, the taste is amazing.

Full-frontal shot.

I tried my hand at desert plating. Looked cute, but I think I'm not quite there yet.

Extra Fun:

I've been dying to try my hand at making a Paris Brest since forever and I thought this was the perfect opportunity. Lots of leftoever choux! What to do!? That rhymed. By the way.

Hot, no?

*Phew*. That was fun. Now I have to go wash the damn dishes. My silly FAT family keeps eating all my food and never helps me clean up!

Blog Hiatus...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Lots of stuffs happening. Don't worry, will be back very soon. Daring Bakers post coming up too. And lots of other joyfulness as well! And lookie look! The counter is over a 1000 now. That's always a plus :D

TKD.

I joined the uni taekwondo club. Met a cool guy. Who then kicked me in the stomach 5 times. It hurts. But I like. *SADO MASO SADO MASO*.

Noodley fun!

Just did a linear algebra online quiz/assessment and got full marks WOOT!

Anyway, I feel like guiding my happy readers through my adventure of making Malay style fried noodles (Mi Goreng). One of my favouritests things (when my mum makes it anyway). I was really hungry and no one felt like making anything so silly old me got up and had all the fun.

Firstly, get a big fire going. BIG IS GOOD.

Get a wok. Put oil. Good child.

Dump in your daily allowance of eggs and watch them drown in cholesterol. Tasty.

Scrambled oil! Since there's more oil than egg!

Get a good onion and dice it up.

Fry the onions and add some potato too. For good measure.

Dump in some chillis; cos we Malays are just like that.

Add your prawns, or alternative meat of choice...

Now SHAZAM bam in all ur noodles!

Add the secret mix of sauces that every Asian momma knows and passes on to her kiddies!! AMAZING MAGICAL SECRET SAUCES.

Stir stir stir...

Voila! Tasty times!