Fudgey Brownies with Dark Chocolate Ganache

And so I continue my journey to find my ideal chocolate brownie. I've only made brownies to three recipes so far (first, second and third recipes). I like the first recipe the best, but it seems to be very temperamental. I haven't gotten the same result twice. The second one was a bit too cakey for my liking, while the third one suffered from the use of the oven in Brunei Hall and was a bit undercooked. Plus, it was also too sweet for me. Very very rich that one.

Anyway, in the week I had in Brunei, one of my sisters insisted on making a chocolate brownie. After looking through the various ones I had collected, I decided to make this one, which had a chocolate ganache topping. Mmmmm! Here we go!

What you need:
1 cup butter, melted (227g)
2 cups granulated sugar (400g)
4 eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup cocoa powder, sifted (86g)
1 cup all purpose flour, sifted (125g)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the ganache:
3/4 cup whipping cream, unwhipped (180g)
227g bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces (we used semi-sweet chocolate chips)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

What you do:

1. Whisk together butter, sugar, and eggs just until blended. Add cocoa and vanilla and blend until combined.
2. Mix together remaining ingredients. Add to liquid mixture and mix until just combined.
3. Spread batter into lightly greased 9x13" pan. Bake at 180 C for 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out with fudgey crumbs adhering to it. The centre will still look moist. Do not overbake, or you might lose the fudginess. Cool to room temperature.
   
4. Meanwhile, boil whipping cream. Add chopped chocolate and stir with a rubber spatula until smooth. Stir in vanilla. Refrigerate until spreading consistency, about 1 hour. Continue to refrigerate if mixture is too thin. If too firm, allow to sit on the counter for a few minutes.
5. Smooth ganache onto brownies. Allow to set for 15 minutes and cut into squares.

Supposedly, this brownie can be mixed together in 10 minutes. I didn't time us, or anything, but excluding measuring everything out, it really didn't take long at all. Melted chocolate is not used, unlike the other brownie recipes, so that skips out one step that usually takes a bit of time.

Because we didn't have a large enough pan and I didn't want the brownies to be too thick, we used two pans. I think one was about 8x8 inches and the other one was slightly smaller. We managed to fit both into the oven at the same time, so that wasn't a problem.

At first, I wasn't sure whether to make the ganache or not, since most of my other brownies were usually served plain anyway. But when these brownies (together with the v6.5 chocolate chip cookies) were decided to be the dish we would be bringing to a relative's house for sungkai, I thought.... meh, might as well make them prettier.

We had a bit of a glitch when we couldn't find whipping cream in a small enough portion though. There was a small bottle of Paul's whipping cream available at Supasave, but for some reason, that one contained gelatine... :S Since we weren't sure whether it would be okay to use or not, we decided to use Nestle canned cream in the end.

At this point, I had to go off to do an errand, so it was my sister who made the ganache, but she said it wasn't too hard to make. And yes, looking at the instructions, it really is quite easy. The only problem is that the chocolate must be in small enough pieces to melt easily. Because we didn't have much time before we had to go, we just used chocolate chips but this can turn out expensive. You can either chop the chocolate or grate it, whichever one you think is easier. Anyway, after spreading the ganache on the top and leaving it to set, we decided to make it look brighter (hehe) by adding rainbow sprinkles, before cutting them into 1-inch pieces and placing them in mini cupcake cases. Don't they look gorgeous??

We had to wait till it was time to break our fast before I could try out the brownies (where they had competition in the form of an iced chocolate cake - which didn't have rainbow sprinkles, haha!) but the wait was tooooooooooootally worth it! These are the BEST brownies I've ever made. Seriously seriously. The brownies were fudgey without being undercooked-gooey, yet still retained a crunchy crust. The ganache made it even more scrumptious. Since its so easy to make, I definitely suggest you make a topping if you make these brownies. Makes it even more worth it.

The brownie was tested over a series of age groups, ranging from old (yet young inside! ;) ) to the very young. It garnered the most attention from the teenaged boy sector, where it was always always met with cries of "Awesome!!". Seriously. The word people used the most to describe this brownie is Awesome. And it really truly is awesome. The bigger tray was finished by the end of the sungkai event, while the smaller one was finished by my brothers and our neighbours in a midnight snack event, haha. Again, it was described as "Awesome". This brownie recipe is highly recommended.

Not sure if I will be continuing my brownie journey at this point, it seems to be much easier to get a result you want compared to cookies, haha. But I suppose it can't hurt. Until my next post (which also involves chocolate!), Ihsan is out. :)

Quote of the day: Stress wouldn’t be so hard to take if it were chocolate covered.

Luscious Chocolate Cupcakes with Creamy Chocolate Frosting

I know. I promised a post a day before I leave, but whoops! Turned out I was too busy, plus my sisters commandeered my computer to play the Sims 2 "before Ka San belayar balik" (was their excuse).

Anyways, after the success of the brownie cupcakes last time, for the sungkai event at our place Ka Num wanted to make another batch of cupcakes that were similar, but less sweet, which was the main complaint of the previous ones. So, she decided to make these ones, which originally used a dark chocolate ganache which isn't all that sweet, but somehow or other, she decided to go for a creamy chocolate topping instead. In any case, here we go!


What you need:
113g butter, softened
1 and 1/4 cups sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoons vanilla
2/3 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

For the chocolate frosting:
50g chocolate, melted
1 cup whipping cream

What you do:

1. Beat butter until softened. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
2. Add eggs one at a time, beating until well-combined each time.
3. Measure the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder into a small-sized bowl and whisk to combine.
4. Measure out the milk and vanilla and stir to combine. Add about a third of the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture and beat to combine. Add about half of the milk/vanilla mixture and beat to combine.
5. Continue adding, alternating between dry and wet and finishing with the dry. Stir in the chocolate chips. Scoop batter into cupcake cups about 1/2 full. Bake at 180 C for 22-25 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
6. To make the icing, whip the cream until it doubles in size. Add the melted chocolate and carefully fold in until completely combined. Pipe or spread onto the cupcakes. Sprinkle with sprinklables if desired.
   

I completely forgot to take a picture of these cupcakes in all the hustle and bustle of getting the house ready, so had to make do with some pictures one of my cousins had taken. Unfortunately, she didn't have any of the finished product, but they look very very similar to the brownie cupcakes anyway. In fact, many people thought they were the same thing.

Anyway... because of the different frosting in this case, these cupcakes are much less sweeter than the previous ones, which was very well received. I didn't come across any children licking off only the frosting, so that is a good sign, haha. What the children did want was the rainbow sprinkles, which proved to be very popular. Ka Num didn't have time to sprinkle the post-tarawih batch of the cupcakes, so when I offered to sprinkle some on for the kids, they were following me around until I gave them the sprinkles, haha. They do make the cupcakes look much prettier, I suppose.

To tell you the truth, I can't quite tell what the difference between these cupcakes and the brownie cupcakes is. Besides the icing, I suppose. These ones might have been a bit more fudgier maybe because of the chocolate chips added, but both were very chocolatey, very rich. Its a good thing we made both into mini cupcake-size, because any bigger and it might have been a bit too much for people to eat comfortably. :P

I actually think using a chocolate ganache would have been much better, but don't worry! That will be coming up in my next post, but don't worry, its not yet another chocolate cupcake recipe. ;) In the meantime, Ihsan is out!

Quote of the day: There are four basic food groups - milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles.

Raspberry Shortbread with Custard

I've only ever made shortbread once before, and sad to say, it wasn't a success. Probably I made it too thick, or the oven wasn't the best, but the bottom half of the dough wasn't quite cooked. Not only that, the dough itself was rather bland and generally icky.

However, after having so many baking successes recently, I thought it was time to give shortbread another try. I came across a recipe that sounded really nice here, so I thought... yeah, why not? :D Because the dough in the recipe is grated, instead of being pressed into the pan, it will apparently make a firm yet light and crispy shortbread. So... here we go!

What you need:
455g unsalted butter, slightly softened
4 egg yolks
2 cups granulated sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup raspberry jam, at room temperature - I substituted with frozen raspberries
1/4 cup icing sugar

What you do:

1. Cream the butter in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or using a hand mixer) until soft and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and mix well.
2. Mix the granulated sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add to the butter and egg yolk mixture and mix just until incorporated and the dough starts to come together.
   
3. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and form into two balls. Wrap each ball in plastic wrap and freeze at least 2 hours or overnight (or as long as a month, if you like). Meanwhile, heat the oven to 350 degrees.
4. Remove one ball of dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it by hand or with the grating disk in a food processor into the bottom of a 9x13-inch baking pan or a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Make sure the surface is covered evenly with shreds of dough.
5. With the back of a spoon or a flexible spatula, spread the jam over the surface, to within 1/2 inch of the edge all the way around - or use a piping bag. Remove the remaining dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it over the entire surface.
6. Bake until lightly golden brown, 50 to 60 minutes. As soon as the shortbread comes out of the oven, dust with icing sugar. Cool on a wire rack, then cut in the pan with a serrated knife.
   

I accidentally used caster sugar instead of granulated sugar when I made this. Because I was worried that it might be too sweet because of that, I decided to mash up frozen raspberries instead (sooo expensive!) and used that.

When this came out of the oven, the top was a lovely golden brown crust. I checked whether it was done by giving it a good shake to see if it jiggled, which it didn't. I guess I should have really made sure by poking a knife in the middle, but... I didn't. And I really really should have. Because when it came to cut it, I found that while the top was nice and crusty, the bottom was all cakey. It might have been because my baking tin was slightly smaller than the recommended one, making the shortbread too thick. Nuooooooooo! Another failure with shortbread...

Or so I thought. Ibu managed to save it, somehow! (Ibu awesome! <3 style="font-style: italic;">sungkai was at our house that day) I didn't have the time to take a taste of it, and can't seem to find the leftovers, but people seemed to like it well enough, so yay! Of course, if you manage to make the shortbread properly, you don't really have to have the custard, but it manages to curb the tartness of the raspberries well. You can just serve it on the side, instead of pouring it over the whole thing, if you wish. :)

Doesn't it look lovely? :D

Quote of the day: He who comes first, eats first. [Familiar as - First come first served.]

Tomato, Mozzarella and Pesto Paninis

This was the post I was supposed to publish before I left for Brunei, haha. Oh well, never mind. Better late than never.

Anyway... after a whole year of having nasi goreng as a packed lunch, I got really really tired of it. Add to the fact that I lost my access to a microwave for the last month or so, I got tired of the cold rice I had to have instead and decided to find something else to make. One was the tomato and mozzarella croissant you've seen before. Another was this... a panini using left-over tomatoes and frozen pesto. Here we go!

What you need:
2 panini buns (?)
2 tablespoons green pesto
Fresh mozzarella cheese, torn into smaller pieces
6 small tomatoes, cut into thin slices

What you do:

1. Cut the panini buns into half horizontally.
2. Spread one tablespoon of pesto onto the cut side of one half.
3. Place the tomato slices onto the side with pesto, then place the cheese over the tomatoes.
4. Place the other side of the bun over the whole thing, then press down lightly with your hands.
5. Heat a frying pan over medium heat, and grill the paninis until the cheese has melted. Eat immediately, or leave to cool and place into a container as a packed lunch.

There. Nice and easy. Quite similar to the combination I had last time, only I don't have chicken this time round. I quite liked it, even with no meat, which is rather surprising. But good.

And um.... that's it for now! Haha, can't say too much about this, really. Look out for more sweet treats, coming up tomorrow! Or maybe even tonight!

Quote of the day: Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power, has that ability to comfort.

Brownie Cupcakes with Milo Buttercream Frosting

I know. I promised a post before I left for Brunei. And even though I was very very bored once I passed up my project write-up, for some reason, I still didn't manage to find the time to post, somehow. And since I arrived in Brunei, I've been very very busy, so... apologies to all those who have been eagerly waiting to see more delectable creations.

But no worries. For the past few days, me and my sisters have been making sooooo many things, so I'm sure you all will have plenty of things to drool over during this time of fasting. Oh, and Selamat Berpuasa to everyone!! Anyway... here we go!

What you need:
86g unsalted butter (6 tablespoons)
315g semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped - of the highest quality you can find
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (optional)

For the buttercream:
170g unsalted butter, softened
450g icing sugar
Milo, to taste
1 to 2 tablespoons milk, if needed

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners. Set aside.
2. Melt the butter and 225g of the chocolate in a microwave, or in a saucepan over low heat. Stir until smooth, and set aside to cool slightly.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar. Add flour, cocoa and baking soda. Stir in the melted chocolate until combined. Stir in the remaining chocolate and nuts, if desired.
4. Fill the cupcake liners 3/4 full with the batter. Bake until a firm crust forms on the cupcakes, about 20 minutes.
5. Place the tray on a wire rack to cool for about 10 minutes, then remve cupcakes from pan and continue to cool on the wire rack.
6. Ice the cupcakes with a generous amount of frosting. Decorate with sprinklables, if desired. :)
   
7. To make the buttercream icing, cream the butter in a bowl until smooth. Gradually add the icing sugar and milo, beat until smooth. If too thick to spread, beat in 1 to 2 tablespoons of milk. Makes 3.5 cups, enough for 12 standard cupcakes

In the one year I've been away, my sisters and cousins have really gotten into making cupcakes. You've seen a few of the cupcakes we made in London before (see here and here). Of course, I'm always looking for the chance to try out and of course, post, new baked goods, so I'm rather pleased about this development.

This particular cupcake is a safe combination of chocolatey cake with sweet icing. Instead of making 12 standard-sized cupcakes, we made them mini-sized as they were for a sungkai function at a relative's house. We got about 100 cupcakes from a batch. Slightly more troublesome to make, but they were so cute! Quite handy for Raya, I should think!

The main problem was that the icing was very very sweet. Very sweet. Instead of just spreading a thin layer over the tops of the cupcakes, we decided to pipe a swirly pile over the cupcakes which looks adorable but equals to a big icing-to-cupcake ratio, haha. Of course, since they were mini-cupcakes they weren't too bad, but some adults found it much too sweet for their liking. On the other hand, some kids licked off only the icing, leaving the cupcake itself behind, haha. So its a win-lose situation, I guess? In any case, the cupcakes were a hit, especially with the smaller kids which is really not surprising.

Myself, I thought it was too sweet, yes, as buttercream usually is. I really liked the cupcake though. Very chocolatey and moist. If it had been standard-sized, it might have turned out to be too rich for my taste, but by making it bite-sized, you're not all that overwhelmed by it. Which is great!

We didn't really encounter many problems in the baking (well, actually, I wasn't the one who baked this. I was only there for company, haha. I did help frost the cupcakes though. :D). The first batch did collapse, making very dense chocolatey nests, but that was because they were taken out of the oven a bit too early, I think. The rest of the cupcakes were nice and flat-topped, which makes them easy to ice. I thought the texture was a bit denser and chewier than cupcakes usually are, but I guess that is because of the chocolate. Besides, I wouldn't have liked it if it had a more sponge-like texture anyway.

So yes... that's our first cupcake for the week! Look out for more varieties (and of course, non-cupcake posts, even) coming up soon! I am leaving for UK very soon, but will try to post daily before I go. :)

Quote of the day: Diet tip - Eat a chocolate bar before each meal. It'll take the edge off your appetite and you'll eat less.