Orange Rock Cakes!

I don't know about you, but rock cakes were well-established in my childhood.  I knew what they were, like I knew of the existence of pancakes. I assumed that everyone had seen/eaten a rock cake before, especially with the popularity of the Harry Potter series. I made them in Food Tech, and I remember that my partner and I ended up with the honey version of the recipe, and our rock cakes were too doughy and bland. Other groups had varying amounts of sugar, and we all tried to get chunks from the group that made rock cakes with the highest ratio of sugar. I think that Ms. Revans was trying to teach us that we could vary sugar content to make healthier foods, but I don't think the message sunk in. I never used to be obsessed with food. Maybe it should've stayed that way.

THE KITCHEN SMELLS AMAZING! If I could capture smells for my blog, I'd have you room smelling like sweet, buttery dough right now. It's a distinct orange-rock-cake smell, highly unlike the aroma of chocolate chip cookies, and definitely distinct from the whiff of orange cake.

I got my rock cake recipe from Baking for Britain. I've been meaning to try this recipe for at least 2 (?) years, and today, because I wanted to make something British (to remind me of the lack of Britishness in New Jersey), I settled on this. AND NOW I HAVE A FRAGRANT KITCHEN!

The changes I made were:
1. Whole wheat flour instead of white flour

2. 50 g sugar instead of 75 g 

3. Raisins instead of candied peel and rind, because I didn't want to use an orange

4. Orange juice instead of an orange because the 2.84 L bottle expires in a month (we have 1.5 L left)

5. Baking time of 11 minutes at 350 F/180 C in an unpreheated oven on the lower shelf and then leaving the rock cakes in the oven (off) for some 30 minutes.

I remarked that one tablespoon of orange juice really DOES make a difference to the consistency of the dough. Before I put in the last tablespoon, the dough was slightly crumbly and dry. After merely ONE tablespoon of juice, the dough was gooey-er and stuck better together. Also, per usual for the winter, there were lumps of butter in the dough. This isn't a big deal, though, because [next part is highly unscientific and is highly speculated] when the rock cake is baking, the butter will melt and all that liquid will infiltrate the flour-y parts, so the end result is still a rock cake. When I was scooping the dough onto the pan, it smelled just like the rock cakes I made in Food Tech. I'm not really sure when else I've consumed rock cakes, but I know I definitely have, several times in my life.

They taste crunchy the way a rock cake should, yet have a springy, barely-moist center, have a great texture due to the whole wheat flour, aren't too sweet (the raisins add a nice touch), and are, as Baking for Britain says, "craggy".

25 (24 pictured, since I had already eaten one...) rock cakes that *drumroll* rock!


UPDATE:: 6 Jan 2012: Made two more batches of these because my mum loves them. Also, squeezing 1.8 batches onto that cookie pan above actually works! (The dough doesn't expand).

Gooey Cheese "Biscuits"!

Well, I finally removed myself from Penn's food blog [I never posted on there anyway] because its style was very different from mine, and I prefer to vent out everything on this blog. Sure, they get more readers [do they?], but this blog was made by myself. Also, there's a lot of Penn-Dining-Hall- bashing/insulting/burning in effigy on there. While I disagree with the meal plan that we are forced to buy, I do like the food.

I had about half a jar of mayonnaise remaining from the potato salad I made last week, so I decided to use it to make something. But what? I'm not particularly fond of mayonnaise in the first place, so I had to make something that everyone else in the family would eat.

I found a recipe for mayonnaise biscuits written by someone who I don't think I like [judging by her writing style and comments and the fact that she uses mixes for basically everything; okay, I'm being narrow-minded and mean here].

I used it as the basis of what I made, but I made it better! You know it! Sure, they are "biscuits" in the American conventional definition, but they're definitely pretty good. A bit oily, but kind of like cheesy potato patties [without the potato]. The picture below is the batter made following her recipe.

The following is my version! Note that these are not British biscuits. Those are sweet, and a synonym for those is "cookie".

Ingredients for 12 patty-type-American-"biscuits"

1. 14 to 16 tbsp mayonnaise [Please. Get. The. Fatty. Original. Kind.]

2. 1/2 cup of fat-free milk

3. 1/4 cup whole fat milk, put into jar and swirled around so that the last globs of mayonnaise can be used

4. 1 cup of self-rising flour

5. 2 big tbsp of 100% whole wheat flour

6. 1/2 tsp baking soda

7. 2 cups of shredded cheese!

8. Lots of garlic powder and herbs! No salt is fine in my opinion.

Method:

1. Mix everything except ONE CUP of cheese. You will get something that looks like the image above^ [the dark spots are dried herbs; I used oregano, basil, and thyme]. The dough should be like muffin dough, and very sticky. It doesn't taste that great when it is uncooked.

2. Spoon evenly into 12 muffin cups. Since I don't have muffin cups, I spooned them into tart shells. And a pumpkin-shaped mould.

3. Sprinkle remaining cup of shredded cheese over each spoonful of batter.

4. Bake for 14-16 minutes at 400 degrees F in an un-preheated oven. I never preheat my oven...

5. Leave everything in the un-operating oven for 15-20 minutes.

These biscuit-patty-gooey-thingys taste very cheesy, gooey, and a bit oily. They are not the conventional dry American biscuit that you get at fried chicken restaurants. The texture is extremely spongy [like a sponge cake!]. They are a bit puffy, but they didn't rise much in the oven.

Now it really looks like a pumpkin...

Tomato Biscuits!

On Friday, TJ, MA, JC and I went to the Penn Taiwanese Society Bubble tea Social. Unfortunately, since we went at 2:30pm [Oh, we got let out of class really early because we were all going to go see Noam Chomsky, but it turned out that we were supposed to preregister], there was NO MORE BUBBLE TEA. I didn't really mind because I was going for coffee with my HSOC peers and professor. Anyway.

Since we [well, TJ, mostly] looked extremely upset, they just gave us some food. Yay! I got some nori which was amazing since I LOVE dried, crunchy seaweed. I also got this:

Notice that there are holes in the back of each piece. I guess it's on purpose... because all of them had holes on the back. They were really pretty, in my opinion, for crackers/biscuits.

Now, they were crunchy and a tad tomatoey and oily.

Get this, though: they were SWEET. As in, there were sugar granules on them. I'm telling, you this was bizarre. Imagine drenching a slice of pizza or lasagne with a packet of sugar, and you'll get the picture. Get the taste, rather :P [<- tongue is out, to lick the food]. Unfortunately, it wasn't even a good pairing. Peanut butter and tortilla chips are a good pairing, yes, but this... wasn't.

Definitely a "Newtaste".

MS's Grad Party - Desserts!

Okay I lied. I WILL talk about MS's grad party, because it was truly the one with the most ethnically diverse foods [well. Apart from mine :P, but mine doesn't count]. This month, June, has been the most prodigal month of my life. No kidding. All that EXCESS food ["XS" as my chem teacher used to write, while we balanced out equations]... all that variety...

This is LEGIT Americana. Eat and party. Oh, and run away from exercise.

This is the stuff I've been missin' out since 2006, though I don't really know if I would've wanted partying to interfere with schoolwork. Maybe it was just better that I used to be antisocial, because by being antisocial, I would get all my work done.

But now that HS is over, I can party all I want!! This morning, JM came over for breakfast, I went for a super-long walk with MZ, JM and my bro and I went to the weight room... and it was all real chill, just hanging out and letting time slide by, without a sense of anxiety and procrastination.

Okay, so the dessert at MS's party was really sweet! She is Philippino, so there was a ton of ethnic food, which I love. Oh, there was a whole roasted pig... as a side note. MP commented on the irony that I found it enticing, but I basically blog about anything that interests me, food-wise... so here it is!

Glutinous rice pudding, with some brown sugar topping that was the reason the pudding tasted good. [I like corner and side pieces].

Mango trifle. It. Was. The. Best. Thing. There. Layers of mango and cream, patched up with sponge cake and crushed sweet biscuit pieces, and a crunchy top...

Pieces of trifle, with watermelon and the rice pudding.

I think that this was sweet grass jelly drink, with colourful tapioca balls inside. I am not sure, though.

Plantain wrapped in sweet pastry. It actually tasted like sweet potato pastry, for a second, but then I saw the seeds and the yellow filling. Oh, and the texture was not sweet potatoey. Plantains are awesome!

Eggplant parm; glutinous rice flour sweet bun, with a piece of processed cheese [It was sticky and nice until I got to the cheese]; soft taro pudding, coconut rice pudding - second favourite dessert there; some mini rice cake [see below] that I didn't like as much; upside down flan spongecake.

Another rice pudding, above which is the mini rice cake that I didn't really fancy.

Sponge cake! With flan on top! I love flan, in general, and the fact that this cake is absolutely beautifully shaped truly helped me to more helpings of it...

Plate of everything. The one in the bottom left is the coconut rice pudding, and I took the corner piece, with the crusty top and sides. I think that I love corner pieces because it has the widest range of textures.