Brownies!

I was going to make my sister a Victoria sandwich cake today. However, she wanted brownies, so I literally just finished making brownies with her from scratch. I'm not super happy with store-bought brownie mixes because of the PHO, so I altered this brownie recipe.

Unfortunately, the liquid in the brownie refused to disappear so I ended up cooking the brownie for 10 minutes longer than it should've been cooked [hoping that the liquid would evaporate] and I ended up pouring the liquid down the drain [it somehow leaked out of all of the brownie... it was like pouring water out of a can of fish or something]. I'm not sure whether the liquid was oil or water, but I'm guessing it's the water from the milk.

This is my recipe, and I believe that there should be NO MILK in it [I'll try it again another time and see what happens without milk].

1. 1 cup sugar

2. 2 cups whole wheat flour

3. 3/4 cup cocoa powder

4. 1/2 cup honey

5. 1 cup oil

6. 3/4 cup fat-free milk [which I believe caused all the liquid problems...]

7. vanilla

8. 1 tsp leftover salt

9. 1 tsp baking soda

Method:

1. Mix all non-liquid ingredients. Add in all liquid ingredients.

2. Bake at 350 F, bottom rack, for 20 minutes. This fit well in a 9.5 inch diameter circular pan.

3. A lot of bubbling and liquid is seen.

4. Bake for another 10 minutes and realise that none of the liquid has evaporated.

5. Take out pan and pour out liquid.

6. Let it chill....

I believe that steps 3-5 should be omitted if I don't use milk. I'll have to try that soon.

The brownies didn't turn out super sweet, which I really like but my sister kind of dislikes [she likes everything saturated with sugar or salt]. The inside is extremely moist and gooey, although the outside is kind of hard [sorta gluteny too, actually]. It is a beautiful colour and texture. I'm very happy with it, except for the weird part during the baking. My dad thought there was some coffee in it, which I suppose means that the cocoa flavour is quite pronounced.

My sister added a glaze of powdered sugar, vanilla and milk.

Kashi GoLean Crunch! Oatmeal.

Because I don't have a fridge in my room, I also don't have any milk in my room. So, I can't actually have cereal with milk, which is kind of sad because I do love cereal and milk together [next year, my fridge will be filled with milk, chocolate, fruit, tofu, and vegetables].

I didn't feel like eating dry cereal, or cereal with cold water, so I decided to have hot water [yes, I have an electric kettle!] with the Kashi GoLean Crunch! cereal that usually is super sweet and... crunchy... [and reminds me of popcorn].

To my amazement, after absorbing a whole cup of water, the cereal swelled! It tasted like oatmeal mixed with some brown rice, with a really fibrous texture. It was still extremely sweet and had that Kashi company flavour. It was quite a nice change, and I think I like it better than I like normal Kashi cereal.

In this case, why is there even Kashi oatmeal out there? It makes so much sense to just buy a lot of cereal...and watch it puff and cook into oatmeal, instantly. JUST ADD WATER! [Wow, I'm turning into a college kid!]

The Toaster.

I put two slices of bread into the toaster at Hill. It's a conveyor belt toaster. One piece of toast came out. The other piece disappeared. I peered into the toaster. I saw nothing. I shrugged it off and figured that perhaps I had hallucinated putting in two slices of bread.

I put in a new slice of bread. A minute or so later, it slid out of the toaster. I prepared to leave.

Then I noticed a rolled up piece of bread, wedged between the underside of the toaster and the end of the conveyor belt [on the external side of the toaster]. I assume that the piece of toast, instead of sliding off the conveyor belt on the internal side, ended up flipping into the underside of the conveyor belt.

That roll of toast was the most amazing invention.

Campus Food...What? Be a Scavenger...

A few weeks ago, there was this terribly organised event called "CampusFood Free for All". The theory was that there would be tons of restaurant food from catering services affiliated with CampusFood, and all this food would go to us frosh, along with nice glass mugs.

This failed in many many many aspects.

1. Squishing 1000s of people, including not frosh, into a small room (fire hazard=more than 200 people) evidently doesn't make sense.

2. Having people stand in line outside this room doesn't work, especially since nearly everyone cuts lines. This really irked me...but I suppose I should've expected it; after all, humans are greedy, jealous, and selfish. It's human nature. So, it was basically a blob of a line, and MA, who arrived maybe half an hour after me and TJ somehow ended up getting a mug an hour before we did.

3. Insomnia Cookies is on the floor below the room. Somehow, they only provided us with 3 boxes of cookies, which ended up going to people standing behind us.

4. Cream and Sugar didn't turn up.

5. Oh, you know what DID turn up? Pizza and sammiches. But it's not a Frosh Free for All! No no no, it's take-half-a-slice-of-pizza and a-small-chunk-of-a-cured-pig-flesh-sammich and don't-take-more! For some reason, they didn't expect this many frosh to turn up [hello? 2,500 frosh!! + all the other undergrads and grads...]

So it was a terrible waste of an hour although I did get a mug out of it. So then TJ and I went to Hill for actual dinner [At the "Free For All", we saw the first few people walking out with 3+ slices of pizza. We ended up each getting half a slice of pizza. So...]

At Hill, there was sushi! Although the rice tasted correctly seasoned with the vinegar, the rice was either overcooked [congee-texture], or undercooked [hard]. It was a nice change, although the server only gave everyone two pieces :(

There was also a cupcake with icky pink icing, no doubt because they want to use up all the leftover red food colouring from Commercialization Day. I've never seen Hill with cupcakes before, but I have to say that the cupcakes are bland, dry, and boring. Actually, I don't really think I tremendously like the baked goods at Penn Dining because the cookies are always hard and never moist/soft, and the cakes are as I have described. The pies are generally fantastic though and the mini doughnuts are quite nice because they have this flavour that reminds me of doughnuts that I used to eat in Australia and HK.

Late July Vanilla Bean and Green Tea Sandwich Cookies

I'm going to admit it; I was highly swayed by advertising. The phrase "Green Tea" caught my eye, and I believed that for once, I could buy a green tea flavoured cookie from a non-specialty store!

I was so upset when I realised that these sandwich cookies do not taste like green tea. Green tea is actually the last ingredient on the list. In fact, if it weren't for the placebo effect [after chewing on the cookie for simply ages and thinking, oh! Perhaps that bitter note was the green tea!], I would honestly just say that they are normal sandwich cookies.

Compared to Oreos, however, they are much more flavourful. The cookies are crunchier, more chocolately, and more crumbly textured [instead of the uniform texture of Oreos]. The vanilla filling isn't that waxy, actually tastes vanilla-ful, is less sweet, and really melts well in my mouth. It has dimension, unlike the Oreo cookie filling.

Of course, I may be swayed [yet again] by the fact that these are organic and reputedly made by one family [although how they get each cookie to look perfect with the indents and stuff is beyond a "one family operation", in my opinion, and as the website states that this is all cooked up by one mother, she should understand that other mothers/people in general don't like spending 2x the amount of money to buy something that is already unhealthy. Except for the mental-chillness of eating cookies, they are physically not really healthy, no matter what people say.