Chocolate Chip Cake-Cookie Puffs!

I thought that it was a good idea to make a Victoria Sandwich cake. I weighed the sugar and butter and flour according to a recipe that I used around 7 years ago in Food Tech class, and I started mixing...

And then I realised that this was NOT going to work out because

1. The "batter" was the consistency of cookie dough.

2. The butter was globby.

3. The "batter" was brown, not yellowy-creamy-white, because I had used whole wheat flour instead of bleached flour.

4. I didn't have an electric whisk.

I'm not really sure why the batter worked out right 7 years ago, but completely failed when I tried to make it again. The method said to add the butter into the flour and sugar, rather than cream the butter and sugar first, which is what I'd usually expect to do.

So I added 3/4 cups of milk and then realised that the globby, pungent butter [Okay, the butter wasn't pungent, but I've decided that I don't like the smell of butter by itself. It needs to be creamed with sugar to smell good] was not going to somehow melt and homogenise into the mixture. I did not take a picture of it because it was terribly ugly.

So I added another 250 grams of flour... and make chocolate chip cake-cookie puffs!

It doesn't look like the dough is airy and not-dense, but it actually is. When you poke it, it should feels soft, and a hole should be easily made.

[Note the usage of my pie pan from "Santa"!!]

They aren't that sweet, which is good.

Ingredients for 45 cookie puffs:

1. 400g 100% whole wheat flour, or basically enough to make a dough that you can mould into balls with your hands - just keep adding flour by the tablespoon

2. 150g butter [about 1.5 sticks]

3. 3/4 cup milk

4. 3 eggs

5. 170g sugar

6. vanilla and chocolate chips, however much you want!

7. 1 tbsp baking soda

8. 1 tsp baking powder

9. Numbers 7. and 8. aren't that well tested out. Straight after baking, I could taste the baking soda, but after letting the cookies sit for two days, the taste of the baking soda is... gone...

Method:

1. [Don't do what I did, and mix the flour with the the butter...] Cream butter with sugar, and add eggs and vanilla. Add milk.

2. Add flour by the tablespoon.

3. Use hands to roll a dough. The dough SHOULD NOT STICK to the hands. Sift dough if you feel like it.

4. Add baking soda and baking powder.

5. The dough should be light, airy, NOT DENSELY PACKED, gooey, and feel plasticky.

6. Add however many chocolate chips you want.

7. Make balls the size of meatballs, maybe with a 3cm diameter.

8. Bake [see below]

I baked two batches. The first one was on the middle rack at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.

The second batch was on the bottom rack at 360 degrees F for 6 minutes, and then left in the oven for ~10 minutes.

They should be done when a fork stuck inside the centre of the cookie comes out clean. They will appear soft when taken out of the oven, but they harden.

Both batches turned out basically the same...The cookies do not spread in the oven. In other words, you can make them into any shape you'd like.

The image above includes both the first batch and the second batch... and they look the same. They also taste the same; cakey, airy, dry-ish, not bland, textured [due to the whole wheat flour] and not too sweet. They don't taste greasy or rich or saturated with chocolate chips. Actually, maybe they're more muffin-y than cakey. You decide.

My mother likes them. She thinks that they look like meatballs! They are quite 3D, due to the baking powder and baking soda, of course. These can totally be cakes...except that they don't require a cake pan or paper baking cups.

So, how are my baking skills? I can turn a failed cake recipe into a cookie recipe... I guess that shows that I'm not a complete neophyte, right?

And now to actually make a Victoria sandwich cake...

Starfish!

In my quest to make Goldfish crackers, I have instead ended up making Pufferfish and Starfish.

Yes, Starfish! I think I burned myself a few times in the process; right now, certain skin areas on my hands feel kind of raw. Ah well.

Before I started, I firmly decide that I would follow this recipe. However, since I am PIE-314 and enjoy taking risks that make my dishes terribe, I end up tweaking everything. Though, this time I had a legitimate reason for changing stuff. The butter wouldn't mix properly.

The recipe asked for room-temperature butter. Right now, room temperature is around18 degrees C. In science," room temperature" is around 20 to 25 degrees C. The butter was hard, and hard to mix. So I ended up adding more milk than the recipe called for.

I also ended up adding less flour, because the dough was extremely dry.

So I give you STARFISH! [or any other shape, really]. - 38 to 40 crackers!!!

Ingredients:

1. 1 stick of butter [half a cup]

2. 4 tbsp low-fat milk [or whole milk]

3. 2 cups of shredded cheese. Don't worry, it'll break into smaller pieces! :) I used a 4-cheese blend.

4. 1 cup of whole wheat unbleached awesome flour plus 4 to 8 heaped tsps

5. 0.5 tsp baking powder [I think I used around 0.8 tsp, though.]

6. A bit of salt and/or pepper.

7. A lot of herbs. I used dried oregano and thyme.

Method

1. Mix butter, milk, cheese, salt, herbs. The butter will be lumpy.

2. Add in one cup of flour and the baking powder. Mix for about 20 minutes. [Or, if you're gifted at mixing, unlike me, fewer than 20 minutes].

3. Keep adding flour by the tsp [I think I used around 8 tsp] until it easily forms a ball that isn't stick. At this point, you may use your hands to knead it. It should be pretty dense, not sticky, and easily rollable without having to flour the cutting board [I rolled out the dough onto a wooden cutting board. A floured surface should not be necessary].

4. Depending on how crispy/crunchy/soft you want these crackers to be, roll out the dough. Some of my crackers are thin and have the texture of Wheat-Thins, and others look like snickerdoodles [but taste like cheese puffs...].

5. For those without ovens, microwave for 30 seconds on one side and 30 seconds again after flipping. The taste is about the same as the baked version, although the baked version has semi-burned corners [which I like]. I made 38 starfish and 3 microwaved crackers. I suppose I could've made 40 starfish in total, but I really had to try microwaving them, to see how they'd turn out [for when I have to cook in college].

Alternatively, bake them at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes on the bottom rack, and leave them there until a fork poked in comes out clean. You can also bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes, but if you can all your pans onto the bottom rack [which I can't], 10 minutes of baking saves more energy than 15 minutes. You can put them really closely together, since they do not poof out or expand much.

Enjoy!!!

172 Posts!

They said I couldn't do it... they said I'd get bored... they said I'd forget my password or my account would get hacked... but they were wrong! PIE-314 lives and reeks of nearly-year-old food! [The blog is only a year old on the 24th, because that's when I was done with midterm exams]

Unfortunately, there was no "they". My parents are unaware my this blog, my siblings are indifferent, and I have perhaps gained 2 frequent readers to this blog. To them: Thank you!

In 2010, I created 172 posts, and if you count the one on 1.1.11 [which is about the food in 2010, and included food I made in 2010], I had 173 posts. This means that I posted on about 47.4% [or 47.1%] of the year, with August having a post on every single day.

This year I suppose I should blog more, since I've realised that I never actually write about the economic/social/scientific aspects of food that much... Most of the time it's me making really stinky jokes and using dramatic imagery to make your salivary glands release an excess of amylase. I also ought to take better pictures and I really want to figure out how to make these uploaded pictures larger! 400x300 pixels is much too small nowadays, although you can click to get a 10.2mpx or 5.0mpx version.

Anyway, I haven't been blogging recently because I've been hanging out with BV and today I did the unforgivable act of prolonging the shelf-life of stereotypes.

I made a sandwich. For a male person.

Actually, it was a half-baked attempt, because it was only one slice of bread spread with peanut butter. Controversial or not... I'd gladly make him more sandwiches. He said he'd cook for me too, so that's cool :D.

So, here are some pictures of Chowder from Chowder. I love to watch Chowder!

New Year Party!

First post of 2011! I will now post about my "birthday party" on the 31st of December 2010. It's actually not my birthday on the last day of the year [but I do know someone who is born on that day!], but the idea was that I meet up with my friends from high school and celebrate my birthday which is around this time of year. The funny thing is that my mum actually let my friends stay overnight. The sad part is that 80% of the people I invited couldn't come due to another party or travelling. So, my brother invited his friends [and they took the TV to play games], and my mum invited her friends, so we ended up with a group of around 20 people. I also made a birthday cake, since I didn't want to buy a cake that had icky stuff in it. The cake I made included whole wheat flour and balsamic vinegar.

This layer of cake actually turned out alright [I was using a brownie recipe, so it's a bit flat and dense], but the first two layers were way too thin; when they were piled together they looked shorter than a pie. Or a fruit tart.

Orange glaze - 3 tablespoons of orange juice, 1 tablespoon of milk, and 1 cup of sugar! The glaze only had a hint of orange when it was dry, though.

See how flat the first batch came out?

A very coarsely-ground recipe for this cake [if you want 1-2cm-thick brownies that fit two 9.5 inch pans]

Ingredients:

2 cups of whole wheat flour

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of milk

1 cup of oil

1 cup of cocoa powder

3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar

1.5 tsp baking soda [want it poofier? add 1-2tsp baking soda]

some salt

Method: Mix and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees F. Add more time if you want to.

First layer=blackberry jam

Second layer=marshmallows [Should've gotten marshmallow fluff, which doesn't have gelatin, but I didn't realise that I was going to be making a four-layer cake].

Third layer=peanut butter icing!

And... the cake! I have more pictures but I'm not uploading those because I do not want people to know my real name.

[The best] Sprinkles [in the world]! They're just like the ones from Australia - the Hundreds and Thousands that my mum used to put on honey bananas [except that these are only pink, green, and white, instead of rainbow-coloured].

So there were other foods, and I took pictures of them too, but this is one that I want to commemorate. This was brought by HM's family, and HM is my sister's friend. It's primarily composed of glutinous rice spotted with quartered jujubes [red dates]. Enclosed in the chewy, sticky layers is a mound of warm red bean paste. Curly swirls of orange and lime rind gently garnish the outside of the hemispherical [or parabolic... Actually, perhaps more parabolic, since bowls are generally more parabolically shaped] dessert.

Everyone said that the cake was nice, but they could've just been saying that because they knew that I had baked it. Apparently, one of the kids had been eyeing it for a long time before my mum realised that the kid wanted cake. The kid's mum told me that it tasted "fresh" and "rich", which are nice compliments! Another comment includes the "It's good". My sister, who had helped me with it, of course was scarfing down cake and burping out compliments.

We later watched some Harry Potter upstairs because my brother and his friends were still playing games on the TV downstairs, and then we watched the ball drop, which was seriously anti-climatic [as it is, every year].

We finished Harry Potter, and BV and I watched some Snoopy [yes, Snoopy and Harry Potter are awesome!]. It was a great birthday-partyesque-dinner-type-thing.

I Miss Penn Food.

Home food is good. I had a poached egg today. Do you know how difficult it is to obtain a poached egg at a dining hall? All they have are scrambled eggs and hard-boiled eggs. One can NOT obtain a poached egg with pepper. :(

Egg aside, I still actually miss Penn food a bit. At least I ate exactly 3 meals a day (or 2, on weekends), instead of 6 or 7 mini meals...

This is an apple crumble from Penn. There is no such thing as apple crumble in my house. Oh no. Fresh, raw apples are not to be cooked and wasted into sugar- and butter-clad chunks. The only times I use fresh fruit to make stuff... is black currant or gooseberry jam in the summer, because no one likes fresh black currants in our house, due to the high number of seeds in the currants. No one wants to eat fresh gooseberries either because they're "too sour", and also full of seeds.

The raspberries go from branch to mouth in a matter of seconds, though.

Stromboli of amazingness. I mean, vegetable and cheese stromboli; the best ratio of crust to filling ever. I also love potatoes. I LOVE CARBOHYDRATES!! And the quiche was okay... I don't really miss it because it was dry and the egg proteins were overcooked.

But I can NEVER obtain stromboli at home!! Speaking of which... maybe I'll make some one day... although it'll never be as poofy as the ones at Penn.