Simply Perfect Pancakes from King Arthur Flour

I also tried another recipe yesterday from King Arthur Flour,
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/simply-perfect-pancakes-recipe

It tasted and looked like a regular pancake compared to my previous attempt from RasaMalaysia.com. So, I think I'll keep this recipe for pancakes in the future!

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 3 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons sugar

I did a few changes, like substituting 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour with 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp quick-cooking oats blended in the blender and adding a grated apple into the mixture to keep it moist longer.

My younger sister prefers an eggier pancake so maybe I'll add an extra egg for her next time when I have honey for it to go along with her pancake. I on the other hand suggest eating it when it's just hot right off the stove to really enjoy it or microwave it before eating.

Directions

1. Whisk the eggs and milk until light and foamy. Then stir in the vegetable oil.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk the flours, salt, baking powder and sugar.
3. Then, quickly mix the wet and the dry mixture together evenly and let it sit for approximately 15 minutes (the batter will thicken).
4. Then, if you're poor like me and can't find a cooking spray, use a kitchen towel, dip it in oil and oil a sizzling frying pan (sufficiently hot to start cooking the pancakes).
5. Pour 1/4 cup of batter into the pan and wait till you see lots of bubbles popping on the surface of the batter. Flip it now!
6. Then, just wait awhile, check the other side to see if it's golden brown (or cooked pancake look), then voila! into the stomach it goes! (Basically, you only turn the pancakes over only once to get the cool pancake look)

This recipe is really simple, takes awhile to cook up with so stop wasting your money buying those pancake mixes in the stores... you can just donate the money to a poor unfortunate soul (like me). hehe...and this pancake is a wholegrain breakfast with the oatmeal in it... LOL... try it out if you're craving for the English pancake...

I ate my pancake with my tomato jam I previously posted about and it is, without doubt, DELICIOUS!

Apple Spice Bread

Today, I've tried a recipe from About.com... with a few renditions here and there, I think I'll do it more often~! hehe
This is the Apple Spice Cake Recipe I got from
http://southernfood.about.com/od/quickbreadrecipes/r/bl50823i.htm
The recipe given called for 2 loaves so I basically halved the recipe.

Well... I think I'll give my next adaptation here...

• 1 1/3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups coarsely chopped apples
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup melon seeds, toasted
  
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, toasted
• 1 teaspoons sugar mixed with a sprinkle of cinnamon
  

Preparation:

1. Sift into a bowl, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices.
   
2. In a mixing bowl, combine sugar and oil. Beat in eggs and vanilla, then stir in chopped apples, raisins, and seeds.
   
3. Add the dry ingredients and mix until well blended.
   
4. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pans and line bottoms with waxed paper. Greased waxed paper(FOLLOW THIS INSTRUCTION OR THE CAKE WON"T COME OUT AND IT"LL LOOK HORRIBLE).
5. Pour batter into pans, smoothing the top with a spatula or spoon. Bake for 20 minutes at 160°C. Pull out rack and sprinkle loaves with the cinnamon sugar mixture.
   
6. Continue baking for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a wooden pick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.
7. Cool for 10 minutes; turn out onto a rack. Slice and serve or freeze.

The cake basically turned out quite moist, in my case with my not so pretty bread, sufficiently flavourful, not too sweet which is fantastic in my case, a little eggy ( thanks to me adding an extra large egg into the recipe) but all in all it was quite nice! I'm going to try adding a tsp of fennel seeds or a tsp of cumin seeds next time for an extra punch!

Carrot Raisin Bread

I've tried this recipe last week but due to my sister's camera which was out of battery the last time, I didn't post about it, hehe... but have no fear!!! I AM BACK! with my sister's camera!

So, I still referred to Eclectic Recipes for this but with just some alterations with the ingredients~

Carrot Raisin Bread


Ingredients

1 1/2 cup finely shredded carrots (I just used about 1 medium sized bowl that looked kind of full)
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt (I hope I used this amount because I accidentally sifted it with the flour so it didn't go in well, so I just presumed I readded it into flour with approximately the same amount...hehe... cause I didn't use a measuring spoon...hehe)
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg (AA the biggest one in the market)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup raisins (1/4 cup golden, 1/4 cup black)
2 tsp cinnamon (I used more than 2 tsp since mine is expired so it's less effective)
1/2 tsp nutmeg (same as the cinnamon)
1/2 cup of toasted seed (1/4 cup melon, 1/4 cup pumpkin)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4.
   
2. Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
3. Toast the seeds in a frying pan. Just stir it with a wooden spatula like I did with no oil.
   
4. Grate carrot and add to large mixing bowl. Add sugar, molasses, salt, eggs, and oil. Mix very well.
5. Then stir together the dry mixture (2) and wet mixture (4) together until just combined. Just try to get almost all of the flour wet with the mixture in my case.
6. Then stir in raisins and toasted seeds. Pour the mixture into a loaf pan and try to keep the batter even in the pan.
   
7. Bake in an oiled loaf pan for 50-60 minutes, or until bread passes the toothpick test(mine was done in 50 minutes).

Tomato ginger jam from The New York Times

My latest food venture, other than bread is Tomato ginger jam!

I HONESTLY LOVE TOMATOES...

Tomato...tomato...tomato mato mato...Tomato... tomato...tomato mato mato...

Gosh... Tomato above sounds like the bananas in pajamas lyrics~!

XD....Okay... Enough said... IT WAS delicious... and I know I'm going to eat that jam with my bread tomorrow instead of that sickening sweet St. Daflour's Strawberry jam.

hehehehheehhee....XD

I'm in love with the jam~!

Okay...

Well... I did some adjustments to the recipe, added 1/2 a tablespoon of honey lime, more cloves than asked for, used fennel seeds instead of cumin seeds (cause I didn't know the difference until a few days ago) and I'd probably want to try the peppers with dried chili flakes next time...hehe

The link to the recipe is below...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/dining/201mrex.html

and a little reference as well...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/dining/20mini.html

*sniff sniff... but I nicked myself while making the jam on Sunday...so be careful when you're coring the tomatoes if you're making it!!!

XD... I honestly didn't eat the jam till Tuesday cause my mom insisted on eating dim sum on Monday..TT.TT...ooh... Too bad I couldn't eat the jam earlier~!

Apple Caraway Bread from Eclectic Recipes

Woot~! Today I've finally started baking!!! GOSH!!! Okay...
So here's the picture~!

Apple Caraway Bread (a.k.a. Apple Cumin Bread)

Cumin and caraway seeds are one and the same. It's a seed of a herb, so it gives off a nice herb/spice flavour. In malay, caraway seeds are known as biji jintan.

This is basically the link to it...
http://eclecticrecipes.com/apple-caraway-bread

I'm not sure how to HTML this but if you do know how, do tell me, kay?

For this recipe, I basically followed it ingredient by ingredient.
Urm... Just the apple part though, I wasn't sure how many apples to use, so I used three granny smith apples, I presume that's 1 3/4 cup? and the oil I used was a 10% mixture of olive oil and 90% canola oil (due to lower saturation of fats compared to palm oil by 80%). Check it out here...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_oil

LOL... Anyway... it was nice and filling. Got quite full eating just 2 slices of the bread simply as it is with a cup of milk. Hehehe... Nice and comfy in my tummy~!

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LOL... I have to announce that I'm now the proud owner of a brand new pair of running shoes~!

Actually, during my study week in college, the second last week in college, I've already been doing research on what shoe I needed to buy if I'm going to keep running, cause I believe I can't be running in my sports shoe everywhere, it's not good for me feet...XD...
So I bought a pair of NEW shoes~! Yeah~!

It cost my mom RM 269, but it's from NewBalance, and cause I like it and cause I run a lot... So it's worth it~

So, what am I going to do with my old shoes???

Mwhahhahahhaha... I shall bring it to college for all the events that will dirty my shoe!!! This shoe survived a quick-mud (like quicksand but it's quick-mud) , so it will survive anything else~! Mwhaahhahhahhahhahahah

That's all from me today~!