Lily’s Blog, Dragon Absconded!
Baking Until I Drop

EDIT: Problem fixed! I think. I hope. The header was going crazy. Can’t recall what it was doing exactly.

It’s too wide.
It was too wide before but I was ignoring it.
Argh.
I can’t ignore it any longer.
I also need to do somebody else’s.
*sigh*
I wonder if I’m stumped or I was just tired?

Lime Poppyseed Pound Cake, originally uploaded by Lilandra.

Chennette informed me last night that the deadline for Click Citrus was extended until September 1st.

Now, I had noticed Click Citrus but I was so busy baking and such that I hadn’t really planned on entering. But when she reminded me about it, it occurred to me that I did have a citrus picture waiting in the sidelines (I have more pictures of this but not uploaded or fixed yet That post will follow soon) and that I could submit it.

But wait! It was supposed to be obviously citrus.
How did most people make their picture obviously citrus? Stick the fruit in the picture somehow. I didn’t like that. Really. I thought that’s like…hitting people over the head with it. But since I’m not sure about what qualifies, this morning, I figured I would try. There was also lime juice in the fridge and I wasn’t sure what would be the final entry (I also didn’t see why I had to put a lime in the picture for someone to know it’s lime juice. Hmph).

Anywayz so after Fajr, at around 6 am I took some pictures with the tripod and with a white ironed (!!!) pillowcase and tried. It seems I’m not accustomed to the light at that hour. You should see the original picture. Oh my. I only did white balance and levels adjustments and it looks like it was supposed to.

Ah, well, so this is my entry for Click August 2008: Citrus.

Wish me luck! :)

We bought a Kiss white sandwich loaf this week and I noticed it cost TT$10.75…i mean…how long ago was this $7? or … $6? Well, the $8 not too long…the others, I don’t recall.
Does anybody? I wish somebody kept track.

Anyway, I decided to work out how much it cost to make a sandwich loaf home.
The kiss bread said it was 590g so I used Peter Reinhart’s White Bread‘s Percentage Formula to work out the ingredients and then tried to remember the cost of ingredients.

Shame on me for not remembering the cost of yeast. I use so much of it.
*sigh*

Some costs I can’t remember exactly but have decent-ish ideas.
If anybody wants to quibble on price…or contribute…feel free.
I’m sure mom will come along to save the day, yet again. I’ll edit as time goes on.

Well, the ingredient cost for my equivalent white bread is say about TT$7 as opposed to TT$10.75. But I haven’t even factored in gas or labour charge. I guess since I’m making it for home, for me, I could work for free. Am I saving?

Well, at least for the most part I know what’s going into my bread.

Would you still bake bread?

1. If you’re interested, I still calculate/estimate the exchange rate at US$1 = TT$6.30 tho…I can’t recall what it is exactly. XE.com lists a mid-market rate of TT$6.22580
2. Edit 6:30 am: Checked with mom, she’s not sure cost of yeast but thinks it’s around $5…so I don’t feel so bad!
3. Went grocery today. Country Pride Baker’s Flour is $71.49 for 10kg and All-Purpose Flour is $67.99 for 10kg. Also, checked with mom…the powdered milk price is about right. I forget which is more (skim or full-cream) but the range is more like TT$48-$53 so I’ll leave it as is.

So, at 3:30 am I had the startling realization that I could make pancakes.

From one of my recipe books.

I didn’t need a mix.

In case you’re wondering what I’m smoking (nothing!), not much people make sense at 3:30 am. I wanted pancakes. All I could think was no mix…brain freeze you know?

Then, I was like, it’s 3:30 am.
Hmm.
We are supposed to wake up at about 4:00 am to fast.
Hmm.
Quickly, found recipe (Rose Levy Beranbaum‘s Swedish Blini from The Cake Bible) and decided this was doable.

Wait, how sleepy was I?

Was I so sleepy that I could be unable to read this properly? So sleepy that I should go back to sleep?

I made it downstairs.

I made it outside (and let Zoë in and gave her food) and found the cake flour. I couldn’t find any limes. I also brought in a carton of eggs.

So, 4 eggs + remaining cream + flour + milk + (no lemon zest! can’t find the limes! lemon essence? hmmmm) + salt + melted butter + clarified butter (you must be joking right? it’s almost 4 am) and such a thin batter (because, do I know what a blini is? hahaha).

But man is the kitchen a mess (and not totally my fault).

Find dollar-pan (I don’t know I can’t remember what you call them…silver dollar pans? for pancakes? Do about 7 3″ pancakes? Except this is a fun shapes one – animals…hehehe) and heat and rub butter on it.

Then take 1/8 cup measure and pour batter into each shape. Smells very eggy.

I think about how this had no sugar in it (and I have neither crème fraiche, nor lingonberries (what’s a lingonberry???)) and don’t have energy now to find icing sugar (fast approaching 4:00 am, am i hearing movement upstairs?). Can’t even find white sugar.

*sigh*

Eventually I decide to just sprinkle brown sugar on the pancakes (hahaha!) and then I find the white sugar.

Into the third batch (or was it the fourth?) I wonder where anybody is and run upstairs. Who cares about burnt pancakes. They (I) will eat them anywayz. Put me at a stove and I’m a bit more lax because my “cooking” endeavours are usually disastrous so I don’t sweat the details.

So, upstairs, dad isn’t fasting.
He tries waking up mom.
Who says she’s not feeling good.

SET UP
SET UP

See if I cook for anybody again.

*sigh*

Can you imagine a stack of 40+ 2.5″ pancakes? And just me?

Gah!
I kept hoping the people downstairs would wake up and be hungry.

And all the while, cleaning up debris from last night and tonight. Sweating. Finding fan.

Gah.

Made attempt to find icing sugar (can’t figure out where we put it…didn’t I use it just last week? – sign of sleepiness aka crazy Lilandra cooking at 4 in the morning) but locate white sugar. Hmm. Okay then!

(It now occurs to me we have whipped cream and I could’ve sprayed that on my blinis).

Finally done.

Will wash wares later.

Cleaned counters and rubbed out batter spots on stove.

Cracked open jar of…BLUEBERRY PRESERVES.

Just a touch, like dime-sized and spread it over the blini and it was heaven.
I must’ve had 10.
Did I tell you I was hungry? (which is why I sleep badly…hunger).

Yum Yum Yum

So, blinis and jam are good.
I didn’t even need to sprinkle sugar on it but see sleepy…if I had company that said why not jam, Lilandra, I wouldn’t've been worried (I also worry whether they’re cooked through…this pan is…*strange* to me).

*sigh*

then wash wares as dad comes down, wake up brother downstairs…wipe up some more…come upstairs…booff mommy for the major set up and make wudu and pray…internet was down for a bit so had to WAIT to post this.

No pictures.

Just know, eggy milky blinis plus blueberry preserves are good good good.

White Bread, originally uploaded by Lilandra.

Technically all the breads I’ve made recently are white breads (except of course the marble rye bread which did contain a significant portion of plain flour).

I think however, when most people refer to a white bread they are thinking of that nice soft sandwich loaf. I have nothing against sandwich loaves. I have been trying to eat more whole wheat ones (but I strongly suspect the local mass produced one is more colouring than whole grain). So, we try Nature’s something and Chee Mooke’s whole grain breads.

But every now and again we buy a sandwich loaf, for dad, to make mass sandwiches (cheese paste and the like) to carry somewhere or depending if we buy it from the parlour or the grocery and the options available.

Dad is a great fan of white bread. So, I figured I would try one of the variations in Peter Reinhart‘s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Thankfully two of them do not require a starter or sponge of any kind. I’m not sure if I will ever try the second. Sounds like self-inflicted punishment.
Continue reading White Bread!

artofdessert’s chocolate chip cookies, originally uploaded by Lilandra.

I’m sure a lot of people are on the neverending quest for the ultimate be-all-and-end-all of chocolate chip cookies.

Half the problem of course, is defining what you really want in the cookie.

For a while we used Alton Brown’s puffy or chewy even though I wanted crispy (is that thin?).

But I am mostly overruled.

I think, what I look for in a chocolate chip cookie is chewy and crispy.

So, while I was baking white bread the other day, I decided to whip up a batch of these (I found the recipe on flickr! or I found the picture on flickr) where artofdessert modified a ghiradelli recipe to be egg- and nut-free (link).

I really love it…and some of you may know how I feel about nuts…

I didn’t follow the recipe completely.
I tossed the chips in melted butter and cocoa powder before adding them to the batter. So, the chips got a bit melty and plus the cocoa streaked the batter. It was very pretty.

I really loved these.
They were chewy and gooey…not crispy per se but not crumbly and soft.
I couldn’t stop popping them.
Nobody could.
I only baked two trays as I was making rolls (I think?) and didn’t feel up to monitoring the oven forever for dozens of cookies.

I want more.
Hmm.
Well there is batter in the freezer…but I’d have to take them out now? And wait until tomorrow to bake them…
*sigh*

Other fattening goodies await me tomorrow so…maybe not now.

Try these.
Very good!

Macaroni Pie, originally uploaded by Lilandra.

I catch a vaps a couple days ago.
That’s all I can say.
After mom offered me frozen boneless chicken breast for me to grill for dinner (since she’d made curry salmon for dad…which only she and dad and sister-in-law eat and…none of them were going to be home to eat it!!!) and I refused, I found myself downstairs after we prayed ‘Asr boiling macaroni.

I decided I wanted macaroni and eggs, like we used to also eat as children (it wasn’t always the über cheese-laded macaroni and cheese we had – partly because we didn’t always have what we then called halaal cheese).

Then, of course, while the kettle was boiling water, before I even found the macaroni where mom hid it in her back kitchen, I decided a little cheese wouldn’t hurt.

So I grated the cheese leftover in the cheese container.
And then inspiration struck and I felt for macaroni pie!

But not the super cheesy fare that I generally like. I wanted to go back to some roots, a nice milky pie with a crumb topping.

I started boiling water around 5:20pm and put the pie in about 6:20pm and we took it out of the oven at 7:00pm. I was very impressed with the time. This of course included many trips to turn the hose tap on and off for mom, to collect my repaired fan from outside, to carry the cordless phone all around outside the house for mom just to find her in the front porch.

I also managed to have all the ingredients and pans prepped and ready before the macaroni finished boiling so I could relax while I waited.

All I can say is that this bread baking addiction must be teaching me some discipline and the cake-thing the importance of having pans prepared before-hand…(mise-en-place?)

Who’d've thunk!

And you know what?
It came out good.

So, if you want a different kind of macaroni pie from the previous (yet still trini! my brother’s mother-in-law makes her pie more like this) and not even the bajan pie, try it this way:

Ingredients

• lots of boiling water
• 1 pack of long thick tubed macaroni
• couple squirts of oil
• 4 tbsp butter or margerine or so
• salt and black pepper to taste
• 2 eggs
• about 200g or so of grated cheddar cheese
• one can (14oz) of evaporated milk
• mustard
• About two handful of crix (or some other appropriate topping…you can use breadcrumbs I supposed or another biscuit).
• pepper sauce or other seasonings optional

Directions

• Cook macaroni in salted boiling water and squirt some oil in so it won’t stick together (or cook it however you normally cook your macaroni).
• Beat eggs with salt and pepper.
• When macaroni done, drain it out.
• In the same pot, melt 2 tbsp of butter and then add the macaroni. Stir. (You can do this over the burner or not. The pot should be hot enough that you don’t need it to be on anymore and you’re going to bake it anyway.)
• Add eggs and mix.
• Add the grated cheese. You can hold back some if you’re worried about it being too much or for an alternate topping. Mix it in.
• Pour in the evaporated milk and mix. Is kinda liquidy now.
• Add about 3 or 4 squirts of mustard (yes! I used yellow honey mustard! You can use whatever you want and how much ever you want) and stir it in.
• Season to taste.
• Pour into a pan (I greased my pan with some olive oil. The pie might be greasy enough that you don’t need to do this).
• Crush the crix in a bag with a rolling pin and mix it with the remaining 2 tbsp melted butter
• Sprinkle or layer the buttered crumb topping over the whole pie. Maybe if you press it in with the back of a spoon it mightn’t fall off as easily.
• Bake in a 350F oven for about 40minutes or until you think it’s done or it’s got enough colour. We could’ve taken it out earlier but we wanted it a bit darker.

And ta-da! Another macaroni pie! Yum!

You can see all my other home made macaroni pie pictures here.