mocha bars.

Oh this is going to be so hilarious because I am such the genius, as usual. I was following the recipe for these mocha bars but scaled down to a quarter for a smaller batch. I did it by mental calculation to give my brain a good morning workout. Everything was going fine, almost too uneventfully, when Murphy's Law turned around and bit me in the behind. At the last step, of all tragedies! I had my batter scraped and ready to go in my loaf pan and as I was about to send it into the fiery temperatures of the metal box, I had this nagging feeling to check the recipe again. And hey presto! I forgot to stir in the heavy cream.

I considered leaving it out but remembered that the book said that the cream would smooth out the bitterness of the unsweetened chocolate and coffee so I didn't. Pouring all the batter out of the pan into the mixing bowl would result in loss of batter, plus create more trouble by having to get another clean loaf pan and then spraying it with non-stick baking spray. So what did I do? I mixed the cream directly into the batter while it was in the pan, praying fervently that I could somehow get it all evenly mixed.

After I finished with a satisfied there!, Murphy's Law came to say hi again. I added double the amount of cream I needed. You see? That's what would happen if you try to handle finicky mental sums while you are mentally distressed. At that point of realization, I was so exasperated that I added colourful M&Ms on top to cheer me up (which, by the way, didn't turn out to be such a good idea because the shells cracked like fissures). I poured out too much initially and tried to put back the excess into the bag, accidentally sacrificing one orange M&M in the process. May you rest in peace.

You know, when I first saw the title of the recipe, I thought that these bars would be a cookie kind of bar. While I was mixing up the batter, it seemed like a brownie sort of recipe to me. But when I read the instructions in detail, it called these cake. I felt that these were more brownie-like because they are fudgy. Although I have to admit, they are lighter than the average brownie so the most accurate description would be a half-fudgy half-cakey brownie. Then again, brownies are under the cake family- the author wasn't wrong to call them cake.

While the batter smelled strongly of coffee, after they were baked, the coffee taste wasn't that prominent anymore. I would be hard-pressed to call these mocha bars if I hadn't known what had gone into them. The coffee helps to boost the chocolate flavor rather than vie with it on an equal level, which makes it mocha, does it not? Still, that doesn't change the fact that these bars are delicious. Now if you would excuse me, I'm going to chill the rest of the bars to turn them into chocolate fudge.

Mocha Bars
lightly adapted from Baking by Flavour

49g unsalted butter
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, chopped finely
1/2 tsp instant coffee
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp cake flour
1 1/2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/16 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 small egg
80g sugar
3/4 tsp heavy cream
3 tbsp chopped walnuts, toasted and cooled

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a mini loaf pan.

Place the chopped unsweetened chocolate and instant coffee in a small ramekin.

Place the butter in a small saucepan and heat on medium until the butter has melted and is sputtering slightly. Immediately pour the butter into the small ramekin. Let the mixture stand.

Sift the flours, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Toss a bit of the flour mixture with the chocolate chips until they are well-coated. Shake off the excess and set the chocolate chips aside.

Stir the vanilla extract into the butter mixture until the mixture is homogenous.

Whisk the egg until foamy. Whisk in the sugar gradually and continue whisking until the mixture is thick and slightly pale. Stir in the butter mixture until combined. Sift over the flour mixture until no traces of flour can be seen. Stir in the heavy cream, chocolate chips and walnuts until evenly mixed.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 25 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs attached. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes before unmolding onto a rack to cool completely.

brown sugar apricot bars.

The moment my caboose hits the chair, my sore muscles instantly relax like a knot that has been unravelled. A tension still dwells in my legs as blood courses rapidly through them, not unlike how the string of the recently unravelled knot remains somewhat curly. For a fleeting moment, I reach heaven closer than any point in life. My eyelids start to flutter shut unconsciously in bliss, but halfway, I stop. What could be more cliche than showing signs of blissfulness by allowing your peepers to close and your head tilted slightly back? I defiantly will my eyelids to spring back up, not wanting to adhere to such cheesy imagery. But yet, I thought in my head, this is paradise. 10 minutes...15 minutes...20 minutes later, the lower half of my body didn't, couldn't, even shift an inch. Somewhere within that time, my eyelids felt like weights were hanging on them and started to droop, this time from sheer exhaustion. No! I can't afford to close my eyes here or I'll never wake up to sleep in my bed. So, to stave off the sleepy bug, I log on to blogger and started typing. It's working- but I doubt it will work for long.

To cut a long story short, I was on my feet nearly the whole of a good 12 hours, and finally being able to let my behind adhere to a chair for more than 5 minutes was such a treat. When I finally lay down in a horizontal position, I was out for 11 hours straight. Amazing. I woke up hungry but with nothing to eat and ended up ravaging my snack cupboard for a quick fix. I was still unsatisfied though, so I proceeded to the kitchen to whip up something. Not to cook, if that's what you're thinking, because I can't cook for nuts. I went to bake some of these brown sugar apricot bars, which I chose simply because they were quick. Fast forward 1 hour later and they were ready to eat. Of course, it was only made possible by cheating with the cooling process. Thank you technology for freezers!

These bars, and I swear I'm not biased because I was hungry, are a.w.e.s.o.m.e. It's brown sugar-coconut-walnut-apricot nutty nirvana. They are moist and chewy with a sturdy layer of crunch on top.

Make them. It's not an option.

Brown Sugar Apricot Bars
adapted from Baking by Flavour

1 cup coarsely chopped dried apricots
1 1/2 tbsp apricot jam
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp cake flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cardamom (I omitted)
1 stick butter, melted and cooled
2/3 cup brown sugar
5 tbsp sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup lightly packed sweetened flaked coconut (I used desiccated)
2/3 cup chopped walnuts, toasted and cooled

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a 9 inch square baking pan.

Combine the dried apricots and apricot jam together in a bowl and stir to coat the apricot pieces evenly.

Sift the flours, salt, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamom in another bowl.

Stir the melted butter and sugars until combined. Blend in the eggs and vanilla extract. Stir in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Stir in the apricot mixture, coconut and walnuts until evenly distributed.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 25 minutes or until golden on top and just set. Cool completely before cutting.

vanilla bean cream sprinkle cake.

Sometimes, I just feel like writing. Not about baking, not about food; nothing in particular, really.

I like writing, even though I don't think I'm that good. I like crafting sentences. I think the English language is so pretty. A sentence is like a plain white T-shirt and adjectives are the ribbons and lace. The nouns can be the fabric, since they are quintessential in a proper sentence. The verbs are the buttons and zippers as you have to move your fingers to button up those buttons and zip up those zips. The colors and designs of those buttons and zips are the adverbs, as they make them more interesting.
I also think that English is also one of the most melodic languages to be spoken.

Do you know that English is the second most-spoken language in the world? Right after Mandarin.

I like finding new words, and I've learnt many browsing through blogs. Here's one of my new favourites: panache. You pronounce it just like ganache. I feel so cool just by saying it. And here's another: quel que soit, meaning whatever. Like, I know that this counts more as a phrase than a word, but quel que soit. This the kind of word that I want to show off while sticking my nose in the air. But first, I have to learn how to pronounce it with a bit of french flair.

My paragraphs don't link together, I know. That happens to me all the time when I want to write about too many things in a bout of excitement. Since there is already no structure whatsoever, I'm going to talk about cake now. This post pretty much feels like a Christmas tree with no color coordination to me.
Or even worse- hot pink pants with a neon green top. Oh please shield my eyes.

I was really anticipating for this to be an outstanding cake based on its ingredients- vanilla bean, cream and rum. Sadly, it didn't quite live up to my expectations. Part of it was my fault. I ran out of almond extract so I didn't include any. I also messed up the glaze. I dumped all of the ingredients into the pan at once at the beginning of the recipe by mistake instead of following instructions. Although the taste of the cake was pretty much mundane, I loved its dense yet moist crumb. The funfetti, which was my spur-of-the-moment addition, surprisingly managed to retain a bit of crunch. (I can only vouch for the first day though.)

Vanilla Bean Cream Sprinkle Cake
lightly adapted from Baking by Flavour

I made a few, okay, a lot, of changes to the original recipe. I didn't have shortening so I substituted it with butter, used more vanilla bean since I didn't have any vanilla sugar, added sprinkles and most obviously, downsized the cake. The measurements are a bit finicky but try your best!

For the cake:
70g all-purpose flour
23g cake flour
1/10 tsp baking powder
1/5 tsp salt
3/20 tsp ground nutmeg
3/5 stick butter
1/2 cup sugar
seed scrapings from one-fourth of a vanilla bean (save the pod for the glaze)
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/10 tsp almond extract
50ml light cream
3 tbsp sprinkles

For the glaze:
15g sugar
1 tbsp water
vanilla bean that was used for the cake
1/2 tsp dark rum
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
a drop of almond extract

For the cake: Preheat oven to 325F. Grease and flour a 3-cup tube or bundt pan.

Sift the flours, baking powder, ground nutmeg and salt together into a bowl.

Beat the butter until smooth. Beat in the seeds of the vanilla bean. Add the sugar in 3 additions, beating until combined after each addition. After all the sugar has been added, beat until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Add the extracts and beat to combine. Add the egg in 5 parts, beating to fully incorporate each part before adding the next.

Alternately stir in the flour mixture in 3 additions and cream in 2 additions. Stir in the sprinkles.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs attached. Cool in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes before unmolding onto a rack with a tray below to catch any dripping syrup when applied later.

For the glaze: (You should make this while the cake is baking.) Combine the sugar, water and vanilla pod in a small saucepan. Place the pan on low heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar has melted. Bring the syrup to a boil and boil until it has reduced and thickened slightly. Add the rum and heat for another 10 seconds. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the extracts. Remove the vanilla pod and set the pan aside to cool.

Using a pastry brush, brush the top of the cake (previously the bottom) with the syrup while the cake is still warm. Cool the cake before slicing.

brooksters.

Brownies + cookies + hipster (attitude)= Brooksters.

No, sorry, I'm just kidding. But these tiny confections are so adorable that they make you want to strut around a party with one positioned just so between your pointer and thumb, because they make you look cool.

Hey! It's a cookie AND a brownie conveniently and ingeniously packaged together in one cohesive calorie bomb!

I made something similar before, except that the cookie dough portion was unbaked. And like before, my opinions remained unchanged. Two good things combined together doesn't make the final product even more mind-blowing. I think it's probably due to the coinciding flavour profiles, i.e. rich and chocolaty. Usually, the best desserts are those with complementary flavours and textures, regardless of what form they are in. So if I were to take the same brownie with, say, vanilla pudding, I would greatly prefer that. It helps to break the monotony.

That's not to say that these weren't good though. I actually used my own chocolate chip cookie dough recipe instead of the one provided in the book so of course it's good! (Har har.) The brownie is definitely one of my favourites so far. It's dense, but not too much, with a slight cakey-ness to it. So when you store it in the fridge overnight, it transforms into this creamy chocolate bar. Which, by the way, I highly recommend you to try!

On a side note: Curse you chocolate cookies. Why are you so dang good?

Brooksters
partially adapted from Baked Elements
makes 6 4 inch ones, 12 regular-sized ones or 48 mini ones

For the cookie dough, refer to here. Make 1/2 of the recipe or make the full and bake the rest of into regular cookies. Whichever quantity you make, you have to prepare it at least 3 hours ahead, store in fridge.

For the brownie:
3/4 cup flour
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 stick butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs, cold

Grease 6 4-inch pie pans, a 12-hole regular-sized muffin pan or enough mini muffin pans.

Whisk the flour, cocoa powder and salt together in a bowl.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Remove from heat and stir in the sugars and vanilla extract. Stir in the eggs, one by one, until fully incorporated but don't overmix. Fold in the flour mixture until just combined.

Fill each cavity just under halfway full. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Preheat oven to 375F, 350F or 325F for 4-inch, regular-sized or mini brooksters respectively. Take about 1/4 cup of cookie dough for 4-inch brooksters (downsize accordingly for the smaller versions), roll it into a ball and flatten it slightly before placing it on top of the brownie batter.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes (adjust accordingly for the smaller versions again. 10 to 12 minutes for the mini ones should suffice.) or until the cookie dough turns a light golden brown at the edges. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes or until firm enough to hold before unmolding.

chewy brown butter chocolate chunk cookies.

It's strangely frustrating to be posting about chocolate chip cookies while dying, raging, to make french entremets. I've been browsing through pictures of the aforementioned cakes and now I'm hopelessly obsessed. I want to get started right this instant on one but the mere thought of my never ending to-bake list stops me dead in my tracks. There are probably at least 50 items to be checked off and none of them are entremets, because they are a very recent obsession. I can't bear to add yet another project to my endless list either so I'm just going to maniacally cut down those that currently exist on my list by at least half before I embark on my entremet. Oh boy.

So let's get started, beginning with these cookies.

I've tried so many variations of chocolate chip cookies I find it hard to give them a unique name to properly represent them. "Chewy chocolate chip cookies"- too vague. "Browned butter chocolate chip cookies"- been there, done that. Alas, the best solution is to bombard the name with long detailed descriptions that are specific to that certain batch of chocolate chip cookies. So I apologize, sincerely, truly, if you find it hard to catch your breath while uttering the title of this post because I'm definite that this won't be the last.

the hallmark of a good chewy cookie is its flexibility!

What sets this batch of cookies apart from others is the use of corn syrup for a moister and chewier cookie. If. You don't overbake them, of course. No secret tricks can help if you overbake cookies. Similarly, one of the best secrets to chewy cookie heaven is also simply not to overbake them.

I think these pictures sufficiently illustrate how gooey these cookies are. I'm not particularly proud of them but they do do the trick in bringing across my point well. (They were taken at night- please pardon them! I didn't put in more effort because I knew that almost certainly, despite later editing, the lighting would still make the pictures look horrible. But I managed to rescue them a fair bit.) Ah... brings me back to approximately 734 days ago when I was even more of a rookie photographer than I am now. You can take a trip back to my first few posts and you'll see what I mean. Poor lighting, embarrassing close-ups, things that can lead me to make like an ostrich and bury my head in the ground. At that point of time, I was framing my pictures with a message in mind as a guide. Like, I want to show how fudgy this brownie is, so I position my camera 5 cm away from the brownie to capture the texture in detail. Furthermore, I didn't have a DSLR last time so picture quality was obviously poorer too. Oh and I didn't edit my photos as well because I had not discovered photobucket.com and its wondrous editing tools. (I love you, photobucket!)

super moist. I assure you that its not my drool.

I'm well aware that this is my first post of the new year. Will this set the tone for my upcoming bakes? Maybe. Probably. Conceivably. Argh, who am I kidding?

Yes.

Chewy Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup butter, browned and cooled
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup corn syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
1 cup chocolate chunks

Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix the browned butter, sugars, corn syrup, vanilla extract and salt until homogenous.

Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture and mix just until incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chunks. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes so that the flour absorbs some moisture. It will become moderately tacky and easier to scoop.

Take about 1/3 cup of dough and roll it into a ball. Set it on a lined baking sheet. Repeat until all the dough has been used up. Refrigerate overnight.

Bake at 325F for 10 to 12 minutes or until the edges of the cookies start to turn a light golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool cookies on the baking sheet.