So most of my friends know what a huge fan I am of Michael Ruhlman – it was, in a way, his - of a Chef series that kind of encouraged me to give working in a restaurant kitchen a go. (Far from hyping up/glamourising the job, he told it pretty much like how it was which made me feel a little more prepared for what was in store.) And it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life, as I think I learnt a lot about myself and – hey! it was great fun :)

Ruhlman’s also the author of Ratio (also available as a pretty spiffy iPhone App), which I think is one of the most important books ever written for people trying to learn how to cook. I’ve written briefly about it before, but essentially he strips recipes back to their core: ratios (mostly by weight), and I love A) any recipe that will allow me to measure by weight instead of volume, and B) a recipe that allows you to adapt it with different flavour combinations and seasonings. The concept of Ratio teaches you to cook exactly like that: giving you basic building blocks and letting you free to pretty much create whatever you’d like in the kitchen.

A couple of days ago, he also posted a recipe for buttermilk dinner rolls on his blog, and I’ve been looking for a soft roll recipe for a while now. (The bread ratio – 5 parts flour : 3 parts water – is great for most sturdy loaves but I wasn’t confident enough about knowing what to substitute for the liquid etc in order to get a soft fluffy dinner roll.)

Being the fan girl that I am, I decided to give those rolls a try, sprinkling the middle buns with sesame seeds and the rest with flaky salt. Unfortunately, I didn’t really let it proof enough during the second rise so the rolls were a little dense (and baked into a slightly non-roll-like shape), but the flavour and – density aside – texture were great. I’m intending to try them again very soon (perhaps with a slightly smaller amount of flour: maybe 700g?), this time starting out a little earlier so I don’t end up rushing the process.

Ruhlman recommends eating these with soft butter, but they were also fantastic, torn into chunks and smeared with a little homemade mayonnaise (egg yolk, dijon, mild-flavoured olive oil) or whole-grain mustard, and topped with a rare slice of steak (fried in some canola oil scented with two cloves of garlic). It was a fantastic dinner, and thanks for inspiring this meal, as well as countless others, Michael! :)

The first time I’d heard of snickerdoodles was sometime early this year. It was on some food blog or other (sadly I can’t remember where I originally saw this whimsically named cinnamon-sugar encrusted cookie), and I was hooked. I mean, c’mon. They’re called snickerdoodles – how can that be a bad thing?

Long story short: I completely forgot about them, having neglected to pick up a jar of ground cinnamon on any of my supermarket runs. (Bunny isn’t a fan of cinnamon, so I don’t use it all that often.) That is, until Deb of Smitten Kitchen posted about them. This time, the pictures were so gorgeous and so tempting that I pretty much immediately ran out to citysuper to get supplies, and boy were they good.

For one, the entire house smelled heavenly. I mean, it tends to, when you’ve got little bombs of sugar and butter and cinnamon in the oven. And it took so much self-control to not eat them as I pulled each snickerdoodle off the baking tray and onto the cooling rack. They were the perfect mix of crisp-edged and chewy on the inside.

It’s taken me long enough (about 3 more batches have since been baked in between) to post about them, but now that I have, it’s your duty to make some. Your sweet-toothed, cinnamon loving friends and family will love you all the more for it, and, because they keep for about a week when wrapped air-tight, they’d probably make the perfect Christmas gifts. No prizes for guessing what my friends will be receiving this year – which reminds me, I’ve gotta get baking! :)

PS: Merry Christmas everyone!

Snickerdoodles
(From Smitten Kitchen)

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups sugar, plus more if needed
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon, plus more if needed
2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 200°C, with one rack in top third and one rack in bottom third of oven. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.

Whisk together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt to evenly mix and aerate then set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl. Beat in eggs, one by one. Add dry ingredients, and mix on low speed to just combine. Chill the dough for at least one hour (or overnight) in an airtight container to facilitate scooping.

Once the dough has chilled, in a small bowl, combine remaining 1/4 cup sugar and the ground cinnamon. The original recipe says to use a small ice-cream scoop to form small balls of dough, but I found it much easier to weight out 20g pieces of dough and roll them into small balls with my hands. Roll them in the cinnamon sugar, and arrange about two inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies are set in center and begin to crack (they will not brown), about 10 minutes, rotating the baking sheets halfway through. Transfer the sheets to a wire rack to cool about five minutes before transferring the cookies to the rack.

Yield: I didn’t count (and, also, many of the finished cookies disappeared into waiting and eager mouths once they came out of the oven…) but I think I made around 4 dozen 2 to 3-inch snickerdoodles.

As I mentioned in my previous post on Bento Basics, one shortcut that I’ve found invaluable is relying on your freezer. I’ve always extolled the virtues of bulk-cooking, especially for people who have small family units. It can be a little tricky to buy and cook for one or two people, and since it takes hardly any longer to make a small amount of ragu as it does to make a giant pot, why not just do a big batch which you can portion and freeze, and that’ll make for another 4 or 5 meals which will only take a few minutes to heat up in the microwave (or on the stove top).

Soboro is likewise a great staple to have in your freezer. Since I use it mostly for my bentos, they’re also in such small portions that I can nuke them while stir-frying some vegetables, and the entire bento gets assembled in under 10 minutes. The best part about it is that it takes under 30 minutes to cook, even in a huge batch (unlike some stews which might need a few hours in a low oven). The only thing I’d really caution you against is buying cheap ground meat from a dodgy source: there’s been quite a lot of attention shone on E.Coli and other types of bacterial food poisoning arising out of contaminated grinder equipment and poor hygiene (especially if all sorts of odd, nasty bits get ground into the meat, complete with the associated germs), so find a reliable butcher you trust, or – as I prefer – grind it on your own. (Granted, most people look at me kinda funny when I say that I grind my own meat. But it’s really quite easy when you have a KitchenAid or a similar stand mixer, which has a meat grinder attachment available. Although, presumably, grinding your own meat means you’ll be in the kitchen for more than the abovementioned half hour.)

The best part about soboro is how versatile it is: you can make a classic sanshoku-don (3-coloured rice bowl) bento if you combine it with some tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelette) and steamed veg, mix it with some mashed potatoes, then bread and fry the mixture for soboro croquettes, fold it into an omelette or scrambled eggs, use as your base for a fried noodle dish, or even drain off the sauce and fill onigiri (rice balls) with it (as pictured at the start of the post).

And lest you start to fancy soboro as something that belongs only in your obento, I should probably share one of our current favourite weeknight quick-fixes too: when I was in Tokyo in October, we closed off a meal at a little yakitori joint with an excellent soboro donburi: a bowl of steaming hot rice, a few spoonfuls of juicy soboro, all topped with a quail’s egg yolk. When mixed together, the sauce from the meat and the egg yolk combined, coating the rice with such a delectable rich flavour. I now replicate this at home by mixing up a double portion of the donburi with a hen’s egg yolk. Simple, and – admittedly – not much to look at, but I can assure you: it is thoroughly satisfying.

Ground Meat Soboro

5 tbsp oyster sauce
3 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce

3 tbsp sesame oil
1 bulb garlic, peeled and minced (or grated)
3 tbsp grated ginger (about a 2-3 inch knob)
1kg ground beef/veal/pork/chicken (or a mixture – I like using roughly 70:30 beef to pork)
5 tbsp sake
salt & black pepper
a small bunch of spring onions/chives, sliced into 1cm lengths (my bundle weighed about 100g, and had around 20 stalks, but feel free to adjust this amount to taste)

Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a small bowl, set aside.

Heat the sesame oil in a large, high-sided frying pan over medium heat, and add the garlic and ginger. Fry until fragrant, and just starting to brown around the edges; about 3 minutes. Turn the heat up to high, add all the meat in and fry fast to brown all over, breaking up any clumps that form.

When the meat is about 3/4 cooked, add in the sake and a big pinch of salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the meat is cooked through. Add the sauce mixture along with a level tablespoon of ground black pepper and about 50ml of water, and stir thoroughly to ensure that it is evenly mixed. Turn the heat to low and simmer, about 5 minutes until the liquid is reduced by half. Remove from heat, then stir through your spring onions, cover and let it steam for a minute or two more to wilt the spring onions. Taste, correct the seasoning with salt and/or pepper if necessary.

You can now either serve it immediately, or cool rapidly (use an ice bath), then portion out and store. It will keep for about 2-3 days in the fridge, covered tightly, or for a few months frozen in an airtight container. I generally freeze portions of around 150g for my bentos, which I can then nuke for 2-3 minutes on high to defrost and reheat.

Yield: Makes about 8 servings, depending on the sizes of your portions, but you can also double (or triple!) the amount you make, depending on the size of the pots you have. Likewise, feel free to reduce the amount you make, tasting and adjusting the measurements accordingly.

Okay fine, it’s not summer (in Hong Kong – or anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere – anyway), but I think we’re all too familiar with those weeknights when you need to rustle up a quick dinner. And whether it’s a hot summer’s day where you’re dreading the idea of spending a few hours in a hot kitchen, or it’s a gloomy wintry evening where all you want is to curl up on the couch with a warm plate of dinner in front of the tube, this pasta’s for you.

I’ve been cooking a lot more these days. Honestly, as much as I love food and cooking, I only used to average about 3-5 meals a week where I cooked. But in the last couple of months, I’ve been packing daily lunch bentos for the bunny and I, as well as cooking many more dinners (and weekend brunches) for the two of us. It’s probably also got something to do with the new kitchen, which has much more space than the old one did. :)

This pasta is one of my weeknight staples – it’s really easy, and most of the ingredients are things I tend to have on hand: a couple of fresh, good-quality sausages, a handful of fresh prawns (or scallops, or lump crabmeat), chilli flakes, and garlic. It goes great with short pasta like fusilli or shells, which grab bits of the crispy sausage meat, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work just as well with noodles if that’s all you’ve got in the larder. If you don’t have any seafood around, you could just leave it out, and even use different types of sausages (like fresh lamb ones). And last night’s addition of roasted cherry tomatoes added a delightful explosion of tangy sweetness in every other mouthful.

And, I know I say this in pretty much every recipe I post (but only because it’s true!), it’s really fast and easy to do. By the time you’ve roasted off your tomatoes, the pasta will be cooked and you can add everything into the pan where your sausage and prawns are to combine it all. Seriously – 25 minutes tops and you’ll be out of the kitchen. Time yourself and see!

Pasta with Sausagemeat, Prawns, and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

100g cherry tomatoes, halved
2 good-quality fresh pork sausages (I used spicy spanish ones here)
5 large cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
10 fresh prawns, peeled and deveined
chilli flakes
200g dried pasta
olive oil
salt and pepper
pecorino or parmeggiano for grating

Preheat your oven to 200C and bring a pot of salted water to the boil. Lay the cherry tomatoes cut side up on a baking tray, drizzle over some olive oil (about 1-2 tbsp) and season quite liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for about 20 minutes, or until they’ve shrunken by about half.

Once your tomatoes are in the oven, cook your pasta according to the packet instructions, or until al dente, and prep the rest of your ingredients (slice the garlic, peel the prawns, squeeze the sausagemeat out of their casings).

Heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a sauté pan and cook the sausagemeat over high heat. Break up any clumps of meat with the back of a wooden spoon, and fry until the meat is well browned and slightly crispy. Add in the garlic and sauté for a couple more minutes, then push the meat and garlic to one side and fry the prawns until just pink – about 1 minute per side. Season well with salt, pepper and add about 2 tsp of chilli flakes (or more, to taste).

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it, reserving a little of the cooking water, and add it to your sauté pan, together with the roasted tomatoes. Toss it all together, adding a little of the cooking water to loosen it, so that the “sauce” clings to the pasta. Taste, and correct the seasoning if necessary.

Divide between two warm plates, and grate over a generous amount of cheese. Serve immediately, and enjoy!

PS: If you had some on hand, a sprinkle of freshly chopped flat-leaf Italian parsley would be great to brighten up this dish, both visually and with that slightly peppery bite.

Yield: Serves 2

I don’t know whether it’s got something to do with the weather – growing up in Singapore meant that I was always in search of an icy-cold drink – or if it’s cos they just taste nicer this way, but I’ve always been an iced coffee kind of girl. I like hot coffee too, especially on a cold morning, in a warm mug that I can wrap my hands around, but given the choice, I always spring for my coffee iced.

I’ve experimented with different ways of making it at home, chilling espresso, making coffee ice cubes, assembling my coffee and sticking it in a pitcher in the fridge to decant as and when I wanted my fix, but a lot of that just ended up being too pernickety: I’d run out of coffee ice cubes, or space in the freezer, and I’d never have the foresight to make a batch of cold coffee to stick in the fridge so I’d always end up dropping a bunch of ice cubes into not-super-cold coffee, making it more diluted than I liked.

Enter Cold Brew coffee – thanks to the neuroses of a similarly obsessive friend of mine. This is a method of making coffee similar to the Toddy Coffee method, but without the Toddy system, of course. Essentially, all you do is mix some medium-coarse ground coffee with water, and let it steep for 12 hours, before straining out the grounds. What you’re left with is a coffee concentrate which you can then dilute with either milk or water, depending on how you like your coffee.

The other great thing about cold brewing is that there’s a much lower percentage of acid and oils extracted from the coffee (the figure of how much acid and oil extracted is somewhere between 15-35%, depending on which internet source you trust more). This means that the coffee doesn’t end up with a bitter/sour aftertaste when you cool it down or keep it for a while. In fact, a batch of cold brew will keep in the fridge for a good two weeks or so (though I’ve never had a batch last that long in my house)! And while, like me, you might be concerned that lower amounts of oils means less aroma and flavour, the full 12 hour steeping time soaks every last bit of coffee-tastic tasting goodness right out of those beans, so you don’t need to worry about an inferior tasting cuppa joe.

And, since it’s already cold, and super concentrated, you don’t need to worry about it melting all your ice cubes. Just factor in the melting ice in your dilution factor while assembling your drink.

The only hiccup I encountered was that while most of the information I found online on the proportions of coffee to water suggested a 1:4 ratio by volume (i.e. say 1 cup of ground coffee to 4 cups of water), the resulting brew I got was much too weak. I did a few experiments and I’ve settled on my perfect ratio, which is 1:4 by weight. It’s also way easier to measure it out by weight, but if you haven’t got a scale, my ratio works out to be around 1:2 or 2:5 by volume.

Also, this coffee that I made was just So Good, I now drink it by the bucketload. I’ve barely even made it to Starbucks for Toffee Nut Latte season!

Cold Brewed Coffee
250g medium-coarse ground coffee
1000ml cold (distilled) water

Weight out the coffee and water into a non-reactive container that has a tight fitting lid (you want to keep other fridge aromas out). Mix well, to ensure that there are no lumps of coffee grounds, then cover.

Allow to steep for at least 12 hours (I’ve left it for about 16 with no huge detriment either), then strain twice – once through a fine-meshed sieve, then the second time through a coffee filter or a sieve lined with muslin/cheesecloth. Store in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Yield: Around 700ml of cold brew

Awesome Iced Lattes
1 tbsp simple syrup*
150ml whole milk, very cold
1 shot (30ml) cold brew
4-8 ice cubes

Combine all the ingredients and stir well to combine. Enjoy :)

*simple syrup is equal parts of sugar and water by weight, heated on the stove or in the microwave until the sugar fully dissolves and a clear solution is produced.

It’s no secret around here that I love eggs. A friend and I were recently – and, rather excitedly – comparing our Top 5 egg-dishes, and there was one rather obvious common thread: we both love them runny.

Now, I haven’t always loved runny eggs. In fact, I still don’t really like the Singapore coffee-shop style of coddling eggs in a tub of hot water for a couple of minutes, until the whites are barely set and the yolks are still completely liquid. Two of these – as far as I’m concerned – completely uncooked specimens are cracked into a saucer, and doused in soy sauce and stirred into a pulp. Thankfully, while I still am not a huge fan of runny whites, I’ve learnt to love runny yolks, which are also the perfect sauce.

Oeufs en Cocotte (the fancy french name for Baked Eggs) are something I’ve read about for a long time. For some reason, I never really got around to making them till this past week – ramekins too small; ovenproof dish too shallow; no cream in the house…. All I can say is that I am one helluva fool for procrastinating for so long.

The entire dish comes together in about 15 minutes, and can be customised for any time of the day – add a little chopped ham or crisped bacon under the eggs for breakfast, unmould over a frisée salad for a light lunch, or serve in the shell, topped with a little caviar, for an elegant starter with grilled asparagus spears for dinner. Whatever the time of day, and however you choose to garnish it (or, eat it plain as below), if you love eggs even a quarter as much as I do, I’m sure you’re going to really enjoy this one.

Oeufs en Cocotte

4 eggs
butter for greasing
40g freshly grated cheese (I used emmental here, you could also use a mild cheddar, gruyere, parmesan, or any other melty cheese that tickles your fancy)
60-100g cream
salt and pepper

optional:
nutmeg
a few tablespoons of shredded/chopped ham/bacon/leftover roast chicken
a large handful of spinach, blanched and drained well

Preheat your oven to 180C, and butter two appropriately sized ramekins or oven-proof dishes (you want a dish approximately 10-15cm in diameter and 3-5cm deep). Sprinkle most of the cheese evenly into the base of the dishes. If using any of the optional extras, scatter the meat/veg in a thin, even layer over the base, then crack two eggs into each dish. Drizzle half the cream around the yolks (I prefer to have the egg yolks exposed), then season well with salt and pepper, grate over a little nutmeg, if using, and sprinkle the rest of your cheese over.

Bake in the preheated oven for 7-10 minutes. When done, it should still be pretty wobbly – the yolks should be runny and the whites just set. (Feel free to take them out a minute or so before the whites are set, as they will continue cooking from the residual heat.) Serve with plenty of buttered toasted bread to mop all the egg up, and a tall glass of iced coffee.

Yield: Serves 2

I don’t even want to know how many cherry-dish posts have been so titled. But it’s alright, I’m not gonna think about it. Nor am I going to think about how I didn’t even actually make Cherry Pie, but Cherry Clafoutis.

I first became a little obsessed with making a clafoutis over a year ago, when I kept seeing recipes popping up in the food magazines I often flip through, and for some reason none other than one filled with ripe, sweet, nuggets of cherries would do. I’m not even sure why – considering my aversion to cherries (chalked up to one too many sour ones that I’ve over-enthusiastically bit into). Then the season passed, and the idea was pushed to the back of my mind, lost in a tangle of all the other ones filed under “To Make”.

Fast forward to a weekend, early last month, where you’d have find me wandering the aisles of a supermarket, picking out ingredients for an upcoming dinner party. I did a double take as I ambled by the produce section, where there were a few trays of Royal Rainier Cherries stashed between their usual deep red counterparts.

For those of you who’ve hesitated making clafoutis, you really shouldn’t – take it from me. It’s a ridiculously simple process, and if you’ve ever made pancakes from a box, then you’ve got all the necessary skills. Cherry Clafoutis is originally made with unpitted cherries, which imparts a slightly nutty, almost almondy flavour to the pie. I didn’t really like the idea of one of my guests crunching down on a pit and breaking a tooth, though, so I’ve added in that nuttiness by means of amaretto and some ground almonds. As Rainier Cherries are also quite a bit sweeter (and somewhat lacking in tartness) in comparison to the more common Bings, I’ve also added in a little lemon zest to perk it up and reduced the amount of sugar.

Rainier Cherry Clafoutis

500g Rainier Cherries, pitted (substitute with other types, or other fruit if unavailable)
100g ground almonds
100g all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
100g granulated sugar (increase the amount accordingly if using different fruit)
1 tbsp amaretto
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 (375g) cups whole milk
pinch of salt
100g pine nuts (optional)
butter for greasing
icing sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 175C. Butter a 9 inch pie tin (or another appropriately sized baking dish), and add the cherries in.

Combine the ground almonds and flour in a large bowl, and whisk briefly to combine. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, amaretto, vanilla extract, milk and salt until thoroughly blended. Gradually pour this into the flour mixture, whisking continuously, until all the liquid has been added and there are no more lumps. Gently pour this into the prepared pan over the fruit, then scatter the pinenuts over the batter, if using.

Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. The clafoutis will still jiggle a little when you shake the pan.

Cool in the pan on a rack, then serve, dusted with icing sugar and a dollop of whipped cream (or vanilla ice cream).

Yield: Serves 6-8

I’m really sorry for having let an entire month go by without posting a single thing. (It also feels like every other post I write starts with an apology on how infrequently I’ve been posting!) But I only had about 13 days in August where I was in HK, and I spent about a week of that time fretting over my laptop which decided that harddrive failure was the way to go to keep me on my toes. I’m picking up the laptop tomorrow (finally) and I’ve got 98% of my drive recovered in a new external harddrive right here! But on to the post proper:

Now, I’ve mentioned once before that the bunny isn’t a fan of chocolate. (In fact, she downright dislikes the stuff!) So you can imagine my surprise when one day she requested for Marble Cake, and the quizzical expression I had when I asked, “Doesn’t marble cake have chocolate in it?!” But nope, along with Hot Chocolate, Marble Cake falls into that strange twilight zone of chocolate things that apparently don’t taste of chocolate.

It’s all the better for me anyway, since marble cakes are incredibly easy to make, and the asymmetrical swirls of chocolate batter through an otherwise blond cake generally seem to inspire many an admiring recipient. And I’m pretty sure all 5 of you who read this know what a big fan I am of dishes that look a lot more difficult to make than they actually were! And this one – a recipe taken from one of my favourite baking books, whose recipes never fail to give me a delicious, beautiful and consistent result – is one of those that can be whipped up in a flash, even if you’ve got three screaming kittens making a disaster zone of your house while trying to get your attention, and you’re in the midst of stressing out over a failed harddrive :P

Marble Cake
(From Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook)

4oz unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for the pan
1 3/4 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2/3 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp Dutch process cocoa powder
1/4 cup boiling water
Milk Glaze (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Generously butter a 9×5″ loaf pan (I used three mini loaf pans); set aside. Whisk together the cake flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar together on medium-high speed (about 5 minutes). Add the eggs one at a time, beating for a minute after each addition, and scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Mix in the vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the buttermilk, and beginning and ending with the flour. Divide the batter into two bowls – with two thirds in one bowl and one third in another.

In a bowl, mix together the cocoa and boiling water until smooth. Add the cocoa mixture to the smaller bowl of batter, and stir until well combined.

Spoon the batters into the prepared pan in two layers, alternating spoonfuls of vanilla and chocolate to simulate a checkerboard. To create marbling, run a table knife through the batters in a swirling motion. Be careful not to overswirl the batter, or the marbling won’t be as pretty!

Cake, rotating the pan halfway through, until a cake tester comes out clean, 40-50 minutes. Transfer pan to a rack to cool 10 minutes. Turn out cake from the pan and cool completely on the rack. Pour glaze over cake, letting it drip down the sides. Cake can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Milk Glaze
(From the same book)

1 cup confectioners’ (icing) sugar, sifted
2 tbsp milk

In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar and milk until completely smooth. Immediately drizzle glaze over cake.

I feel like I’ve been on some perpetual search for the elusive perfect cake most of my life. To me, it should be moist, but with a light, tender crumb. The buttery richness shouldn’t be outweighed by a heavy handed baker adding too much sugar, the eggs should give it a beautiful golden hue. There should be enough flour to give it structure and density, but not so much that it becomes leaden, dense or dry. A playful whiff of vanilla would be a fantastic foundation, and perhaps a citrusy glaze or an asymmetrical marbling of chocolate to build the complexity of flavours never hurt. But the search is over.

Having been sorely disappointed by one too many store-bought cake slices, I usually end up baking a cake for myself when the craving strikes. Some days, I’ll want to experiment; to trawl through my cookbooks for one of the earmarked recipes, but often it’s the familiar that I crave. When I’m in the mood for the latter, it’s my favourite cake that I invariably turn to – blondies. It is perfect on its own, doused liberally in a butterscotch or salted caramel sauce, yet somehow that perfection is surpassed when topped with a generous quenelle of home-made ice cream. The best part? It’s really simple and quick to whip up – it takes about 30 minutes to whip up the batter, and in the time it takes to bake, the dishes miraculously clean themselves, and you still have enough time to make the sauce. Really, the hardest part is waiting for the cake to cool and for the golden crumb to swell and soak up the caramel sauce.

And of course, it goes perfectly with that afternoon cup of tea. Hits the spot, every single time.

The only thing about baking an entire cake is that if I don’t want to gorge on an entire 9-inch, double-layered cake within the fleeting window when it remains at the height of perfection, it generally means there’ll be a distribution run to a bunch of happy friends. And after the last gazillion requests I’ve received for this particular recipe from said sticky-fingered recipients of the leftovers, I figured it was high time I just posted it up here. That way, the rest of you can enjoy it too. :)

PS: Sorry for the slightly long break I took between posts – I’ve been in and out of the country, and have had visitors in town (the HK Sevens was this weekend!), and also somehow managed to catch bunny’s non-contagious sinus infection. I have a couple more posts in my draft folder so will try to bang those out once I get a couple of minutes to breathe.

Blondies
(Adapted from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
6 oz unsalted butter, softened
65g caster sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp light corn syrup
1 tbsp vanilla extract
200g chopped toasted pecan halves (optional)
1 cup Salted Butter Caramel sauce (recipe below)

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Adjust the rack to the centre of the oven. Grease a 9×13 inch baking pan and line the base with greaseproof paper. Grease the paper.

Triple sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on high speed until soft and creamy (about 1 minute). Slowly add the sugars and beat on high speed until fully incorporated and the mixture is light and fluffy (about 10 minutes). Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.

Add the eggs, one at a time. Be sure each egg is completely incorporated and scrape down the sides of the bowl before adding the next one. Add the corn syrup and vanilla.

Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and smooth the top. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Poke holes in the surface of the cake with a skewer or fork. Pour the caramel sauce over the cake. Let the cake cool in the pan on a rack, then cut into 2-inch squares before serving.

The blondies will last wrapped airtight at room temperature for 3 days, or frozen for up to 3 weeks, but frankly they never survive that long around my house. :)

Yield: About 2 dozen 2-inch squares

Salted Butter Caramel Sauce
(Adapted from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop)

85g unsalted butter
150g sugar
250ml heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp coarse salt (fleur de sel)

Melt the butter in a large, deep, heavy-based saucepan or Dutch oven. Stir in the sugar and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar is a deep golden brown and starts to smoke.

Remove pan from the heat and immediately whisk in half of the cream and stir until smooth. (Wear an oven mitt since the mixture will steam and splatter, and may bubble furiously.) Stir in the rest of the cream, then the vanilla and salt. If there are any lumps of caramel, whisk the sauce gently over very low heat until they have been dissolved. This sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for 2 weeks. Rewarm it gently in a microwave or by stirring in a saucepan over very low heat.

Yield: Makes about 1.5 cups (so you can either just dump it ALL over the cake, or save the remainder for drizzling a little extra over the cake when you serve it. I am lazy and normally just opt for the former.)

Okay, bad rhyme. But I can’t help it – cheesecakes just get me into a certain sort of silly mood. As with most desserts, I’m generally not too hot on funny mutated variations, and I keep my tweaking to the minimum flavour-wise. Cheesecake doesn’t get any special treatment from me in this respect – I love it plain, rich, heavy, and with a buttery biscuit crust. No Oreos, no chocolate, no marbling, no fruits. Well, maybe I could do with a little compote or coulis on the side, but it should never be baked INTO the cake. I’m also not too fond of the Japanese souffle-style light cheesecakes. I want a cheesecake that’s so rich I can barely eat more than a sliver at a time – I just keep going back to the fridge for multiple slivers :)

This recipe is one that I found in my mom’s little scrapbook of recipes, where she’d paste her magazine and newspaper cutouts haphazardly, faded black and white pictures interspersed along with the recipes, and her scribbles on the notebook alongside the scraps, noting down changes she may have made. I was particularly intrigued by this one because it was on a tiny 2×2″ square of paper, with no title and only the vaguest of directions. It was barely more than the ingredients and the instructions to “combine ingredients, pour over crust, bake at low temp for 40 min”. Goodness knows where she even copied it down from. Over the past 10 years, my mom and I have experimented with this cake and I’ve now got my version of it, and hopefully with my notably more long-winded instructions, you’ll be able to add this to your list too.

Because of how rich the cake is, I can never eat a normal-sized slice at once. I like to bake it in an 8.5″ or 9″ square cake pan so that I can cut it into small, neat squares (or not-so-neat other shapes), but you could always use a 9″ round springform pan instead.

Cheesecake
(Adapted from my mom’s recipe scrapbook)

10 McVities Digestive Biscuits
60g unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing
3 x 8oz packets of Philadelphia cream cheese, at room temperature
100g caster sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
fine sea salt
4 large eggs, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease an 8.5-9″ square cake pan or a 9″ round springform pan well with butter (both the sides and the base). Line the square pan with a strip of greaseproof paper that hangs over the edges of the pan (this will make unmoulding the cake a lot easier), or the base of the springform pan. Butter the paper as well.

Place the digestive biscuits into a bowl or a resealable plastic bag and crush. It doesn’t need to be 100% homogeneously crumbled into a fine dust but you don’t want any huge lumps. Add the melted butter and a pinch of salt, stir together (it should look like damp sand), then press this firmly into the base of the prepared pan. Keep the pan in the fridge while you assemble the cake.

Beat the cream cheese in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment at medium speed for 2 minutes to further soften it. Gradually add the sugar and a pinch of salt, then cream for 5 minutes on medium-high speed until it’s fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, scraping down the sides of the bowl between additions, then beat in the vanilla extract. Pour the cream cheese mixture into the prepared pan, then transfer the pan into the preheated oven and bake for 70-80 minutes, or until the middle is just set. If you prefer that the surface of your cake not be browned, you can also tent some foil loosely over the pan.

Once the cake is done, set the cake, in its pan, on top of a wire rack to cool completely, then unmould and refrigerate until completely cold. I love it as is, but you can always top it with some whipped sour cream, strawberry or blueberry compote, or I suppose no one will stop you if you even want to drizzle some chocolate sauce over!

Yield: Serves 6-10