Brown sugar mini muffins

Wao, seems like I am very free? Not really, just that there is a need to have some breakfast for some days, and also I am only doing fried rice for simple dinner on some days. Ironing was done over weekend so I had the chance to bake. This is baked shortly after the cream cheese chocolate cookie.

I had wanted to try this - Brown sugar mini muffins ever since I see it in this blog. The recipe uses simple ingredients, esp one that I wish to "get rid" sooner - brown sugar. I had this pack of brown sugar for a long time. It has harden despite the fact that I put it in the fridge (in a container somemore!). Can anyone tell me how to keep the brown sugar from hardening?

I feel that this recipe is not that sinful and a little healthier because it is half fat to the flour used and it uses brown sugar instead of white sugar. Brown sugar is better isn't it? The method is also easy, everything throw into mixer in order. The only thing is, how to cream the sugar to pale and fluffy when I am using brown sugar. The creamed butter still seem brownish. Anyway, 無驚無險，the batter is mixed and then scooped into mini muffin paper cases lined inside my 12 holed mini muffin pan. The baking process is also not very eventful. The mini muffins rose as desired and browned as desired too. Very soon, the mini muffins are out. The recipe I referred to can make 14 mini muffins, but I am able to make 12 mini ones, plus 12 heart shaped one.

Yes, I bought a new pan, like the mini muffin pan but in heart shape. I cannot find heard shaped liner, thus I baked the muffins direct in it (since it is non stick pan). The end product is not so "heart" looking because I "squeeze" too much batter into each "heart" as I did not want to bake another half pan.

Here are how my mini muffins looked like.

No price guessing why is there a hole in each muffin :-)

I wondered, this recipe calls for 1.5 tsp of baking powder with 110g cake flour but how come the mini muffins are not puffing up very much?

The muffin is very soft when just out from oven but it taste good (and not too sweet)) when cooled. I feel that it is rather plain looking so perhaps when I serve the kids this, I will spread a layer of kaya or nutella on top. It will also served as a cover for the brown dotted surface. Why is the surface dotted? Brown sugar not melted?

Anyway my family big and small, all liked this muffin ..

Strike when the iron's hot

What iron is hot? - I baked cookies today! So I must blog now, if not, it will be like the chocolate chip muffin post (not done as of now, but muffin baked like 1-2 weeks ago).

Philly cheese are getting expensive... so previously when there is sales, I bought two (very greedy!). Then as usual, they will sit in the fridge till near expire then I get very kan cheong. So I used one on the pineapple cheese cake, and I am determine to try a drop cookie recipe with cheese next. As my hersley mini chips are also near expiry, I also need to clear them.  I look through the usual blogs but could not find a cream cheese chocolate chip cookie recipe, so I googled.

I took the recipe from here.  I converted the measurements of the ingredients in oz to gms. So I had reading like brown sugar 110g, granulated sugar 150g, cheese and butter 115g and flour 156.25g. I felt that granulated sugar was on the high side, so I reduced it to the same as brown sugar. I think it should be fine since there are chocolate chips. In the end, I still feel that the cookies are on the sweet side. I did not even put enough chocolate chips as I did not have enough (as what recipe asked for).

It was fun looking at the butter and cheese creaming. The batter looked so smooth and after the egg, it looks more "droppable". I started to worry it will be too soft to hold its shape but after adding the flour,  I had a soft dough. I do not know how big should a drop be, so I just put a big lump. In the end, some of them spread out and joined together. It is also fun looking at the lumps spread out into circular cookie shape.

Finally , after almost 2 hours since I measured out the ingredients, I had around 2 dozen or more biscuits. The baking time per batch is very long. I took at least half hour for a batch but the recipe only says about 10 minute or so. Thus, it is either my cookies are too big, or the oven really gone haywired.

The cookies were so soft when I first tried to remove them from the tray to the wire rack. It gave me a small shock, worried that the inside are not cooked. It did firm up a little after cooling . The cookies are crispy on the outside, and soft in the inside. I wonder if that is the characteristic of drop cookies. However, I did not detect any cheese.

Here they are :-

With this cream cheese chocolate chip drop cookies, I am going to join the challenge - Aspiring Bakers #6 : Say Cheese (Apr 11).

The recipe is taken from http://southernfood.about.com/.

Ingredients :

                     4oz of cream cheese, room temperature
                     4 oz of butter, room temperature
                     1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
                      1/4 cup granulated sugar
                     1 large egg
                     1 1/2 tspn vanilla extract
                      1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
                      1/2 tspn baking powder
                      1/4 tspn salt
                       1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips or milk

Preparation :

Hear oven to 350 F. Grease a cookie sheet , or spray with nonstick cooking spray, or line with silicon liner.
In a mixing bowl with electric mixer, beat cream cheese, butter, and sugars until very light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla until smooth. Slowly beat in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in chocolate chips.
Drop by teaspoonfuls onto prepare baking sheets (s), leaving about 1 inch between cookies, these cookies spread very little. Bake for 10 to 14 minutes, or until the cookies are set lightly browned around the edges.

Here is a cross section close up of the biscuit to end this post.

I am submitting this entry to this month's Aspiring Bakers #6 : Say Cheese (Apr 11).

Have been "saying" in the header of my blog that shooting is one of my hobby .. but seriously I really love to take pictures ... thou not very good, cos do not like to spend money taking courses. While downloading the photos of our short trip end last year (ya now then download to PC!), I could not help giving these pictures captions and have the urge to share them out. Here goes :-

 看海的日子

 看海的日子，有我有你就夠了

 看海的日子，加上爸爸才有意思

：－）

When I am not baking ...

When I am not baking, I will be busy with housework or cooking. Recently, I made pop corns with the new wok, made Sloppy Joe Burgers, made strawberry pudding as well as ice jelly cocktail. I even tried making pizza with pita bread since I am so lazy to make my own base.

Pop corns - It all started with HHB's pop corns, combined with kids' growing interest in watching cartoon movie at home and the new wok. HHB's pop corn post introduced the urge, the kids' interest adds to the need, then it became a MUST with the tool available. (*grin*) It is a very fun thing to do. I followed HHB's ingredient measurement as I lost the recipe given by the promoter. It is very satisfying to see the oil coated corn pop up. However, I messed up when I try to coat the popcorn with caramel. I have to melt the sugar but when the liquid sugar starts turning brownish at certain places while some white crystal are still melting, I started to swirl the wok, hoping to balance the heat and upon seeing all the white crystals disappeared, I quickly emptied all the popcorns inside the wok. I think I overloaded my wok and also the sugar may not be totally melted? I got a problem tossing the popcorns and the sugar hardens easily so I had big lumps of popcorns and some sticking to the base with the sugar. Anyway the kids were still thrilled to have the popcorns with their movie and I think I will try again (have the corns anyway).

Here's sharing the popcorns.

Next up is Sloppy Joe Burger. Oh yes, the recipe came from HHB too. Her instructions are easy to follow and understand. Thank you for sharing, HHB. I am running out of what to cook for the kids only (as head of family is often out to make ends meet) and I saw her lovely post on this burger that is made with japanese curry n spaghetti sauce. Japanese curry and spaghetti are my kids' favourite so I think this should not go wrong. Furthermore, I welcome another way to use beef since I heard beef is good for boosting immunity. I made the burgers using Sunshine's butter rolls which are smaller (less wastage incase they really don't like it). The kids really love the filling and the daddy mentioned that it taste like rendang burger from BK yet minus the sweetness. So that night alone, the kids and the daddy polished up the bag of rolls. I have just received orders from the kids to cook it again next week.

Here is sharing my Sloppy Joe.

Finally the dessert (haha just like in a 3 course meal - but I did not make these the same day) - strawberry pudding. My family loves having dessert and the pudding post from cook.bake.love tempted me and my kids. I even purposely buy gelatin for this. Just as expected, the kids are thrilled. The pudding were very well received. What I did not understand was that .. the pudding kind of become quite watery towards the end (they have finish eating and left the bowls for me to pack up and wash) but soon, I got clarification from Angel (blog owner). Thank you Angel.

Here is how my pudding looked like.

Besides this lovely dessert, I also tried my hands at ice jelly cocktail. My kids will ask for this same dessert everytime we told them we are going to order dessert after a meal outside. Since I have heard that it is not difficult at all, I quickly go to Phoon Huat to get the ice jelly powder and with a can of tropical cocktail, the kids got their ice jelly cocktail. Not difficult to make the jelly because it is after all jelly so made it the usual jelly way. LOL. After setting it in the fridge, I just add cocktail and put in some cocktail syrup. I even put in sugar during the 2nd time I made the jelly and the family prefered jelly with a hint of sweetness.  Now I am trying to tempt you with my homemade ice jelly cocktail ;-)

Pizza with pita bread as base was last night's dinner. I love that the end product look very much like a real pizza, where it is round and have a thick bread look alike base. My boy helped in assembling the pizza and while I showered the kids, I let the cheese melt inside the oven.  After a while, the cheese has melted but did not brown. So I changed the oven mode to grill and I left to coach boy on a math's question. After 4 minutes (my timer beeps) I went to look at them and to my horror, some are "over grilled". The "not so black" parts are given to the hungry kids while those below will have to be cleared by me.

Both dh and the kids felt that this version is better than having normal square sandwich bread as base pizza. If I cook more cooling tea.. the kids will have more choices. 

Changes to my hobby blog

Dear friends,

I have made some changes in the settings of my blog. I have added the option of moderating comments and also word verification. I am sorry to cause inconvenience to you when leaving comments but I have to do it to safe guard myself and you too.

Recently I have received comments in two of my beading post. The comments look very real, with relevance to my post contents too, but when I clicked on the page of that user, I was brought to a website not so suitable for children. My hubby told me that these are ways people advertise their website, or help create awareness or could be virus being loaded into the PC when the link being clicked on. I am fine with people advertising cos it is a way I get to know the world beyond my home, but virus? no way. Since everyone can click on the links, I would prefer to put a stop to those "bots" that could be putting in comments.

My hubby also mentioned that, the person could be a genuine reader but her/his PC is infected with virus that changes links after she posted. So on the safe side - I hope you all can understand and will understand.

Cheers and have a good weekend ahead.

Trying to follow HHB's baking trail - Mixed Berries Muffins

I said I will join HHB in her baking trail.. and it has been a long long while then I started ... her Mixed Berries Muffins. She explained that the usual muffin method uses less fat, so this creaming method uses more fat .. oh dear ... but it is a new thing to me, mixing berries .. so I wanna try.

Even though it is such a simple thing, I took a long long time to get it done. I can only blame it on the fact that I do not bake often. So I have to do alot of washing, before and after .. and putting them into the muffin cups proves a bit of a job . The batter I ended up having is rather thick even though my batter curdles alot in between (because I have pour in two eggs by mistake). My kids love the muffins especially my boy because blueberry is his favourite.

I did not get a high muffin because I have forgotten how high should I fill my muffin cup, I am worry about them overflowing so I just fill 3/4 full and in process of baking, the batter became half full only and rise to 3/4 full not nicely to the top. Next time if I am to bake again, I will fill the cup higher.

Here is sharing the nice blue and red tinted muffins.

Please refer to the recipe from Happy Home baking's blog. Perhaps you would like to join her in her baking trail too?

Yellow Yellow Ugly Fellow

It is now 2.30am, Saturday morning, in the week of school holiday. I have just finish blog hopping and finally willing to write about my latest bake that I did last week.

I have been itching to bake for a long long time. My last bake is in December! However, I am really lazy and  I am still adjusting to new routine (My girl went to P1 this year) .. blah blah blah... ok so I want easy, fast .. so I went to my shelves and took the "Easy Stir n Bake Cakes" book. I remember I have the cheese (since Nov! and yet not expired and not mouldy *phew*) so I settled for "Pineapple Cheesecake". I revisited my first try, knowing how my kids had liked it, I went ahead with full confidence.

However, I had problem melting my cheese into smooth and creamy state, but luckily that did not affect the cake at all. I cannot explain why the cheese has tiny lumps thou. Beside this difference, I also must note that I did not have enough cream cheese but since slice cheese can make into lovely cheesecake, I am sure there is no harm making up the difference with a slice of sliced cheese. I did worry about the saltiness of sliced cheese, but what can I do then? :-) I also deliberately reduce the sugar (since the pineapple should be sweet coming from a can) and oil. I reduce both by 20g.

Although there wasn't much hiccups during preparation, the cake rose unevenly in the oven, so unlike the first try.

 


Was quite upset by it since it is suppose to be fail proof. However, the end result is so well received by my kids, as expected.
The cake is gone in day 2 and the boy make a big fuss as he only has two pieces in that 2 days.

I took a few photos (cos I also love photography) even though it is a simple cake so now I had problem choosing one to be place here. (Note : Please do not expect good pictures, cos loving to take doesn't means I can do it well now.)

Shall spare myself the agony of looking at those pictures (now at 3.09am) by putting only just one.

A piece that looks like coming from a perfect loaf.


















As this cake has pineapple, I would like to give my support to a challenge started by SSB and now hosted by Jess.

For the challenge and convenience, I am posting the details of recipe here.

Ingredients

180g cream cheese
120g caster sugar
90ml corn oil
3 eggs
130g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
170g canned pineapple (diced)

Method

1) Grease and line a 10cm x 20cm (4 x 8 inches) loaf pan. Preheat oven to 170dC.
2) Stir cream cheese and sugar over simmering water until soft and smooth. Remove from heat. Stir in oil and eggs until well combined.
3) Combine flour, baking powder and soda. Fold into cheese mixture together with pineapple dices until well blended.
4) Spoon mixture into prepared pan. Bake in oven for 40 - 45 minutes or until cooked. Stand for 10 minutes and turning on to wire rack to cool.



Recipe from Kevin Chai - Easy Stir 'n Bake Cakes


I am submitting this entry to this month's Aspiring Baker#5 : Fruity March (March 2011).