"Lord of all Biscuits"

The rich tea biscuit is everything that a decadent chocolate chip cookie is not - it's light as a feather and is perfectly capable of just blending into the background. They are probably just a step up in terms of standout ability from cream crackers. In fact, until about a year ago, I always thought that rich tea biscuits were made from tea extracts or something along those lines.

It's funny how these things quietly sneak up on you - one day after having my very first rich tea biscuit out of lack of choice, I fell helplessly in love with the simple wallflower of a biscuit. To think that I had been missing out all this while.

So if you, like me pre-rich-tea-enlightenment, always pick the more attractive looking cookies from the middle shelf at the supermarket over the plain janes stacked in the bottom row, I say give those plain janes a go - you might be pleasantly surprised.

Queen Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

"I'm coming over to bake cupcakes"

And that was that - another Wednesday afternoon spent in the kitchen with Ju Vern attempting to turn out adequately attractive cupcakes for someone's birthday and a charity bake-off. The cupcakes came from a simple recipe from her mum, quirky-ly titled "Queen's Cupcakes". While it slipped my mind to get the recipe from her, I did manage to find a similarly named recipe with the help of good old Google (really, what would the world do without google?).


Queen Cupcakes, taken from Bake Space with a cream cheese frosting

Ingredients:

Cupcake:
100g flour
75g butter
75g castor sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
milk to taste
50g raisins

Cream cheese frosting:
75g butter, softened,
75g cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
sugar to taste

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celcius.
Sift flour and baking powder.
Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy before adding the lightly beaten egg to the mixture.
Add vanilla essence and fold in flour and baking powder. Add milk until the batter has a soft dropping consistency. Mix in raisins.
Fill 3/4 of each cupcake shell with the batter and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
To make the frosting, cream butter, cream cheese, vanilla extract and incremental amounts of sugar. Adding sugar a bit at a time and tasting as you go along gives you control of how sweet you want your frosting to be.
Allow cupcakes to cool before spreading the frosting.

The cupcakes are a breeze to make - the perfect recipe to fall back on when you need to make a quick dessert. It's also a good basic recipe to play around with (I suspect that adding some lemon or orange juice in place of milk would be a good twist). The bit that we didn't find so easy, however, was the decorating of the cupcakes. While cream cheese frosting is absolutely delicious (yes, even on its own) it's quite tricky to work with. Colouring doesn't mix very well with it and it doesn't have that stiff consistency that usual frosting or icing has.

So some lessons learnt that afternoon:

1. Mixing more and more food colouring into cream cheese frosting does not make it look better - in fact, what you get is crazy looking, psychedelic frosting.
   
2. Cream cheese frosting dissolves makeshift paper funnels.
3. It may be a good idea to invest in a basic cake-decorating kit.

The thing about the cream cheese frosting, though, is that it's so good that you forgive it for being difficult.

I've come away from the experience wanting more than ever to spend some time experimenting and learning how to make my food look gorgeous. Perhaps I've watched one too many episodes of Masterchef or read far too many amazing food blogs - whatever it is, I think it's time I learnt a thing or two about presentation.

Any suggestions on where to begin?

Apple Crumble Pie

Before moving to the UK, apples were well, just apples. I could never tell one variety of apple from another, all types just merging into one. To be completely honest, apples were never really my thing. The thing is, you can't help but know your apples (at least some of them) in this country and after three years, I've decided that apples are in fact, my thing especially those lovely, sweet gala apples. So it doesn't come as a surprise when I decided one afternoon that the only cure to the brain-muddling that came with trying to decipher equation after equation was apple pie.

Adapted from LEHOUX's Apple Crumble Pie Recipe and B1BMOM's Easy Pie Crust Recipe

Ingredients:

Pie crust:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons milk

Filling:
5 apples, thinly sliced (I used gala, of course)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Crumble:
6 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup white sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius.
Place all pie crust ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
Pat mixture into bottom and up sides of a 9 inch pie pan. Using a fork, pierce the bottom and sides of the crust lightly.
Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until light brown.

Once the baked pie crust is sufficiently cool, arrange the apple slices in the shell.
Mix 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over apples.

Mix 1/2 cup sugar with flour and mix in butter until crumbly (your fingertips are the best tools for this).
Spoon the crumble mixture over the apples and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until apples are soft and crumble is a golden brown.

Alright, so it's not really your traditional apple pie but I love how the crumble adds that extra texture to it (and really, who doesn't love toasty, slightly crunchy, crumble?). I have to admit that (yes, another admission) before I came to the UK, I never truly appreciated the the magical powers of custard. I reckon that this could be due to the Malaysian rendition of custard always being a tad too sweet and tasting too much like condensed milk. I discovered in my time here that smooth, creamy custard can be extremely addictive and is often the perfect complement to dessert. So, while warm apple pie with a generous side of vanilla ice cream will always be the winning combination for me, I highly recommend giving the pie-custard pairing a go.

And yes, apple crumble pie does wonders for the muddled brain.

Orange-Lemon Shortbread Cookies

Some time during the peak of the chocoholic's chocolate chunk cookie baking madness, I decided that we needed something, anything, to break the all-consuming chocolate cycle. I was craving something a bit lighter, something with a bit of acidity and zing to it.

I scouted around for something simple and quick to whip up and thought that lemon shortbread cookies sounded absolutely perfect.

Adapted from Debster's Lemon Shortbread Cookies Recipe

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 cups sifted flour
zest of one lemon
zest of one orange
juice of one lemon
castor sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 325 degrees celcius.
Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer.
Add lemon juice, zest and flour. Mix well on low speed.
Drop cookie dough balls on an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cookies are light brown
Sprinkle some castor sugar onto the tops of the cookies as soon as they are removed from the oven, while they are still soft.

Some of the comments about the original recipe involved the cookie being not lemony enough and because I really wanted something with a punch, I increased the amount of lemon zest and juice. After deciding that I would use the zest of two lemons, I discovered that we only had one lying around in the kitchen so I thought some orange rind would be a good substitute and it was - the orange zest gave the cookies a more well-rounded flavour. Sprinkling some sugar on top of the cookies while they were still soft let the sugar set a little - the sweetness of the slightly crunchy sugar was a lovely complement to the sharp, bold cookie.

Light, buttery, uplifting - perfect with a cup of tea.

So there we go, the antidote to too much chocolate - orange-lemon shortbread cookies.

Of dogs and horses

There's nothing like the smell of fried onions coming from a hotdog stand - that intense, intoxicating, "oh-so-yummy' aroma accompanied by the equally tantalising sound of the onions sizzling on the hot grill. There's always a stand by the Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue that makes me stop to entertain the idea of getting a hotdog no matter how full I am from a meal in Chinatown. I suppose that's great publicity for you.

While I've always managed to resist temptation with the Shaftesbury Avenue stall, munching on a hotdog piled high with sauteed onions and oozing brown sauce and ketchup seemed like just the right thing to do at the racecourse.

And so there we were, hotdogs in hand (the meat-lover uncharacteristically decided on fried noodles for some reason), squinting, cheering, soaking up the atmosphere.

I love how hotdogs are one of those comforting, universal things that seem right for any occasion - even a day at the racecourse.

Carluccio's Canary Wharf

I suppose it was wishful thinking on our part - attempting to get a table at Jamie's Italian in Canary Wharf on a Friday night. Perhaps on any other occasion, we would have been accepting of the 30-40 minute wait for a table but on that particular Friday night, we were far too hungry to stand around waiting for our remote-control-like devices to beep. We decided to head to Carluccio's for our Italian fix instead.

Carluccio's Canary Wharf
Docklands
Reuters Plaza
London, E14 5AJ

The thing that strikes you first as you walk into Carluccio's is the feeling of warmth that greets you - the buzz of activity provides a lively atmosphere while still allowing you to enjoy a good conversation. This seems to be the general feel of all of the Carluccio's outlets that I've ever visited.

Penne Giardiniera - Pugliese penne with courgette, chilli and deep fried spinach balls with parmesan and garlic. I decided on this almost immediately, having enjoyed the dish tremendously at the Bicester Village branch. It was love at first bite then - the slight crunch of the spinach-parmesan-garlic balls offset by the soft courgette. While extremely similar to the Bicester Village rendition, the Penne Giardiniera in Canary Wharf didn't quite hit the spot. I cannot put my finger on what exactly was different about it, though. Perhaps bags and bags of shopping make all the difference.

Pasta con Funghi - egg pappardelle with a mix of shiitake, oyster, porcini and button mushrooms. Like the Penne Giardiniera, this dish was ordered based on our visit to the Bicester Village branch. I remember marvelling at the delightful mushroom flavour that was simultaneously strong and subtle.

Bistecca di bue con patate - 10oz bone in rib steak, chargrilled and served with rosemary potatoes and red pepper sauce. After some soul-searching, our meat-lover simply had to order the steak. While he enjoyed the red pepper sauce, he found the steak to be overdone.

Tiramisù - Savoiardi biscuits soaked in strong espresso coffee and coffee liqueur with mascarpone and chocolate. I've always had a very soft spot for tiramisu - the intense flavour of coffee, the creaminess of the mascarpone and the sponge that soaks it all up. Carluccio's does a very good version of this classic. It's definitely worth saving some space for.

For some reason, the Carluccio's in Canary Wharf didn't quite live up to expectations. It might have been the chaos that comes with a Friday night dinner service or simply that the quality of food isn't as good as the Bicester Village branch. Nevertheless, the restaurant is still worth a visit, especially if you stick to the pasta dishes and remember to end your meal with some tiramisu.

Cream Puffs

My earliest cream puff memories involve trips to the neighbourhood bakery with my grandmother whenever she came to visit. We'd take a stroll down the street to see what the bakery had to offer for the day. If we were lucky, we'd come home with a dozen or so mini cream puffs - I absolutely loved every light, fluffy, custard-filled bit of those little treats.

I was always under the impression that making cream puffs would involve complicated techniques - the need to whip eggwhites a certain way or the need to get the oven temperature just right. On retrospect, it seems likely that I may have somehow managed to associate cream puffs with souffles. So when the housemate suggested that we make cream puffs, I immediately imagined us in full project mode - deciphering a complicated recipe, whipping countless eggwhites and fashioning some sort of make-shift baking device that we needed but didn't own. When I saw the recipe she had pulled up on our favourite recipe site, I couldn't have been more surprised. No crazy techniques, no complicated procedures - I'd say that making a batch of cream puffs would be easier than turning out a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Based on Shellie Wendel's Cream Puffs Recipe

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs

Custard powder
50g plain chocolate
Milk

Make custard as per instructions on the packaging (we used about 2 tablespoons of Bird's custard powder to make a pint of custard), adding the plain chocolate to the mixture.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
In a large pot, bring water and butter to a rolling boil. Stir in flour and salt until the mixture forms a ball. Transfer the dough to a large mixing bowl. Using a wooden spoon or stand mixer, beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown. Centers should be dry.
When the shells are cool, either split and fill them with the custard mixture, or use a pastry bag to pipe the custard into the shells.


I have to admit, we did have to fashion a utensil that we needed but didn't own - a piping bag. We've come away having learnt that while a ziplock bag generally does the trick, it really isn't the cleanest tidiest way to go about it.

I marveled at how the bits of dough transformed into gorgeous, golden brown puffs in the oven, almost as if by magic.


Who would have thought - cream puffs, easy as ABC.