Pizza pretzels

Fresh bread is one of my guiltiest pleasures ever. Luckily, there are quite a few bakeries in town that cater to my needs. An example of this is King’s Bakery (on No. 3 Rd in Richmond, in the heart of the RAV construction zone). It is not your run of the mill Chinese bakery, but instead there have many inventive buns with a twist to them. On this visit, I had their Sticky Taro bread.

It had a very soft and moist texture. The top was decorated with fine strings of crispy material, dotted with dough, and dusted in powdered sugar. The first bite gave way to the melting powdered sugar on the tongue. This beast was larger than my palm, and at $1.50, it was a steal. The inside was similar to a mochi with a sweet taro paste filling. Purple and white deliciousness. This sparked my need to bake something equally delectable, so I decided on a savoury pizza pretzel.

I had intended to make a pretzel, but as you can see from the pictures, they came out looking more like buns than pretzels. But they were nonetheless tasty. And better yet, they’re fa-free pizza pretzels! The dough was so soft that kneading could be done lickety split. As it was coming together, I felt that the dough called for way too much water. So you could cut back on this or you will definitely need to increase the amount of flour at your discretion because it will toughen the dough. I think that I’ll need to rework this part a bit. As you can see in the picture, there were some large holes in the texture. I think that I need to add a second rise to this before reshaping to minimize this. Also, boiling the dough longer seemed to toughen the crust, but give it more of a golden brown colour. This won’t be too important if you’re adding a pizza topping onto it. But it will become more apparent if you only put sea salt on it. Watch these like a hawk in the oven. You definitely don’t want to overcook them or they won’t be soft. And you must use a Silpat, as they have no oil in the dough, so the parchment paper stuck like nobody’s business.

Results: The bread tasted so good warm out of the oven. The crust was thin and toasty, while the inside was warm and soft. The plain salt topping really did taste like a pretzel, but oh so much more luxurious. The pizza topping won hands down though because everyone loves pizza! The next day, the insides were still soft, but the edges were no longer crusty. So this can be saved by lightly toasting it.

Low fat, low sugar orange chiffon cake

One of my favourite blogs to try recipes from is Do what I like. Almost every recipe that I’ve tried from there has been a winner. In my rampage for low fat cake recipes, I’ve tried her chiffon cake.

In my mind, the key to a successful chiffon is that it is still soft and moist the next day. This is a big problem with sponge cakes for me, as it becomes hard and chewy very quickly. Luckily, this one was still just as delicious the next day. I scaled her recipe to use 3 eggs in a 9″ tube pan because I didn’t want to waste too many ingredients if it failed. But it worked and rose beautifully. The taste is just right for me, not too sweet. I think that I may try to cut the sugar back just a bit more. And I may want to play around, substituting strawberry puree for orange juice.

Look at the fine texture. Small crumbs, and not many big holes.

White chocolate cranberry muffins

Have you ever craved something so much, you’d go out to the store 5 minutes before closing just to get the ingredient you needed?? That’s me with chocolate. Ahh. the 5th food group. That’s surprisingly healthy as well. Luckily, this time, I have padded my pantry with chocolate to last me a good while, should I not bake excessively.

So… due to my new-found glut of Purdy’s white chocolate bars, I have had to find something to do with them. Googling up white chocolate recipes was not easy, lemme tell you. I wanted white chocolate recipes that were not too buttery in themselves, as white chocolate is luxurious enough as it is.

Finally, I stumbled upon a recipe from Godiva’s website. It was for white chocolate cheesecake muffins. Not feeling the need to gain 20lb, I opted out of the cheesecake and settled to gain 10. Oh boy, were these worth it. It you like a crispy top, these are the muffins for you. I halved the recipe and took out some oil and sugar. It didn’t compromise the taste from what I could tell. The texture of the insides are nice and soft. Truly, best eaten warm. And it took me less than 1/2hr to put together and eat. A big plus!

Next time I try this, I think I’ll flavor half of it with matcha and do a marbled loaf. Or I might switch it up and make them in madeleine pans, which would give these a really cute shape.

Plus, this is my first submission ever to a blog event. Sugar High Friday’s -Cravings.

Low calorie chocolate banana cookie

After a weekend of luxurious macarons, I felt the need to overcompensate with a low calorie breakfast cookie. No pictures, because it’s not a sight to behold. But it’s relatively tasty, if you don’t mind a soft texture. Best of all, it’s guilt free. Now, it’s off to my humdrum of salad and cereal once more!

 

Macaron Batch #2

I’ve been surfing food blogs for a while… drooling at the delicious pictures. One of the recipes that I’ve wanted to try most is the macaron. So yesterday, I decided to give it a shot. I made the macaron batter using the Italian meringue method found on many websites. I then separated the batter into 3 and flavoured with matcha, raspberry and vanilla extract, and espresso powder. For the filling, I made an Italian buttercream with chocolate. Unfortunately, the tops of every single one of them cracked! And to top it off, there were no feet on any of them. I dare not show the pictures.

So on to round 2 today! Today, I made a small batch of matcha macarons since those tasted the best from yesterday. I adapted a recipe from David Leibovitz’ blog . It worked just perfectly! So I’ve included the steps with some pictures below.

Mmm.. apples!

It’s not really that time of year yet. But the weather has been rainy and cold here of late. So that warm apple cinnamon taste definitely helps.

I can’t remember exactly where I pulled this recipe from because it was a while ago. But it’s very easy to make with nice results. I added a jam glaze and icing sugar on the top for some extra impact.

Verdict: The taste was a bit bland. I should add more sugar next time. Also, the cake ended up being a bit flat. It might fare better in a 8″ pan. But it looks like I spent a lot of time on it 🙂

Stay tuned

Soon to come… excellent simple and healthy recipes for your sweet tooth.