Anyways, in trying not to get caught up in negative thoughts, I thought I would do a little baking to distract myself. Domestic Goddess I am not. I loathe tidying up and cleaning; cooking is a chore and baking was something I did in my secondary school years. So, I am always happy if the recipes I try out come out edible but look less than perfect. Which is good considering all three recipes I tried this time turned out tasting good but lacking a little in the looks department.
The first cake I tried was something called a Flourless Chocolate Cake taken from this website http://www.recipelion.com/Chocolate-Cake-Recipes/Easy-Chocolate-Fudge-Cake. It was really easy to make, took only 15 minutes of prep and used very simple ingredients: sugar, chocolate chips, butter, eggs and vanilla. But the finished result looked even worse than the one in the recipe! Taste wise, it got different reviews. Mummy said it was too rich for her, Daddy thought it was nice but a little too sweet while Hubby said it was good- but then Hubby is one of the best people in the world to cook for as he always thinks whatever I make is good. Personally, I think taste wise it was passable, although I will try using darker chocolate next time.Texture wise, it wasn't what I had imagined.The recipe said it was fudgy. It wasn't. It was a little too light, perhaps I overbeat the egg whites...
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| The ingredients for the Flourless Chocolate Cake |
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| The melted chocolate and beaten egg mixture ready to be baked. Still looked normal here. And then... |
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| I think my cake tin was a little too small for this cake... It looks like it's about to explode! |
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| Although the recipe said the cake was meant to rise and fall, I don't think it was meant to collapse in this manner!! |
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| The outside of the cake was nice and crusty while the inside was light and moist, but not FUDGY as I expected >.< |
A few days later I tried my hand at making Creme Caramel aka Custard Pudding. I developed a craving for this dessert while watching one of my favourite Youtube cooking channels, Cooking with Dog. What made me try it was that the lady made it look so easy!! Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself at:
It took me only 30 minutes to finish prep and used ingredients I could find around the house immediately-sugar, water, eggs, milk and vanilla. I had problems with the cooking time though. The recipe said that it would take only 20 minutes for the custard to be done, but in my case it took almost 50 minutes!! I had made 1.5 times more than the recipe and adjusted the cooking time accordingly, but I am sure I messed up somewhere. Or perhaps my ramekins were just too thick. Taste and texture wise I was very pleased. It was smooth and velvety if a little too sweet for our tastebuds. Appearance wise, I shall need to try and ensure that there aren't any bubbles the next time I make it.
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| I liked this because it did not have the normal eggy smell of most creme caramels but the recipe was a little too sweet for us though. |
Yesterday I tried something a little more complicated. New York Cheesecake. Again the ingredients were very simple, but EXPENSIVE! Might be better to just buy the cake from a shop. Anyway, I modified the recipe a little. Firstly, I thought there was way too much sugar in it. There is meant to be sugar in the base, cream cheese filling as well as the sour cream topping!! Definitely not something I want in my condition. So in the end I omitted the sugar from the biscuit base, and cut down the sugar in the filling from two thirds of a cup to half a cup. I also reduced the sugar in the topping from half a cup to slightly over a quarter of a cup. I also could not be bothered to bake the base first, so I just chilled it in the fridge while I prepared the filling.
The end result wasn't as bad as I had imagined. I had only ever made chilled cheesecakes and so was expecting my first attempt to be disasterous. It wasn't perfect, but I think I can forgive myself the slight cracks in the corners.
We had the cake tonight for dessert, and it was well received not just by my husband, but also by my extended family. I guess this recipe's a keeper!
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| I was a little disappointed with the cracks at the side, but decided to ignore them and slopped the sourcream topping all over it (^.^)/ |
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| I held my breath while removing the cheesecake from the tin. Thank goodness it turned out alright. You can actually see the sourcream topping on top of the filling if you look close enough. |
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| I'm not artistic at all and had planned to serve the cheesecake plain. But seeing that it was meant to be a Valentne's Day cake for my husband, I decide to slice up some canned peaches and place them on the top as additional topping. I am pleased to say that the sweetnes of the peaches went well with the sourcream. |
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