HELLO! My brekkie! I really tried to come up with something good after a long hiatus from Salad Mondays. I still eat salads, like everyday, but they’re the same damn salad. This salad to be specific.
So yesterday I decided to try something different.
Ok, I’m lying, it was basically that same salad with a tahini based dressing. Salad nooooooooooo Looks ok, doesn’t it?
It was gross. Not super gross, but heavy gross, and unworthy of being touted as a Salad Monday salad.
SO – this was going to be a post I saved for a Friday or a Saturday to inspire some weekend projects but instead, since it turned out so beautifully and made me so happy this morning, I decided to share this little bit of success/heaven.
Every morning I eat some oat based breakfast. It’s usually overnight oats or granola or muesli. After months of the first two, I caved and bought a bag of Marks and Spencer’s “Four Berry Muesli”. Very delicious. Also, very expensive at about SGD15 a bag. It was also close to expiration.
So every morning, as I shoveled this very expensive and slightly stale cereal down my throat (with greek yogurt, obs), I realized I should try making it because a) I had most of the ingredients in my house and b) whatever I made should be cheaper.
This is what I came up with and seriously – it tastes fresh and nutty and is WAY better than any store bought muesli I have ever had, is easier to make than granola and is probably healthier – coz no added sugar!
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup chopped almonds, toasted/roasted (with no added salt)
1 Tbsp chia seeds
2/3 cup raisins
2/3 cups dried cranberries
Preheat oven to 175C/350C.
Spread oats onto a baking sheet until its 1/4 inch deep (ish). Toast for ten minutes, stirring once in the middle.
Remove from oven and cool in a separate tray/ big plates.
At this point you can toast the almonds if you need to. Ten minutes should do it.
Once cool, evenly scatter the almonds, chia seeds, raisins and dried cranberries over the oats.
Started from the bottom
Added nuts + chia seeds
Added fruit
Carefully scoop into an air-tight container.
And done!Serve with milk or yogurt. Drink black coffee. Revel in your brilliance.
The motivation behind the coconut lemon curd – was a lack of tastiness.
Let me rewind.
So, Saturday last week, I awoke, slightly worse for the wear after… let’s call it, an enthusiastic Friday night.
The only solution was – brunch. And grocery shopping. Because I had to make food. And get on with my day. Because no matter how you feel – you gotta get shit done. Coz you’re an ADULT. See here for inspiration.
So, in my mind I had a game plan. I was gonna go, get the freaking groceries and get a donut from Starbucks. A glazed old-fashioned donut with a cup of black coffee. And life would be beautiful.
After getting all them groceries and ambling over to Starbucks, the semi-polite barista informed me they were out of donuts.
WHAT???
Since my entire plan for happiness, that Saturday, was precariously hinged on whether I not I ate that donut, I left said Starbucks knowing that all hope was lost.
I had nothing else to do but make butter cake.
Also I bought a lot of eggs. Butter cake requires many eggs.
All the batter
I would like to tell you that after I hate-baked this cake I discovered that it was quite dry. This may be because I baked it like 10 minutes more than the recommended time. The batter was still jiggling – OK? The only thing I could do – obviously – was to then make lemon curd to go with it.
The curd!
When life gives you lemons…
Butter Cake
250g unsalted butter, at room temperature – I used salted because I didn’t have unsalted. Don’t judge.
1 + 2/3 cup / 200gm all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup / 200gm castor sugar
4 eggs
½ tsp salt
4 Tbsps yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F.
Grease a loaf pan with butter, line with parchment paper, and grease that. Foolproof dudes. Use this method when baking.
Sieve the flour and baking powder together, stir in the salt.
Use an electronic mixer, unless you want to hate your life, to cream the butter and sugar together until pale yellow in color.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
Add in the vanilla extract and mix well.
Fold in the flour. I did this by spooning the flour in and making a “figure 8” shape with my spatula. Mel told me to do this. It worked.
Add in the yogurt and mix.
Pour mixture into the baking pan and smooth down with a knife.
Bake until golden brown and no longer jiggly! About 40 minutes. Use a cake tester to see if cooked.
Reading this recipe properly now, I realize I baked it at the wrong temperature, so 40 minutes might actually work.
Coconut Lemon Curd
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (approximately the juice of 1 lemon)
2 tsp finely grated lemon zest (approximately the zest of 1 lemon)
1/3 cup / 70gm sugar
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup / 60g unsalted butter, cubed
4 Tbsps coconut milk
Measure out the lemon juice, zest and sugar into a saucepan. Cook over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves completely.
Whisk egg yolks in a medium heatproof bowl until frothy and add the hot lemon mixture slowly. Whisk continuously to combine. Strain the mixture through a mesh sieve.
Return to the heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan of simmering water. Cook, stirring continuously, until the mixture sticks to the back of a wooden spoon. Do not allow the mixture to boil.
Remove from the heat and add the butter cubes, whisking until fully combined.
Finally, add the coconut milk and whisk to combine.
Set aside to cool. Should keep in the fridge for about a week.
Funny thing about this cake and lemon curd was, I really thought it was just kind of blahhhh but my flatmates ate it all. I guess one person’s butter cake can be another person’s chocolate chip cookie.
Hi friends! I’m back with the third installment of ugly food I cook and for some reason, you can’t get enough of!
I cook a couple of times a week and many times I look to the Internet Gods for guidance, advice and of course – recipes.
This installment is the longest I’ve ever done and features heavily on desserts… Clearly I need to stop pretending I live in a cold country and need sustenance in the form of sweet treats.
Because I live in Singapore and my ass needs sustenance in the form of raw green things. And some lean protein. But you know #details
SO. This time around I changed up the format. See the pretty pictures first and the ugly AND REAL pictures later.
This dessert, like so many others, was born out of a frenzy of denying my body sugar for days. Actually it might have been 24 hours. But as they say, same-to-same. I found the lemons in my fridge, stole my flatmate’s flour and baked these babies up. They might look questionable but I can actually say I pretty much ate ALL of this, by myself.
I always REALLY regret making Indian-fusion food or anything with the word curry in it. Why? It’s always insipid and then I crave my Mom’s food and then I crawl into a fetal position and cry. True story.
I have featured these babies before here, but before the editing and amateur “food styling” I attempted, they looked like this. They tasted friggin AMAZING though.
Goat Cheese and Blackberry Jam Grilled Sandwiches – Aamupalalla
Stunning Goat and Blackberry Jam Grilled cheese
Off-putting morning goat and jam grilled cheese sammies
I saw this grilled cheese, I had some left-over goat cheese, Hoi had just given me a mini-pot of strawberry jam – and I knew, it was meant to be. Stinky, cheesy and yummy, this baby was intense. Would I make it again? No. But do I regret it? No.
I made these nachos for a girlie dinner and it went down like a hit. Looking back at these pictures makes me realize though that man – I have got to learn how to style food! Or accept that having a food blog might mean not eating the food you present on the blog. ANYWAY, this was very tasty and Molly Yeh’s original post on it is beautiful. I recommend taking a look.
I saved the best, err ugliest, for last. A questionable textured breakfast that tasted pretty yummy, this baked oatmeal looked like the stuff of breakfast dreams, but in actuality looked CRAZY TERRIBLE. UGH.
I know y’all, it’s Salad Mondays, I promised you a nutritious recipe of salad goodness that would inspire you to take on the world and your week.
But ALAS. It’s not to be because although I have a salad to present to you… it looks like this:
In case you actually want to know what this is, it’s leftover chopped romaine, baked salmon with a simple lemon-garlic-oil dressing. Actually its crazy tasty. Just not very photogenic.
This past weekend I went to a barbecue and of course I had to take something because I have a food blog. If I didn’t take anything that would make me A) lose credibility and B) an asshole.
But I really didn’t want to take a potato salad, which is basically the easiest thing you can make for a group, and I didn’t want to make brownies because I recently have had some bad luck baking brownies. They’ve just been underdone and potentially salmonella causing.
What I really wanted was chocolate chip cookies.
What I really didn’t want was to spend my Saturday watching my oven.
Then I had a brainwave. Ages ago, when I was attempting to win host-of-the-year with my bruschetta bar themed brunch, I made this crazy easy batch of blondies for dessert. They took 5 minutes to prepare and 20 minutes to bake and my guests kept raving about them like no other. I, on the other hand, was on the fence about them. They seemed so normal.
BUT they had chocolate chips and were easy so I thought – why not?
This time I decided to kick it up a notch. I started with browned butter and added some crystallized ginger for some kick (I’m totally lying, I have a bag of leftover crystallized ginger that I bought, like, 3 months ago that I can’t finish).
It turned out so amazing and so soft that they were demolished at the barbecue.
The next morning I woke up wanting more and made a whole new batch, sans ginger and with coffee stirred into the batter.
My body protested these bad decisions but my mouth did not. Coz DAYAMN.
1/2 cup / 113 grams butter
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips (semi-sweet or bittersweet is fine)
Add-ins (optional):
1/3 cup crystallized ginger, chopped + 1/4 tsp ground ginger OR 1/2 Tbsp ground coffee
Preheat the oven to 175C/350F.
Generously butter an 8 by 8 square baking tin.
Cut the butter into even pieces and melt in a small saucepan over a medium fire. I suggest you whisk it so that it melts evenly.
Do this until the butter is light brown and smells nutty. This didn’t actually happen with me, but this is what the internet told me would happen. Mine just got very dark yellow and smelled quite good and coz I was scared of burning it, I stopped.
Wait for butter to cool till warm. Beat in the sugar until smooth.
Beat in the egg and vanilla. At this point, if using coffee, this is when you stir it in.
Stir in the flour and salt.
Stir in the chocolate chips and, if using crystallized ginger, this is when you stir it in.
Pour into prepared pan.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. I personally prefer 25 because otherwise I find the middle is a tad runny.
It’s SO good guys. I’m like swooning just writing this.
I have been spending these past two weeks avoiding anything sweet.
Because A. My friend is getting married and I don’t want to look fat in the pictures.
And B. I pulled my back and can’t workout and I don’t want to look FAT IN THE PICTURES.
I am aware that it is not my wedding.
I am aware that gaining a bit of weight is not that big a deal.
I am also aware that looking like I’m fat in these pictures will do nothing for my self-esteem or street cred.
Are you aware that being overweight can lead to a variety of different health complications?
Yeah you know don’t you. So stop judging.
Anyway, what I’m saying is that I’ve been avoiding things that are sweet. Because desserts and anything chocolate, specifically, are my kryptonite.
So week one wasn’t that hard. Especially when I was at home, on MC, all like I need to eat healthy! Not crappy!
Week two was still doable – at work, but you know, bit difficult with the daily 3 o’clock boredom hunger pangs.
So what happened, in the middle of week two (I’m lying it was like Tuesday), was that I came across the one dessert recipe for which I ALREADY had all the ingredients for. Even if that meant stealing Hoi’s bananas. Which I did.
***
3 ripe bananas
200gm/whole jar Nutella
3 Tbsps/40gm unsalted butter
2 Tbsps/30gm brown sugar
1/2 cup/ 60gm all-purpose flour
2 Tbsps/20gm ground almonds
2 Tbsps oats (accidental but happy addition)
Heat the oven to 180C/350C.
Slice the bananas and evenly scatter them in an 8 inch round baking dish/something similar.
Spoon Nutella over, making sure to evenly layer it over. This is where you can use your individual taste to determine if you’re going to use that whole jar. DO IT.
Mix the dry ingredients with the butter until it resembles a mealy crumble. It’s okay of there are still bits of butter, that’s how the crumble form.
Top the Nutella layer with the crumble layer evenly. AGAIN.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until the top is golden brown and the bananas are bubbling. You’ll be able to see this from the side.
***
OH! And about the taste – it’s chocolatey and banana-ey with a hearty crumble. Basically totes perfect breakfast/tea/comfort food.
diniblini.wordpress.com 
