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“Let the dill rain from the heavens” Couldn’t find bagels at the supermarket so made my own. Nice to get back to baking for a bit after work-induced hiatus. (at Gladstone, Queensland) https://www.instagram.com/p/COY2_-lF34z/?igshid=c8j7mu0qpt98

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Want the taste of hot cross buns without the actual effort of piping crosses?

3 cups ap flour

1 cup milk (may need an extra tbsp of milk or water)

6 tbsp sugar

Pinch of salt

2 tsp active dry yeast

Half cup of sultanas

1 tsp cinnamon

Add milk to microwave safe bowl

Microwave your milk on high for 30 sec if fresh out of the fridge.

Add sugar to milk. Stir.

Add yeast to milk mix.

In big bowl put your flour, salt, cinnamon,sultanas. Mix with spoon.

Add in liquids

Mix and knead till it comes together

Cover bowl with plate and leave to rise 1-2 hours depending on how warm your house is. Mine didn't rise much but I still moved on because I was hungry.

Divide into 9-10 balls of roughly the same size. Try and make them smooth.

Arrange on tray.

Put into warm oven (like you can stick your hand in comfortably. Turn it on to any heating setting to any temperature for about a minute then turn it off.) and shut the door. Wait about 30 min.

If you wanna be fancy you can egg wash but people we are in a pandemic, eggs are for eating not for decoration.

Two options for baking:

1) oven to 200 deg C fan forced for 15 min

2) leave tray inside, turn oven to 200 deg C fan forced and walk away, come back when your house smells like cinnamon raisin buns

You know it's done when top is lightly browned and if you flip it and tap the bottom it's also brown

Serve immediately, store airtight container overnight. Brief microwave to revitalise it.

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HEALTHY(er) CINNAMON BUNS

(“You just didn’t put butter, milk and eggs in it but there’s still all the sugar in it so how is it healthy??” “SHH.”)

It’s also quite easy because you don’t need a lot of ingredients or effort!

I tried to make it healthier because I’m going to eat them for breakfast before work but it’s still pretty sugary so I’ll still be hyper. Good for any morning paeds patients.

Ingrediences:

DOUGH

3 cups flour

1.5 cups water

Pinch of salt (kinda wished I put more salt? Maybe 2 tsp)

Pinch of cinnamon

1.5 tsp yeast

1 tbsp sugar

FILLING

0.25 cup sugar

2 tsp cinnamon. I think? Enough that your white sugar becomes brown sugar-like. To taste.

ETC

Oil to grease everything

Extra flour to stop your dough sticking to EVERYTHING

Condensed milk

Mix ingredients for dough. Will be sticky. Knead to smooth dough. Rise in oiled bowl for 1-2 hours. Today was kinda hot so it was very much doubled in one hour.

Roll out on floured tabletop to big rectangle. Make your sugar mixture, spread it on top leaving space along the long edges of dough. Roll up the long edge. Seal with water. Cut into 12 with sharp knife. Put in oiled tray like in photo. Cover and allow rising for 1 hour. (I just throw it into the oven that’s off so it doesn’t dry out or have flies attack it) Bake 160 deg C fan forced for uhhh 12-15 min? Until you smell cinnamon sugar through the house and the tops are browned. Take out.

I thought it looked too healthy so I brushed it with about 4 tbsp of condensed milk. #healthy

Verdict:

Very sweet. The bread just isn’t as rich as the traditional recipes, but it’s still soft and fluffy. Might put more salt next time. Really missing out on the richness of the butter but if you’re craving cinnamon rolls and trying to be kinda healthy, this works. I think. Don’t quote me on the healthy part.

Before final rise

After final rise

After baking, then condensed milk glaze

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Made a brownie cheesecake.

Need to refine the brownie component of this recipe but the fiancé likes it anyway.

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Tips on Efficient Bread Production: Quarantine Special

The supermarkets are all selling out on flour and putting restrictions on how much people can buy. It’s a bit insane, like it’s wartime, but it makes sense especially in Western cultures where bread is a staple.

That being said, the rice is also sold out, so it’s a good thing I did end up buying the 4 bags back when it was on sale. #asian

So I figure I’ll drop some hints/what I’m doing in this bread crisis.

1) Making buns instead of loaves

Buns bake for about 10-12 minutes instead of loaves which take 40-50 minutes. This is if you make multiple round dough balls and put them on a tray about 1-2cm apart as opposed to putting a huge loaf into a loaf pan. Obviously loaves are more Aesthetic but realistically it’s not very energy efficient for the oven. Unless you’re a bakery/very dedicated baker who’s got more than one loaf pan it’s not very worth your time/electricity bill to make a loaf of bread when you get the same amount of carb in individual portions if you make buns.

2) Storage

I chuck my buns in a bag, clip it with a bread clip/clothes peg/loosely knot it and chuck that in the freezer.

If you’ve got an airtight container, you can leave it on the benchtop for about 3 days. Back when I had a housemate who brought a huge box of muruku and we finished the muruku, I used that container to store bread on the countertop because it was quite airtight. But if you do this and you don’t finish the bread in 3 days, remember to put it in the freezer after that. The saddest thing is seeing your beautiful buns growing mould. If you live somewhere hot, put it in the freezer after like 1-2 days. If it’s winter, you can leave it out up to a week, but your bread is most likely going to lose out in texture by then. Freezing helps keep your bread at least mostly palatable when microwaved/toasted.

Make sure your buns cool completely before storing into the container IF KEEPING ON COUNTERTOP, otherwise your bread will get soggy and mouldy faster. If you stick it in the freezer while it’s still warm, the worst thing you get is a lot of frost/ice on the bun. Microwaving and toasting don’t seem to be affected much though, so I don’t care, I put it in the freezer when it’s still warm.

3) Reheating

But you can’t toast a bun! you say. Loaves or death!

I don’t get why people don’t just...microwave the bun for 30-60 seconds, cut through the middle, and put a big chunk of butter in. It’s delicious.

Alternatively, grill on a pan. Or slice and toast in the oven set on grill (total oven time: 10-12 minutes baking, maybe 3-5 minutes in the oven to toast. Still better than 40-50 minutes of oven time to make a loaf. Math don’t lie.)

4) Wholemeal or White bread

If you’re in wartime, do you get to choose between whether you get broccoli or green beans for vegetables? No, you eat whatever you’ve got. Don’t stress too much about nutritional value at this stage. Sure, your bowel movements might not be great for 2 weeks, but it’s better than, yknow, causing the group of elderly people down the road who HAD to go to the supermarket to die because they’re at high risk of mortality from certain grievous diseases.

Also I’ve had some messages from people regarding bread troubleshooting, feel free to ask me anything. Preferably not about anything involving a stand mixer though. I don’t have one.

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Cold fermented pizza dough for garlic cheese bread. Exciteddd

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Green bread dough makes green buns

And then I burned the tops because we just moved into a new house and I forgot this new oven is Powerful

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Getting ready for a 12 hour room temperature ferment— I saw some half-price salami at the supermarket and decided to try cold fermenting pizza dough... just in time for Saturday dinner (it’s Wednesday today).

Behind you can see my pandan buns hanging out in an airtight container

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Brown sugar milk tea with pearls cake for my housemate’s birthday party. You know we are Asian millennials when this cake is a hit amongst everyone, even the ones on a diet. It was also assembled on a car, literally, because it would have been nigh impossible to transport assembled.

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This week’s load is mocha swirly surprise. I now only do aesthetic cross section breads, actual artisan sourdoughs and rye breads can unfollow

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Plaited chocolate loaf!

Pro tip: brush the loaf with melted butter when the loaf is fresh out of the oven for that 💯💯👌👌👌👍👍 glossy shine

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We made beef and mushroom pies. The pastry is...not the right one but it still tastes amazing for a first try

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Big buns

Used my silicone baking sheet!

Made them for French onion soup but the bf also used them to make breakfast :)

Sliced bread lightly pan toasted with bacon and hash brown on top. Mine has grated gruyere on it.

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Birthday present update

Haven't been able to blog much because we've moved temporarily to a place with limited internet but anyway the bf got me bench scrapers for my birthday!

The ones on the left, top and right are one set that slide in together, from brand Chef'n. It was about 12 dollars. The right one has markings on it too! They're really useful when making bread and now my dough gets cut in slightly more reliably consistent chunks!

The bottom one is a cheap one dollar cutter that he got off eBay for funsies. It feels really floppy and I haven't made anything with it, lol.

I also got a silicone mat for $2 from Aldi, but since bread is usually baked at 220 deg C and the mat tolerates up to 220 deg C but ovens vary quite a bit around your desired temperature! I'm not sure whether to use it in the oven. If anyone has tips, please share on whether you use them for bread! I've seen these mats used for cookies and cakes in cooking videos.

Instead of using cling wrap to cover the dough when rising, i've been using wax cloth that another friend bought me for my birthday! I find it a bit annoying to wash, so now I just throw my silicone mat on top of the bowl.

Not an indicated use for the mat, but it's non stick and you'll use it later for rolling out dough anyway so it's brilliant!

Anyway sorry for the hiatus, here's the only thing I have to offer for my latest cooking adventure:

Muah Chee

Not exactly baking but it is a delicious childhood treat from South East Asia. The recipe I used is from a website called the MeatMen (themeatmen.sg) which does Singaporean dishes. They do lots of non meat dishes too!

This dessert/snack is basically chewy glutinous rice flour mochi-like lumps rolled in ground peanut and sugar. Some people add in white sesame seeds or they roll them in black sesame seeds, but I love peanut.

You need:

135 g glutinous rice flour

2 tablespoons tapioca flour

200ml room temperature water

2 tablespoons oil (we used rice bran)

Mix all that together until combined and microwave at 900W for 2 minutes. We didn't cover it and it was fine.

Stir it together to mix. If you have a rubber spatula, that's your ideal weapon of choice.

Microwave for another minute and you're done.

Now combine 100g ground peanuts and 90g white sugar. We couldn't find ground peanuts anywhere so we bought raw peanuts, toasted it in an oven until we could smell peanuts, and then crushed them by hand in a mortar and pestle. Apparently if you use any sort of blender or food processor you'll end up with peanut butter, which you don't want in this case. It's hard work, but it's delicious.

Anyway here's the fun part. Put the peanuts and sugar in a big plate and mix well. Chuck the entire dough mass into the peanuts. Roll it around and use kitchen scissors to snip it to pieces! Use tongs to hold it up and try to snip nice little 2 cm sized pieces, but really the smaller the better because the more surface area you have the more peanut mix you pick up. And that's it!

In South East Asia they then put it in a box or a plate and you eat it with toothpicks. It's also usually sold for like, 1-2 dollars for a box (it was 50 cents when I was a kid!) but if you live in a western country you're not gonna ever see it sold outside, so go forth and have a taste of Asia at home.

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Variant of Hokkaido milk bread (because we didn’t have cream or milk powder). A sweet and rich tasting bread (this one is a bit too dense I think) but still delightful to the senses https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp_t6BJlTqF/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=10iwpnlzydg1f

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sometimes you do dumb things like post on your main blog, and tumblr won’t let you change that, so here.

How to make mantou (馒头)

Now comes with pictures!

Keep reading

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I didn't have enough Nutella to stuff all the buns so I stuffed half of them and the other half are just plain with sugar sprinkled on top before baking.

Also I had two buns leak Nutella. Haemorrhage of Nutella.