Dauphinoise Potatoes

Because I ate it at a restaurant the other day and it tasted so good that I went to search the recipe on how to do it. Well, potatoes were on offer too, and it's the holidays. So why not? :)

Ingredients:

2 large baking potatoes

500ml double cream

Garlic cloves (up to you on how much you want to put)

100g Gruyere cheese (but I used mozzarella cheese instead)

Salt (to taste)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius

2. Prepare the potatoes: peel and slice into 3mm pieces

3. Place potatoes into a shallow baking dish

4. Add salt and cheese, and mix well

5. Arrange the potatoes that they are evenly distributed

6. Pour double cream till it covers the top layer of potatoes

7. Bake for about 1 hour

8. Remove and add more cheese on top and bake till brown (optional)

9. Leave to stand for 5 minutes

Apple Crumble

Before:

 

After:

 

 

So I had spare apples and on a lazy Saturday, I wanted to do something simple and easy for fun.

Ingredients:
- For the Filling:
450g of medium to soft apples
2 tablespoon of caster sugar
Pinch of ground cinnamon (optional, I did not use them)
- For the Topping:
115g of butter
115 of caster sugar
175g of all-purpose or plain flour

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius
2. Prepare the apples: peel, core and chop the peeled applies into chunky pieces
3. Placed them into a shallow baking dish
4. If using cinnamon, mix with 2 tablespoons of sugar and sprinkle over the apples
5. Mix butter, flour and sugar till coarse mixture
6. Sprinkle crumble topping over the apples
7. Bake for about 35 minutes (you can seethe apples bubbling)
8. Leave to stand for 5 minutes

Variations:
1. Add raisins to your apples
2. Change flour to whole wheat for darker crumble topping
3. Change sugar to soft brown for more caramel-type flavour
4. Add couple of tablesppons of muesli or oats to crumble

Pancakes strikes again

So pancakes strikes again. I need to learn something nicer and better! But since I have a pretty photo of pancakes again, shall post them! :):) same recipe again! 

Recipe:

2 cups of self-raising flour

1.5 cups of milk

4 tablespoon of sugar

4 tablespoon of melted butter

2 eggs

1 pinch of sale

Topped with golden syrup, strawberries and blueberries. The secret to making pretty pancakes is controlling the heat of your pan. And the best thing to use is a non-stick pan so you don have to add extra butter/oil on the pan and therefore having an evenly cooked pancakes! :)

Lemon fudge bars.

I always have a special liking for lemons. Lemon tarts, lemon crepes, lemon anything. Lemon taste so good, despite people constantly saying that it is really sour. I honestly love lemons. So I finally decided to make lemon bars! I made a lemon loaf before but that turned out horribly, so I didn't dare make another batch. Plus my oven is really bad. So this recipe would be much better.

Also, I've found a replacement for healthier bakes! :) I now use greek yoghurt to replace butter and splenda to replace sugar. Though I'm still trying around about the measurements for the greek yoghurt to replace butter because of the texture. &I always forget to use splenda, so I used sugar instead for this. But I'll definitely make more in the future, so I'm looking forward for the next "healthy" bake!

Recipe for the crust (the bottom):
1/2 cup greek yoghurt
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour

Recipe for lemon fudge (the top layer):
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup flour
4 eggs
2 lemon juiced (I basically bought lemon juice in a bottle and pour it, I didn't measure how much I used, but if you like lemon... ADD MORE!)

Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius
1. Combine greek yoghurt and softened butter together and mixed till it is smooth/creamed
2. Add in the sugar
3. Add in flour by 1/2 cup each time.
I suggest not to use a hand mixer. I used my hands to "kneed" the crust slowly. Probably the longest and most tiring process.
4. Press down the crust into your 9x13 inch pan
I used a much smaller pan because I was too lazy to wash my 9x13, and thus you can see from the picture that the crust & the fudge is actually quite thick. I should have halved my ingredients. You don't have to use baking paper because the crust do not really stick. Try to make it all even, even though it is pretty hard.
5. Put it in the oven for 15-20mins.
I put mine in for a good 20 because my crust was really thick and took longer to cook. While waiting, make your lemon fudge!
6. Combine sugar and flour together and mix it well.
7. Crack all the eggs together and add lemon juice
8. Once your crust is done, pour it over and put it back in the oven for another 20minutes (?)
I questioned mark the time because after 20minutes, mine turned out to be slightly burnt. It may be because of my lousy oven, but do check that it should not be burnt!
9. It will firm up as it cools down.
The edges of mine was pretty nice as as it cools down, it all firmed up. But the center of it was still slightly too watery. And I honestly blame it on my oven.

I'll try this recipe again another day in mind of things to be change:
- Change sugar to splenda
- Add more greek yoghurt instead of butter
- Halved my ingredients if I were to use the same pan for thinner crust & fudge
- Bake 2nd round at 18minutes

Nutella Cookies

Nutella cookies. Probably the simplest cookies you'll ever make and can never go wrong. 

I honestly hate making cookies so much because I never seem to perfect them. Can never seem to find the consistency with the dough. Made one years ago (look at archives) with my sisters, and it came out looking horrendous as well. And I also tried making sugar cookies for valentines and that also didn't turn out too well. Maybe because I substitute butter for margarine and that wasn't the wisest choice I've made. Tasted pretty horrible that I had to half coat it with chocolate to mask up the taste. It looks pretty but looks can be deceiving.

So I was contemplating between Nutella brownies or cookies, and my boyfriend decided on cookies for me. I was preparing myself for another failure of baking cookies. Started looking through google for a few recipes and comparing them and deciding on my quantity and what I should use. (That's how I usually bake, I don't follow specifically a single recipe. I usually scroll through about 5 and decide on the ingredients myself based on previous baking experiences and how I expect them to be.)

So ingredients are basically:

1. A jar of Nutella - I used 200grams

2. 3/4 cups of plain flour

3. 1 egg

+/- hazelnuts or chocolate chips 

I really wanted to add hazelnuts, but I was too lazy to get them. But I'm sure they will taste heavenly. 

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to about 180 degrees celcius 

2. Line your tray with baking paper

3. Mix all your ingredients together until it is smooth and consistent.

(I had some problems with this because I got too tired as they were getting really lumpy, so I added one tablespoon of chocolate milk and everything mixed so much more easily) 

4. Roll them into little balls

5. Use your thumb or a cup to slightly press them down. 

(Make sure you don't make them too thin whereby the edges cracks off and is not in a nice circular shape.)

6. Put in the oven for 5/6mins (most people say 6-8mins, but I feel the cookies usually would be burned by then)

7. Allow them to cool down on the grill until it hardens up. 

(I must say some times it's hard to take them off the baking paper because it's really soft and would break apart)

8. Have it with a glass of chocolate milk

You can always put them back in the Nutella jars. It fits perfectly and looks so presentable as a gift. (: 

I would never ever make any other kind of cookies anymore. (I'm kidding, I'm attempting on making lemon sugar cookies one day.)