Wednesday 29 August 2012

carrot muffins

There are so many recipes out there for carrot cake/muffins. It was really hard to find one that had all the ingredients I wanted to use. I stumbled upon a recipe for something called morning glory muffins. The name itself sounds delightful! I don't know where that name come from, but it contained grated carrots and unsweetened shredded coconut, two ingredients that I was keen on using (the coconut was left over from the time I made macaroons). If anyone does know why those muffins are called so, please let me know!
baby carrot muffin with his parents

Sunday 26 August 2012

zucchini bread

Here is the final installment of my zucchini posts. I finally finished all the grated zucchini today. Oddly enough, it feels like such a great accomplishment. I realized that I should have weighed it rather than taking a picture in comparison to the iPod classic. Ah well!

twin zucchini bread loaves

zucchini fritters

The zucchini madness continues.

zucchini fritters

Saturday 25 August 2012

courgette pancakes

Among the first words I learned in kindergarden, courgette has been a memorable one. Even today, my parents remind me how I'd try to correct them whenever they said zucchini. I was pretty excited when we received this lovely courgette from someone's garden.
Courgette vs iPod Classic
It is huge. Like maybe 10 cups of shredded courgette.. and I thought I'd only most 5 cups. So it's officially time to get creative with this amazing veggie. Since I wasn't expecting so much zucchini, I ended up shredding the whole thing. So much shredding! I started to use my grater, but ended up using my food processor. Boy did that make my life easier! Haha, I can't believe I did not think of that earlier.

Friday 24 August 2012

classic chocolate chip cookies

It's amazing that I still don't have a chocolate chip cookie post. This is a staple to my baking and I have been making these cookies for ages. Last night was the perfect opportunity to bake them since there was a surprise gathering for a friend that's leaving for AB. He will be missed! I did not have that many pictures since my dad's camera decided to die on me while I was taking pictures. So the quality of the following pictures isn't as nice as the others. A Canon PowerShot SD600 doesn't take as great pictures as a Nikon D5000! 
Plain advertisement, but no fluffy decorations
I took the liberty of attempting to package it nicely. Unfortunately, yesterday was pretty hectic and I did not have much time to decorate it more neatly (but I did treat myself to the SPA with L. :) The next thing that I'll need to work on is making uniform cookies. Haha, the shape is pretty.. unique! Maybe because I was rushed and did not take as much time to make each of them round. But a good ice cream scooper is at the top of my to-buy list! I love these cookies because their soft and chewy, also my family's favorite. A lot of the chocolate chip cookies end up being hard and brittle, but my favorite ones have to be tender.

Monday 20 August 2012

failed oatmeal muffins

Next time I see the words "healthy" and "oatmeal" in a recipe, I'll skip it. I did make some minor changes to the recipe that might have affected the taste. The muffins are interesting as one of my friends would say. They are quite bland. This recipe called for 1/3 cup of brown sugar for 1 cup of rolled oats and 1 cup of flour. Go figure! But they did have 1 cup of semi sweet chocolate.. which I substituted for 1/2 cup of raisins and 1/2 cup of the chips... that was a big mistake. It also had surprisingly not a lot of fatty ingredients (only 1 egg and 1/4 cup of butter).  No wonder the recipe I used said to put a nice pat of butter on these muffins when eating them.
stuck with a dozen of these bad boys
I'm very happy that today I decided not the double the recipe. I'll need to find a better oatmeal muffin recipe in the future. Though that might not be in the near future. Most of my posts are actually related to oatmeal now that I look at it.. but there is a logical explanation behind this!

Sunday 19 August 2012

sandwich bread

So what happens when you have an odd craving for white sandwich bread and have none at home?

Answer: You try and make it. At least that was my solution.

The Loaf
My picture doesn't do it justice.. It just doesn't look as good as the website where I got the recipe. I'll definitely need to work on this though since it wasn't exactly what I wanted. The bread turned out to be nice and sort of fluffy, but not as airy as I wished it would be. In my case, I think the second 4 1/2 cups of flour was a little too much. I think maybe just 4 cups would be better. My bread turned out a little dense, but the taste was still good.

Saturday 18 August 2012

home sweet home granola

It feels great to be back! After two weeks traveling across Europe, it feels great to be finally home. I started to miss my good old home cooked meals and also breakfasts that did not involve weird tasting milk.. and most probably croissants and chocolatines. It was a great trip! Here's a little sneak peak of some of the many pictures I took. I might have went a little overboard with the pictures.. but the more the merrier! And I can't wait to see the girls' videos and pictures too!

At the top of Mt Rigi
Honestly, all of my pictures don't capture the beauty of the scenery... It's one of those things that you need to be there to really appreciate it. Anyhow, here's a picture of my favorite destination. Out of all the cities I've been to, Lucerne would have to be my favorite.. well that'd also include Mt Rigi where we were staying at. It is in the middle of nowhere and it did require us to take that train up the mountain, but it was nice and peaceful with the constant ringing of cow bells.. and the only downside being the smell of cow dung.