a little me time

My deepest apologies to those who had taken their time to frequent this humble abode of mine for the past two weeks only to find nought. To be perfectly honest, I had contemplated to update with a this-is-the-reason-why-I-have-not-been-baking filler entry, but because it seemed only a couple of entries ago that I was unwell, I reckoned it would not reflect well to say that I was battling a stomach virus yet again.

So here I am, all better, and armed with a lengthy entry to bore you. Ahakz. Since I was away from chocolate (among thousands of other food items) during the bout, I already had in mind what to bake today, and narrowed it down to chewy chocolate chip cookies and brownies. With all the Christmas cookie baking abound, I was lured to the buttery smells of warm cookies blooming in the oven. But the thought of indulging in a sinful chocoholic delight that would highly likely only please me, seemed too irresistable a thought. Sometimes we just need a little pampering, don’t we? Albeit at the risk of sounding utterly self-centered… :p

And nothing spells indulgence better than the long-bookmarked-and-eyed Peanut Butter-Nutella Brownie?

As expected, I underbaked them for about 5 mins or so. The result? A fudgey, gooey, chewy brownie that made me thank the constellations for the chocoholic that I am. I got the recipe here, and you’d notice that instead of infusing the peanut butter together with the Nutella into the batter, I had melted the peanut butter separately and drizzled it generously on top of the batter. I know not what the original method would result in, but for my version of the brownie, there was a distinct difference in the taste of the sweet fudgey brownie itself and the salty peanut butter crust, which resulted in a delightful balance, without the brownie being cloyingly sweet.

not so murphy

As Murphy had aptly put it, “What can go wrong, will go wrong”, and I guess Murphy was knocking on my door that fateful day when the mixer finally died on me. I  was baking, or rather, attempting to bake my very first chocolate spongecake for the mother’s birthday, when the mixer started sounding like something off a Robitussin cough mixture advertisement, I kid you not. Having given up on the cake that day, I assured myself that all the mixer needed and probably badly yearned for, was just a good rest.

And so, I was at it again a couple of days later, for a 100 cupcake order. While rushing home from work to start baking, I thought to myself in the comforts of the backseat of the cab, with three huge plastic bags of baking supplies in hand, what would happen to the mixer:-

1. the mixer would have had enough rest by now, and would cooperate with me, in true-blue fairytale-esque fantasy;
2. the mixer should be able to work this time round, because I suspect that the store-bought spongecake mixture was much too thick for it to churn and mix around, and so, there shouldn’t be any problem with beating the oft-used cupcake batter now;
3. i would have to look for Captain Hook’s forearm over at Ebay/Etsy, and somehow affix it onto my own, and add in some Duracell bunny batteries, and let it go vroooooooom!

As luck were to have it, none of the above happened. There was no way of resuscitating the mixer, and I was too pressed for time to get help from Hook. A quick call to the mister got me reacquainted with my very first butter cupcake recipe that needed a mere throw-in-everything take to it.

But all’s not lost, since I’m done mourning whining over the death of the mixer (I didn’t exactly mourn, because the mixer wasn’t mine to begin with, hence the lack of emotional attachment) and have moved on to greener pastures. One with waffling banana aroma, and speckled with chocolate tease.