surplus sunday: cinnamon chip brownie cornstarch ice-cream

I know what you’re thinking; how can anyone possibly have leftover brownies, right? Sheer sacrilege! Now before you start judging me with ‘So much for being a chocoholic, you can’t even finish a brownie?!’ thoughts, allow me to put your mind at ease by affirming that yes, these delectable cinnamon chip brownies were nothing short of well, delectable, and no, there were leftovers not because they were far from it. But when you find yourself with a carton of milk about to go bad in just a couple of days, the only thing you can think of is choosing to send it off with the sweetest ending, a most apt vicissitude to punctuate its unintended oversight, and conveniently pair it with an equally charming counterpart, from whom you’ve been extolling its rich deep flavour.

Now, for those of you who cannot possibly wrap your minds around the idea of a cornstarch ice-cream, fret not, for the ice-cream doesn’t have the slightest taste of cornstarch. With no eggs in the recipe, the cornstarch acts merely in its place as a thickener and binder of sorts, promising a rich and creamy homemade ice-cream.

surplus sunday: beginner’s fried rice

A quick glance over at the cooking department on this site will surely leave one wondering where the actual cooking is, what with most of the cooking featuring stove-cooked desserts and side dishes cooked in the oven. For when it comes to true cooking, you could pretty much smell my fear shrouding the air like burnt garlic plastered at the bottom of a new I-thought-it-was-nonstick pan. Of course, my favourite and perhaps overused excuse reason behind this non-culinary trait of mine would be the fact that I live in the same household as an undeniably great cook, who, much to my dismay, never follows any recipes nor uses any strict measurements, and rocks it old-school with her method of  ‘a pinch of this, a dollop of that’, which, if I may add, never fails to confuse me to no end, for the pinch almost always leads to more than what I had imagined a pinch to be. At this point, I can almost see a couple of heads nodding in agreement, attesting to the aforementioned style of seasoned cooks, as I would call them; along with some of you catching yourselves laughing silently, perforated with a tad of guilt at my ineptness around the kitchen and my accurate description of your cooking style.

To those of you belonging to the former camp, I feel you; to the latter, know that I have an unabashed envy of you.

surplus sunday: nutella chocolate bread pudding

Bread is one of those constant must-haves in our kitchen. The parents have their baguettes toasted with butter and sugar for tea, I have my whites toasted or grilled for sandwich dinners, and ever so now and then all of us make our own signatures with our favourite spreads for breakfast. It shouldn’t come as a surprise now that between three to four different flavours, my choice of spread has always been Nutella.

Hence it is only natural that when I found four bread slices a day past their expiration (shocking, I know!), regardless of the household’s different preferences, I still insisted on having them with Nutella.