Genoise (sponge cake)

(Date: 9 January 2013. The 5th recipe in 2013)

This is a belated birthday cake for my husband. My first attempt to make a Genoise sponge cake with cream frosting as I made several mistakes - cutting the cake too early, whipping the double cream too much, not leaving it long enough in fridge before serving. But I think the genoise recipe itself is terrific. It makes the English Victorian Sponge look as heavy as a stone. It's not difficult neither. I'll certainly make it again. That's why I finally decided to write this post for my future reference even I wasn't entirely happy with what I did.

corn muffins

(Date: 5 Feb 2012)
The 24th recipe in 2013. It's also the second recipe I used from Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller. Again, it's a muffin recipe with the batter sitting overnight in order to hydrate the flour. I didn't control the temperature well -- my oven seems to be getting dodgier with more unstable temperature these days. Could be a sign of ageing? But the resulting muffins are still very moist and soft.

The original recipe is "Corn Muffins" from Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller. Basically I've followed the recipe quite closely except the following minor changes: (1) I only used two-thirds of the recipe and have made smaller muffin tin, (2) I've reduced the sugar amount from 90g to 75g, (3) Sea salt & sunflower oil had been used instead of kosher salt and canola oil, (4) I prepared the batter without using a hand mixer to prevent over-mixing.

anzac cookies

The 17th recipe in 2013.

The Anzac biscuits recipe is from BBC GoodFood. I misread the recipe and didn't realize I should dissolve the bicarbonate of soda to 2tbsp of boiling water. Therefore, I missed 2 tbsp of water at first and had difficulty in forming a dough. The mix was as dry as muesli and couldn't form a dough. I then re-read the recipe but for some reason I still didn't see the line about dissolving bicarb!! Luckily I looked up a few other Anzac cookie recipes written by Australians. I found their recipes seem to have an extra 1 or 2 tablespoon of water and syrup. Hence I added an extra tablespoon of golden syrup - which helped but it was still a bit crumbly. Then I added 2 tablespoons of water gradually which just did the magic and gave me one lump of workable dough. Turns out my dough has one extra tbsp of syrup compared with the original and has exactly the water content it calls for! What can I say? I think I was just very very lucky! And the cookies taste really good!

lemon poppy seed muffins

The 20th recipe in 2013. (The 16th-19th recipes will be posted later)

The original recipe is from Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller. I do not did not own this book when I tried this recipe (but now do! Yay!). I just googled some recipes reposted by a few American bloggers. Although the original book has metric measurements, but none had been reposted. Hence I just tried to work out my own conversion, which can be the main source of errors. I have also made some adjustments in the amount of sugar and lemon juice.

japanese cheesecake

The 13th recipe I attempted in 2013.

I found the cake recipe from Just One Cookbook (link here) by Ms. Nami. She found the recipe from Cookpad, a Japanese cooking website and has modified it for a bigger size and to suit her oven. I have closely followed the recipe except (1) I halved the recipe and changed the baking time accordingly, (2) I used French T45 cake flour instead of plain flour, (3) I used castor sugar instead of granulated sugar when beating the egg whites, (4) I skipped the apricot jam glaze and (5) I didn't refrigerate the cake for a few hours (THE BIGGEST MISTAKE! MY BAD!).

bacon-wrapped salmon

The 12th recipe I attempted in 2013, and the 6th Nigel Slater's.

This recipe appeared as "Bacon-wrapped Salmon" in "The Kitchen Diaries 2" by Nigel Slater. You can also find it on The Guardian website (link here). I followed the recipe almost to word except (1) I made it for 3 instead of 2, (2) I put the thyme in before wrapping the bacon, instead of tucking it in after, (3) I doubled the bacon.