Friday, July 14, 2006

Intentional and Accidental

After my two-week hiatus, I came back to find my kitchen top covered with a thin layer of dust. Armed with my table cloth, it’s wipe-down time to prepare for the ‘re-opening’ of my kitchen.

What I didn’t expect is my baking skills to be also covered with a layer of dust, or rather, rust. Or probably I should not have tried out new recipes so soon.

This Cranberry Bread is made using the recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, one of the few ‘straight-dough’ recipes in this book. It’s supposed to be formed into a braid. Alas, my shaping was so poor that I had to use my tube pan to give it some shape. The texture is also not satisfactory as it is quite dense, most likely due to my over-zealousness when shaping.

Not willing to succumb to my failure, I got hold of a brownie recipe. Brownies are generally easier to do right? Right. But I still failed. After adding in eggs to the butter-chocolate-sugar mixture, the mixture started to look ‘wrong’. It has clumped into a big brown mess. Dilemma: should I dump the whole mixture, therefore wasting my dark chocolate, or continue adding in the flour and risk getting something totally inedible and destined for the bin eventually? I chose the latter. The batter became more like a cookie dough and I knew I cannot bake it as a brownie. So cookies they shall be.

These ‘accidental’ cookies do not taste so bad after all, they had a very intense chocolate flavour due to the 72% chocolate. I had a piece after it cooled off a bit, not the super-crispy type, but crisp edges with chewy centre. Although they had gone soft after one day(to my disappointment), I am not surprised because the ingredients proportions are not meant to produce a cookie. But they crisped up nicely again if I pop them into the oven toaster for a few minutes.


Looks like I’ve got to brush up my skills a little. Morale of the story: better not go on long trips away from my kitchen and oven *lol*

16 comments:

Bonnie Yves said...

Miss you tasty food so much!! :> Yves

Unknown said...

Thanks Yves. I'm back, hope to churn out more food :p

Unknown said...

Hee Connie, I bet if you make now it will turn out well, just like your 12-years-apart scones attempt ;p

Tazz said...

Angie, I experienced that before, failing one recipe after another. Three in a week, to be exact. *lol*

Cuisine Paradise said...

Don't worry about it Angie... things will get better soon... :) But afterall....your end-products still look good. rite!

Edith said...

dun worry. still looks good enuf to eat. anyway, i am sure you will find yourself in top form in no time.

Unknown said...

Thanks gals for your encouragement :) I shall not be 'beaten' by these two failures. More practice to come ;p

Eve, I see you've kept your promise to still leave your paw prints. I'm really really happy to 'see' you.

Peony said...

yours not too bad, till now I still can't 'master' baking small bread buns or free-form bread successfully.

I have better luck with the breadmachine.

Little Corner of Mine said...

Agreed with others! In fact, your chocolate brownie cookie looks really good! :)

diddy said...

Hi Angie!
I just popped by to check out your yummy blog! What you call "rusty baking skills" seem like perfection in my book! Everything looks delish!

Unknown said...

Thanks to all once again for your kind words.

Peony, how about using your breadmachine to knead and let 1st rise, followed by shaping by hands then the 2nd rise? If you're not comfortable with free-form shaping yet, you could roll out small balls of doughs, place them into a cake tin(any shape) and leave them to rise. This way you can get small pull-apart buns, then next time you can proceed to free-form shaping. Just my suggestion.

Diddy, I've popped over to your very-new blog. Welcome to the blogging world.

Peony said...

i do use breadmachine to knead,cos got weak hands, but when trying to form rolls, guess overhandle or too impatient for it to proof properly, rolls always turn out dense and short,(when put in cake tin ).

thanks for helping..

Anonymous said...

Hahaha, Angie, you're so cute!

Nevertheless, yr 'accidental' Brownie Cookies still looks very yummy!

Anonymous said...

Oops, it's me, artchoo6

Anonymous said...

Angie,
sorry to hear your not-too-satisfied experience, although they all look pretty good in photo. So what's your next project?
gattina

Unknown said...

Thanks Gattina, have been trying to improve on my not-very-good photography.

Next project? Dunno yet leh, depends on the mood, have to get bk to my rustic breads though :p