The Baking Medic

I seem to be baking a lot recently! But when I get stressed, I bake. And well, the exam’s tomorrow, so baking is a relatively short and productive revision break. Although, I must say it’s not terribly wonderful for my, ahem, waistline. :P O well.

I made this because on Thursday evening, my other half, B, had some Couchsurfers staying with him! We had a wonderful meal together and talked about everything under the sun from how to properly pronounce “Salford” in the Manchurian accent to driving down dirt tracks in rural Mexico.  They were just starting another several month tour of the UK, Europe and Asia before heading home to Australia.  Talk about living the dream!

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These muffins are the first variation on the muffin recipe that I posted earlier this week, the Pear & White Chocolate Chip Muffins.  The recipe once again uses oil instead of butter, comes together so quickly and gives you delicious muffins with generous muffintop (the best part!).

These muffins are Jaffa Muffins! If you don’t know what Jaffa cakes are, you’re missing out.  They’re a UK cookie/cake covered with a layer of orange jelly and topped off by a coating of chocolate.  Whether or not they’re a cake or a biscuit is a source of great debate, but these are without a doubt muffins. :)

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Pear + White Chocolate = Delicious Muffins

It’s the Easter break here in St Andrews and most students are off cavorting away somewhere on the Continent. Alas, for medics, the 2 week break finds us at home or still in the Bubble looking longingly outside as we get our first days of spring.  Such is the lot of people who have midterms the first day back from the “break”.

But I still found some time to make these muffins.  A few months back, I made a Glazed Pear & White Chocolate Bundt cake.  I loved the combination of pear and white chocolate, two soft sweet complementary flavours.  So this past weekend, I was running low on a few ingredients and was looking for a recipe to use up a couple of pears that I had sitting around.  See I was butter-less, which pretty much rules out 75% of cake and cookie recipes.  So I decided to go looking for a muffin recipe and I found a great basic buttermilk muffin recipe.  The recipe originally called for berries, but I substituted the same volume of chopped up pear and white chocolate chips.

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macaroons!

People sometimes get confused when I talk about macaroons.  They come in all different shapes and sizes, some chocolate coated others pure coconut.  It’s even easy to confuse macaroons, the sweet soft coconut confection, with macarons, the French confection made with eggwhite, icing sugar, and ground almonds.  Macarons come in a rainbow of colours and flavours, vs macaroons are mostly coconut with a hint of almond extract. Wikipedia tells me that the Australians like to hide a dab of jam in the centre of their macaroons prior to cooking.  What a delicious surprise!

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Omg. This mousse is divine!  And I think it’s most defining feature is that it’s eggless — so no consuming raw eggs (although I confess to regularly trying the cookie dough) or any fiddling about with beating until “soft peaks” form.  The secret to this mousse is that it uses cream cheese and whipped cream to achieve it’s smooth creaminess and lightness.  This recipe was adapted from a version I found on one of my favourite blogs, Closet Cooking.  Kevin there adapted it from a recipe from the Dairy Farmers of Canada — which explains the prominent use of dairy products in the recipe.

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tada! proof that size matters not!

This recipe proves that bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better! I made this cake a few weeks back for my Valentine’s Day dinner with my dear other half.  We decided to have a relaxed night in rather than a sappy and overpriced night out. :)

My dear other half was in charge of the main meal whilst I was given the task of procuring dessert.  Giving my obsession with all things chocolate, I was not terribly troubled by this.  However, I still had to find a cute dessert that be sufficient for the two of us. :)

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Possibly my favourite cookie recipe of 2010.

I’m home for the holidays! And I’m lucky to have made it out of the UK, judging by what I hear from my friends back in Scotland.  Apparently Heathrow resembles a refugee camp and the queue for the Eurostar stretches 1km back! Eek.  Indeed I hope all of this will have calmed down before it’s time to go back to the Bubble.

As usual I have a long droughts with no posting followed by a flash flood of recipes and photos.  I do bake in between posts! Lots! It’s just hard to get a good photo and even harder for me to motivate myself to post when most people who read this probably already sampled the baked goods. Ah well. It’s the end of 2010, so I thought I’d include some pictures of my favourite cakes and other sweets from this year.  If you’d like any of the recipes, just let me know!

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Almost halfway through Week 2, my studies are definitely well underway… and I’m already well behind on notes! ;_; But nothing says procrastination productive distraction like baking and I’ve already brought in treats for my classmates a few times! :) This cake is from my Golden Book of Chocolate, one of the most amazing chocolate cookbooks every published.  I was surprised and impressed by its comprehensive introduction, packed full of information about the history of chocolate, it’s production, and it’s role in the economic world of today.  The language is a bit grandiose, but it was informative nonetheless.

However, what really sets this book apart is the variety and quantity of recipes.  There are over 300 of them! And every single recipe is accompanied by a mouthwatering, foodgasm inducing photo.  It’s a pleasure simply to sit down with a cup of tea and slowly leaf through it’s golden pages. » Read the rest of this entry «

It’s usually a stint of baking that motivates me to post again.  Today a friend and I made chocolate cupcakes (recipe to follow) and the simple pleasure of sharing something tasty to eat gave me the itch to blog again.  I made this jelly roll a few weeks ago during my visit to the Lake. My mum has this Company’s Coming cake cookbook full of delicious, old-fashioned cakes and desserts.  I was feeling in a “retro” mood and decided I wanted to try and make a jelly roll. » Read the rest of this entry «

Cheesecake Brownies with Raspberry Marble

Although I routinely get the ‘brownie-shakes’, it’s not often that I crave cheesecake.  But last week, the urge hit and I couldn’t ignore it: I just had to make something with cheesecake in it.  Since I had decided that bars would be more practical if I wanted to share these with my colleagues at work, it was just a matter of choosing the type of base I wanted.

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