TWD

mmmm.... I did last week's challenge for today. We didn't buy milk this week so the only thing I had was a can of condensed milk. Haha... icecream wouldn't have turned out too well. Anyhow, so the white and black bananna cake turned out super well. Once again, i substituted rum for irish cream and since i'm on a diet, I substitued half the butter for apple sauce. Turned out beautifully moist, and rich. As for the milk, I just diluted some of the condensed milk with water.

Well, I'm back. Gosh, it's been too long.
Anyhow the Twd challenge this week was the summer fruit galette, but I came across quite a few problems.
My family has quite a few allergies to fruit especially and being a tuesday, i can't really share it with anyone else other than my family. So I turned the galette into an apple and apricot galette and left out the custard. Tasted like one big apple pie with a good amount of tartness to it. The crust turned out beautifully. It was perfectly flaky and I rushed it with an egg before baking it. Not too many pictures this time I'm afraid. My great grandmother cut it up, stuffed it into a pyrex container, and shoved the now unidentifiable dessert into the fridge. I was pretty angry. I looked around yesterday for it after I made realized that all my pictures were blurry to take some more pictures and couldn't find it anywhere. Never thought that the stuff in the pyrex container would be it. I thought it was left over beef and chicken.
So that's what I'm stuck with. Maybe I'll make it again today. It would be a bloody waste though. I've already gained 7 pounds this summer from my nearly limitless mealplan at Duke.

Well, I'm finally back, but I'm absolutely exhausted. I'll start posting again next week. I'm really wiped out this week.

TWD: challenge

Yes! I made the deadline.
I've been totally swamped these days with final papers and just finals in general. I'm going to be at Duke for a business program for the next 3 weeks so i won't be able to post anything/bake anything. =(.
This recipe turned out quite well. The pastry was lovely, just like store bought cream puff pastry dough. The only problem I had was my failure to read. I went to the supermarket today to pick up a little container of heavy cream only to discover upon my return that I had picked up light cream instead. I wasn't willing to return to the supermarket so I just added 3 egg yolks to thicken it. It turned out pretty well. The flavor of the mint is charming. Strong, but charming. This was quite an easy recipe. Next time I'll do it properly.

I totally adore fruit tarts.
And recently, I've managed to make this absolutely delectable and irresistible flaky crust that has conspired to sabotage my diet. And after playing around with the cream for two weeks, I've managed to make a wonderful cream, nice and rich but tastefully so. I've also been obsessing over fruit tart designs. So here's my little tropical fruit tart. The two new chins that appeared magically the next morning were indication enough of its charm. <3

TWD , french brownies

Okay,
mm... I dunno. I think I did something wrong again. -_-.
Well, it turned out pretty well... just more cake-y. I probably measure the wrong amount of flour. I added in walnuts and put in 2 tablespoons of irish cream. It gave the brownies a nice touch. Well, I ldefinitely liked the taste, so the only thing I have to complain about is my lack of skill at measuring.
My camera wasn't cooperating with me either. Pardon the blurriness.

Okay, so several unfortunate occurrences took place this weekend.
My uncle and grandparents came up from New Jersey so my mom decided to throw a party, and I was like... oh cool! I can make the sticky buns. And so I did. So while they were rising, my friends called me up and were like... "hey, let's go clubbing" so I did. I told my mom how and when to bake the buns and all was well until i got home. They left me the smallest buns in the batch and like... only three of them at that.
So I had to take a picture of the three most miserable looking buns in the batch and after snapping several miserable looking pictures of three miserable looking buns, I ate them. Then going through my camera, I realized that my brother had played with my camera and made the setting super dark. So my pictures came out dark and gloomy looking. The flash made everything too bright and so all in all, pictures were pretty miserable. Fortunately, I still have half a batch of dough left since I made the full batch of brioche dough. I'll post my miserable looking photos of my 3 miserable buns today and update with happier photos either by the end of the day, or by tomorrow (hopefully).

Now, some feedback on the process of the bun making. It turned out pretty well actually. My dough didn't seem to rise as well as I wanted or expected it to, but it tasted pretty good. I thought that the three sticks of butter in the brioche dough was a little ridiculous (especially for someone watching her weight {moi} so I took out one stick. It probably made it less tasty or moist than it should have been, but I found three sticks a little scary. I should have substituted it for something else to help keep the dough more moist.
Other than that, I felt as if it was pretty much just a normal cinnamon bun. I've had better, but maybe that's cause I left out one stick of butter? =\ My fault probably. I'll do it over