Tuesday Afternoon Treats

Sugar cookies with chocolate chips and frosty vanilla iced tea. Enjoyed at the end of an otherwise bland and muggy Tuesday.

 

Homemade Breakfast- Banana and Sunflower Seed Muffins

 

Whahaha! Scones!

This is my first attempt at baking scones. The recipe said to roll the dough into an 8 inch circle, cut it into wedge and bake. I shaped it into some circle-like form and then tried cutting, but the dough was too sticky. I suppose I should have used a little more flour. So I baked it for ten minutes, and then took it out and cut into not-wedges. I broke out into a fit of giggles and then baked it for another ten minutes.

It came out okay, mainly because I added lots of chocolate chips I think. They look like freaks though, all misshapen.

I think I’m going to open a bake shop and just create crazy looking, yet yummy baked goodies.

 

Kolwyntjies

Yesterday I baked cupcakes for which the Afrikaans word is kolwyntjies (pronouncing it like col-vane-kiss might sound close). I got a real simple recipe at cupcakerecipes.com, made the basic batter and then had fun.

I cannot recall the last time I baked cupcakes, so even though I knew it should be relatively simple I was nervous. I guess I am always a bit nervous when I am making something new.

I picked up, the day before I made the cupcakes, some blue and pink food coloring to add to my tiny collection of food color, a packet of cocoa, and a couple of candy bars. The packet of M&M’s disappeared between arriving home Friday afternoon and the time I started baking.

The recipe yielded about 30 cupcakes of varying sizes (and shapes), so I had a lot of batter to play with. I divided it into about three equal amounts and experimented from there on. Into the first batter I mixed some chocolate food coloring and scooped it into the cups, adding a bit of chocolate bar into each cup. The next batter became electric blue and was kept pretty simple. Except for two into which I scooped some peanut butter as a surprise. Into the last batter I mixed in cocoa powder and peanut butter and in a few I dropped chopped pieces from a Sneaker’s bar. Notice in the picture on the right that I finally bought a hand mixer. Loving it. Now I just need mixing bowls.

It took a while to bake all the cupcakes in our tiny oven. After they cooled I decorated them with a really simple milk and powdered sugar frosting.

The shocking pink and electric blue one’s I called queercakes, after the bunch of cupcakes my friend Christel and Alexander baked for a friend’s birthday last year which looked quite similar (you can see the peanut butter in the queercake in the first picture). The peanut butter one’s each got a cashew on top of the icing and some of them come with a yummy surprise in the center. The chocolate one’s look quite plain but they all have a candy bar surprise inside. Delightful!

- Alexander took most of the pictures in this entry. My favorite is the one of the giraffe overlooking the candy bar surprise cupcakes. -

 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

In keeping with a bit of a recent obsession I baked pumpkin chocolate chip cookies yesterday. I found the recipe at allrecipes.com. I discovered that the Villa Market supermarkets chains stock canned pumpkin, so I decided to go about it the easy way and picked up a can on the way home from work.

While making them I decided that I am most definitely spoiling myself with an electric hand mixer once I get this month’s check and proper mixing bowls. This fork and pot business is just not charming enough for me anymore.

You need:

1 cup white sugar
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup shortening
1 egg
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 and ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup chocolate chips

Make:

Preheat the over to 175C.
Cream the sugar and shortening. Mix in the egg. Add the vanilla essence and pumpkin and stir through until combined. Sift in the dry ingredients, except for the chocolate chips and mix. When all of this is combined well, add the cup of chocolate chips and mix it in.
Scoop spoons (or teaspoons) full of the batter onto cookie sheets and bake for about 15 minutes.

Let it cool and enjoy.

I scooped large spoons full of the batter onto the cookie sheets and they came out looking like Chernobyl cookies. Fantastic!

Suggestions for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies:

- the original recipe called for only white sugar, but for some reason I mix in some brown with everything of late. Both I assume work fine.
- next time I think I will add a little more cinnamon and nutmeg than 1 teaspoon

 

Beskuit

I grew up with this baked and dried-out delicacy always being present in our home. As a child, my mother would bake new batches almost every week to keep up with my constant demand for beskuit in the morning. We took them on trips to the coast, Kruger Park, Namibia and even on our first trip to Europe. Whenever I was visiting South Africa, while still living in Taiwan, my mom would become frantic with worry during the final days of my visit that she would not be able to have enough time to bake me some beskuit to take back with me.

Beskuit is the Afrikaans word for rusks. A traditional South African baked item I believe has its roots in the Italian biscotti. Besides the similarities in name and texture, it also needs to be baked twice and you can play around with different kinds of beskuit.

My favorite is still my mother’s tried and trusted recipe I grew up on. I got it from her while I was living abroad to attempt my own version. This, my first time baking it in Bangkok, has possibly been my most successful. Whether it was using plain yogurt instead of buttermilk or whether maybe I just finally got the other ingredients and temperature right I do not know. But I think it came out great.

To make beskuit you need to get:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cups whole weat flour

1 and 1/2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

250ml plain yoghurt

250 grams butter

1 teaspoon salt

Make:

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease a baking dish. Sift the dry ingredients together and put aside. Melt the butter and mix in the yogurt. Combine the wet and dry ingredients well and pour into the baking dish. Bake for 45 minutes. Let it cool on a wire rack and then cut it into squares. Place the squares onto the wire rack and dry in the oven until dried through, about two hours, at 100C. The oven should be open just a little while it is drying out.

Beskuit, in my opinion, is best enjoyed with a cup of fresh coffee for breakfast, or afternoon coffee or any other time actually. I love it.

Suggestions for beskuit:

- use bran instead of wholewheat flour

- my mother uses buttermilk, but I could not find it in stores here so I used yogurt instead- worked like a charm

- margarine also works if for some reason you do not want to use butter

- beskuit is great with sunflower seeds or dried fruit added to the mixture. Yum!

 

Pumpkin Bread

Since buying our oven we’ve been putting it to very good use. Alexander found a recipe for delightful pumpkin muffins from Martha Stewart the same day we brought the oven home. Soon after I prepared sweet potatoes in it and this week I finally came round to baking beskuit (called rusks in English) and a pumpkin loaf recipe I found at The Scent of Water.

The loaf is awesome, I have a hard time not sitting down and eating it all at once. I want it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and with coffee. It is, without a doubt, one of the most delicious breads I have ever baked. I altered the recipe a little to suit what I had in the kitchen.

Round up:

1 cup pumpkin puree

100g butter

1/2 cup caster sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon fresh ginger- minced

Make:

Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs, beat well and then mix in the puree. Sift in the dry ingredients and the ginger and fold it in until combined. Place in a greased bread tin and bake for one hour, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

We had it hot with coffee. Then we had it cold with Milo. Then again cold with more coffee.

Suggestions for Pumpkin Loaf:

- I use puree that I make by cooking some pumpkin and mushing it up in the blender. I once baked some pumpkin in the oven too and then pureed that in the blender.

- the fresh ginger worked well in the bread, but I assume powdered ginger would work just as well.

- the original recipe is here and it looks lovely