Matcha Brioche Buns

Hello. It is currently 11.14pm on a Friday night and I am in my room with the lights off and partially hidden under my blanket as I type this because I cannot, for the life of me, fall asleep. 

This might not seem like a big deal to you because it isn't even past midnight yet. Technically it wouldn't usually be that big of a deal to me either because usually I'm still up at this time on Friday nights. On my iPad. On that evil site they call Pinterest. Oh... I gotta tell you. The hours just fly by every time I refresh that page.

Anyway it is a big deal to me now because last night, I couldn't sleep either. And to top it off, I woke up before 5am. I always go for a jog or cycle in the mornings so I gave up staring at the ceiling and just pulled on my shoes (after showering and changing out of my pajamas of course) and hit the ground running. I got through the day just fine, and even met up with a friend of a friend that I met through Instagram. It was totally random. We just decided we'd meet up and go for dessert. Which is my absolute favorite thing to do. Other than having dessert for dinner of course..

Then I came home and got sleepy around 8. I climbed into bed around 9 because you know, I thought going to bed earlier would justify me not getting enough sleep the night before. Repaying my sleep debt and all that. But nope, I ended up tossing and turning and dreaming of my days of interning in Shangri-la. Don't ask me why, I think it had something to do with the copious amounts of cake and sweets I ate when I was there. As if dessert today wasn't enough.

And I didn't actually make these matcha brioche buns today. I only decided to blog about them now because.. I think you get it by now.

I first saw them on foodbeam a little while ago, while I was - you guessed it - hopping around on Pinterest. They looked so lovely and matcha is also one of my favorite flavours so I bookmarked it and proceeded to forget about it until recently when I thought it would be a great idea to start baking bread again. Mine are nowhere as lovely as Fanny's, though.

And I'm sorry about the horrible photos. It was nighttime by the time the buns came out of the oven and my dad was hovering eagerly around the tray, asking every two minutes if I was done taking pictures because he wanted to try just one while they were still warm. I eventually gave up trying to take pretty pictures (I was practically in the sink trying to get the best-lit shot of them) and just handed him a plate. Needless to say, he went to town with them, the bread-fiend.

I didn't shape them the way Fanny did too. The filling sort of oozed out so I just cut them up, twisted them and placed them into muffin tins. Then I smeared some of the matcha filling on top because hey, why waste a good thing ? And trust me, while they're not the simplest thing to make, they're pretty damn easy to eat. And they smell good too, when they're almost done baking. Kind of like cinnamon rolls. Only without the cinnamon.

They're not flaky like croissants but they have the layers of soft pillowy bread and yummy matcha cream throughout. I don't know about you, but I love anything with layers in them.. Layered cakes, buns, pastries.. The cafeteria at Shangri-la had croissants and, on the rare occasion, cinnamon rolls. I used to eat nearly three four five of those croissants in one sitting. Okay, they were quite small, maybe around two to three inches long but the cinnamon rolls were huge. Think maybe the size of your head huge. And I had two. The first was split quite modestly with a friend who watched me eat said croissants.. And the second, I attempted to split with him. I ended up eating most of it. No wonder I had trouble pulling on my jeans after that.

Oh, I don't know if you've heard, but apparently one of the reasons you can't fall asleep (aside from massive caffeine consumption prior to bedtime, but I am no caffeine addict) is because, I quote, "you're awake in someone else's dreams." Yup, I got that from Pinterest too.

Do I believe that ? I'd like to. But unfortunately every time I can't sleep, it's because someone else is in my dream. Okay, daydream since I'm not actually sleeping. But shouldn't it be a nightdream since it's dark ?

Look at all those italics. I think I should stop now.

For the recipe and even a drawing tutorial on how to make and shape these matcha brioches, visit Fanny at her site, foodbeam here. Her pictures and prose are really something, I tell you.

11.54pm. Going to try to sleep now.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Macarons

Ah, the macaron. 

To be honest, I was late getting onto the macaron bandwagon. When everyone was fussing and cooing over these little cookies that sold for 10 ringgit each, I was busy baking up brownies and cheesecakes. I just didn't see the appeal of them. Another factor was that I had an ex boyfriend that was just macaron-obsessed to the point where he talked about them all the time. He'd been to France before and managed to convince everyone, me included, that he could make the best macarons ever. And when we (we being me and him and a few friends of ours) went over to his house for a lesson on baking macarons, the results were stuck to the baking sheet. Which inevitably ended with me peeling macaron shells off the baking sheet and popping them into my mouth between bites of (storebought - Betty Crocker to be exact) frosting.

So when it ended between us, it ended between me and the macaron as well. I went crawling back to the ubiquitous fudge brownie for comfort. Didn't you know chocolate heals anything ? Speaking of chocolate/brownies, I just realized that I haven't posted a recipe for brownies yet. I'll be sure to fix that soon.

Anyway when my friend contacted me recently, saying he had found a little patisserie that sold the best macarons he had ever tasted, I was intrigued. For one, he didn't strike me as someone who had a big sweet tooth (unlike me, I practically have sweet teeth) and I wanted to try a macaron that I wouldn't have to scrape off a surface with a spoon. So I hopped into his car and we drove off to a quaint little place and ate ourselves silly. 

I didn't manage to get a picture of all the things we ate - I was too busy shoveling cake into my face. I was hungry.

They have wonderful cakes. Between the two of us, we managed ten kinds. Ad about seven macarons. There was even a white truffle one. The only experience I had with white truffle was when I was still an intern in the hotel. I was cooking risotto for the arancini, and unbeknownst to me, my friend had poured some truffle oil liberally into the mixture before frying it. In my defense, the risotto had been taken from my hands as soon as it was al dente, so when I happily grabbed a few of the arancini and put them in my gob, I wasn't expecting the burst of truffle-stink that hit me in the head. It's an acquired taste.. And I've yet to acquire it.

But I digress. The macarons I tried the other day were more than enough to convince me that I had to make some as soon as freakin' possible.

I've tried making macarons before. And they were always disappointing, either becoming too crispy or just baking up completely devoid of 'feet'. They were tasty, but at that time I would rather spend my daily quota of sugar on something else. That was before I had the chance to eat any that was worth mentioning.

My first macarons were some pistachio ones (recipe later) that I made for my cousin. They came out pretty enough, but some were a little lopsided and they still had the quirky, homemade look to them. The rest of the times I tried making them after that just baked up funny (the shells cracked and sort of imploded). So when I found this recipe in one of the cookbooks that I had squirreled away, I wasn't expecting much. I just threw (Figure of speech. Don't do that. Be gentle) them in the oven and prayed feet feet feet please let them grow feet.

And grow feet they did.

I made them in the flavones of peanut butter and jelly because I've always loved the combination. I would like to say that they were the flavours I grew up with but sadly, that isn't true. The sandwiches I grew up with had jelly but used sliced cheese instead of the peanut butter. Odd, but yummy.

It's a good idea to draw rings of peanut butter filling around the edge first before you fill them with jam. That way they won't slide around so much.

For the best authority on macaron making, refer to this post here or here. Two of my favorite bloggers will walk you through the process better than I can :)

Peanut Butter and Jelly Macarons (makes 13 macarons)

For the macaron shells:

15g almond flour

25g peanuts

80g icing sugar

40g egg whites

20g caster sugar

For the peanut butter filling:

15g butter

60g peanut butter

20g icing sugar

1/2 tbsp milk

To assemble: 

Any jam of your choice (I used blackberry)

1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Make the macaron shells. Put the almond flour, peanuts and icing sugar in a blender or food processor, blend until very finely ground (but not so much that you get peanut butter). Sieve into a bowl and set this aside.

3. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks form (where you can hold up the whisk and the whites droop off in a soft peak, hence the name). Slowly add the sugar while whisking, then whip till you get firm, glossy peaks (when you hold up the whisk, the whites stand in a firm peak that doesn't droop). I do this by hand since it isn't much to whip and I'm terrified I'll over whip them in my mixer.

4. Sieve half of the ground peanut mixture over the whites. Gently fold them in using a spatula, then sift over the remaining ground peanut mixture. Fold it in until well combined. 

5. Then using the spatula, stir the batter while pressing it against the side of the bowl to deflate it ever so slightly. You want to get the right piping consistency, that is when you lift the spatula and draw a figure eight with the batter, it disappears into itself within 20 seconds. The texture of it will be like chorus pastry dough. It takes a little practice but you'll get the hang of it soon enough :)

6. Put the batter into a piping bag and snip a 1cm opening. Pipe 1 inch circles on the parchment lined baking sheet, spacing them 1/2 an inch apart. Set them aside in a cool, dry place to dry for at least 45 minutes. They will form a shell - you can tell by touching them lightly with your finger. The batter shouldn't stick to your finger and it'll have a crust of sorts. Leave them to dry longer if necessary, it can take up to two hours. Don't rush this, believe me, I learnt it the hard way.

7. Preheat the oven to 155C. When the macarons have formed a shell, bake them for 10-12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through. Let them cool on the baking sheet. The shells should peel off the parchment paper easily when they're cool, if not, just pop them back in the oven for another 3-5 minutes. Let them cool completely before filling.

8. To make the filling, cream the butter and peanut butter together using a hand mixer. Add the icing sugar and beat till blended, then beat in the milk until fluffy. Put this mixture into a piping bag and snip off the end, then pipe circles of peanut butter filling onto half the cooled macaron shells. You want to pipe circles only around the edges of the shells to form a kind of frame. This will hold in the jam.

9. Stir the jam a little to loosen it, then use a teaspoon to dollop around 1/2 tsp of jam in the middle of the ring of peanut butter filling (if you get confused, just look at the pictures above again). 

10. Use the other half of the macaron shells to sandwich the filled ones - pressing them together lightly until the filling comes to the edges of the macaron (don't squash the filling out though). Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Some recipes say to let them mature for a day before eating, since they do taste better the next day when the shells are crisp on the outside but the centers have softened slightly. It's up to you though, I'd eat them as soon as they're filled. 

Italian Chocolate Ricotta Pie

As I type this, I've just finished the very last piece of candied pineapple I bought yesterday. I planned to eke it out over the week but then I sat down to watch a Korean drama with my mom just now and munched my way through the entire box. Sigh. Candied fruit won't make you fat, right ?

Speaking of candied fruit, there's some mixed peel in today's recipe. No, I didn't make it myself, but I did make the ricotta cheese it called for. I also threw in some yogurt cheese because I was on a cheese making roll and I didn't want to have any leftovers sitting in the fridge. 

I know a lot of people hate candied fruit (or peel) with a vengeance, and here's the thing: I'm not one of them. I love candied fruit (or peel). Maraschino cherries ? I eat them by the handful. Candied peel ? No problem. This probably explains the pineapple problem I had today. When I was in Chiangmai, Thailand for a holiday, I bought and ate so much candied and dried mango, I probably didn't need to eat any more sugared fruit for the entire year. But then of course I bought several packs of them to bring home. Thailand has the best dried mangoes, I tell you. And you can eat all you want - fruit is good for you ! Heh.

Do try to make your own cheese. And by cheese, I mean ricotta. I haven't seen rennet anywhere here so I won't be making mozzarella any time soon.. Which is good news for my thighs. But the ricotta - I tried store bought out of a tub and I thought it was pretty meh. But I tried a spoonful of the homemade and it blew my mind. I loved the tang and the silkiness you just can't get from the weird stuff you find in the supermarket. Unless of course you're lucky enough to live next to an Italian deli. If you do, please send me some cheese. 

Feel free to omit the yogurt cheese and replace it with more ricotta. The pie tastes awesome either way. I mean, it is chocolate and cheese. And they are, oh, just about two of my favorite things in the whole wide world.

Italian Chocolate Ricotta Pie (adapted from 500 Delicious Desserts by Ann Kay)

For the crust: 

225g plain flour

2 tbsp cocoa powder

50g caster sugar

115g unsalted butter

4 tbsp orange juice

For the filling:

2 egg yolks

115g caster sugar

250g ricotta cheese (I made my own, you can refer Here or see how below)

250g yogurt cheese (see how to make below)

Finely grated rind of 1 orange (use the juice for the crust)

6 tbsp dark chocolate chips

4 tbsp mixed (candied) chopped peel

1. Sift the flour and cocoa into a bowl. Stir in the sugar. Rub in the butter using your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the orange juice to form a firm dough, adding more juice if necessary to bind the dough.

2. Preheat the oven to 200C. Roll out three quarters of the dough on a lightly floured surface and line a 9 inch loose bottomed tart pan. Reserve the trimmings and add to the remaining quarter of dough.

3. Prick the bottom of the crust with a fork and bake it in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until it is dry and you can smell a chocolatey-orangey fragrance permeating the air. Remove from the oven and leave to cool while you make the filling.

4. For the filling, place the ricotta, yogurt cheese and sugar in a food processor. Blend until smooth, then blend in the yolks one at a time. By hand, stir in the orange rind, chocolate chips and mixed peel. Pour into the baked tart shell and level the surface.

5. Roll the remaining dough and cut out strips. Arrange the strips in a lattice pattern on the filling, making sure to press the edges so they adhere to the sides of the tart.

6. Bake for 15 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 180C and bake fore 25-30 minutes more, until golden brown and firm. It'll puff up a little, but settle as it cools. Remove from the oven and cool completely in the pan before serving.

To make yogurt cheese:

4 cups of natural yogurt

You'll need a strainer and some cheesecloth. I didn't have any cheesecloth so I just used some coffee strainers.

Line the strainer with the cheesecloth. Pour in the yogurt and wrap it up using the cloth. Place some weights on it (not the kind you used to workout, maybe some plates or bowls) and set it over a large bowl to catch the liquid that drains out. Leave it in the fridge for at least 2 hours (overnight is okay too). The longer you drain it, the thicker the yogurt cheese. This recipe will yield 2 1/2 to 3 cups of yogurt cheese, depending on how long you drain it.

To make your own ricotta:

2 1/2 cups of whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

1/3 cup white vinegar

Pinch of salt

This is easy ! Pour the milk and cream into a heavy based saucepan and heat it till it reaches 200F. Then take it off the heat, and stirring clockwise, pour in the vinegar and salt. Clamp the lid on and let sit for 12 minutes. When you open it, curds will have formed. Line a strainer with cheesecloth (like the setup for making yogurt cheese) and remove the curds with a slotted spoon, and gently place them in the cheesecloth lined strainer. Wrap it up with the cloth and weight it down, placing the strainer over a bowl. Leave to drain at least an hour or overnight. Tada, your own homemade ricotta. It's magical stuff.

Black Sesame Ice Cream

Don't ask me why the words of my posts have sort of bunched up on the left of the page. I've just started blogging from my new iPad and I have absolutely no idea how to center the words on the page. Oops.

Anyways one of my best friends has left for the states yesterday. I've known him since I was 12 (speaking of that, I'm almost 20 now. Omg.) and he's been my best friend since I was 16. We were in a gang of sorts with a few other dudes and dudettes but we were reaaally close with each other. I think it's because he sees me as some sort of counsellor for his love life. Which is, I must say, starting to take off now. Heh.

Let's call him C. C was the kind of guy who would carry my bags for me and open doors and patiently wait while I ran off to the toilet in between classes. He would stay back with me after school when I couldn't go home because my mom had meetings to attend (she was a teacher in my high school). He would inhale his food in two seconds flat (even plates of pasta or fried rice) and watch me eat mine very, very slowly. Then when I got my license, he would make me fetch him around or send him home after college even when I was dog tired and hungry, then he would buy me ice cream after. Then when he got his license, I never had to drive ever again. He would pick me up from home and drag me to watch movies and eat sushi. It's because of him that I'm obsessed with The Police Story 2013. Starring Jackie Chan (love him). I followed C rather non enthusiastically into the cinema and then I spent the entire length of the movie holding my breath and not wanting it to end. Now I'm looking for excuses and um, people to watch it with again. This is coming from someone who absolutely hates watching movies in the cinema. I don't know why. It's not that I don't like movies, I just don't like going to the cinema to watch them and I always feel so sad when they end. Regardless of whether the ending is sad or not.

Anyways back to C. He bugged me for years to complain about anything and everything. I guess I bugged him too. But I get affected really easily by the emotions of people I care about, and since I can say that I care about him a fair lot, his sadness or mopeyness always made me feel really down. And who likes feeling down ?

But he's still my best friend. And he did buy me ice cream and cake and talk me to my senses when I had locked myself in the bathroom to cry, once. That's not as weird as it sounds. We were on the phone, mind you.

And now he's gone. I'll see him again for sure and we'll be in touch, but it just isn't the same when he isn't here to ask me again for the bajilionth time, what he should eat for dinner.

On another note, my sister has been asking me to make black sesame idea cream for the longest time. Okay, not that long, but she does love it and since she is as decisive as a seesaw, I made up her mind for her that she wanted black sesame ice cream(she loves the stuff actually) and that I had to make it. Actually I was just looking for an excuse to try and make ice cream again. I made cookies and cream ice cream once and it turned out so well, I was sure it wouldn't work a second time. Since I didn't have a ice cream machine and all.. But I tried again. And it worked. AND I even managed to healthify it. Kinda. 

Now I stopped eating ice cream after C stopped buying them for me. I had never even tried black sesame ice cream before, since it was my sister who would eat scoops of it after dinner. I much preferred noshing on candied fruit but that's just me. So when I made it, I popped it in the freezer and scooped some into a bowl and sprinkled some.. Sprinkles over it and snapped some photos. Then I put it back in the freezer and expected to forget about it.

Then one day I decided that I had to take a bite because well, I made it and it wouldn't make sense for me to not know how it tastes like. So I took a dainty bite.

Ever had one of those eureka moments ? When you do something for the first time and wonder why the hell haven't I done this before ? Yeah. That was what happened. I took my first bite and felt several light bulbs blink on in my head. There was a loud DING and then I proceeded to take many not-so-dainty bites out of the container.

Which is why, if you haven't tried black sesame ice cream before, or if you don't have an ice cream maker, you should make this. On the other hand, if you have tried black sesame ice cream before or you do have an ice cream maker..

I'm sure you know what to do. 

Black sesame (goma) ice cream.

60g black sesame paste

180ml + 120ml milk, divided

2 egg yolks

70g + 2 tbsp sugar, divided

1 tbsp black sesame seeds (I omitted this because my sister said she preferred it smooth)

1. Whisk the 2 tbsp of sugar with the sesame paste until smooth.

2. Whisk the yolks and 70g of sugar until pale and thick. Heat 180ml of the milk in a saucepan until just below boiling point (don't let it actually boil, that's when things get messy) then pour a thin stream of the milk into the yolks, whisking all the while. This is to raise the temperature of the yolks slowly so you don't end up making scrambled eggs in milk.

3. When the yolks and milk are mixed, pour in the rest of the hot milk slowly, still whisking, until smooth. Pour this mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Cook until it thickens enough so that it coats the back of the wooden spoon, and you can draw a line on the coating with your finger.

4. Strain the mixture into a bowl. Slowly mix the warm custard with the black sesame paste, adding it in small portions and stirring well (so it doesn't separate). When all of the custard had been mixed in, stir in the remaining 120ml of milk. Chill in the fridge until cold.

5. If you have an ice cream maker, process the mixture according to the manufacturer's directions. If not, just pour the mixture into a wide shallow container and pop it in the freezer until the edges start to freeze, maybe around 2 hours. Use a whisk to stir the frozen bits into the soft middle and freeze until the edges set. Repeat the whisking and freezing process at least twice more, then freeze until solid. If you want a smooooth ice cream (like I do) then after it had been whisked and frozen, chop it into pieces and give it a whizz in your food processor. It'll look like smooth, velvet soft serve. Eat immediately or put it back in the freezer to be eaten later.

Matcha Mille Crepes

I used to have nightmares a lot.

I was a pretty good kid. I rarely stayed up past my bedtime and I always, always brushed my teeth before I crawled under the blankets (except for a few occasions when I was so sleepy I had to be carried into bed). But I had a lot of nightmares. I slept with my parents and sister when I was a kid, so I'd wake up in tears and proceed to wake up either parent. My sister never woke - she sleeps like the dead. They would then sit with me until my tears dried and my heart rate slowed down enough for me to go back to sleep.

I remember one dream in particular - it had to do with falling into a pool with some huge carnivorous catfish. Yes, catfish. It was my favorite thing to eat and see when I visited aquariums but now I can barely look at them, let alone put one in my mouth. 

Now I have my own room and I don't have nightmares that often any more. Even when I do, I don't find it necessary to run to my parents' room in the middle of the night. Is that what growing up feels like? I don't know. Because now when I have dreams, it's always sci-fi. Like last night, I dreamt that I was in a shopping mall that linked to an underground research place that either built weapons or made some scientist-ey stuff, I can't recall. The more I think about it, the fuzzier it becomes. All I can remember is that the walls of the underground lab were purple and there were tunnels leading everywhere from their experimental rooms to a shop that sold candy. Not even kidding.

My brain is wired that way I guess. Kind of like why I decided to make these crepe cakes tiny - they were like an inch in diameter. I guess I thought they'd be cute. But what I didn't account for was how awkward they would be to frost and stack and store. I also thought it would be a brilliant idea to have matcha in both the crepes and the filling but that just meant you couldn't tell them apart when they were stacked. Which meant I just had some tiny tall green towers. But they were tasty, tall green towers.

Small and very matcha-ey. Just the way I like them.

See how small ?

I posted the recipe as I made them, with matcha in the filling too but feel free to omit the green tea powder if you're not a huge fan. And if you want the striking layers of green and white. They'll taste wonderful either way.

Green Tea Crêpe Cake (adapted from Zen Can Cook)
Serves 6

For the green tea crêpes:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1/2 cup lukewarm water or beer
4 large eggs
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons sugar
1 pinch salt
2 tablespoons matcha powder

For the pastry cream:

2 cups whole milk
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 tablespoon matcha powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped (optional)

For the crêpes:

1. Combine all the ingredients by hand and mix until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.
2. Place a nonstick frying pan or a seasoned crêpe pan over medium heat. Using a paper towel, coat the pan with a little butter. Pour about 2 to 3 tablespoons of batter into the pan. Lift, tilt and rotate the pan so that the batter forms an even, very thin layer. Cook until golden. Turn the crêpe over and cook a little longer. Remove the crêpe to a piece of wax paper. Continue cooking the rest of the crêpes.

Pastry cream:

1. In a small saucepan, bring the milk to a boil over medium heat.
2. Whisk the yolks, sugar, cornstarch and matcha together in a bowl. Drizzle a quarter of the hot milk and whisk vigorously. Pour the rest of the milk and keep whisking. Return the custard to the pan and add the vanilla extract. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil while whisking energetically for 1 or 2 minutes. The mixture will be thick.
3. Set the bottom of the pot in a ice-water bath to cool, stirring frequently so that the mixture remains smooth. Cool to 140′F (warm to the touch) and stir in the butter until completely incorporated. Cool and refrigerate.
4. When ready to use, place the put the pastry cream in a food processor and process for 10 seconds for the best consistency. Fold in the whipped cream if using.

To assemble the Mille Crêpes:

Lay 1 crêpe on a cake plate. Using an icing spatula, completely cover with a thin layer of pastry cream. Cover with a crêpe and repeat to make a stack of 15 to 20. Chill for at least 2 hours. Serve cold.