Of tarts and chocolate.

Okay… so here’s this week’s baking. 

Lemon Blueberry Tart!

Okay this was my first attempt at the tart. Didn’t turn out fantastic – my crust was waaaaay too thick (recipe for crust was for a 9 inch pan, and I was using an 8 inch pan.. but I stuffed it all in anyway and it came out so thick it was like more like biscuit) and my lemon was too runny and had bits of cooked egg in it because the fire got too hot and my whisking was too slow. Lol. But it still tasted pretty good overall, can’t go wrong with the strength of lemon zing. 

Did a 2nd tart which turned out a lot better for Caregroup dinner last night. This time this lemon filling turned out much smoother and creamier, and Jason helped create a far thinner crust… which was just a teensy bit too thin (it broke apart under the weight of the lemon curd too easily) but far more palatable than trying to gnaw on the previous biscuit. 

Here’s Jason viciously trying to squeeze out 115ml of lemon juice from 3 lemons yesterday. (For the uninformed, one lemon produces an average 30ml worth of juice.) 

 

I also tried making these Chocolate Chip Meringue cookies… mine really didn’t turn out quite as the recipe dictated. In fact I severely burnt the first batch that went into the oven and had to throw them away. 

 

Okay, so they didn’t rise as well as they should’ve, and had a strange Malteses taste on the first day, with a sticky chewy melt in the mouth taste which I really wasn’t fond of. (It was supposed to have a more melt in your mouth taste…) I was convinced that I never wanted to make these cookies again. But as each day passed, the cookies tasted better because they started deflating and became really sweet and crisp. :O 

Caregroup passed the cookies too so well maybe I’ll bake these for my students because they’re actually quite easy to make. There isn’t a drop of flour in these cookies – they’re largely made out of very whisked egg whites, sugar, and of course, chocolate.  

Wanted to make the Quintuple Chocolate Brownies that I tried the last time but they’re REALLY tedious and pricey to make so I may just make some muffins instead. Found a recipe for Banana Bread that makes really good muffins too (with walnuts!) so I may try that before the boy comes back from romping around Brunei’s jungles, since he requested something of that variety… 

Each day I spend on Tastespotting brings me more and more and more new recipes that I want to try!! Ahhhh! And most of it has chocolate!!!!! :S

Time to try some real food… there’s a lot of extra cheese in the fridge from my Shepherd’s pie (well, Cottage pie to be exact because it was beef, and Shepherd’s pie is technically lamb) so I may try something with that… And there’s a lot of extra dough from the pie too..  

Heh heh heh heh. 

Okay yes, so I tried a Shepherd’s Cottage pie. It was really quite tedious to prepare – or perhaps it felt that way because we were preparing both the lemon tart and pie simultaneously. 

The mixer turned out to be really useful for making potato puree, although I would seriously like a better mixer. (And a better oven.. and gloves so I would stop burning my fingers taking trays out of the oven.. and a proper mixing bowl.. and etc…) The frying of the pie filling was mostly Jason’s doing. By that time Aruna and Hui Ting had arrived so 4 of us were quite enthusiastically trying to finish up by then. We also tried to fry the potato skins for fun to see what would happen. The result: Nothing much, but they were still nice to nibble on anyway. 

So the cottage pie turned out pretty well, though yes, more onions would have made it more moist, and more cheese wouldn’t have hurt.  

Wonder what I should try this week…. HMMMMM~

And since I posted such an unglamorous photo of the boyfriend, here’s a nicer one taken after his Social Night @ Timbre. Such dramatic lighting my dining room has. We then proceeded to watch the Euro semi-finals though for the life of me I have no idea what I was doing watching soccer.

The girls are meeting up tonight to watch it at Mifa’s. A very interesting collection of people whom I generally do not associate with soccer. *scratches head*