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Fancied baking some brownies today, I have surfed through different websites and found out dark chocolate (70% cocoa) is preferably used. However I have lots of milk chocolate sitting gathering dust. Should give it a try with milk chocolate brownies to see how it goes. I made marbled pattern with French white cheese (fromage blanc) and also tried filling with some sunflower seeds. Sounds like a weird mixture, doesn’t it?

Here is how I did it!

Ingredients:

113g unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

170g milk chocolate

2/3cup all purpose flour (140g)

1/2tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

½ cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

2tsp pure vanilla extract

1tbsp plus 1tsp rum

2/3 cup sunflower seeds

Marble part:

1/3 cup fromage blanc (French white cheese)

Preheat 160C/325F; Baking time: 30 minutes

Method:

Butter a 20cm x 20cm pan or dust it with some flour, line the buttered pan with baking paper/ parchment.

Using a double boiler to melt butter and chocolate over low heat. Let it slightly cool down. Gradually add sugar to the melted mixture, mix with a fork.

Whisk flour, salt and baking powder.

Lightly beat three eggs with vanilla extract, then pour this to the butter and sugar mixture above. Whisk until the mixture is completely blended.

Add rum.

Fold in the mixture of flour, salt and baking powder.

Add sunflower seeds.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spread evenly with a rubber spatula if it is not.

To make the marble pattern:

Use a small spoon dropping little evenly drops of fromage on the brownie surface. Draw the line.

Bake 30minutes, check before by inserting a toothpick in and it comes out with either crumbs or clean but not wet.

Let it cool on wire rack completely before cutting into squares.

Note: The recipe was mostly adapted from this link

http://parispastry.blogspot.com/2010/07/milk-chocolate-brownies.html

Thank you so much for sharing to let me know that I’m not the only crazy people who thinks of making brownies out of milk chocolate.

I might prepare some fudge frosting tomorrow to make it more interesting when brought to my friends.

Golf disc, cannot wait!

This charlotte version is the most simple one, made with fromage blanc (French white cheese) and fresh strawberries. Having found out fromage blanc is extremely low in fat (virtually fat free) plus both Chomchom and I really like the taste. I tend to make it for desserts.

Charlotte is a typical French cake which can make my bf a bit nostalgic.

If lots of people choose to bake a kind of sponge cakes to inaugurate their ovens/ baking career, I think I chose to bake bread.  I was not successful at first due to my very amateur spirit, I would never obey any recipe or measure an exact amount of flour or yeast that are required; and I was too tired to knead flour until the dough is elastic enough. I did not enjoy my bread much at that time, until now I can really enjoy my bread products but not entirely satisfied yet. However my meal is still rice based more than bread-based, I don’t bake bread  often.

Photos of bread when I was at the beginning of my baking career, breads smelt amazing but the filling remained compact and not as good as those I made recently.

Epi pain- and an embarrassing baguette ( I know I was terrible at shaping these breads, but you can see how soft their insides were. Those were really good!!!

And the shapes

I used to think that I did not like sushi but I was totally wrong about myself. I have become a sushi-holic just like my boyfriend. We always love spending a dinner out in some Japanese restaurant and we ate so much that we felt like sumo’s after the meal. Thus I tried making some sushi nights at home, I made different types of sushi, sushi maki’s and also made ginger pickle once (now I don’t bother making them as it’s too much work and just isn’t worth it. You know you can buy a whole bag of …uh like 1kg of ginger pickle in any Asian store. However, making sushi and maki at home is another thing, which is really fun <3

Preparing sushi rice plays the most important role in making delicious maki rolls or even sushi (besides the quality of fish that you bought).

For two persons, you just need around 1 cup or maximum a cup and a half of sushi rice if you are really big sushi consumers like us. The best is to follow the cooking instruction on your sushi rice bag. But some sushi rice company doesn’t really give you an instruction, in which case, you could just use one and a half amount of the rice that you cook. For example: a cup of rice needs a cup and a half of water. It is told that the rice quality is much improved if you use bottled water, which I find a bit perplexed as I do not think chefs in a popular restaurant ever use bottled water for your rice and theirs sushi remain delicious enough to make you come back there again and again. Another tip is to soak the rice 30 minutes before cooking, use a rice cooker is the most simple thing to do.

While rice is there, prepare the mixture to add to your sushi rice, which includes: vinegar (mizkan), sugar, salt, a bit of mirin and sake (I always use dry white wine that what we tend to always have in our kitchen). Simply put them in a microwave for around 1minute or so to make it boil and to dissolve sugar.

Mixing the above mixture to your rice in front of a running fan to dry out a bit the rice and give your rice a shining look, then cover the bowl of rice with a damp cloth let it cool.

Let roll your maki or sushi and serve with ginger pickle, soya sauce and lots of wasabi!

We always love making sushi with salmon, tuna, eel, avocado, cucumber, crabstick, Japanese omlette. But really you can really be very creative with any fillings, I once tried sushi with mango on top :))

Those were made for my younger sister’s excursion, cannot remember when. Might be in 2008 or even before that.

Our first home-made sushi night together: I tried making ginger pickle,  inside-out maki, sesame maki and so forth, I really like those!

For those who are not fond of eating raw fish, you can make a Korean version of the sushi, “GIMBAB”, which is filled with Korean kimchi (chinese cabbage pickle), Korean sausage, fried egg, cucumber and carrot…. or as mentioned above, just which ever ingredients that you are thinking of.

My beautiful Charlotte ♥ which was made in April 2011. I did not have a real charlotte mould then and  just used a food plastic box.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_(dessert)