More Baking endeavors

I"ve moved in a unit that has hot plates and electric oven. While the hot plates demotivate my not-so-enthusiatic cooking attempts immensely, having an oven keeps giving you ideas.. it wasn't until about 4 months of having ideas that I finally decided I needed to put them into action. I baked these:



I love how the blueberry muffins puffed up but the banana muffins just got deflated.. The latter tasted better though... I"d sprinkled a bit of raw sugar on the blueberry muffins.. hence the texture on top.. just wanted to try the tip and had no idea this is what it would rturn out like... I don't mind it.. it all ends in just one place anyway.

Here's another photo of them, I love the heart shape silicone tray I got for $5 from Kmart.


I didn't really know better so I didn't put any paper cups.. I dodn't think I"d have gotten heart shaped ones even if I had known that they need to be used. So I  made a happy discovery that you don't really need any paper cups and just an extreme minimal greasing when using silicone trays, what you do need to do, however, to prevent the spill (the burnt brown thing) while sliding them onto the racks is to put the silicone tray on something solid (I used my chopping board) and slide it off of it. The burnt stuff comes off as a breeze though I love these trays!

I used the super-simple recipe that came with my magic bullet blender:
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 tbsp oil
1 and 1/4 cup self-raising flour (it says bisquick, guess thats equivalent of self raising flour in Australia)
1/4 cup sugar

Put them in the same order in the tall cup of the bullet blender, blend a bit and pour in the muffin tray.. easy peasy!!

I made another of these again this time substituting 1/4cup flour with 1/4 cup cocoa (used drinking chocolate because I didn't have any baking cocoa with me.. made them extra sugary.. yummm ;). I also put in a lot of baking chocolate melts in the center of the muffins to try and replicate Dominos choco-lava cake and I guess I got a similar thing... it really was just an excuse to make them more chocolateyyyy

   
And that's my chopping tray I keep the silicone tray on top of to slide it into the oven easily.

I'd bought some 4 inch nonstick trays one day thinking I'd bake cakes in them but ended up making hot biscuits by substituing sugar with a little bit of the fiery birds-eye-chilli powder and a pinch of Garam Masala. Its unfortunate that the biscuits got irretrievably burnt and had to be discarded.


I had the quiche trays and didn't know what else to use them for so I tried to make quiches in it.. I knew I'd read the blind bake part where you put in beans for the quiche tray to retain shape and all but went with the flow and decided it was just me that was going to eat them anyway... so made rolled the dough, kept it in the freezer for a bit. I had the experience of making the dough from the hot biscuits above but knew that the dough needed to take some time for its gluten to bind or whatever. The thing really did turn out to be terribly darned good.. but then again what wouldn't with the crazy amount of cheese I'd put on it.. Here's my Spinach and Mushroom quiche:

Inspired by the success of the muffins, I decided to take my baking to the next level and enrolled in a discounted cupcake making demo and decoration class. I mention the making as a demo because we were just shown how to bake cupcakes and didn't actually quite make them ourselves, but the process is just the same, except a little bit more buttery. The class also included decoration which was a really cool part, We made lemon curd (which I didn't like much) and some sort of icing I forgot the name of with a shot of spresso which was so so so-o-o darned good. Thats's the coffee colored icing and the other one is Choclate ganache which is simple to make too, just need a beater (time to spend some more.. oh wait! I"m unemployed..).
   
Ever wondered why they don't have more of the icing on those yummy cupcakes you spend a fortune on in those cupcakes.. just because sometimes too much of icing can be a not-so-good thing.. I can't believe I"m saying this myself.. but I ended up having to (sob) throw away 4 of the six cupcakes I got to take home just because I couldn't take anymore of the the sugarinezz. After the class though, I made many batches of mini banana bread loaves that I didn't take photos of but have the exact same recipe as the muffins just pour in a bread loaf tin. I hate the dietitians who recommend cutting down sugar and white flour and butter!! what DOES that leave for me to eat!!