French Chocolate Macaroons

*darker looking cookies - french chocolate macaroons (by myself)
*lighter coloured cookies - chewy oat cookies (by karen zhang)
*acknowledgements: kelly lee, for helping with preparation, baking, and participating in the photo =)


Post-exam cookie baking session. held just before cocktail drinks session for some of us. really fun baking with friends - loads of endless laughter. and usually there's always something new to learn about baking, or just about your friends =)

French Chocolate Macaroons (makes 24)

3 egg whites
25g Dutch cocoa
200g caster sugar
150g ground almonds
1 1/2 tbsp plain flour

1.Line biscuit tray with baking paper. Preheat oven 180 C.
2.Using an electric mixer, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add sugar, whisking well after each addition to dissolve sugar, until mixture is smooth and glossy.
3.Sift clour and cocoa together, then stir in ground almonds.
4.Gently stir flour mixture into egg white mixture until just combined.
5.Spoon tablespoonfuls of mixture on to tray and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until crisp on the outside but still soft in the centre.
6.Let the macaroons stand for 10 minutes before transferring on to a wire rack to cool.

*7. for the macaroons i made this time, i added some chocolate chips onto the cookies' surface as well as glazed the macaroons with egg-wash (egg yolk and water mixture... in roughly 1:1 or 2:1 proportion)

strawberry with basil

2 punnets strawberries, sliced
1/2 lemon juiced
2 tablespoons castor sugar
6 basil leaves, finely shredded
100ml balsamic vinegar
vanilla ice cream, to serve

slice strawberries lengthways
add lemon juice, sugar, basil leaves, balsamic vinegar. (you may want to heat it slightly)
set aside for 10 minutes

serve with ice cream... a mix of hot and cold per se?

delicious bread

"If you've created a truly delicious-looking bread, who's the first person you'd give it to?

Yourself.
Just because it looks delicious, doesn't mean it really is. In that case, you can't give it to people yet.

But, once you know that it's delicious, to whom would you give it to first?

Who do you think it is?

Obviously, when you know that the bread is truly delicious...

You first give a truly delicious bread to...
every person you'd want to eat it.
And in addition, you want every person who loves the bread to eat it."

- quoted from the anime 'Yakitate! Japan'.

...and you'd give that truly delicious bread to the one you love,

...for it is out of love, that you make a bread truly delicious...

for if not for love, there wouldn't be a truly delicious bread...

no noise during study and exam weeks (:

for your viewing pleasure!

(one's the actual notice.. the other.. just a pun on the real one. both notices ARE actually spread along corridors in my halls of residence ^_^ )