Pass: Carrot Cinnamon Bread

I feel pretty geeky baking two things in one night. (posting this other recipe a few days late) Well.. What happened last weekend wasn't a very ordinary thing.  After succeeding in making the cookies, Uri still wanted to make carrot bread so we tried to find a recipe for carrot bread that had cinnamon.  

So I found one on taste.com.

Did some revisions on this recipe though.. 

So here are the ingredients: 

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup almond milk
1/4 cup rice bran oil
1 egg
1 eggwhite
2 large carrots peeled and grated

Started off by sifting the flour together with the baking soda and the cinnamon..

I then added the brown sugar into the dry mixture. 

On a separate bowl, I combined the almond milk, egg and eggwhites and the oil.

Whisked them together to look like this... I still don't know how different it'll taste since I used almond milk and 1 egg + 1 eggwhite combination which were both substitutions in my effort for it to be healthier. 

I mixed the dry and the wet ingredients together.

It looks pretty much like bread at this point. 

I then added the grated carrots. The bright orange looks  so so pretty... I have a feeling this bread will taste good with jam... 

When I mixed the carrots it... It then looked like puke... Fragrant puke at this point. The water content of the grated carrots made the mixture lose it's thick texture. 

On to the baking loaf pan .... 

And then on to the oven... It looks and smells amazing. The bread has that pretty crack on top on it's 30th minute. 

Baked it for about 45 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius and I kept checking by poking a wood bbq stick into it's core.  haha

Another PASS for this recipe that I tweaked! Tastes really good and it' keeps well in the fridge.  It's now been 4 days since I baked this loaf and I had it for breakfast this morning and it still tastes good.  Even if I refrigerated it, it didn't harden at all. 

Pretty amazing! I think this is by far the healthiest thing I've baked.  Looking forward to find healthier recipes...

I'm thinking of making sugar cookies next! I bought a bunch of cookie cutters and I wanna make a Christmas tree one! Excited about that.. Hoping to have time to bake again. 

Advanced merry Christmas!

Pass: Starbucks-style Chocolate Chip Cookies

Been trying to venture out and not get stuck with baking just bread loaves... 

Good thing I had an impromptu date with Uri and she suggested that we bake cookies.  She was also the one who found the recipe online and we found it in this forum.  Which of course we did some substitutions.. As usual. 

So I baked this recipe with my sister, Celine and Uri.  Among the 3 of us, Celine has the most experience since she did baking lessons last summer. On to the recipe.. 

The ingredients are: 

2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (170 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/3 cups dark brown sugar

1 large egg 

1 egg yolk 

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate chips, unsweetened

1/4 cup white chocolate chips 

We started off by combining all the dry ingredients together except for the sugar and roughly mixed it with a spoon. 

On a separate bowl, we combined the dark brown sugar and the butter.

In the instructions, it said that it has to be mixed to a creamy texture so I whipped out our spankin' new electric mixer to do the job.  I got so nervous... The power on that thing even at the lowest setting is pretty crazy! 

After mixing the butter-sugar combo, we then added the eggs and egg yolk as well as the vanilla extract.  

 After a bit of mixing, it looked pretty much like mud... Yummy smelling mud... 

Next step is to add the dry mixture part by part into the wet mixture. 

 It got pretty stiff and mixing was a bit of an effort.  It looked exactly how a cookie dough looks like! What a relief!

After mixing all the dry mixture in, we set aside the electric mixer because the choco chips just needed to be folded in.  I wanted to use both white and milk just coz it looks so much better in terms of aesthetics.. 

After a lot of struggling, it eventually looked like this... It's pretty tough manually mixing in at this point because the dough is so tacky and heavy already. 

Measure the dough into 1/4 cup size and put them on the cookie sheet and flatten them a bit. 

They've expanded a bit after 10 minutes!

So these are done and took just about 15-17 minutes at 177 degrees Celsius. 

They look so pretty and pro! They taste good too! 

Celine's offering you some cookies.

How they look like on the inside... They're soft and moist. The taste isn't so sweet, they're just right.

Another PASS for me and the rest of my baking gang. This cookie recipe is so awesome. The recipe makes 12 pcs of this large sized cookie..

Win: Natural Vanilla Extract

Yay!

It didn't take me a long time to find a natural and organic vanilla extract.  

I found The Vanilla Company Tahiti Organic Pure Vanilla Extract at Cooks Exchange in Glorietta for about Php 245.00.  I guess that's not so bad? I did look for their website for the legit-ness and I found their website here.

Thank goodness I do not have to order vanilla extract from Amazon.com!

Pass: Pumpkin Spice Bread

It's been a dream of mine to bake... and bake with anything pumpkin flavored.  We don't have pumpkin varieties here in the Philippines that look like Jack-o-Lantern however, we do have squash. Loads and loads of squash.  I did some Googling and found out that there are really not much difference between the two.  Dream come true! I'm making Pumpkin Spice Bread! 

I found this recipe from thefreshloaf.com and I'm pretty happy I found it because they're using chocolate chips in their recipe and I have leftover chocolate chips! Sign from the heavens above! 

Here's the recipe: 

1 3/4 cup pumpkin puree (or in my case, squash) 

3 1/2 cups flour 

1 1/2 cups brown sugar 

1/2 cup butter 

3 eggs 

2 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp nutmeg 

1 1/2 cup chocolate chips (the recipe called for 2 cups nuts or chocolate chips..i lessened it because I want it to be a pumpkin loaf not a choco chip loaf) 

As I Googled, I found that most Pumpkin Bread recipes call for canned pumpkin puree but since we don't have those here and I'm slightly against not making anything from scratch in my baking journey... I did it myself by following the steps from chefinyou.com

The steps are so simple, it would kind of be a sin to buy the canned version.  

When the squash finished roasting in the oven for a bit less than 60 minutes, it looked like this.  Tender and easily poked. Haha

Just used 1/4 section of a whole squash.. It's pretty cool because I'll never look at squash the same way. I mean, no longer labeled as pinakbet..


I forked the squash meat out.

And then I mashed it like how you normally do mashed potatoes.  In the site, you can actually make it more pureed like the store-bought kind, but then I think it would have a more interesting texture if it's not too fine.

Simple ingredients, nothing complicated.

And so I was slightly surprised how the mixing of this particular bread is different from the Banana one I made. This one mixes all the wet ingredients together first together with the sugar. I used dark brown sugar.

In the recipe, it said, "mix until creamy".  I don't think I achieved it coz I microwaved the butter coz it was taking forever to soften.  I am not sure if that's like a baking mortal sin or something.

This is my best try at "creamy consistency". I think the reason why it didn't become creamy is coz I didn't soften the butter...I melted it. Tsk tsk..

On a separate bowl I mixed all the powder ingredients together.  So the only thing left out is the chocolate.

I mixed the powder mixture into the wet mixture part by part.

It slowly gets thicker and thicker..

According to the recipe, the end batter should be able to hold a spoon upright.  I think I succeeded except I didn't actually test it with a spoon.

Lastly I added the chocolate chips.. Folded those in.

I distributed the batter into 2 loaf pans just I can share it with more people.

They look pretty chill and ready to go into the preheated oven.. 350 F, 177 C.

After about 45 minutes they appeared to be ready for poking... And that I did. I found out it was just perfect. 

I love the non stick pan I got. The bread just really slides out of it even if it hasn't fully cooled.  I think this looks pretty delicious and amazing.  I can't believe I nailed my second attempt. 

This is the best part of my baking experience.  Getting the kids to eat my stuff!

Tala seems to really like this bread. I'm so happy!

That said, the verdict is I PASSED this Pumpkin Spice Bread with flying colors!

On to my next recipe... Healthier recipes, most probably.

Goal: Top 10 Thing I Wanna Bake

1. Macarons 
2. Pumpkin pie 
3. High fiber healthy muffins 
4. High fiber energy bars 
5. Carrot cake 
6. White chocolate & macadamia cookies
7. Pecan pie
8. Pizza dough 
9. Cinnamon rolls
10. Super moist chocolate birthday cake 

My goal is to use the most natural ingredients possible... Honestly I'm still in the process of finding natural vanilla extract, not the McCormick ones.

I did find this Simply Organic Vanilla Extract from Amazon... Thinking if I should get it.

 I would also like to use more whole grain, non-refined stuff if possible and no artificial food color. 

Good luck with these goals!  I seem to like creating goals that drive me crazy.. 

Inspiration: The video that started it all

The Youtube video that sparked my interest... 

Thanks to her... I'm again learning, studying and curious about a random skill called baking. 

Pass: Choco Chip Banana Bread

This is a monumental Sunday because this is the day that I try baking for the first time.  

My debut recipe is a banana bread that I tweaked.  

I was thinking that I should take this baking one step at a time and not go through anything complicated first. I actually love banana bread so I surfed the Internet for the best recipes and I found two - Rachel Ray's and Food.com's recipe.  I also changed the recipe a bit and used dark brown sugar instead of refined white sugar. 

So here's the recipe I used (makes 1 loaf) 

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup brown sugar 

1/2 cup butter

2 pieces bananas, mashed

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt 

2 eggs, lightly beaten 

1/2 tsp vanilla extract 

As i read in the intructions, I should be mixing all the dry ingredients together.  I didn't sift the flour so I was trying to pulverize some flour lumps I found in the process.

After I mixed all the dry ingredients, I added all the wet and moist ingredients... Only thing I left out was the chocolate chips.

At this point in folding and mixing the ingredients together, I was already wishing I was ambidextrous because it feels like a work out and I was only working out my left arm.

I think I made a mistake adding the butter when it was not fully softened.  I found these hunks of butter in the mixture and I had to do some extra mixing just to make it all look homogeneous.
 

After some left arm exercise later, it eventually looked like a decent enough batter.

Folded in the choco chips last... I realized, maybe it's too much?

Used my spanking new non stick pan..

The bread looked perfect after around 40 minutes of baking at 177 degrees Celsius. 

So for this first baking experience I think I PASSED.

It looks pretty yummy and it tastes really yummy.  It isn't so sweet (despite the 1 cup sugar and 1 cup choco chips -yikes!)

Yay! I do have an issue though.... 

Why does it collapse after fully cooling it? I wonder... 

I still consider it as a success in terms of taste however, I guess I'll have to work on what went wrong in the aesthetics.