Cooking up a Thai storm

Last Monday was A's birthday, and since he wanted something low key and chill, I decided to cook him up a feast and invite a few friends around instead of taking him out. He has a penchant for both Thai and Indian foods, so given our Indian adventures last week, I thought Thai would be a highly welcomed choice.

I spent a day or so digging up old recipes that I thought would fit the theme. It was actually more difficult than I thought to figure out an appetiser-main-desserts menu -- mostly because I wanted to spend more time on the desserts than anything else! After some deliberation, I decided on a fairly simple, but still fun and casual menu. Appetisers would be rice paper rolls with dipping sauce, while mains would be a simple green curry with coconut rice and a pad thai.
The rice paper rolls were easy - shredded chicken, grated cucumber and carrot, some lettuce and beansprouts all went onto the paper and were rolled up. I served them with a simple plum sauce and hoisin sauce. The curry was simply a matter of chucking any leftover veggies I had, some tofu, green curry paste and some coconut milk into a pot and letting it simmer. Pad thai, similarly, was just about stirfrying rice noodles with chicken pieces and beansprouts. All done (with the help of the 2 other girls; the 3 men just sat there chatting while we did all the cooking. Don't worry, we made them wash up) in a matter of half an hour.


Desserts was the main concern for me. I really wanted to make cupcakes, because a year ago, back when we'd only been going out for a week, I made - or rather, attempted to make - him cupcakes for his birthday. As these stories usually go, I ended up forgetting to put in baking powder (this WAS in my pre-baking/cooking days). I'm not sure if he ate them, but clearly was touched enough to stick around for a while. I had yet to attempt cupcakes again since that incident, but for the sake of continuity and tradition, I decided to give it another go.

After poring over the multitude of cupcake blogs out there, I decided to stick with something simple, not too fancy, yet rich and decadent. I was initially considering these Thai Tea Cupcakes, but ended up going with these cupcakes for the simplicity and apparent "never fail"ingness of the chocolate cupcake. Sounds good enough to me. I decided to forgo the mint buttercream and ganache, since some people don't necessarily like mint. I don't understand it, but hey, they're the ones missing out. No matter. I'll just substitute. I examined the fridge for something to flavour my frosting, and eventually found some lime juice that would go wonderfully with my cream cheese. I following the recipe to a T, the only chance being I made half a batch, 12 cupcakes, instead of the full 24. Chockylit was right when she called them "rich chocolate cupcakes", because they were definitely rich. A whole cupcake with icing was almost more than I could take. Nonetheless, they received rave reviews - definitely something to repeat again sometime.


Rich Chocolate Cupcakes with Lime Cream Cheese Frosting
(makes 24 regular cupcakes)
courtesy of Chockylit of Cupcake Bakeshop

200g bar chocolate (I used pretty average quality safeway cooking chocolate, worked wonderfully for me.)
3 sticks butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
8 eggs
1 1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1 package cream cheese (mine had about 250mL)
1/2 stick butter
3 cups sifted powdered sugar
3-4 tbsp lime juice (or as much as you like)

1. Chop chocolate and transfer into bowl. Add butter, and melt, stirring until both are combined.
2. Remove from heat and stir in sugar. Let mixture cool for 10 minutes.
3. Beat with electric mixer for 3 minutes, or as much as you can by hand.
4. Add egg one at a time, mixing for 30 seconds between each.
5. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and pinch salt into the mixture. Mix until blended.
6. Scoop into cupcake cups and bake at 180C for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

7. Beat cream cheese and butter till creamy.
8. Sift in half the sugar, and beat until combined.
9. Stir in lime juice, then continue to beat in remaining sugar.

Because I only made half the cupcakes and the whole batch of frosting, I still have a little tub sitting in my fridge. I also could have done well to add more lime juice, as the three tablespoonfuls of lime juice wasn't necessarily enough to completely outdo the cheesiness of the cream cheese. Nonetheless, the cupcakes were given rave reviews. Everybody could only manage one after our meal, which was fine; more leftovers for me! I also served up a tropical fruit salad to cleanse our palates somewhat. Lychees, watermelon cubes, pineapple chunks, mango slices and passionfruit pulp was just what we needed to finish off a night of Thai goodness.

Soothing my baking itch - Apple Muffins

After a long week at uni, I arrived home in the early evening, thankful to be home. However, half an hour later, I was suffering from a bad case of nothing-to-do's, which quickly turned into a large case of "baking itch". This is unfortunately (for my waistline - not so much for my housemates) a constant occurence, whereby I'm suddenly seized with a great urge to improve my baking prowess and whip up something fantastic that will have the house smelling wonderful and adoring people showering compliments upon my humble self (ha). I must admit that 'improvement' of my baking skills is not quite equivalent, in my case, to broadening my horizons and trying new things. Thus, my baking tends to be quite limited to the generic muffin and occasionally, fruit crumble or pie.

Another partial reason for the need to bake was because T, one of the housies, had brought from home a bag full of apples that weren't much good for eating, but fantastic for baking, stewing or cooking. After having stewed and frozen some, I thought it might be a good idea to use some of them up. After vetoing the idea of making a pie, I googled "apple muffins" and came up with quite an easy version.

The recipe itself was easy to follow, and were made from ingredients one usually has lying around the house. The recipe itself is labelled "Apple Muffins", omitting the cinnamon - and in terms of taste, it's probably the more accurate label for it. The cinnamon can't really be tasted, even though I added quite a few more shakes than called for in the recipe in an attempt to get a more spicy muffin. Next time, I might try adding cloves and perhaps some more nutmeg.

(N.B. I just noticed that under the recipe itself, the reviews aren't very supportive of the recipe, calling it "bland" and "heavy". I wouldn't call them heavy exactly, and those who called the muffin bland blamed the lack of sugar. I personally don't like my muffins overly sweet, so the low amount of sugar was preferable for me. The fact that I had one straight out of the oven was a plus for me, as warm anything muffin, especially with apple chunks, taste great. More spices is definitely needed to add more Zing to it.)


Apple Muffins
(courtesy of AllRecipes.com
submitted by Maria Evertsen)

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (I used Mixed Spice)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup apple, chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Lightly grease 12 muffin cups.
2. Stir together flour, baking powder, sugar, spices and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together milk, egg, and butter.
   
4. Combine the dry and wet ingredients. Fold in apple chunks.
5. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
6. Bake for 15 minutes, then sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top of muffins. Bake for another 5 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

(photo courtesy of AllRecipes.com)