Favourite Pins #1

Sorry I haven't been posting a while... school's not letting me! Trials are creeping up really quickly so I don't think I will have time to bake before it ends- which is *shudder* in 5 weeks. But I'm sure that after all the exams end, I will be back on track whipping up as many things I can from my baking list! I've even got a recipe pending but I just couldn't find the time to actually post all the recipes/pictures, but I will soon- promise! And just a hint: it'll be for all you white chocolate and vanilla lovers out there!

So in the meantime, I thought I'd just write a super quick post on some of my favourite pins I've encountered in the past days. I'm pretty new to pinterest so I'm on the lonely side for followers so if you want to join the crowd oops, there is none haha just follow the link HERE to follow me!

 Yellows, Greys and Blacks

So many flavours...

 Dessert Table

Banana, Orange Pancakes with Caramel Sauce

It's been quite some time since I've had homemade pancakes for breakfast. And we all know that pancakes could probably be the world's best disguised breakfast that's actually a dessert- on par with waffles, crepes and the like of course. Well, I've tried quite a few recipes that were  labelled 'thick and fluffy pancakes' with great reviews but when it's my turn to try, sure, the pancakes itself look pretty flipping awesome- nice and high and golden brown but problemo: undercooked batter detected under the perfect surfaces... And I really did try to troubleshoot it, by that of course I meant cooking them for longer on a lower heat etc but they just never work for me! But yesterday while I was browsing, I encountered these beautiful pictures of banana pancakes from a blog which completely renewed my desire to continue my quest for the perfect pancakes. These ones I'm writing about are probably pretty close to perfect- they're fairly healthy and although modest in height, they were soft and the big plus was that I encountered no problems with undercooked innards! 


I will also apologise in advance for the massive influx of pictures of the same pancake stack but this morning, I was shooting with the best natural light I've ever worked with before and so the selecting process became quite challenging indeed! 

No-Yeast Mini Cinnamon Buns

For the past few days, I've been craving anything cinnamony, the options were narrowed down to baked cinnamon churros, cinnamon pretzels, baked cinnamon donuts or of course, the might cinnamon rolls! All these sounded crazily appealing but I just really wanted something fairly quick and easy and pretty foolproof too and the weather looked pretty horrid so I thought nooo way yeasty breads so pretzels and donuts were out of the way. And I recently spotted some quick recipes without yeast for cinnamon rolls so I quickly ran down to the kitchen with my laptop and gathered the ingredients. I love it how cinnamon baked goods don't need any super fancy ingredients you wouldn't already have in your pantry. I guess it's because the star of them all is, to be honest, just the cinnamon!!

Oh yeah, and I know I said that I won't be cooking anymore these holidays, but just this one I couldn't resist okay? And another thing was I didn't have buttermilk, so usually I just substituted it with some regular milk and lemon but on the day, I ran out of lemons and decided to put it a fair amount of orange juice instead of lemon. Aaaand after baking it I realised that my baking soda was kinda expired and also I probably just kneaded the dough for way longer than 2 minutes. So I wasn't really sure if it was one of these or all of these combos that led to my cinnamon buns being a little tough albeit still very yummy. But I am totally sure that it was completely my fault that it turned out that way but that if you guys follow this recipe carefully, checking expiry dates on all your ingredients, you'll be good to go for a softer bun. I just had to pop mine in the microwave for 25 seconds and it became quite soft anyway so it wasn't such a big deal, just that maybe I'll have to buy a new packet of baking soda and lemon the next time I go shopping because I'll never know when I'll crave for these cinnamon buns again!

Peach and Strawberry Verrines

I'm really liking the idea of desserts in individual cups. It's beautiful to see layers defined behind the clear glass cups! Weirdly enough, in Australia, it's strawberry season during winter while my foreign friends insist that strawberry is definitely a summer fruit. I would've been ok if peaches were also a winter fruit but sadly, it is a summer one so it made it impossible to use fresh peaches in this recipe for me... so I opted for the canned varieties and I guess it was alright but, I'm so sure it would've tasted a lot lot nicer with fresh stone fruits! What a shame!

Peach and Strawberry Verrines

Recipe adapted from Tartelette

Serves 4

For the peach puree:

1 teaspoon powdered gelatin
1 tablespoon cold water

1 cup (200gr) peaches, peeled and pitted diced small

juice and zest of a lime

2 tablespoons (25gr) sugar

1. Sprinkle the gelatin over the water and reserve. 

2. Process the peach dices with the lime juice and zest and the sugar until completely processed. 

3. Heat the mixture in a medium saucepan set over medium heat until it starts to bubble. Add the gelatin and stir until it is completely melted. 

4. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Divide evenly among 4 glasses. Refrigerate until set. 

Mornings

Don't you just love mornings? I don't understand non-morning people. It's the best time of the day since it just started and everything's just so bright and it's so refreshing to think that hey, I've got a whooole day in front of me. It's just so chill and I love it. And plus, I think breakfast can easily be my favourite meal of the day. Oats with brown sugar, dried apricots and cinnamon, yoghurt with muesli, pancakes, crepes, and eggs! I'm a big fan of eggs but it's a shame that I usually have the time to cook them before school so holiday time = nice breakfast for me.

Yesterday night, we had a coles run at 10 and since my mum's away, we don't have a system for grocery shopping and so that usually means no food in the fridge... So we decided we had to get something pretty substantial for breakfast and I spotted this brioche braid and nearly screamed, LET'S GET THIS! I was super excited because the last time I had brioche was when I was doing my exchange in France, and despite it being a loaf of brioche from the supermarket, it was amazing- fluffy, cakey and sooo buttery and perfect for dunking into your bowl of hot chocolate- like a real Frenchie! But I was so disappointed because the one I bought was nothing like it, it was tough and tasted like plain bread. Nonetheless, I slathered it with some butter and topped it with eggs and it was alright I suppose. I think this happens with all families- if you bought something from the shops, whether it's nice or not (especially when it's not particularly nice), all the other family members use the fact that it's your purchase against you to tell you to finish it... Well, they're nice aren't they?

Eggs yolk... oozing... come to my mouth now. This is what mornings are for! 

6-Layer Passionfruit and Lemon Trifle Cups

 I know, I know, yet another chilled dessert in the middle of winter, but seriously, this one's amazing and you'll definitely be missing out if you don't make some for yourself! And if you've noticed, I'm totally hooked with vibrant foods right now, and yellow just happens to be one of my favourite colour so I knew I just had to... 

It's been a week already since my school holidays started and since I'm in year 12, when I get back to school in 2 weeks, exams will be waiting for me. So I think these 3 weeks are in fact just intense study period aka a reaaaally badly disguised holiday. And you know what, I HATE IT! After 9 gruelling weeks of school, I was so excited to have finally reached the end, yet we're expected to do more studying? Say whaaaat? It's so unfair! And so far, I've done close to no schoolwork and instead spent hours editing photos, making food, making a new banner, grazing on food blogs, submitting photos to foodgawker and the like. Okay, so you get it, I've been completely zonked out from reality and went down the spiral of food blogging to the point of no return these last few days. So I've made a little pact with myself- no more cooking, well at least no big projects for the rest of the holidays and gotta focus on studying now... But for the moment, let's just finish this post, I hate leaving things unfinished, you know what I'm sayin'?

To buy or not to buy- ice cream makers

I've always wanted to make my own homemade ice cream since I've seen tons of homemade ones that are packed full of mouthwatering combinations that you'll never get from coles... I mean just look at these marvelous creations like  this one,  Look, I've even bought some ice cream based cookbooks without owning an ice cream machine, which shows how desperate I am. But hey, don't judge, it was on sale at the time- only 5 bucks I think and more importantly the book said you could also make it WITHOUT a machine- I was hooked already! But after researching, I found out that despite the possibility, I just can't bring myself to attempt making them knowing I'll have to check/stir mixture every 3 hours. After that moment, I have completely diminished any desire to make homemade ice cream...  But am I ready to splurge $200 on one, knowing I won't make ice cream everyday as I would still opt for the packaged kind- for convenience. And plus 200 divided by 5 gives you 40 scoops of ice cream from gelatissimo or ben & jerry's, so that's when I started to hesitate even more and just looked the other way without ever turning back... So that's my story on ice cream makers. In short, would I buy one? Probably not now, you see, now here is the key word... In the future, if I've got all this money, then sure, why not? Well until then, sorry folks, no ice cream recipes! 

Here's my interpretation of the perfect outing with a friend- yes, ice cream is always involved. And I just realised there was no one looking after the shop oops, well let's just say it was a self serve gelatissimo- EVEN BETTER!