My First Pizza Square Bread Thingy!

Yes, I know it's been almost a year and a half since me last post, and I know I haven't really kept my promise of posting every week, so I have instead decided to post whenever I want to; without the dreaded deadline I set on myself.

So, I have neither made bread before, nor have I ever made a pizza and I thought why not combine the two things I have no idea how to make and create MY FIRST PIZZA SQUARE BREAD THINGY! Of course it's been thought of and made before; it's just called pizza bread. 

I came across an interesting recipe for the bread I wanted to make. Instead of water to knead the dough with, it asked for beer. BEER! The one time I could actually open a can of beer at 10 in the morning and tell my mother, “ It’s for the recipe!” naturally I took a few swigs of the cool liquid every now and then but I can assure you that not a single drop of water was used for this recipe; except for dissolving the yeast that is. After kneading my awesome beer bread dough, and allowing it to rise for about two hours, I decided to make my very own tomato sauce from scratch.

I took two tomatoes, blitzed them in the grinder and poured it into a saucepan with garlic sautéed in olive oil. I added salt, oregano and other usual herbs and allowed the sauce to reduce to a thick consistency. The flavour of the sauce can be quite sharp so ease up on the salt if you must.

After my dough had risen, I plucked about two handful of it and spread it out into a glass-baking dish. I poked holes with a fork all over the base so that it would cook through all the way. I added my homemade sauce, topped it with some good old pizza cheese, red and yellow peppers. I could have added more ingredients but I was apprehensive about how the dish would turn out so…

I popped it into the oven at about 180 degrees Celsius for 10-15 minutes and voila! My very first Pizza Square Bread Thingy! And I must say so myself it was quite Yummilicious!

Dark Chocolate Ganache Pie

Happy Diwali my fellow foodies! I know I have not been so regular with the posts and I apologise. Of late, given that I go through frequent bouts of existential issues and never ending dilemmas of wanting to quit my job, I have decided that my plans to become an anime character must be put on hold.

This weekend I will be talking about a Ganache pie that I made. I love pies and I’m slowly trying to learn how to make a basic biscuit piecrust. I did make one for the Nutella Cheesecake and yes it was amazing because of the added Nutella but this piecrust I made out of plain digestive biscuits and butter was pretty darn good as well.

Now before you go oooh Ganache, it sounds so fancy and so bourgeois let me just say that a monkey’s uncle could do it. So, for those of you who are noobs when it comes to baking like I am, then this recipe will surely sort that worry out.

I initially wanted to make a Lindt chocolate Ganache but my local grocery store was fresh out of Lindt chocolate; which was a good thing because I ended up buying dark cooking chocolate with 70% cocoa. It just so happens that you can’t make Ganache with chocolate with less than 70% cocoa in it. 

So here’s how I made the biscuit base:

• Digestive Biscuits: 2 cups
• Cooking Butter (at room temperature): 1 cup
• First pre-heat the oven at 170 degrees.
• All you need to do is give the biscuits a whizz in the mixer and spread it out over the pie dish or if you don’t have one, a plate with edges would do.
• Take the room temperature butter and mix it with the biscuit powder; I did it with my hands but a fork would work as well.
• Line the biscuit base into the pie dish and bake for 5-6 minutes or until it is golden brown.
• Remove the pie dish from the oven and set aside.

For the Ganache:

• Dark Cooking Chocolate- 2 cups
• Fresh Cream- 1 cup
• Break up the chocolate into small pieces.
• Add the chocolate and fresh cream together over a slow flame.
• Stir continuously until all the chocolate is melted.
• Take it off the heat and pour it over the biscuit base.



Can you guess which piece he cut?

• Let it cool in the fridge for an hour or two and serve with whipped cream.

And there you have it folks, a deliciously rich chocolate Ganache pie that you can share with your loved ones and fellow foodies! I would have ideally wanted it to stay put overnight but with certain family members constantly giving you a time update, I didn’t think it was possible. In fact the moment I took it out from the fridge, my brother, the caveman that he is, carved out a rather large piece and ran away with it. 

Until next time, stay awesome!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hello my fellow foodies and people who my mother randomly sent this post to!

Before I get back to describing my love for all things food, I’d like to talk about the random cow-kaka that people say to me.

I’ve been called many things from obvious ones like fatty; to being called a sack of potatoes by my grandmother; to even beached whale by my beloved brothers. But what really gets me in a black mood is when people I barely know come up to me and say cow-kaka like, “oh you’re so cuddly-wuddly! I want to use you as a pillow!” (Giggle giggle)

What can I say to that? Can I say, “Oh you’re such a stick! I want to use you to play fetch with my dog!” Noooo, I can’t. Instead I smile shyly, shrug my shoulders and hope to god that they choke on that piece of lettuce they call lunch and die!

With that being said, moving on to the yummier things in my life. This week I made some delicious and chewy chocolate chip cookies!

I must confess that the cookies you see in the picture were my fourth batch of cookies; the previous batches were trial and error. I experimented with the amount of time the cookies needed to be baked. My first batch was in the oven for 9 minutes. Yes, they came out burnt. The subsequent batches of 8 and 7 too were not up to my chewy expectations. They came out hard and looked not so nice; but that was before I found the “Golden Minute".

6 minutes, my fellow foodies, was the golden minute where my cookies actually looked like cookies and to top it off; they were chewy!

Some things that I would definitely like to alter the next time I decide to bake cookies is the amount of sugar I used; it was too sweet and I would most definitely like to add more chocolate. All in all, for my first (Ahem) fourth attempt at baking cookies, it was awesome!

Until next time, stay awesome!

My First Sponge

It’s done. I have decided to do something about what I love! Watching countless cooking shows on either TLC or Fox Life has finally lit a fire in my big belly.  I‘ve decided to make one dish a week and write about it.

I love food but unfortunately it’s one-sided; an unrequited love that will never amount to anything but an ever expanding waistline and people screaming, “Think about your poor knees!” And all I wanted to do was scream back a quote from a world-renowned chef, Jamie Oliver, who said that life is too short to eat crap. But instead I just smile shyly, shrug my shoulders and only hope that they choke on their own saliva and die!

Sure, I know that being morbidly obese can kill you but so can a bus while you’re walking down the street thinking about how many calories you’ve consumed. Now that’s what I call irony.

Phew! Moving on now to the yummier bit. Armed with my brand new oven and hand mixer (Thanks to my wonderful family), I made my first awesome sponge cake. The recipe I looked up was for a Granny’s Victoria Sponge where you fill in jam and fresh cream in between. Unfortunately, my sponge did not rise enough for it to have the filling; but it was delicious nonetheless, especially for my first attempt at making a basic sponge.

I followed the recipe down to a “T” and the result was great! The secret, I found, lay in using the ingredients at room temperature.

What struck me like a sort of epiphany, was that all that yummy food that I’ve stuffed my face with is made some how right? They follow a recipe and it’s created with ingredients that don’t grow on Mars! This maybe something that seems obvious to you but to me it was a far greater complexity knowing that trained professionals are at it day and night!  I only hope I can get better at this as time goes on!

Until next time, stay awesome!

Nutella Cheesecake

I admit, this was made a while ago but there’s no harm in sharing the info now so, here goes!

I stumbled upon a recipe for Nutella cheesecake which was easy to make and oh so sinful to taste that even the Gods would be tempted. It’s cheesecake made out of friggin Nutella! What would you expect? For those of you who aren’t fans of Nutella or even chocolate for that matter can bugger off! This is no place for chocolate haters.

The smooth creamy richness of the filling topped off by the crunch of the biscuit base surely made this one of my best-made desserts. I have tried making other kinds of cheesecake only to be disappointed by either the lack of ‘oomphness’ or to be met with soggy, unpalatable ‘kaka’ cake, as I’d like to call it.  Of course with this recipe, the addition of a rather large jar of Nutella fixed all of that. However, that being said, I wish everything were made out of Nutella; sigh…

The crust for this beautiful cheesecake (oh how I adore you) contained a mixture of digestive biscuits, butter, crushed hazelnuts and one large tablespoon of, you guessed it, Nutella! The filling was made of cream cheese, icing sugar and a jar of Nutella and I must say, watching all these ingredients getting blitzed together was just magical…and there you have it, after topping it off with more crushed hazelnuts (or pistachios since I ran out of hazelnuts), and leaving it to chill overnight, behold, my masterpiece!

You may think that I’m exaggerating but I don’t care, I mean this is something that I made that turned out quite nicely so yes I am going to be all, “In your face you skinny biatches!” about it.

Until next time… stay awesome!