Blueberry Coconut Lime Brown Butter Muffins

Okay...It's a new year, I'm slowly (but surely) plodding my way through the mountain of backlog I had accumulated. I've at least edited photos for three other posts! See? Baby steps. It seems too soon to start talking about New Year reflections (given that my reflections post for the previous year was like what, a half year ago?), so I'll skip that bit first and jump straight to the goodies.

Blueberry Coconut Lime Brown Butter Muffins

Brown Butter Chocolate Chunks Cookies

I'm flying off to Aussie tonight for a (almost) two weeks vacation! Thus, I'll prob not be updating this space for some time. But in the meantime, I'll leave you with some crumbs cookies.

Everyone loves a good cookie. Especially a chocolate cookie. One that is made with browned butter, stuffed with tons of chopped dark chocolate, and topped with a sprinkle of fine sea salt. Right? Right. Don't mind me. That's just me answering my own question here.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chunks Cookies

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Coconut Brown Butter Muffins

I've previously made these muffins before, but decided to revisit this recipe again to see if they were as yummy as I remembered.

Dark chocolate, raspberries and toasted coconut

Brown butter blackberry granola muffins

I had bought some blackberries, thinking to eat them with yogurt and granola for breakfast. However, I had forgotten all about them, and by the time I remembered that they were still in the fridge, they were looking a little too ripe. I needed to use them asap.

My muffins stash had ran out at the same time, thus I thought that I could just use them in a new muffin batch.

Brown butter blackberry granola muffins

Vanilla bean ice cream, browned buttered peaches and a berry sauce

I bought a litre of cream before the big move. Should I say it was a big mistake on my part?

I should have known that there was no oven facilities at the temporary rented place, and my ice cream maker was packed away in some box that was moved to the new place. So, how in the world was I going to use cream that was due to expire within one week? I've come up with some ideas on how to use up cream. The first thought I had was ice cream. Hand churned of course since the ice cream maker was playing hide and seek.

 Vanilla bean ice cream, browned buttered peaches and a warm berry sauce

Hazelnut pear brown butter muffins

Fruits such as apples, pears and oranges might seem ordinary at first glance. After all, they are available almost any time of the year, and are readily available in most countries. However, if you dive into the world of fruits into details, there are actually quite a wide range of varieties for every single fruit. Take the humble pear for instance. Before I developed my passion for baking, I only knew of two kinds of pears - the ubiquitous green William pears, and the Asian pear. When my passion grew, I started taking note of fruits in a different light while grocery shopping. Pears come in so many different shapes, sizes and colours! Depending on the season, I might chance upon Anjous (red and green), Bosc, Forelles, Seckels, Korean pears, Bartletts and so on. My, my. I get excited whenever I spot a new variety of fruit in the supermarket aisle.

"Sugar" bowl

Madeleines and macarons

Well, here I am again. It's not that I bake every other day, just that it's coming to the end of the year, and I would really really like to clear my backlog so I won't keep having a long list of backlogs that get posted like months later...and I'm proud to say I've clear like pretty much of my backlogs with the frantic postings I do lately. ;) I'm already posting stuff that I've baked in December! *gasp*

Two weeks ago, I baked some macarons and madeleines for the colleagues and packaged them up in small party favour bags. I made - Brown butter cinnamon praline madeleines, chai chocolate macarons and coconut macarons with a mango passion fruit filling. I've decided to split the pictures up in two posts cos I'll be including recipes for some items...

Chai macaron shells with cinnamon chocolate ganache

Brown butter chocolate chip cookies

Nothing cheers me up like good old chocolate. In fact, chocolate is good for any occasion.

When I'm upset, my first thought - chocolate.
The week before my period, I crave - chocolate.
When I'm having period cramps, I reach for - chocolate.
When I'm happy, I feel like celebrating with - chocolate.
When I'm hungry, I desire - chocolate.
When I feel cranky, I buy - chocolate.
When I feel bored, I get inspired by - chocolate.
When in doubt, I choose - chocolate.

See? The list goes on. My love for chocolate shows for itself. I reckon if there's one thing in the world I can't live without, it's probably chocolate. How would I survive without knowing it? That's really too upsetting a thought. Let's not think about such depressing thoughts. Let's think about chocolate chip cookies.

This is yet again, another chocolate chip cookie recipe. Yet, one can never try too many recipes to find the perfect one. I can't say these are the best chocolate chip cookies I've made, but they're still pretty tasty nonethless. The brown butter brings out a lovely buttery taste. And with the addition of some coarse sea salt pressed into them when they are still soft from the oven, these cookies taste sweet and salty at the same time. Pretty addictive I must say.

Brown butter chocolate chip cookies

One Bite; Two bites; Three bites; Gone.

There's still an ongoing search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. In the meantime, I'll slowly bake my way through my long stash of chocolate chip cookies recipes I bookmarked. Plus other chocolate- related recipes. There can never be too much chocolate. ;)

Blueberry coconut and chocolate hazelnut financiers

Around the same time I made the icecreams (yes, plural, I still have images of vanilla bean icecream to upload, that's for another post), I had lots and lots of leftover egg whites. I didn't feel like making macarons, but I was meeting some friends that week, so I decided to make some financiers to share. I used the same recipe for the raspberry financiers I made previously, tweaked it around a little, and came up with two new flavours - chocolate hazelnut and blueberry coconut.

Family weekend. And small tea cakes and financiers.

It's been a great and unusual weekend. Family weekend. Went shopping at Ion with Sista on Saturday. We didn't manage to walk alot cos it was nearing lunch time and we were starving. Yet, in that short span of time we were walking around, I got a pair of shoes from Rubi (Sis got 2 pairs!) and she also got 2 dresses. Bah.

The original plan was to lunch at Ion, but the queues during lunch time at the dining places were atrocious, so we walked over to Wheelock for good ole Sun & Moon. Since it's the weekend, everyone in Singapore must have been in town, cos everywhere was crowded. Gah. Our wait for a table took twenty minutes. Over lunch, Daddy and I made a date to watch Overheard together later on at night (Sis had plans), just the two of us. haha. So rare can. Anyway, the dessert we ordered was really interesting, I like - some Japanese sweet potato cream cream atop a bed of almond cream tart? Japanese food love.

Overheard was not bad I suppose, I mean, there's eyecandy - Daniel Wu, whose mere presence makes any movie a more enjoyable experience. ;) Interesting plot, which literally relates back to the movie's title.

Popo came over to teach me how to bake pandan cake today, and I must say it was seriously a hilarious affair. Popo, being popo, was being her typical amusing popo self. If you get what I mean. (: And, I must say, I used to read about food bloggers who spoke about it - getting hand-me-down recipes, but never understood the real meaning, until I actually experienced it first hand. When you are used to measuring everything out clearly down to the very gram required, learning baking from your elders can be exasperating when they actually do not use a measuring scale! Haha. It was really an eye opening experience to see Popo teaching me how to make a pandan chiffon using a traditional chinese bowl (the blue kind with little designs around it) as a measuring "cup". Amazing. The end result was a little sinky chiffon (but still yummy), I think I underbeat the egg whites :( It's okay, I can try again another day. (:

Then I went Ion again with Sis to continue part 2 of our shopping trip there. I got myself really nice shoes from Mitju (in fact I wished I could buy half the shop back with me, they have this series of shoes that scream "GIRLY", "FEMININE" and "CUTE".) and a pair of formal knee shorts. Happy.

After dinner, Dad, Sis and I went to NTUC for groceries shopping. I am one happy happy girl. Blueberries have been on sale for $3.95 for 2 punnets for the past few days. We had 2 and a half packets at home. We bought another 4 punnets. I may snap a photo of the 7 punnets of blueberries currently waiting to be eaten in our fridge tomorrow just for the sake of it. I mean, who knows when else can you find so many punnets of these babies in my fridge again? And I found black sesame paste in the Japanese section of the NTUC! (WOONLI!!!!!!!!!!!! Smiles.)

I think this has been a great weekend. Although we don't normally spend a lot of time together as a family. I reckon within this short three days period, we probably used up a month's worth of family time together or something. snigger.

Anyway, I made apricot tea cakes and raspberry brown butter coconut financiers for our last picnic, and here they are. I must say I rather prefer the raspberry financiers more to the apricot tea cakes. They were much moister and softer to nibble on than the tea cakes. ;)














I love the new camera Canon EOS 500D I'm using now. I have the normal lens and a macro lens and I just love using the macro for my food photos. It is so fun playing around with the focus. Love the comparisons between the two in the shot above. (: And the macro is superb for taking textures upclose. Flours, fruits and what nots, you can totally see everything clearly. Have I already mentioned how much I love the macro lens? ;)