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Avocado milkshake

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I love avocados, you know.

Its nourishing green-ness (it’s officially a word now), its thick, fatty, buttery consistency. Yes, that’s it, it’s a healthy butter. Most people hate its slippery meatiness, its grassy and lightly sweet consistency, but to me, it’s practically life in another form. Apart from being mashed thickly on toast with a drizzle of good honey and coarse sea salt, it’s wonderful in this shake. In my opinion, a shake or smoothie should only be thick. So ridiculously thick that you might as well eat it, not drink it, with a spoon, if there were no such thing as fat stripey straws. It makes the process all the more pleasurable, and almost cheeky.

You don’t need much, I promise. And extremely glad my mother owns a Vitamix!

Avocado milkshake (for 2-3 servings)

1 ripe avocado (I used a Hass for this)

1 small or half a large frozen banana (you can use a normal banana, just increase the amount of ice to 2 cups)

1.5 cups ice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon each of salt and cinnamon

half cup milk of your choice (I used a blend of almond and whole)

Blend everything together until you get a rich, thick and delectably creamy consistency.

Avocados are worth the life hype.

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Craftsmen Specialty Coffee

cappuccino

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I still can’t believe I travelled all the way to the East for good coffee. Siglap, to be more precise. All for the sake of trying out this three-week old café. It wasn’t exactly a tedious prospect, but it just so happened that that day was particularly hot, and I almost couldn’t bring myself to further my advances in the obtaining of skin cancer. I’ll be the first to get it and my future children would hate me forever. It’s kind of genetic, you know.

So thank goodness this place had an ambience welcoming enough to compensate for the long distance. I took my little sister along to accompany me, forcing her to bring along some work just so she could at least attempt to be productive that Thursday. I brought my English stuff along, but ended up gushing over the coffee instead of analysing the moth-like tendencies of Blanche Dubois in Streetcar named Desire. All’s still good, I promise.

 

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cappuccino–$5, iced chocolate–$6

The cappuccino was one of the best I’ve had in an incredibly long time. I appreciated its soft and creamy touch on the palate, and wasn’t in the least bit acidic or sour. The iced chocolate was predictably sweet and refreshing; you can’t exactly go wrong with this. Some places like to posh it up with some vanilla ice cream and extra bits and bobs, but this was perfectly fine on its own. Yum.

The food, on the other hand, was another story. Pips, my sister, ordered the pain au chocolat, her favourite, which was unfortunately nothing short of disappointing. Sufficiently chocolatey and gooey on the inside, yes, but it should definitely have been served warmer and toastier. The crisp factor here was little to none, apart from the occasional caress of flaky crust on your tongue as you joyously tear the elastic pastry bands beneath the less-than-pleasant crust on top.

My own parfait was mediocre, decent at most. The yoghurt they used was a little thin and much too bland; someone needs to hook these guys up with some greek yoghurt stat. The thick, freshly-strained sort. Tang missing, fruit doing little to compensate for the muesli which was overwhelming in both quantity and sweetness. I felt a tad ill after eating just half of the stuff. I personally love it when muesli and yoghurt are mushed together and the initial crunch is whittled down after some time to a delectable, sub-healthy mush, but the ratios here did not work as well to bolster that nice ‘mush’ factor. Ah, pity.

That being said, the ambience here was more than inviting, gorgeous wooden tables everywhere and even a miniature ferris wheel gracing the wide window, and the staff are friendly and amicable. They also serve a variety of belgian waffles, each with its own coupling of ice cream and toppings. I promised myself, as I left, with a half-heavy heart, to try some the next time I chance upon an East Café adventure. Waffle-anything is the epitome of café worthiness, and this place is worth the hop.

 

Craftsmen Specialty Coffee

2 First Street, Siglap V, #01-01, Singapore 458278

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pain au chocolat–$4.20, yoghurt and muesli parfait–$10
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Kilo at Pact

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This one’s specially for Felix(:

I had been meaning to come here, though to me, Orchard Central isn’t the most particularly ideal destination. All these escalators, all these random jutting corners, as if the designers only thought properly about the layout after it was all set up and built. But fusion food? I was up for the stuff. And so was he.

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Donburi salmon rice bowl (all rice bowls come with sweet corn, radishes, sugar peas, wasabi sprouts, shimeji mushrooms and cherry tomatoes) – $17
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salmon avocado ‘sushiro’– $17

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They are currently having a set lunch promotion, whereby you can get either a salad, sushiro (I love how they do a nice play on our grotesque accents here) or rice bowl, together with a citrus iced tea and a choice between two desserts– basil panna cotta or a lemon tart with fresh cream. All for around $20++. Since we were in a rush for a movie (I teared up an embarrassing amount during The Fault in Our Stars, though I might have enjoyed it more if it weren’t for the mediocre book), we just ordered two mains, but each was satisfying enough!

I thoroughly enjoyed my donburi salmon rice bowl, a relatively new addition to the menu. They also offer pork belly, beef short-rib and roasted vegetables with tofu options. The salmon could have been more tender and with a little teriyaki marination, for otherwise it was a little dry and bland. You know, it’s always easy to put ‘sweet corn’ in the menu, and I could almost imagine them pouring the bright yellow stuff out from a can, but these kernels were as crunchy as the almost-burnt crusts of toast and as sweet as can be. The avocado was a nice touch, but it was a little lonely green sliver amongst the mounds of superior vegetables, and should have been accompanied by some sauce or other– I’d say a sweet soya or shabu-shabu variety. Anything, really. The highlight of the whole thing was most certainly those sweet, marinated shimeji mushrooms. Tender, sweet and fresh, and paired perfectly with the more hardy stance of brown rice. I chose brown because I enjoy its chewy wholesomeness and frankly I get enough sushi rice in my life already. Everything was dandy, but a little overpriced. 17 bucks demands serious business for a bowl of rice, fish and vegetables. Let’s be real.

That being said, the portions were perfectly satisfying, and I think I shall return for the set lunch option. The sushiro Lix ordered was proper huge, served with nacho-style chips (which I thought needed more seasoning, whatever brand they’re sourced from), and wasabi and soy. The ambience here is lovely; there was gorgeous, soft light streaming through the wide top-to-toe windows that early afternoon, but they could do with more tables to accommodate more people.

One thing is for sure though– lunches with this guy are the best.

 

 

Rating: 4.4/5.0

Kilo at Pact

#02-16/18
Orchard Central
Singapore

 

 

 

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Flourless Chocolate Cake

It deserves the thing.

AKA a well-deserved post dedication. Chocolate deserves it all. Chocolate is love because chocolate is basically the centre of the universe and everything else hovers in serf-like subservience bound to drifting orbits in honour of the magic lying before them.

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It’s flourless because of the ground almonds incorporated into the rich and decadent, chocolatey batter. I’m glad I made time just to bake this, in between all the schoolwork and studying, because firstly, it’s hell simple, and secondly, the end result was absolutely worth it. Some people think baking is a serious waste of time, but it’s utterly therapeutic and I love how I get to hone both my skill and concentration in the process. The cake is rich without being too cloying or fudgy in texture, the almonds offering a wholesome crumble and lift in body, dispersed evenly throughout. The quality of chocolate used here is of utmost importance. I used Ghirardelli chips here, because I had some left over from a previous baking spree and I wishd to ensure only the best possible final product. There’s… There’s no room for Hershey’s here, lads. Oops. Try as you might, you just won’t obtain the same glorious melt-in-your-mouth-brownie-style bite.

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Its semi-provocative flavour pairs superbly with a scoop of plain vanilla ice cream, straight out of the freezer and melting like frothy clouds on the surface. The original recipe called for 100% white sugar, but I replaced 50g with dark brown sugar instead to get that gorgeous molasses, treacly flavour. Which reminds me– I really need to get around making a treacle tart soon…

 

Flourless Chocolate Cake, adapted from Elizabeth David’s Flourless Chocolate Cake (which I’ve been meaning to attack for ages)

Ingredients

5 eggs, separated, with whites in a large and clean, stainless steel or glass bowl

100g ground almonds (or almond flour)

250g good quality dark chocolate (60% cocoa or above), in chips or broken into chunks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon salt

150g unsalted butter (or eliminate the one teaspoon of salt and use salted butter instead)

100g white sugar, 50g dark brown muscovado sugar

icing sugar for the topping

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C (or 350 degrees F). Grease (no lining needed, hoorah!) and lightly flour a 9-inch cake pan with a removable bottom tin, or simple use a normal round cake tin. The cake itself isn’t hard to remove from the tin, so you shouldn’t be worried about having difficulty (as the story is with so many brownie recipes I have tried in the past) to remove it after cooling, post-bake.

Half fill a medium saucepan with water and bring it to a boil. Place a bowl containing the chocolate and butter on top to create a double-boiler system. Use a wooden spoon to stir and melt it all together, and once most of it has melted, add the sugars and continue stirring until it’s all been dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in ground almonds. Make sure to break apart any clumps or clusters. Stir in the five egg yolks.

In the large bowl containing your egg whites, beat with a hand mixer until you reach reasonably stiff peaks. Soft, but not completely stiff. The original recipe said ‘stiff’, but I yielded a perfectly good mixture afterwards even with slightly softer peaks. Definitely past the baby froth stage, but you’re not quite going for a pavlova-style mountain range. Use a spatula to gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate and egg yolk mixture. Take your time here– be patient and wait for a couple minutes until it comes nicely together. Believe me, I was initially extremely skeptical during this stage, as the first few folds seemed to make the mixture split and turn watery. I panicked. But I willed the thing to work (for heaven’s sake, right?) and it all came together beautifully in the end. The ribbons of white will lighten the mixture both in colour and texture, and you end up with a sort of heavy mousse. Just be patient with the folding.

Pour mixture into cake tin and smooth out the top. Place in the middle of your preheated oven and bake for 40-45 minutes. Mine was fine by 40. Check yours with a skewer at 40 minutes– if the stick comes out with moist crumbs then take it out, if it’s wet then leave it in for another 3 minutes or so. Leave to cool on a rack, before dusting some icing sugar on top. Serve this warm with some vanilla ice cream and nothing else, because just this pairs makes for the perfect afternoon treat. Have it for breakfast. Have it for… um, anything, really.

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This flourless chocolate cake can be kept at room temperature in an airtight container for a couple of days, or store it in the fridge and it will reheat nicely.

 

 

 

Posted on by alexcrumb 4

15-minute French Toast Casserole

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This is for anyone who finds pleasure in breakfast bread pudding.

This is for anyone who, like me, thinks french toast makes the perfect pre-study whip-up.

This is for anyone who delights in obtaining 100% satisfaction with a dash of rustic decadence after a mere 15-20 minutes.

Ok, it’s for anyone. Make it. It’s just so dead easy. My sisters thanked me, and they’re pretty picky eaters.

I was thinking of what to make this morning with the leftover brioche we had– no, not the good, grand sort found in artisan bakeries, but the pre-sliced, white-as-ice, chemically-laden stuff (I’m cringing as I type) from the cheap side of Cold Storage. Yes. My friends, work with what you have. I did just that. No regrets whatsoever. Of course, use the good sort if you have it. You’ll probably get less of the ‘wobbliness’ post-bake, a less sloppy (though I enjoy the wild messiness of a lovely pudding consistency) underneath, with better form and a crust which doesn’t burn as easily as the one I made. It just so happens that the brioche I used was slightly stale after being left in our Cold Room for quite a bit, so it was the perfect alternative for something all lush and fluffy and swanky, or a day-old French loaf or baguette. Make do. Happiness awaits.

This french toast casserole is chimerical and childlike in flavour, bearing a modern sweetness with the addition of good quality maple syrup at the bottom of the pan, and a thick, swelling custard which renders the bread all nice and gooey after a generous soak and bake. Plump, fluffy, sweet and magnificently soft. Sweet eggy clouds hiding beneath a brown sugar-crusted toasty top. Topped with more maple syrup, double cream and berries. Oh, that glorious crust. I mentioned this is only 15 minutes right?

What I like about this is that it’s more of a base recipe than anything. Appropriate toppings cover a wide range– caramelised bananas, pineapple and blackberries, orange/lemon zest, apple chunks coated in cinnamon, and if you want, sprinkle on a good handful of small cream cheese cubes to add a little more zing and a dash of creaminess between each bite. The sole reason for my happiness right now is this french toast right here. No kidding.

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French Toast Casserole (serves 4-5)

Ingredients

3 and a half large, torn-up slices of brioche/ 2.5 cups of cubed bread of choice (sliced white/challah/French or Italian loaf/baguette)

3 eggs

1.5 cups whole milk

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp white sugar

2 tbsp light brown/ demerara sugar

1/3 cup good quality maple syrup (not Aunt Jemima’s this time)

Preheat your oven to 220 degrees C (that’s 428 degrees F), and grease an 8×8 inch pyrex dish, or any square brownie pan you have, with cooking spray. Pour the maple syrup into the dish and move it around a bit so it’s coated nicely on the bottom. For the custard, in a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, white sugar, salt, vanilla, cinnamon.

Place your bread into the dish with maple syrup. It can be random or if you’re one of those neat freaks, go ahead and place your neat little cubes in pretty little layers. Pour the custard on top and press the bread down so all surface area, including the top, is in contact with the egg mixture. The very top would not be soaking in the custard, though.

Sprinkle the two tablespoons of light brown/demerara sugar evenly over the top, to yield the wonderful, crisp top after baking. Place the pyrex dish into the middle of the preheated oven and set the timer for 15 minutes. Serve the casserole hot, drizzled with cold double cream, more maple syrup and berries. If it’s a dessert, please take out the best vanilla ice cream you have!

Of course, since this is my first time trying this 15-minute wonder, I cannot guarantee a perfect bake after this period of time for everyone, due to different ovens, climates and the sort of bread you use. If the top is not golden and there is too obvious a wobble when you shake the dish a little, give it another 5-10 minutes. Most recipes actually require 30-40 minutes of baking, but the volume of bread and custard here is smaller than a typical serving for 6-8 people, and I’m only using an 8×8-inch pyrex dish.

That being said, this recipe is extremely versatile, so just keep an eye on the browning process and make sure everything in the dish is lovingly soaked. For french toast is love in itself, isn’t it?

Posted on by alexcrumb 1