Make me a Hercules
Cause I have sent for a warrior
From on my knees, make me a Hercules
I was meant to be a warrior please
Make me a Hercules
Ive lost a grip on where I started from
I wish Id thought ahead and left a few crumbs
Im on the hunt for who Ive not yet become
But Id settle for little equilibrium
There is a war inside my heart gone silent
Both sides dissatisfied and somewhat violent
The issue I have now begun to see
I am the only lonely casualty
This is not the end though...
Not that I don't jump around and scream my lungs out to random catchy tswift songs about adolescence and relationships... but I cannot comprehend how the girl has won so many awards for song writing when sara bareilles is clearly superior. good lord, i need to watch sara bareilles live again - two times is just not enough :(
Also, I attempted choux pastry for the first time ever the other day and it was extremely tedious, I perspired buckets while making them little buns. It was however equally enjoyable and I'd like to attempt a full scale croquembouche one day, burn my fingers silly from scalding caramel and hope to god my cone turns over and reveals a perfectly standing tower to over-caramelised perfectly-sized choux buns spilling with creme patiserrie and showered with sugar fluff. I foresee that when that day comes, i myself with be showered in sugar and perspiration but absolutely delighted - well, until wati and my mother kill me for how messy the kitchen/dining area/ living area will be... note to self: attempt it when everyone is out on a Sunday and I shall feign illness to have the whole house as a kitchen for croquembouche attempt #1.
Recipe: lauduree recipe book
Tips I've learnt from watching an insane amount of baking shows and documentaries and that I shall pick up on the next time i make these choux babies:
- Poke them after they're out of the oven to let the steam out so that they don't deflate (The Great British Bake Off)
- Pipe them a little higher (lesson from attempt #1)
- Bake them on a metal baking sheet and not a silicon sheet - the base just doesn't cook right (lesson from attempt #1)
- When trying to use flatten the tip, use a damp finger (The Great British Bake Off)
- Stop the cooking process of caramel by dumping the pot into a big bath of iced water (The Great British Bake Off) - be prepared to adorn your fingers with plasters for the next week after (what I noticed from The Great British Bake Off)
Here's something else interesting I learnt - did you know that the topping atop a chocolate eclair isn't melted chocolate or chocolate ganache (which I always believed to be the case) but actually some form of chocolate fondant mixture! How interesting is that!
Well, if you don't find it half as interesting as I do, here's an explanation: Fondant tastes absolutely revolting, it's sweet, strange and all around artificial tasting (but its important to note that I hate marzipan too and I know some people love it). So I was extremely surprised to find out that layer of chocolate adorning the much loved eclair actually contains a substantial portion of fondant.
On that note, I have grand plans of making fondant from scratch - from marshmallows --> if i was really brave I'd make my own marshmallows and make them into fondant from there (but hey, that would take 24 hours, too many disasaters and beaten egg white in my hair)
The other day also marked my first attempt at vanilla bean creme patisserie - in english, that would be a type of thickened creme or a runny custard to fill the choux pastry. It can be flavoured with a multitude of flavourings but I opted for the not-so-plain-jane vanilla bean version which required me to make vanilla bean infused milk (how delish!)
Once again, for the unacquainted I shall have to explain more clearly why I was so amazed at the process of it all! I for the longest time believed that whipping cream or double cream would be a key component in creme patisserie since it is after all a thickened cream! Surprisingly, it has none of that in it and is instead a fusion of milk, eggs, corn flour (to thicken it) and butter. It took a hell a lot of arm strength to whisk and too much attention to make sure it's consistency was perfect.
If you're looking at my photo above - The whisk in my creme pat bowl dates back to oli's days in home economics class at the old building of IJ - what an amazing whisk having gone through my eldest sister's horrendous ineptitude at anything in the kitchen and my constant desire to make everything - most of which result in disasters.
On the other hand, the brown whisk in the chocolate ganache is an expensive silicon whisk i recently purchased from Melbourne and it's failed me terribly, having gone out of shape after 2 times of use :"(
the oldies are truly superior.
(prime example - as much as i love my nespresso machine, can anyone deny that vietnamese drip coffee is an inferior form of caffeine - if you think that to be the case you need to take a trip to HCM, find yourself a dodgy coffee shop and come back to me on that)
Who is oli you might ask?
She's my eldest sister currently studying in Roma who is also the skinniest in the family with the tiniest feet - she also has the smallest appetite and is terrible in the kitchen but she is a linguist and knows a multitude of languages whereas Ive yet to master english.
She's the extreme left on in the picture, and as you can expect, she no longer looks like that - just like how i no longer deck myself out in a white dress with white socks, white shoes, white hairband and a weird white bag while the rest of my family is decked out in red (father is red because he was always sun burnt from playing tennis).
Also, since i'm in the mood to ramble although I really have an assignment to finish on how much I should sentence a fictional man who has been accused of molesting a girl (with previous history of molesting girls) - if I had my way I'd imprison him in the sewers for 20 years for him to clean it up of all our waste.. well, if my team mate nat had her way he'd be kneeling in -1 degree C weather outside an oxford bar in a tshirt and bermudas kowtowing to her for his heinous act- here's a quick update on the multitude of cafes I've visited in the past few weeks.
(I shall explain that the recent obsession with cafes is rather unusual for me since i'm regularly satisfied by my not so humble cups of coffee at home and I tend to have a lot of cakes and pastries sitting around at home (i wonder why). But i suspect it's because i can't really eat very much elsewhere and so going out tends to mean coffee - or anything liquid really - and eggs)
Last week, mark and I headed to DOC (Department of Caffeine) which is one of the many cafes at the Duxton area that have popped up over the recent years. We had their highly recommended hot chocolate with hazelnut accents and a flat white.
Foodwise, we got a buttermilk waffle with scrambled eggs and crisp bacon.
Would I go back? Probably! The outside of the place looked like a club though so i have to admit that i've walked past it numerous times without actually realizing it was the much acclaimed department of caffeine (oops?)
The waffle and scrambled eggs were great - the bacon was ho-hum (probably because my teeth/jaw didn't permit me to eat any of it.. but i've never been much of a fan of bacon anyway). The coffee was good although I have to admit that I prefer Nylon/ Oriole coffee - that being said, I loved the hot chocolate and I'd probably go back for that instead (ironic isn't it?)