The Cooking Ninja

It has been quite a while since we have a weekend alone sans Little One. So when my parents-in-law offered to look after her, we took it up without any hesitation. Pierre was already planning which restaurants to check out, what to do in Paris etc while I was torn between being happy to have some couplehood time alone at last and feeling like I have abandoned my little girl behind and worried about this and that (like a typical mother ). Pierre kept reassuring me that she would be fine and I should relax and enjoy this rare 'us' time alone but I was too stressed up. Needlessly to say, I hadn't slept well on the first night as I was too worried about how Little One was adapting with her grandparents and whether she was crying for us or not etc. Upon my insistence, Pierre called home the next day to check on her and was told that she passed a wonderful day out with her grandparents and enjoyed herself thoroughly and that she didn't asked for us once (to my surprise and a bit of a disappointment - Am I being selfish to want her to miss us just a little bit?). After the phone call, I thought 'tonight I can have a good night sleep.' ha! What a joke that was... We were woken up by the lady living upstairs at 4 am. As you know, many apartment in Paris have thin walls and floors so one can literally hear the neighbour next door or upstairs.

Anyway when Little One joined us finally a few days later, she didn't seems to miss us at all... I guess my little girl is growing up and no longer my little baby. We brought her sightseeing Paris and checking out the restaurants... she loves wraps and club sandwiches just as chinese dim sum. The 3,5 hour train ride home went uneventful, thank goodness. We were pretty worried that she might get bored and start to run around etc. At the end of the train ride, she made friend with a Maltese which growled at her in the beginning and she wasn't the least afraid of him. She insisted on patting and caressing him despite his hissing. *eyes rolling upwards* Then she decided to wander off from us even though I told her to stay put ... she walked away confidently waving and saying 'au revoir mommy' ... then started bawling her eyes out when a burly mustachio man smiled at her from his seat. So much for her little adventure.

Today I would like to share with you a delicious muffin recipe that I made before I left for Paris. I call it Banana Muffin Surprise because you never know what you gonna get. Hope you like it.

Banana Muffin Surprise

Ingredients

• 75 g butter (melted)
• 250 g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• 115 g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large ripe bananas or 3 medium size bananas (almost)
• 2 medium eggs
• 125 ml milk
• some nutella
• some chopped dark chocolates
• some chopped walnuts
• some chopped white chocolates
• pinch of salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F - Gas 5).
2. Melt the butter and allow to cool.
3. Mash the bananas well.
4. In a large bowl, sift flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together. Add caster sugar and stir though.
5. Beat the eggs with the fork for a minute before adding vanilla extract, melted butter and milk. Then add the mashed banana and stir till combined.
6. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, add the banana-egg mixture, stirring roughly with a fork until it is a lumpy paste. Do not over-mix.
7. Place the paper cups into the moulds, or grease the moulds well with butter.
8. Fill some of the cups with the banana mixture till almost full cup while filling a few half way to the cup, drop a few chocolate chips or nuts and cover it with the mixture until almost full. As for the nutella, fill a few cups 3/4 way up and drop a teaspoon of nutella into the centre of it and it will sink down naturally.
9. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the muffins come away from the side of the pan when touched.
10. Rest the muffin tray on a wire rack for five minutes then remove the muffins and leave on the rack for another five minutes before serving.

The Verdict

These muffins are very flavourful, light, moist and super delicious. Everyone started checking out the muffins at microscopic range after I told them that each muffin contains different stuff inside it. ... of course everyone is battling over each other to get either the dark chocolates or nutella ones ... I tell you I have a bunch of chocoholics in my house.

My mother-in-law who was watching her lines couldn't help but ate 2 of them. My father-in-law and Pierre were happily chomping down the muffins and see who gets the most chocolate ones out of the batch.

I thought we wouldn't be able to finish all of them and that I would have to freeze some of them. To my great surprise, they were so good that only 3 were left at the end of tea time.

I have made these again just last week and I have beaten all the wet ingredients together at one go with a fork - with this method, muffins are more compact but still moist, flavourful and delicious.

Notes

In all my baking, I use only salted butter (and I usually skip the salt part in the recipe). And I used 1½ tsp baking powder instead as I didn't have any bicarbonate of soda in my cupboard.

The weather has been acting weird for the past few days. We had weeks of very sunny spring weather and flowers were blooming everywhere, including the fruit trees in our backyard (we don't know what kind of fruit trees we have in our garden so that will be a surprise. ) Then suddenly end of last week, it started to rain for 2 days... and turned into snow.... gasp! Within half an hour, our garden was all covered with snow. The scenery was actually very pretty. Little One (LO) saw snow for her first time, and when the snow flakes hit her face and little hands, her expression was truly priceless ... It was like 'hey...what was that?' with a serious frown on her little face. We went on the balcony and let her play with snow. Since she never had snow fight before, I decided to gather a little snow ball and threw it at her ... hahaha ... she was like 'Mommy, why did you do that?' Sister-in-law joined in the fun and soon LO got the idea, however instead of her throwing her tiny snow ball at us, she threw it off the balcony. hahaha Apparently she enjoyed watching it falling down and making a splatter on the floor. Too soon, it stopped snowing and the sun came shinning and melt all the snow.

To chase away this cold weary weather, baking is the way to go : filling up the house with cookie aroma - mmm... yummy ... this recipe is (heavily) inspired by my previous Choc-Hazelnut Scrolls.

Coconut-Choc Scrolls

Ingredients

• 234 g or 2 cups plain flour
• 50 g or ½ cup dry grated coconut
• 100 g butter (cubed)
• ½ cup caster sugar
• 1 egg (lightly beaten)
• 2 tbsp iced water
• chocolate hazelnut spread
• some extra dry grated coconut

Directions

1. Very lightly brown the 50 g grated coconut in a pan.
2. Place the grated coconut and flour in food processor bowl; add butter and sugar. Using the pulse action, press button for 30 seconds or until mixture is fine and crumbly.
3. Add egg and 2 tbsp water; process a further 20 seconds until mixture forms a dough.
4. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead 30 seconds or until smooth.
5. Roll pastry out on a large sheet of baking paper, to a rectangle. Trim any uneven edges.
6. Spread dough evenly with hazelnut spread.
7. Sprinkle dry grated coconut all over the hazelnut spread.
8. Using paper to lift dough, roll up from the long side in Swiss roll style. Wrap tightly in paper and refrigerate for 1 hour.
9. Using a very sharp knife, cut dough into 1 cm slices. Place it on biscuit trays with baking paper.
10. Bake at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4) for 15 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

The Verdict

My sister-in-law took the first bite and exclaimed 'This is really good. Can I have the recipe please. Super yummy.' I was really taken by surprise and went : 'Really?' :O ... Pierre took one and didn't say anything ... he just chomped down another one, yet another. Little One was happily devouring hers. So I sank my teeth for my first bite... it is really good. Crunchy but not overly crunchy - a bit like shortbread. The coconut aroma just swamped my senses. I have to say the nutella or any chocolate spread goes very well with coconut.

I have made these cookies many times but I never really given much thought on the chocolate nut spread I used on it till Pierre asked me that day 'Do you know how Nutella came about?' 'No. I don't think there's anything interesting about it. It's just some modern invention.' Pierre: 'You should look it up. You'll be surprised.' Now that got me curious. So, here's some history lesson for you and me.

Nutella®, in its original form, was first created during WWII by Mr. Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker and founder of the Ferrero company. At that time, there was a shortage of cocoa due to rationing, so Mr. Ferrero used hazelnuts, which are plentiful in the Piedmont region of Italy (northwest), to extend the chocolate supply. The original version of Nutella spread was called pasta gianduja - pasta means obviously paste, and gianduja is the name of a carnival character famous to the region, a character that can be found in the first advertisements for the product. This original form of Nutella was actually made in loaves and wrapped in tinfoil, so it could be sliced and placed on bread for mothers to make sandwiches for their children. But many children would throw away the bread and only eat the pasta gianduja! So Mr. Ferrero altered the product into a paste that came in a jar, that could be spread on the bread as well. This then became known as supercrema gianduja because it was a spread-able version of the gianduja. Supecrema gianduja was eventually renamed "Nutella" in 1964, with the origin of the word being "nut" and the "ella" giving it a soft ending. So now you know.

Choc-Hazelnut Scrolls

(taken from Biscuits & Slices)

Preparation: 25 minutes
Baking: 15 minutes
Makes: 35

Ingredients

• 250 g or 2 cups plain flour
• 63 g or ½ cup ground hazelnuts
• 100 g unsalted butter (chopped)
• 125 g or ½ cup caster sugar
• 1 egg (lightly beaten)
• 2 tbsp iced water
• ¼ cup chocolate hazelnut spread

Directions

Using food processor

1. Place dry ingredients in food processor bowl; add butter and sugar. Using the pulse action, press button for 30 seconds or until mixture is fine and crumbly.
2. Add combined egg and water; process a further 20 seconds until mixture forms a dough.
3. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead 30 seconds or until smooth.
4. Roll pastry out on a large sheet of baking paper, to a rectangle of 25x35cm. Trim any uneven edges.
5. Spread dough evenly with hazelnut spread.
6. Using paper to lift dough, roll up from the long side in Swiss roll style. Wrap tightly in paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
7. Cut dough into 1 cm slices, wiping blade of knife between cuts. Place on biscuit trays with baking paper.
8. Bake at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4) for 15 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Using hand

1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, ground hazelnuts and sugar together. Then add in the diced up butter.
2. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it is crumbly (like sand). To make sure that all butter are rubbed in and there is no big lumps left, scoop some mixture into your hands and rub it in a rubbing motion.
3. Make a small well in the middle, pour in the egg and iced water. Mix the dough mixture with your hands until it forms a ball of dough.
4. Then follow steps 3) to 8) same as above.

Conclusion

As Nutella is very tasty (this reminds me of the scene in Joe Black where Brad Pitt was licking deliciously his spoon), it is a nice base for these cookies, making them rich in taste and flavour. Great tea treats.

For that extra punch: crunchy and nutty flavour in every bite - I added some chopped hazelnuts into the recipe and an extra 20 g (approx) butter. It turns out very good and exactly what I wanted. We both love this modified recipe.

Regarding the spread, don't go over zealous with it or else you would have nutella spilling all over (although it was finger-licking good) and will have a hard time slicing the dough. Don't make the same mistake as me. I gave an extra dose in mine because Pierre complained that I always spread too thin a layer. When I had to slice it, aïe yaï yaï, what a mess! In the end, I had to use dental floss string to cut the dough. That saved the day.

Note

You can use ground macadamia nuts in place of the hazelnuts.

The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.