Kahlúa Brownies

So I had a bottle of Kahlúa sitting about collecting dust and figured that it needed to be put to decent use.

That being said, one must be creative and incorporate neglected liquor in other ways. I enjoyed eating vanilla ice cream with some Kahlúa but I think that will take a thousand years to finish my big bottle.
I'm not a coffee lover, honestly. I love the fragrant of coffee brew, but drinking coffee makes my heart beating fast. Despite that, I do take coffee occasionally and when I do take a sip, I like to have some nice chocolate cake to go with it. So is it any surprise that I poured a small amount into a batch of brownies?
I think not.
The addition of coffee liquor just gives it a nice bit of bitter flavor. If you don't have Kahlúa then using strong coffee or espresso is a perfect alternative.
To cut the long story short, I tried making this dessert cake last Saturday. I bought some nice 77% cocoa chocolate and tried my electric hand-mixer for the first time. Yeepee!
 

Ingredients

• 350g of dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup of butter, cut into pieces and at room temperature
• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 1 cups of sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon of Kahlúa
• 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 3/4 cups of all purpose flour

Method

1 Lightly grease a baking pan (depends on the size of your over; my oven is quite small so I used the 17x17 cm pan). Preheat the oven to 350 F.
2 In a double boiler or using a bowl over a pot of simmering water, melt the chocolate and butter together.
3 With an electric mixer, beat together the eggs, sugar and salt. Add the chocolate mixture and the vanilla extract and Kahlúa. Mix until smooth.
4 Slowly sift in the flour.
5 Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Place on a wire rack to cool for thirty minutes.

The smell was so good and it just filled up the kitchen and dining area with the nice dark chocolate smell... but oh~la~la.... I forgot to check out on my brownies and it was burnt slightly at the top. I'm still not so familiar with the setting of this oven. It's not really good but I know I have to bear with it for a while and make full use of that until someone buys me one for my birthday present, hehe!

From Kitchen Runaway

Despite the slightly over-browned surface, the taste is pretty good. But I wonder why the texture is slightly too dense. Is that because of not enough power on the egg-mixer? Or too much chocolate-butter composition? Or too long mixing of all the ingredients? I'm not quite sure. Anyone out there can advice me? But I can call up my friend - a real baker - next week to get some advice. Now the brownies is our take-to-work breakfast or high-tea menu.

Cinderella

I wonder when Cinderella quoted this.... Anyway this is beautiful and this is what I referred to at the previous post.

Have faith in your dreams and someday your rainbow will come shining through.

No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep believing, the dream that you wish will come true.

Le Gordon Bleu

Today I decided to contact the Le Gordon Bleu's Admission Officer from the Ottawa Campus. Because of the 12 hours time-difference, it's a little bit tricky to schedule a call. Well that shouldn't be a problem as I don't normally sleep before midnight anyway. It's quite funny though, one of my Caucasian friends said that Asian doesn't need to sleep. Lol... What a crazy idea!

Anyway, I'll prepare the questions that I need to clarify with her regarding the programme that I'm interested in - the Cuisine Diploma. Will see how it goes, provided I can finance myself for 9 months!

Oh.... Le Gordon Bleu.... that I imagine is like MIT for Engineering... and maybe that could be the answer for my forbidden dream. I said it again, maybe.

I was talking to my sister earlier today, and she reminded me of the text message that I sent to her, my bro, and my youngest sister. I forget how it quotes exactly but tonight I'll check it out again. It's something like, "Never give up even if you have to grieve to achieve that, as one day the rainbow will shine through".

Something Simple for a Change

Last night, going home exhausted, nobody was in the real mood for cooking. I still insisted that I need some home-cook food as I have been eating out for the past Easter weekend. So I thought I just need something simple and healthy for a change. It was only a mixed vegetables of bean-sprout, fresh red chili, carrot, celery, and shitake mushrooms. All were sauteed with olive oil, Sake, Hon-Mirin, salt and Kikkoman soy sauce. Served with warm brown rice. Voala!

The Swiss Roschti

Talking about potatoes, this is also another food that I like. The Roschti. The easiest way to get it, served nice and warm, is from Marche. It's not that I'm promoting Marche, but yes I always get Roschti (with some other stuff) when I hit there.

It was last Saturday, after we finished baking the cakes, we had the urge to eat Roschti. So I looked that we have some potatoes in the kitchen and some cream leftover from the baking activities too. I "ordered" that the (5 med-sized for 3 persons) potatoes were peeled and then shredded, seasoned it with some (1 tbsp) cream, salt, pepper, and baked it in the oven for 15 minutes or so to get the seasoning absorbed and to make it slightly cooked. Some Swiss actually recommends to use day-old-baked potatoes, but we were too hungry to wait until the next day!!!

Applied some butter or olive oil onto a flat non-sticky pan and transferred the baked shredded-potatoes. Pan fried with low heat. Stirred occasionally and pressed down. Served it hot with some mustard and sour cream, or even tomato sauce.

And for me, I like to eat it with Bratwurst (I bought some from the Pan Pacific Hotel) since no one travels to Germany recently. I enjoyed it a lot. Mmmmm.... 

From Kitchen Runaway

Corn and Sweet Potato Soup

The past few weeks, somehow, I started enjoying sweet potato again. I just steam it and have it for breakfast. It's sweetly nice and filling too. My Mom used to tell me that sweet potato is healthy and so nutritious and She even told me that if I wanted to become smart like the Japanese, I should eat sweet potato. Really? I just did some simple search and yes this food is really nutritious and of course somehow, somewhat, somewhere it links to our brain too :)

Sweet potatoes are rich in complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, beta carotene (a vitamin A equivalent nutrient), vitamin C, and vitamin B6. Pink and yellow varieties are high in carotene, the precursor of vitamin A. The purple breed is high in anthocyanin content, which is a pigment that presents the purple color in the vegetable. The pigment can produce red, blue and purple colors depending on the source's chemical structure, such as in foods like blueberries, red grapes and red cabbage. The powerful antioxidant agents from this anthocyanin help to prevent diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. They boost immunity, are anti-inflammatory, and keep bones and skin healthy. I ever read it somewhere too that even the name is "sweet", it is also good for the diabetics. 

Hey, maybe this is just TMI (too much information) but even Oprah Winfrey is advocating increased consumption of sweet potatoes both for health benefits and because of their importance in traditional Southern cuisine.

Ok, I stop now. I realize that I have drifted so much from the cooking of my Corn and Sweet Potato Soup. So back to the story again, since I enjoy eating steam sweet potato, we often have some ready at home. As the name suggests, it's just carrot and sweet potato, sauteed with butter, blended it and added some sour cream. Serve it warm. Best to have it with some nice bread or baguette.

From Kitchen Runaway

It's really sweet, isn't it?

Good Friday with Good Chocolate Fondant

We didn't have any egg-dishes this Easter, but surely we ate a lot of eggs from the Good Friday dinner. I wanted so badly to give it another try baking the Chocolate Fondant. The last time it was failed because I put it a little too long in the oven. The taste was still really good because the ingredients and especially the dark chocolate is really good quality. So since I still have some dark chocolate left, and some guests coming for my dining table, I decided to try it again. This time, I think it was really good. It was served warm and the most important thing is the middle part was still melting. Creamy and yummy.

From Kitchen Runaway

But of course there is still rooms to improve so practice more and it will become better!

Besides, we also cooked Cream Snapper Fillet stuffed with Salmon Fish Mousse for our non-Vegetarians friends and Beancurd Skin stuffed with Mushrooms and Carrot Mousse for the Vegetarians menu. Both served with Beurre Blanc sauce and steamed carrot and broccoli.

It was a pleasant night spent with good friends and good white wine. Unfortunately there are no photos of the food.