Chocolate Cookies with Soft Chocolate Centres (Jamie Oliver)

I knew immediately that my son will love these when I first saw this biscuit recipe at Baby Sumo's blog, Eat your heart out. She came across this recipe through Jamie Oliver.com. True enough, this recipe is brilliant and my son loves these cookies very much!

Without a second thought, both my husband and son grabbed a few of cookies in their hands when these were freshly baked. After having the first bite of these cookies, my son was very happy seeing the chocolate filling!
"Look! Mummy. There is chocolate inside these cookies! Who taught you this?"

"Jamie Oliver!" I replied with a big smile in my face.

Totally agreed with Jamie Oliver that this is a great recipe to bake for kids. Although the cookie mixture looked quite dry and ugly when it was first made, it worked very well after resting for a while in the fridge.

Unlike Jamie's descriptions, my nicely shaped cookies didn't look too cracked and rustic. LOL! Being in the oven for just 10 min, the chocolate melt centres are not runny as described and they are slightly gooey only when they were warmed or freshly baked. When the cookies cooled down well in our wintery weather, the chocolate centres harden again and the cookies were not as good as they were with their gooey centres. So, remember to warm up these cookies before consumption...

Time has really files and this will be my last post for the Cook like a Star, Jamie Oliver blog hop event for July 2012. Being a big fan of Jamie Oliver, I'm happy that this month has been a huge success and hope that everyone is happy too cooking or baking Jamie Oliver's recipes. 

The next theme will be MasterChef for September 2012. To join, simply cook or bake any recipe (from the contestants, judges or even sponsors) from any MasterChef websites or cookbooks (any countries) and blog hop with us for the whole month of September 2012. So far, I've only browsed the most from the Australian MasterChef website and there are already more than enough for me to cook and bake at this moment... I hope everyone can be a MasterChef too at your own kitchen. Have fun cooking :D

My son loves these...

shaping the cookies

check out these freshly baked cookies... Yum!

Here's the recipe from Jamie Oliver.com (with my modification in blue)

Makes 30 biscuits/cookies

140g butter
140g caster sugar (I used raw caster sugar)

2 egg yolks
255g self-raising flour
(replace with all-purpose flour with baking powder)

30g cocoa powder (I used Dutch cocoa powder)
30 squares of chocolate (milk, white or plain)  
(I used milk chocolate melts assuming they melt much more easily...)

You’ll need two cutters to shape these cookies, one about 4cm/1½ inches and the other about 5cm/2 inches. (I used 4.8 cm fluted round cutter and 5.8 cm plain round cutter.)

Grease a large baking sheet. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale. Beat in the egg yolks, then add the flour and cocoa powder to make a dough. Turn out and knead, then pop it into the fridge for a while. Preheat the oven to 190ºC/375ºF/gas 5.

On a lightly floured surface, roll about a third of the dough out thinly, then cut out about 30 circles with the smaller cutter (you can do fewer if you want the biscuits bigger). Spread them out on the baking sheet and put a square of chocolate in the middle of each one – make sure you use all the chocolate however many you do. Then roll the rest of the dough out. Cut out the same number of circles with the larger cutter and pop them on top of the chocolate, pressing gently all the way round to seal the edge and keep all the chocolate in. (Please refer to my note for my shaping method)

Cook in the preheated oven for 10 min, and eat them hot or cold.

Note: 

I have baked 15 cookies using half amount of this recipe. 

For this amount, I have used 130g of all-purpose flour plus 1 tsp baking powder. 

I have rolled my dough in between two sheets of baking papers. Instead of above shaping method, I have cut all circles with a 5.8 cm plain round cutter, sandwiched every two circles with a milk chocolate melt and trimmed the edges with a 4.8 cm fluted round cutter. My cookies were baked at 180ºC fan forced for 10 min.

Happy Baking

This post is linked to the blog hop event, Cook like a Star, organised by me, Bake for Happy Kids. To join, simply cook or bake a Jamie Oliver recipe and blog hop with us for the whole month of July 2012. For more details, please see this.

Here are my blogging friends that have joined me cooking for this event. Please visit their blogs for more of their 5-stars cooking.

To blog hop with us, simply copy and paste this linky HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML view/mode when you paste in the code. get the InLinkz code

Little Chicken and Mushroom Pies

The recent flu bugs have been extremely "lethal"... We were all massively attacked by this scary strain of virus and were having high temperature, coughs and snotty noses for the past two weeks. Now that we are recovering, we need good food... LOL!

So, here I am baking these little chicken pies with my two baking buddies, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Lena, from Frozen wings for our bake-along. In fact, these pies are so delicious and it was difficult to believe they were actually made by me. The pie crust are buttery and flaky and the chicken fillings simply melt into our mouths...

This recipe originates from the book, Bourke Street Bakery by Paul Allam and David Mcguinness and I have modified it to transform the original 12.5 cm pies into these miniature ones. It is too complicated to incorporate my modifications into the original form and I have decided to post my adapted version of this recipe.

I'm happy that there is minimal wastage for this bake. All excess pastries were cut into little chicks and even a run-away chick had no escape from my little hungry "monster"... When these pies and little chicks were served, they were all gone in a glimpse.

Making the pie pastry

Baking the eggplants

Cooking the chicken fillings

Making the pies

I was excited removing them pies from my oven...

The buttery little chicks...

A "chick" run!

A picture speaks a thousand words... I'm speechless after I had my first bite of this pie.

Here's the recipe adapted from the book, Bourke Street Bakery by Paul Allam and David Mcguinness

Make 8 x 7.5 cm pies

Savoury Shortcrust pastry

150g unsalted butter, chilled, cut into cubes
300g plain flour
2g salt
7ml vinegar
85ml water, chilled

Remove butter from the refrigerator 20 min before you start mixing - butter should be just soft but still very cold.

Mix flour and salt in a large bowl and toss through the butter. Use fingertips to rub butter into flour to partly combine. Turn out the floury mix onto a clean surface and gather the mix together.

Combine the vinegar with the chilled water and sprinkle over the flour mixture. Use the palm of your hand to smear mixture away from you across the bench. Repeat this smearing process once or twice to combine the dough together.

The original recipe mentioned that at this stage, we should see steaks of butter marbled through the pastry which gives a slightly flaky texture to the final product but I can only see this effect when I rolled the pastry.

Divide into two even sized portions and shape into two round disc about 2 cm thick. Wrap each disc in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hr or overnight.

The Pie Filling

80g eggplant, cut into 1.5 cm cubes
20ml extra virgin olive oil
1 small brown onion, finely chopped
1 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 thyme sprigs, leaves picked
250g skinless, boneless chicken thigh fillets, cut into 3 cm cubes
20ml verjuice
200g button mushroom, quartered
1/3 tsp white pepper
1/3 tsp salt
20g Parmesan cheese, grated
1 small handful basil, leaves torn

Egg wash, for brushing:

1 egg yolk
50ml milk 

Bechamel (French) sauce:

40ml milk

5g butter
4g plain flour, sifted

Preheat the oven to 200°C fan forced. Put the eggplant cubes in a single layer on a tray and sprinkle with a little salt. Set aside for 10 min, then rinse well. Put the eggplant on a baking tray lined with baking paper, drizzle with half of the olive oil and cook for 15-20 min or until tender. Remove from the oven and set aside.

Heat the remaining oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and thyme and cook for 5 min, or until softened, Add the chicken and cook for 5 min, stirring often. Add the verjuice and stir for 30 sec, or until reduced slightly, then pour in enough water to cover the chicken. Bring to boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hr or until chicken is tender.

Add the mushroom and baked eggplant to the chicken mixture and add the white pepper and salt. Cook for a further 10 min, or until the mushrooms have cooked through, then strain off the liquid into another saucepan, reserving the chicken mixture in a large container. Continue to cook the liquid over high heat or until reduced by half.

To make the bechamel sauce, heat the milk in a saucepan over low heat so it is slightly warm. Melt butter in a separate saucepan and add flour, stirring until mixture catches the edge of the pan.

Slowly pour in the warm milk and whisk until smooth until smooth and thick. Remove from the heat and pour into the chicken mixture and stir through. Add the Parmesan and stir to combine, then adjust the seasoning. Allow to cool before stirring through the torn basil leaves.

Remove pastry from refrigerator 20 min before you wish to roll it. On a lightly floured surface, gently roll the pastry away until you get a flat round disc about 3 mm thick. Cut the rolled pastry into eight circles with 10 cm diameter and use them to line the base and sides of the pie tins.

For the pie lids, cut out the rolled pastry into six circles with 7.8 cm diameter. Using a little chick cookie cutter, cut a hole in the middle of each pie lid to allow steam to escape while baking.

Spoon the mixture into the pastry-lined pie tins, filling them to the brim. To attached the lid pastry, brush the rim of the pastry base and lid with a little egg wash and lay the lid over the base. Gently press the circumference edge with an end of a fork in order to make a good seal. Brush the top of the pie lid with egg wash.

Reduce oven temperature to 160°C fan forced and bake the pies for 30-35 min or until golden brown on top. Remove the pies from the tins and leave to cool for a few min before serving.

Happy Baking

Here are our baking friends that have joined us for this bake-along. Please visit their blogs for more of their chicken pie baking.

Please submit your details if you wish to link your post with this bake-along. This linking tool is open from 26 July to 1 Aug 2012.

For our next bake-along, we are baking Apple Cornmeal-Upside Down Cake (Recipe from the book, Bon Appetit, pg 72 or here) which is to be posted on 7 August 2012. Please bake-along with us! All you need to do is to bake this cake and blog hop with us on this day or within the next 7 days.


To blog hop with us, simply copy and paste this linky HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML view/mode when you paste in the code. get the InLinkz code

Before using this linky tool, please make sure that: (1) Your post must be a current post. (2) Please mention Bake-Along in your post and link back to any of our hosts' Bake-Along post, (Joyce, Lena or Zoe). (3) Appreciate if you can display the Bake-Along badge in your post when linking up with us. Cheers!

Boozy Chocolate Cake (Jamie Oliver)

Boy: Mummy, what are you baking today?

Mum: Boozy chocolate cake...

Boy: Boozy cake? I want to eat it!

Mum: OK...

You must be thinking that I must be a crazy mum giving my three-year old boy a slice of this boozy cake. I agree that this boozy chocolate cake which is richly infused with Cointreau and spices should be strictly restricted for adults only! Otherwise, you can be like me baking two versions of this cake... The boozy one for the adults and the non-boozy for little kiddos.

I knew that my son will be disappointed if he can't have a slice of chocolate cake that we are eating. At the same time, I will be disappointed too if I can't bake this interesting cake. To avoid any disappointments from both mother and son, my solution is to bake this cake with both boozy and non-boozy versions.

The chocolate cake base has to be baked to be firm and dry so that it can soak up the spice syrup like a sponge biscuit. And, remember to be patient to give the cake enough time (preferably overnight) to fully absorb the syrup for a moist and delightful texture.

Making the syrup

Making the cake base

Allow the cake to absorb the syrup

Yum!

I'm not telling my son that there is something missing in his cakes.

Here's the recipe from Jamie Oliver Magazine (Mar / Apr 2012)

(with my modification in blue)

Serve 15

Chocolate Cake

300g self raising flour
175g sugar (replaced with 150g raw caster sugar)
175ml milk
100g rapeseed oil (I used rice bran oil)
1 egg, beaten
2 heaped tbsp coca powder (25g Dutch cocoa powder)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
Grated zest of 1 orange (I used zest of only 1/2 orange)

Spiced Cointreau Syrup
50g sugar
4 cardamoms pods, lightly crushed
1 cinnamon stick
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
8 peppercorns (I didn't add this)
2 tbsp honey
Grated zest of 1 orange (I used zest of only 1/2 orange)
50 ml Cointreau

For the syrup, place the sugar, spices and 200ml water in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is reduced slightly. Add the honey and simmer until dissolved. Turn off the heat and stir in the orange zest. (At this stage, I divided the syrup into two portions, 1/3 amount for non-boozy one and 2/3 amount for boozy one.) Add Cointeau to the boozy syrup. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until cold.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 170°C (or 160°C fan forced). Line a 30cm x 20cm baking tin with greaseproof paper. Mix all the cake ingredients into a smooth batter, then spoon into the tin and bake 25 - 30 min, or until the cake is firm and quite dry, so it can soak up the syrup.

Let it cool for a min, then prick all over with a cake skewer. I cut off the edges of the cake and divided it into two portions, 1/3 amount for non-boozy one and 2/3 amount for boozy one and slowly pour over the cold syrup. Serve the cake warm, or leave it to cool.

Happy Baking

This post is linked to the blog hop event, Cook like a Star, organised by me, Bake for Happy Kids. To join, simply cook or bake a Jamie Oliver recipe and blog hop with us for the whole month of July 2012. For more details, please see this.

Here are my blogging friends that have joined me cooking for this event. Please visit their blogs for more of their 5-stars cooking.

To blog hop with us, simply copy and paste this linky HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML view/mode when you paste in the code. get the InLinkz code

Chocolate Marbled Cake

This is the sixth THB bake, chosen by Lena from Frozen wings.

With a group of gorgeous ladies, we are baking this cake for the event, The Home Bakers organised by Joyce, Kitchen Flavours. For this event, we are baking all recipes from one book, "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas until every recipe has been baked from this book.

As mentioned at my first THB bake, I pledged to bake as much as I can like a retro-style home baker for all my THB bakes. Unfortunately, my wooden spoon have been thrown out due to its failure to mix too much butter on my second THB bake. - Ops! Nevertheless, I think that a classic marble cake itself can be quite a retro thing for me to bake... I know. I know. You must be thinking that I'm finding excuses because I don't seem to be not retro enough for this bake but I really think marble butter cake is always a classic cake to bake. Convince? - *wink* To console myself, I will make the marble swirl in this cake with a retro-looking knife... LOL!

As much as I like to bake and eat a classic marble cake, I'm actually quite sad to say... I have one hit and two misses for this bake. The hit for me is that I was actually feeling happy to see a nice looking cake freshly baked from the oven. Misses... (1) Despite that the cake looks good at its outside, I was disappointed to see the ugly swirl inside. I should have predicted this as I can tell that my cake batter was actually quite thick to create a good swirl inside the cake. Unfortunately, I assumed that I had created enough swirl and was sad that the cake had lesser swirls than what I expected. (2) This cake is moist and ok to eat but has a compact texture. I was disappointed that it is not fluffy like most traditional marble cake. Not really my kind of "retro" marble cake after-all...

I could have fix my no. 1 miss by baking the cake again, with more swirls inside the cake but didn't want to bake this cake anymore because we thought that this cake is just so-so for us.

After this bake, I'm actually quite disappointed with these two butter cakes that I have baked from this book. I was wondering if this is the kind of cake texture that Lou prefers or maybe I am expecting something too different from these cakes... To be positive, I shall not stop trying! And, hopefully, I can find other good recipes from this book and enjoy different cakes from different perspectives.

My disappointing marble cake

Making the cake batter

Making a marble swirl inside the cake

Happy and Sad seeing the cake

Being the rule of this event, only the host of the chosen bake can post the recipe in her blog post. Please visit Lena from Frozen wings for the recipe of this bake.

And, here are the notes and modifications that I made for my bake:

• Using 1/3 of the recipe, I've baked this cake in a 8 cm x 17 cm loaf pans at 160°C fan forced for 50 min.
• The chocolate that I'm using has 70% cocoa content.
• I didn't add instant coffee powder dissolved with hot water into my cake. I tried to substitute the missing amount hot water with a similar extra amount of sour cream. 
• I have replaced the baking soda with baking powder.

Happy Baking

Fresh Tagliatelle with Sprouting Broccoli and Oozy Cheese Sauce (Jamie Oliver)

Pasta is quick and easy to cook. All I need to do is to open a packet of dried pasta and pour them into a pot of boiling water. It seems so convenient to cook a decent pasta dish but why am I making my own fresh pasta from scratch today?

"Hey, I can do that too!"... I can stop telling myself this after I saw a particular Australian Masterchef episode, Make that pasta (episode 11 from Season 4). In this episode, the contestants were racing to make at least 250g of fresh pasta to avoid elimination and all of them can make their pasta easily in a glimpse. So, here I am embracing myself to learn making these Tagliatelle all the way scratch...

Tagliatelle are long and flat ribbons pasta that are similar in shape to fettuccine and are typically about 0.65 cm to 1 cm wide and it is great to eat with thick sauces just like the cheesy sauce that I'm cooking with this recipe.

As mentioned in this recipe, any nice melting cheese can be used to make this oozy cheesy sauce and I have chosen to use Dutch Fontina because it is quite mild in taste, thick and creamy in texture. I would like to try cooking this dish with other cheeses one day. I reckon the sauce made from Italian Fontina or Gruyere cheeses will create a different taste and texture.

"Hey, I can do that too!"... but can I? Although everything seems so easy and quick on TV, in actual fact, my first-time pasta wasn't made as quickly as I thought I would. My husband reckon I will be eliminated immediately if I'm making fresh pasta in this Masterchef challenge. On the consolation side, maybe a little more practice makes perfect... In regardless, we all unanimously agree that it is definitely worth the wait to eat this freshly made pasta. The texture is so much nicer than the dried ones and a little QQ* tension with every single bite. Yum!

* The meaning of "QQ" in Chinese term means chewy food with bouncy texture.

My Fresh Tagliatelle with Baby Broccoli and Oozy Cheese Sauce

All the beautiful ingredients that I used to make this dish.

Making Tagliatelle from scratch

Making the OOZY sauce

See the OOZY effect...

Here's the recipe from Food Network

(with my modification in blue)

Ingredients

For the pasta:

4 large free-range or organic eggs

2 cups pasta flour, plus (a lot more) extra for dusting

Sea salt

For the cheese sauce:

1 cup crème fraiche

5 ounces sliced fontina or other nice melting cheese (I used Dutch Fontina)

5 ounces freshly grated Parmesan

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 pound purple sprouting broccoli  

(I used baby broccoli which has a larger number of heads with many thin stalks.)

2 large free-range or organic egg yolks

1 small bunch fresh marjoram, oregano or thyme tips, leaves picked (I used oregano)

Freshly grated Parmesan, for serving

Extra-virgin olive oil

Directions

You can buy ready-made dried or fresh tagliatelle, but this is a really quick way to make your own.

Crack the eggs into a food processor and add the flour. Whiz it up and listen for the sound changing to a rumble - this means the dough is coming together nicely. Turn the power off and test the consistency by pinching the dough. If it's a bit sticky add a little more flour and pulse again (Instead of using a food processor, I did the initial mixing by hand).

Tip the dough mixture onto a floured surface and shape it into a ball using your hands. Give it a little knead until smooth, then divide your dough into 4 equal parts. Start on the thickest setting of your pasta machine and run the first bit of dough through 4 or 5 times, moving the rollers closer together each time until the pasta is silky, smooth and about as thick as a CD. Flour your finished sheet generously, then fold it up and cut across into 1/2-inch strips. Gather all the slices together and toss them through your fingers, with a little flour, to open them up and make your pile of tagliatelle. Place to 1 side and repeat with the rest of the dough.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. In a bowl large enough to rest on top of the pan, put your crème fraiche, fontina or other melting cheese and your Parmesan with a pinch of salt and pepper. Place the bowl over the pan for the cheeses to slowly melt. It won't take long. Meanwhile, trim any dry ends off the broccoli, then finely slice the stalks diagonally and leave the florets whole (cutting any larger ones in half).

At this point the cheese sauce should be lovely and oozy, so remove the bowl from above the pan and drop the pasta and broccoli into the boiling water. Boil hard for 2 to 3 min, until the pasta is just cooked through. Whip up the 2 egg yolks and the marjoram, or other chosen herb leaves, into the sauce. Drain the pasta and broccoli, reserving a little of the cooking water, and quickly toss them with the sauce - the heat from the pasta will be enough to cook the eggs through. If the sauce is a little thick, add a few splashes of cooking water to make it silky and loose. Taste and season, if necessary. Serve as quickly as you can, with some extra Parmesan sprinkled over the top and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. Grand

Note: I made this dish using 3/4 amount of the pasta recipe and half amount of the cheese sauce and the amount that I made can filled up 2 and 1/2 very hungry tummies.

Happy Cooking

This post is linked to two events: (1) Made with Love Mondays, organised by Javelin Warrior's Cookin w/ Luv and (2) the blog hop event, Cook like a Star, organised by me, Bake for Happy Kids. To join, simply cook or bake a Jamie Oliver recipe and blog hop with us for the whole month of July 2012. For more details, please see this.

 

Here are my blogging friends that have joined me cooking for this event. Please visit their blogs for more of their 5-stars cooking.

To blog hop with us, simply copy and paste this linky HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML view/mode when you paste in the code. get the InLinkz code

Before using this linky tool, please make sure that: (1) Your post must be a current post. (2) Please mention Cook Like a Star in your post and link back to any of my Cook Like a Star post. Cheers!

Checkerboard Brownies?

Checkerboard brownies? Even the picture of the brownies in the Bon Appetit book doesn't look "checkerboard" to me. In fact, I think these brownies look more like polka dots brownies to me! LOL!

I'm baking this brownie for our bake-along with Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Lena from Frozen wings. The original checkerboard brownies recipe from Bon Appetit book uses flaked coconut as its white-coloured layer. The white layer is then spread over a dark coloured chocolate brownies base with tablespoonfuls of the brownies batter dropped over the coconut layer to form a polka-dot-checkerboard design.

Instead of the coconut layer, I'm baking my brownies with a cream cheese layer simply because we don't really like eating flaked coconut in our non-Asian sweets. I'm extremely satisfied with my version of polka-dot-checkerboard brownies and happy that the polka dot design on the brownies looks pretty good. Eating this brownies is like eating a slice of cheesecake and brownies, both at the same time. Nice too that the sweetness, salty and texture of both layers are very well balanced and both layers compliment each other very well.

For our next bake-along, we are baking chicken pie which is to be posted on 26 July 2012. Please bake-along with us! All you need to do is to bake your favourite chicken pie and blog hop with us on this day or within the next 7 days.

Checkerboard Brownies? They look more like polka-dots to me.

Making the brownies batter

Making the cream cheese layer

Making the polka dots design... and bake!

Here are the recipes (with my modification in blue)

Chocolate Brownies Batter from the book, Bon Appetite by Baraba Fairchild
Make 16 square

6 tbsp butter, cut into 6 pieces (90g)
3 1/2 ounce unsweetened chocolate, chopped

(I used 100g semi-sweetened chocolate with 70% cocoa)

2 extra large eggs
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup golden brown sugar (reduced to 1 cup)
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt

Cream Cheese layer from Australian Good Taste Magazine, Apr 2011 issue

(in 3/4 amount of the original recipe)

250g cream cheese at room temperature
65g (1/4 cup) sour cream
100g (1/2 cup) sugar (reduced to 50g)
1 egg

Chocolate batter

Butter 9 x 9 x 2 inch metal baking pan. Melt butter with chocolate in heavy small saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth. Pour into medium bowl. Cool to lukewarm. Whisk in eggs and vanilla. Whisk sugar, flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl; sift over chocolate mixture. Mix until blended and smooth.

Spread 1 1 /4 cup chocolate batter in prepared pan. (cover and refrigerate remaining batter). Cover pan tightly with aluminum foil. Refrigerate batter until very firm, about 3 hrs.
(To minimise the storage of the batter in my fridge, I refrigerated my batter all in one container. Even in its firm stage, I was able to spread 2/3 of its amount on the prepared pan as the brownies base)

Cream cheese layer

Beat cream cheese, sour cream and sugar until smooth. Add egg and beat until just combined.

Preheat oven to 350°F (or 160°C fan forced). Spread the cream cheese layer over the chocolate batter. Drop 1 tbsp of chocolate batter over the cream cheese later to form a polka dot checkerboard design. (I rolled tablespoonfuls of chocolate batter into balls and placed them on the cream cheese layer to form a polka dot design) Cover pan tightly with foil.

Bake 45 min. (I baked mine for 30 min) Remove foil and bake until tester inserted in center (with one of dropped chocolate batter) comes out clean, about 40 min. Cool brownies completely in pan on rack.

Cut into squares and serve.

Till now, I'm still not convince that this recipe make a real checkerboard looking brownies and so this is what I have done...

These look more like checkerboard brownies to me :D

And this is how I made this checkerboard brownies...

I made the brownies base using 1/2 of the chocolate batter recipe and bake it in 10cm x 20cm loaf tin. I trimmed off the edges and drew checkerboard designs on the brownies with un-coloured royal icing. (Recipe of royal icing can be found here.)

Now... This is what I called checkerboard brownies...LOL!

Happy Baking

Here are our baking friends that have joined us for this bake-along. Please visit their blogs for more of their checkerboard brownies baking.

Please submit your details if you wish to link your post with this bake-along. This linking tool is open from 11 to 17 July 2012.  

Please take note of these before using this linky tool: (1) Your post must be a current post. (2) Please mention Bake-Along in your post and link back to any of our hosts' Bake-Along post, (Joyce, Lena or Zoe). (3) Appreciate if you can display the Bake-Along badge in your post when linking up with us.


To blog hop with us, simply copy and paste this linky HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML view/mode when you paste in the code. get the InLinkz code  

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If you are a fan of Jamie Oliver, don't miss out cooking or baking his recipes. Don't forget to join my Cook like a Star blog hop event (Theme: Jamie Oliver). To join, all you have to do is to cook or bake any of Jamie Oliver's recipes from his cookbooks, magazine, app or websites and simply do a blog hop with me on the whole month of July 2012. For more details of this event, please see this.

Jamie Oliver's Puffy Omelet

This potato omelet is different from the potato frittata that I made previously. As described by Jamie Oliver, it is a cross between a Spanish tortilla and an Italian frittata. Spanish because of the chorizo and Italian because it is baked in the oven. Interestingly, it puffs up like a souffle with spongy texture and this is something new that I learn from this recipe.

Presenting Jamie Oliver's Puffy Omelet...

This is how I assemble different components of this omelet.

Watching the omelet to puff in the oven is quite exciting!

A very interesting omelet with a spongy texture

Here's the recipe from Food Network

(with my notes and modification in blue)

Ingredients

4 small waxy potatoes, scrubbed and cut into chunks

(replaced with 2 medium sized Desiree potatoes)

6 large free-range or organic eggs

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 ounces Spanish chorizo sausage, cut into 1/2-inch thick slices

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves picked

2 shallots, peeled and very finely sliced (I didn't add this)

1 lemon, juiced

Extra-virgin olive oil

1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked 

(replaced with salad - combination of baby spinach and baby green coral and some shredded beetroot)

Preheat your oven to high, or get your broiler nice and hot (mine is 220°C fan force with top grill). Put the potatoes into a saucepan of boiling salted water and simmer them until cooked, then drain in a colander and leave to steam dry. Beat the eggs with a fork in a large mixing bowl, season well with salt and pepper, and set aside.

Heat a 7 or 8-inch nonstick, ovenproof frying pan (mine is 24cm in diameter). Add the chorizo slices and the potato chunks. The chorizo will start to sizzle, releasing all its tasty oils and spices. After a couple of minutes, when everything's lightly golden and crisp, remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside. Sprinkle the rosemary leaves into the hot fat. As soon as they hit the pan, they'll start to crisp up immediately pour the beaten eggs on top, adding the potatoes and chorizo and spreading everything out evenly. Place the whole pan in the preheated oven or under the broiler until the omelet is golden brown on top and just cooked through in the middle.

While the omelet is cooking, put the shallots into a bowl with the lemon juice, some salt and pepper and a glug of extra-virgin olive oil. Toss and pinch the shallots with your fingertips to soften them slightly, and then mix in the parsley leaves. Serve a little on top of the omelet and tuck in! (All I did was for the salad is to drizzle lemon juice and a little olive oil on top of the salad. Season with salt and pepper and serve them with the omelet.) 

Happy Baking

This post is linked to the blog hop event, Cook like a Star, organised by me, Bake for Happy Kids. To join, simply cook or bake a Jamie Oliver recipe and blog hop with us for the whole month of July 2012. For more details, please see this.
 

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Best Barbecued Meat and Homemade Barbecue Sauce (Jamie Oliver)

I really have to believe Jamie Oliver whenever he claims that this is his best or perfect recipe. Of all, I have tried cooking his best barbecued meat and homemade barbecue sauce and his perfect basic bread. I'm very satisfied with his best barbecued meat and homemade barbecue sauce which is really a great hit but disappointed with his perfect basic bread which is as not ideal as I expected.

In regardless, I would strongly recommend this Jamie Oliver's best barbecued meat and homemade barbecue sauce recipe. Jamie has cleverly designed this recipe to barbecue various types of larger cuts so that the larger cuts would be nicely cooked being golden and crispy on the outside and moist and well-flavored in the inside. What this recipe does is to cook the meat through in the oven first and then finish it off on the barbecue. Instead of using the barbecue, I have cooked mine using the oven grill to give it a nice barbecue-like finish.

Plus, Jamie's homemade barbecue sauce is really really GOOD! It's a REAL "luxurious" kind of barbecue sauce with a great combination of best ingredients and spices... Just the sauce itself can be very delicious to eat with plain bread. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to capture a picture of my plain bread dipping the barbecue sauce... I was too busy eating. Ops!

Making the homemade barbecue sauce

This sauce is really really really GOOD!

The meat has a nice barbecue-like finish and moist and tender inside.

Here's the recipe from Food Network

(with my modification and notes in blue)

Ingredients

For the marinade:

1 heaped tsp cumin seeds

2 tbsp fennel seeds

5 cloves

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bunch fresh thyme or lemon thyme, leaves picked
(Proud to say that I've used my home grown lemon thyme :D)

Bunch fresh rosemary, leaves picked, a few whole sprigs reserve
(I've used my home rosemary too :D)

1 orange, zested and juiced

1 bulb garlic, broken into cloves and peeled

4 heaped tsp sweet smoked paprika (the sweet Hungarian type)

6 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup organic tomato ketchup

8 tbsp olive oil

10 bay leaves

1 (3-pound) free-range or organic chicken, spatchcocked or 1 (7-pound) leg of lamb, on the bone, slashed evenly 1/4-inch deep or 4 1/4 pounds pork rib racks
(I've used 2 kg of pork rib racks)

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350°F (or 160°C fan forced) and light your barbecue about 40 mins later.

To make your marinade, grind the cumin seeds, fennel seeds and cloves in a pestle and mortar with some salt and pepper. Chop the thyme and rosemary leaves, orange zest and garlic together finely. Put into a bowl with the ground spices, then add the rest of the marinade ingredients and mix together.

Rub your chosen meat all over with the marinade, really getting it into all the nooks and crannies and, in case of the lamb, the slashes. Place the meat in a snug-fitting roasting pan, top with any leftover marinade and cover loosely with aluminum foil. Bake the meat in the preheated oven until sweet and tender. This will take 1 1/2 hrs for the pork ribs (I did mine for 1 hr 45 min, baking the ribs in a roasting pan covered with a fitting lid. The longer baking time is preferred too because we like the ribs to be well done.) and the lamb (but if you like your lamb pink, it will only need 1 hour), and 1 hour and 20 minutes for the chicken.

Now you're going to finish your meat on a medium hot barbecue. Place it carefully on the bars of the barbecue and sear it well on 1 side, then turn it over. While it's cooking, use your reserved rosemary sprigs to baste the meat with the sticky juices from the bottom of the roasting pan. Keep turning and brushing the meat until you've built up a lovely sticky, charred crust, then take it off the barbie and rest it on a serving dish for a few min. Meanwhile, pop your roasting pan on the barbie or over a gas burner and let the juices reduce a bit.
(Using an oven grill, I grilled the meat uncovered for 5 min at 180°C fan forced with top grill for each side and finished off with its top side uncovered at 180°C fan forced with no top grill for another 10 min. While grilling the meat, I had reduced the sauce separately in the oven on a lower shelf.)

Cut the pork into individual ribs, carve the leg of lamb into slices or tear the chicken into pieces, and serve with a bowl of the lovely marinade juices from the roasting pan.

Happy Baking

This post is linked to the blog hop event, Cook like a Star, organised by me, Bake for Happy Kids. To join, simply cook or bake a Jamie Oliver recipe and blog hop with us for the whole month of July 2012. For more details, please see this.
 

Here are my blogging friends that have joined me cooking for this event. Please visit their blogs for more of their 5-stars cooking.

To blog hop with us, simply copy and paste this linky HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML view/mode when you paste in the code. get the InLinkz code