Work catering #53: Baked out~

Have you ever just felt burnt out? I'm sure you have, especially when it comes to studying or working... but have you ever feel burnt out when it's your.. hobby? your passion? I  didn't think that would happen but sometimes it does! Like with baking.. I do love it and I could do it everyday (I think).. but sometime I lose motivation or inspiration. For example this week for work, I wasn't really inspired by anything so just chose these 2 random recipes to bake. I wasn't really happy with either of the final products because I think I was just baking out of "having to bake" instead of "wanting to bake"~~~ I think it was because I baked so much for the wedding (yes i know... still need to blog about that)

anyways I hope you can try out these recipes and it turns out better for you ^___^ Hope I get my baking motivation back soon!!! :D

Butterscotch Apple Blondies
Recipe adapted from Crazy for Crust

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups (150g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (113g) unsalted butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups (300g) plain flour
2 cups apples, peeled, cored and diced
1 cup butterscotch chips

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Grease and line rectangle (20x30cm) baking pan.
2. Cream brown sugar and butter with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Beat in vanilla essence.
3. Mix in baking powder, salt and flour. Fold in apples and butterscotch bites.
4. Pour/press batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the edges are golden brown. Cool bars completely before cutting.

In the original recipe, there was an optional caramel sauce but I didn't make it (partly because I was lazy..). I'm sure it would have been great with it!

Greek Yoghurt Lemon Poppyseed Cake
Recipe adapted from Baking Bites

Ingredients
2 cups  (300g) plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (200g) caster sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup (75g) butter, melted and cooled
2 tbs fresh lemon zest
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 cup (300g) greek style yoghurt
1 tbs poppyseeds

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Grease and line square (23cm) cake tin.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in medium bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs until well-combined. Whisk in melted butter, lemon zest and almond extract.
4. Whisk in one third of flour mixture, followed by half of yoghurt and poppyseeds. Whisk another third of flour mixture then remaining yoghurt and rest of the flour. Mix just until no streaks of flour remain. Pour into prepared pan.
5. Bake for 50-55minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center of loaf comes out clean.

baking disaster masked by the good old cream cheese frosting XD

Optional: Ice with cream cheese frosting - the reason I did this was because my cake turned out really dense :S I think I didn't whisk enough to get air in... so to mask my failure, I smothered it with frosting. muahhaha =p Baker's secret~

Pop Pop Pop!

Poppy seeds are a great baking ingredient! Whether they are in cakes or muffins or sprinkled on top of bread buns, they give a great texture of crunch and POP! =D One of the items on my "invisible-in-my-head" to bake list was an orange and poppy seed cake. I had been looking up a few recipes but none that I really liked (most of them used heaps of butter). Then one day a friend of mine posted a pic of some orange and poppy seed muffins she had baked! they looked perfect and she told me they didn't use butter but oil! the recipe looked quite simple so I decided to give it a go =D

Orange and poppy seed muffins
Recipe adapted from Cooking for One

Finished product =D

Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup oil (I used canola oil but I'm sure vegetable or any other oil is fine)
1 cup milk
1 whole orange
1 tbs poppy seeds
1.  Preheat oven to 200oC. Lightly grease 12 hole muffin tin.
2. Place orange in pot of boiling water and boil for 15 minutes. Take orange out of water and place in another pot of boiling water for another 15 minutes. Take out orange and allow to cool down.
3. Place flour in a bowl. Stir in baking powder, poppy seeds and sugar.
4. Whisk oil, egg and milk gently in separate jug. 
5. Chop cooked orange into small pieces and use stick blender to blend orange. If you don't own a stick blender you can manually chop orange into smaller pieces (I was lazy so I did this =p)
6.Stir oil and milk mixture into dry mixture and add chopped orange. Do not overbeat or muffins will be tough.
7. Pour muffin mix into muffin pan. Bake for ~25 minutes or until skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
8. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Mmmm tastes best straight out of the oven ^_^

You can serve with cream cheese icing but they do taste quite nice just the way they are. If you don't have that big a sweet tooth, these muffins are just for you! not too sweet but lovely crunch of poppy seeds and orange flavour =)

cooling in muffin tin~

I am still looking for a good orange and poppy seed cake recipe so if you know any that you would like me to try out, just leave a comment ^__^ I'm happy to take any requests!!