I've not been baking these past couple of weeks, so to fill the void created by my absence, I went digging in the archives for pictures taken a while back. Here's a collection of a familiar favourite: Tiong Bahru Wet Market. Ah, so many a happy weekend morning spent there.
Raw...& Ready
I'm making Apple Galette, a 2 part project consisting of buttery puff pastry enveloping the stars within: 20 Hour Apples. Not as daunting as it sounds, still, no time to chat, we begin!
Melt the butter, slice the apples, zest the orange and save the juice for breakfast (none needed here).
The 20 Hour apple is a very straight forward dish, really. Once your ingredients are prepped, all that's left is an assembly job so simple you can train a donkey to do.
The above knowledge I can impart, my young caterpillars. Patience, I cannot. For this you need a sturdy mind, a quiet determination, and a Special Edition Lord Of the Ring Trilogy Extended Series box set With Deleted Scenes to help you see this through. For you see, you will need to bake this on low for a full 10 hours.
I suggest you start making this in the morning, so you can bake this through the day. Leaving this in the oven to bake overnight - not such a bright idea.
Once done, your proud pile will be reduced to a shadow of its former glory. But its quality, not quantity, we are after.
Not done yet. 20 Hours, remember? SO, we've nuked the apples to Timbukto and back, now it's time to cool the bad boys down. Another 10 hours in the chill chest, just in time for bed, after a long day of baby sitting the oven making sure nothing burns.
The result, my friends, is the sweetest apple candy you'll ever taste. Orange flavored apples, in my case, coz I went crazy with the zest again. Not that I mind, the flavors were balanced, sweet and slightly tart, so long as you can keep from snacking them off in one sitting, these will serve you well when we apply them to the Apple Galette later in the week.
I round off my coconut theme with a Loaf Cake, for no other reason than knowing the half used pack of tropical snowflakes can sit around pretty for only so long.
Should you audit the above picture, you will note that I am not entirely in compliance with PH's recipe. Not that I disagree with the flavor alchemist he is, I just had to consider the adventurous streak of my tasters, many of whom aren't really so. In order to retain their gamely support, I decided to make a few tweaks to the underlying components.
First I replaced ground coriander with lime, a time tested partnership, I'm sure you will agree. Going a step further I replaced the rum in the soaking syrup with lime juice, to keep the simple flavors pronounced. Removing the rum was a tough call, believe me. But I'm sure I'll more than make amends in no time.
My favourite thing to do with dry spices and nuts, or in this case, coconut, is to toast them. This releases the flavors held their oils and hightens their presence in any dish they are called for.
The flavor punch of any citrus fruit is packed in their zest, so long as you keep the bitter whites out. The punctuation of these jade green specks against the pastle cream is a welcome addition I look forward to seeing in the final product.
The butter is creamed in a seperate bowl, until a pool of pale, light, shining cream results.
The above is self explanatory. However I would just like to take a moment to say, gosh I do love my eggs.
Under normal circumstances the butter, sugar and egg would have come together to form a smooth creamy mix. As you can see from the above, mine was not the case. For reasons beyond me, the trio simply refused to come together. Instead I had an emulsion gone terribly wrong.
No matter, we bravely forge on. In goes the toasted coconut, and what a saviour that proved to be, bringing the gobular mess together, readying it for the remaining flours to be incorporated.
Into the oven it goes, until a golden pillow emerges.
While waiting for the cake to bake, I made a magic potion of simple syrup and lime. Add as much or as little sugar / lime juice to suit your taste, I held back on the sugar and went all out with the cutting acid instead.
The application of the soaking syrup is as follows: Without waiting for the cake to cool, I docked the crust with a fork and started painting it with the syrup solution, as a warm cake would soak up the lovely liquid much more readily then when cooled.
Now would be the time to let the cake cool down and rest, for the egg protein to strengthen and give support to the moist rich cake. Wait, and you shall be rewards.
Taste Test: A visually pleasing cake when sliced, the specks of green delivered as promised. The taste? Yum. The coconut provided a warm, lingering background and merried delightfully with the cutting lime. A gamble paid off.
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