Description:
Hmmm brownies... this is one of my favourite sweet desserts. There are many types of brownies, from the cakey, the gooey, the fudgy, mixture of some and so on. I like the gooey with a little bit of cake texture brownie. If you've tried the brownies from Famous Amos, that's the brownies that I love. The brownies were soft and just melted in my mouth.

After browsing several recipes in the internet, I chose to try Pennylane Brownies recipe since there have been several people trying it. Also, there was quite a good review.

I changed some of the ingredients because I love butter and I want to finish off some of the bits and pieces in my pantry.;-p Finally, the brownie is done and I've tried it. The crumb is quite moist as I like. Not bad at all but it is still not exactly what I want. The brownies do not have strong chocolatey taste and less gooey. I'm not sure whether I overmixed it or it's just the recipe. I might adjust slightly the ingredients to amplify the chocolate aroma and the gooeyness (if there is such word for this).

Ingredients:
Here are the ingredients which I used for this brownies:

4 eggs, extra large 59 g min mass
450 g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla concentrated extract, Queen's

60 g cocoa powder, Home Brand 16% fat
210 g all purpose flour
0.5 tsp salt

100 g unsalted butter, melted
125 g olive oil, extra light (not extra virgin!!!)

60 g macadamia nuts, halves
60 g hazelnut, dry roasted

20 g white chocolate chips, Nestle bites
20 g dark chocolate chips, Nestle bites


Directions:
Place a layer of baking paper on the tin. Preheat the oven to 180 deg C.

Sieve and mix dry ingredients well.

Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla until the mixture is fluffy. Add dry ingredients, mix well. Add oil, mix well. Then, add nuts and chocolate chips, mix well.

Pour the batter to the tin. Bake for about 30-35 minutes. When the surface start cracking/drying, stop the baking process.

Description:
I try to copy the cookies from Subway... I love the flavour and the soft chewy texture of the cookies from Subway. The cookies that I've made are not that close to the original. Still needs some trials.

If anyone has the copycat recipe of Subway's WCMC, can you share it with me??? :D

Ingredients:
I use the base recipe from Nicole Weston's recipe and modify it slightly. I used extra light olive oil instead of macadamia oil. However, I'm still not happy with the overall flavour and texture. The maple syrup is too strong for me.

With the second batch, I substituted some of the oil with unsalted butter. Also, I need to reduce the sugar.

Directions:
Also follow hers with some modification. I press the cookies with a fork to flatten the cookie balls about half way of baking.

I have been looking for a copycat recipe of Famous Amos crunchy cookies for a long time. Then, I came across Biskut Raya: Famous Amos about half a year ago. The guy said that the recipe was from Famous Amos in Bangsar, Malaysia. At first, I was quite sceptical about the recipe but anyway, I gave it a go today. There is also another website citing the original recipe and there are comments from some people. They said that the cookies are not like Famous Amos and too much oats etc. But hey, I guess they might not know if they were not told that the cookies were not bought from the Famous Amos shop.   I suppose the cookies have the closest taste and texture to the Famous Amos version.

I converted the quantity to grams, adjusted the quantity of some ingredients, grouped the ingredients, adjusted some of the baking steps and quartered the original quantity. Geez... the ingredients in the original recipe are just all over the place. The reduced quantity still makes a lot of cookies. Just take a look at the total quantity of the quartered recipe, it's about 1 kg dough. Btw, my mother in law said she saw a similar cookie recipe with oatmeals but she cannot remember where it was from.

Anyway, the cookies turned out very light, airy and crunchy as I always want... yihuiiii . Whether the recipe was really from Famous Amos or not, I am still very happy with the result. The texture of the cookies was just right. The light crunchy texture is contributed by the oatmeal and baking powder and soda.

The only thing that I have to improve is the fineness of the oatmeals. Mine was still quite coarse. Here is the adjusted recipe. If you want to use the original, please check the original source.

 

Ingredients

 

115 g butter, You’ll Love Coles, reduced salt, cold and cut into cubes

100 g caster sugar

90 g brown sugar

 

1 egg (70 g with shell but don't include the shell in your mixture )

½ tsp vanilla extract, Queens

 

100 g Oats, Uncle Toby Traditional, grind to a fine powder, sieved

125 g plain flour

^1/­₈ tsp salt (because I used reduced salt butter, you may want to use 1/4 tsp salt if using unsalted butter)

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

 

150 g almond, chopped coarsely

150 g milk chocolate chips, Cadbury 

90 g milk chocolate bar, Lindt, grated finely with microplane (when the chocolate pieces were getting too difficult to grate, my husband just ate those bits. The whole block was 100 g.)

 

 

Cooking Methods

 

1. Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy
2. Add egg and vanilla, beat till well combine
3. Add oats mixture and mix till combine
4. Add chocolate and nut mixture then mix till just combined.
5. Leave the dough in the fridge for about 20 minutes
6. Preheat oven to 160-180^oC
7. Lay a baking paper on the cookie sheet
8. Take about ½ tsp of the mixture and put on the cookie sheet
9. Bake for about 10 minutes
10. Return the remaining dough to the fridge while waiting for the batch to come out from the oven.
11. Cool on the cooling tray
12. Store in an airtight container

 

 

Note:

-        The nuts can be changed to macadamia, walnut, pecan, cashew nuts, peanuts or even just no nuts.

-     The cookies are also nice with some of the dried fruits such as raisins and cranberries.

-        If you want the cookie to have darker colour, you can use dark brown sugar and/or add cocoa powder. Reduce the plain flour accordingly when add cocoa powder.

-        Baking time should be adjusted according to the size of the dough balls

-     Leave the dough ball stay high (don't press it). I find the cookies that still stay high are cruchier and lighter (not dense).

-        I put the dough in the fridge for about 20 minutes before baking the first batch to prevent excessive spreading. Then, I returned the remaining dough to the fridge while waiting for a batch baked in the oven.

As for the photos... just imagine the cookies from the Famous Amos display shelf.  At the moment, I still feel not quite right from eating too much cookies....

 

Note:

- Do not mix the dough for too long as it will cause the cookies turn hard.

- I tried to modify the recipe by reducing the flour and add arrowroot starch and wholemeal flour. Also, I shape the cookie into a log and cut it. The cookie became hard and chewy

I made this mud cake for my hubby's birthday since he requested this cake. I got the recipe from Exclusively Food by Amanda & Debbie as this recipe uses the least amount of sugar. I have checked several websites for similar cakes but those normally use about 2 cups of sugar!! However, I did not check the amount of white chocolate that is used in the other recipes when I compared the sugar. May be... the amount will be the same at the end.

I still have a very long way to go in the cake making department. Here are the incidences that I encountered when I made the cake.... The whipped cream slided towards the edge of the cake, the almond flakes were slightly burnt, the whipped cream splitted after being squeezed and squeezed in the piping bag...  Just take a close look at the photo....

Is there anybody who is willing to teach me to make and decorate cakes?

As usual, I change some of the ingredients depending on the stock in my pantry.   Here is the revised recipe.

Ingredients

300 g white chocolate, Cadbury Dream, break into smaller cubes
200 g unsalted butter, Danish style
¼ cup full cream milk powder and add water to make up to 1 cup
160 g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract, Queen's
2 eggs, lightly beaten (59g each)

250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

 

White chocolate cream (150 g white chocolate + 60 mL thickened cream, melt over bain-marie and mix)

Raffaello

Roasted flake almonds

Whipped cream

Raspberry sauce

 

 

Cooking Methods

 

1. Grease and line a 20 cm round cake tin.
2. Combine flours in a medium bowl.
3. Put chocolate, butter, milk and sugar in a bowl and heat over a bain-marie over low heat, stirring occasionally. When mixture is completely smooth remove from heat and allows cooling for 15 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 160^oCelsius (convection) after finish mixing the chocolate mixture. Add vanilla and eggs to the chocolate mixture and mix to combine.
5. Add one cup of chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Repeat with another cup of the chocolate mixture then stir in remaining chocolate mixture. This method of combining the wet and dry ingredients helps prevent lumps (I used a strainer to remove the remaining lumps).
6. Pour mixture into tin and bake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. When the cake is ready, a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake should come out without any batter attached.
7. Cover cake with a tea towel and allow it to cool to room temperature in tin.
8. When cake is cold, spread with white chocolate cream.
9. Store cake in refrigerator and bring to room temperature before serving.
   

I'll let you know the taste tomorrow coz I have to wait till dinner time.

 

Up-date on 19 Aug 07:

Finally, I got to try it... the taste is nice and not too sweet... but the texture is nothing like at the picture from the original source. It's fudgy instead of cake like.

Not sure where I went wrong.