Another Baking Attempt

It has been a long time since I've baked anything. So I decided to try a recipe I found on Lizzy's blog. Lemon squares looked easy enough to make. Plus, I think Theresa is fond of lemon flavored things? So this would be possible to bake for her in the future.

Even if they'll never quite look as good as they do in the pictures that Lizzy posts.

This is probably what a cake baked by me would look like.

So first things first. Making the crust for the squares. This came to me as a bit of a surprise because from the pictures I couldn't really see the crust. Also, I haven't really made crusts so this was new to me.

And I don't think it turned out too badly, except it looked kind of weird. What with my finger imprints all over it as I tried to smooth things out.

It's all lumpy...

Yes, I did a rather odd job with the aluminum foil there. Kind of lopsided and sloppy. I probably should have grabbed a larger piece of it.

Next we have the actual lemon part. Nothing to special happened. I mean, you're just mixing lemon juice and sugar. Even I can do that without causing a fire. In that goes over the crust.

It's all bubbly...

Another thing I really liked about this recipe was how little mess there was and how fast I was done. So little clean-up and it's something quick you can do within an hour. Well, you can probably do it faster than me. I'm not exactly the greatest baker ever.

And when it finally came out. It looked ok. Again, not as good as Lizzy's but it's still edible. I opted out of putting powdered sugar on top because my Mom preferred it that way.

Still came out lumpy.

A few things to note. The center was kind of gummy. I'm not sure if that's because I didn't bake it for long enough or if it was supposed to be that way. It was more tart than sweet, possibly because again, no powdered sugar but Mom liked it that way so that's the way I served it.

Also, it went moldy within a few days. I actually don't know if it was mold or not but my Mom claimed it was and threw whatever remained away. This came as a surprise to me but this is my first time baking lemon anything.

Next, I'm going to try and see if I can make curry from scratch. We normally use those curry paste things and I'm certain it would be better with fresh ingredients.

Baking Curry Brownies

I've had moderate success with cooking but not so much with baking. Baking is what my sister does and the whole family loves her banana bread and white chocolate chip cookies. Whenever I bake everyone kind of half-heartedly eats it so I feel less bad about myself.

But, I've been trying to practice my culinary skills and now, I need it's time to try and bake something. Microwave brownies don't count, it's time to try actual brownies. Mich posted a recipe for brownies on her blog the other day and what made these brownies unique was that she added curry powder to it. She insists that they're amazing so let's find out.

Assuming I don't screw up.

Ok, even I'm not this derpy.

And actually, I kind of did mess up. To start with, I somehow misread sugar as "flour" on step one and bam, things aren't looking too good.

Hoping that my brownies aren't completely ruined I try and compensate by mixing in the remaining ingredients one after another (as opposed to in the proper order and in their separate respective bowls) and I think it looked ok?

And I had yet another surprise when I opened the can of coconut milk and instead of liquid, I was greeted with this dense, white solid at the top. Confused, I just spooned this white substance into my batter and kept going.

So far so good/bad?

Later I would find out that there WAS liquid, the actual coconut milk was underneath this, this, I don't know, what would you call it? Coconut butter? Fat? I hoped for the best and dumped the batter into the oven.

In the meantime, I tried to make the icing. It didn't look like icing. I'm not going to even show you guys a picture, it was pretty gross and sad. It somehow managed to be watery with clumps of coconut "butter" floating around. If you're really curious, take a bottle of hair conditioner and squirt some of that into a bowl of water, give it a stir and that's what my "icing" looked like.

Needless to say, I threw it out. Especially when it transformed and became this watery, grey sludge.

Sigh...

But wait! Don't lose hope for me yet! We still have the main attraction to reveal. While I was messing around with the "icing" I had the brownie batter baking in the oven. 40 minutes later, I open it up, dump the contents on a plate and....

Viola.

Hey! It doesn't look too bad. I think. I don't really bake that often and this is my first time baking proper brownies. So I have no idea if it's supposed to look that way. I also opted to use mint chocolate chips instead of normal ones. Because I love mint chocolate.

Taste-wise I think it also turned out decently. The center is nice and moist and no hint of curry. I'm sorry Mich but I don't eat brownies that much so I can't tell if there was a difference caused by the curry. Or maybe any benefit of the curry was negated due to my horrible mixing skills.

So there we go, I didn't fail too hard. Yay for me. Any suggestions as to what to bake/cook next? I'm open to almost anything.