June 01, 2005

Let 'Em Eat Cake!

For those who know me, I do NOT bake. Can NOT bake. Not even the simplest butter cake. For the second time in my life, I tried making bread and butter pudding yesterday. The first time I made the pudding was in the UK, when I was stuck indoors with the chicken pox. After all the hard work, I wasn't even allowed to eat it; apparently, according to 'em ol' Chinese Ah Ees and Ah Mas, eggs are supposedly "poisonous" to those with the pox. Go figure.

Naturally, for someone who has never baked (well, not in Japan anyway), I do not have any baking tools, except for a microwave oven (which can be turned into a convection oven, I must say) and a microwave-safe plastic container. Being as oblivious as I am to cooking, I had to call Mumsy about using that in the oven. Suffice to say, after being yelled at over the phone for even thinking I can use the plastic container in the oven, I cannot use the oven for baking.

Blame it on zest, but I still wanted to make bread and butter pudding that night. I already have the ingredients...why not try it out on the conventional microwave oven? Mind you, I do not even have any sort of weighing device which I could use. So I decided to use the ol' one-two, and guessed the amount of eggs I needed, or the the amount of sugar, etc. The recipe suggested one egg. One egg? No way... I'm sure the pudding would taste better with two. 25g of sugar? Okkaaaaayy... that would be, what, 10-15 pinches with the fingers? 150ml of milk...hmm... I'll just pour enough to cover the bread. Everything went into the plastic container. The recipe stated "4~5 mins on Medium on the microwave oven". So let's see...hmm...everything's in Japanese on my oven. Ahhh...I'll just press the Start button, put it in for 10 minutes, and we'll see how it goes.

Ten minutes passed. Hmm...the pudding looked rather gooey. I gave it another good 6 minutes. Still gooey. Uh-oh, the pudding started to dry out. I guess it should be done. It sure did not look like the nice, brown-top-crusted pudding I made before. In front of me was bright yellow goo in a plastic container. It smelt pretty good though. One mouthful of the pudding, and the whole thing went into the rubbish bin. It was one egg too many; it wasn't sweet enough, and baking it in the microwave oven only managed to produce soft gooey pudding, rather than the crispy crust I was expecting.

I shall try it again tonight, but with the proper tools this time.

Wish me luck!

7 comments:

Adrian said...

Geez, thats an engineer's way of baking a bread. Whatever the recipe gave, overdo it. Over-spec and over design with margin to spare...

1 egg, nah 2 is better. 5 minutes? Nah, lets try 10.

Next try please stick to the recipe... Hee hee hee... :p

Tine said...

I thought engineers were supposed to be creative, no? Then how are you going to come up with something good if you don't try? Sure, I have failed pudding...for now. I believe tonight's will be good, and you shan't have any!! Hehehe :p

Adrian said...

Umm that creativity only comes in when you run out of bread and think of what sort of goo you can use to replace an egg... :p

beetrice said...

Try this (in a GLASS container, preferably!!):

1. stale bread
2. raisins
3. 1 egg
4. evaporated milk + 2 tbsps of water (enough to soak in and reach same level as the bread, roughly one can)
5. 25-35g of sugar (which is incidentally 2 - 2 1/2tbsps of sugar ma dear)

*layer (1) and (2), mix (3),(4)and (5)together and pour over your roti...

throw into your microwave (did you check it's on CONVECTION oven setting??)

haha...seeing your delimma, couldn't resist..you know me n food! (sure if our other cuz sees this she will comment!)

charmedcookie said...

mah dear, you shld've called Cuz B instead of your mom lah!

Tine said...

Yeah, I know. Better than having Mumsy nagging at me non-stop, eh? I shall start another project soon :)

Tine said...

Hey, I resent that! The bread and butter pudding was GOOD. So mean of you and Ben to NOT let me eat my wonderful creation *sob*.