Surprisingly, the cupcakes turned out well with no drama at all, though less fluffy than we’d usually like them to be. What’s a couple of PMS-ing chimps to wreck their wrath on, then?
Banana Loaf Cake
Remember the deceivingly black, spotty bananas I mentioned before that turned out to be still firm and unripe? These pisang tanduk swindlers have finally ripened! Well actually, not really, but the bowls of ingredients were taking up too much space in the small fridge.
So this time I used this recipe from David Lebovitz’ Banana Loaf Cake (who adapted it from Perfect Light Desserts by Nick Malgieri and David Joachim) after my previous experiment with Roast Banana-Pumpkin Breakfast Bread (don’t ask). In case you’re wondering, no, we don’t know the difference between banana bread and banana cake. We guessed perhaps it’s just the baker’s (or your) gimmick to make you think you’re eating a healthier option, but don’t kid yourself.
Almond Cookies
Yesterday I happily bought a bunch of seemingly quite ripe, heavily spotted bananas from the Pasar Pakis around the corner, thinking that I’d turn them into a banana bread. Yet this morning, after preparing all my ingredients, I was quite boggled to find the flesh behind the peel still firm and yellow, none of the expected mushiness of ripe bananas imperative for a soft, light banana bread. Apparently, the banana type that I was using–the pisang tanduk variety–is supposed to turn all black when they’re ripe. Trust Chomp to get the bananas wrong.
After squirelling all the prepped-and-measured ingredients back into the fridge, I was left with two separated bowls of three egg whites and three egg yolks. The egg whites, I can saute for breakfast tomorrow. But the egg yolks, what to do with these mucousy, artery-busting yellow devils?
Eeyore Cupcake
After each doing solo for a while, Chimp and Chomp finally joined in force and tangled their banana fingers together in the effort to complete an impossible task: making an Eeyore birthday cupcake for chimp’s friend.
The baking part is the easy part, what we were concerned of were the decorating part. But, after 2 1/2 hours of smeared frosting, monkey tears and deep provoking thoughts on the meaning of life, we finally made something that resembling a mutated eeyore. Hooray to persistence!
Raisin Cornflake Cookies
We crossed our banana fingers a few weeks ago and promised to make our lovely gramp writer, Pak Suparto Brata, a batch of homemade cookies to go with his new Postcards from Bookworms T-shirt. (We actually ran out of his T-shirt size. At least we didn’t run out of flour or any other silly baking slip-up so expected of Chomp.)
In Indonesia, these cookies are quite the standard fare for the Holy Ramadan month and Idul Fitri. While in Singapore or Malaysia, they are usually are stacked up high in every supermarket you walk into during the Chinese New Year season, along with other “traditional” Asian kuih like kuih kapit, kuih loyang (honeycomb cookies), pineapple tarts, and peanut cookies.
The cornflakes in these bite-sized cookies made the texture light, crunchy and kinda addictive, really. Chimp did the orange-zest version for last month’s bake sale, but well, better use the leftover packets of raisins and bottles of rum before Chimp sneaks them out for that new girl in the block.