Butter Chicken Fail?

I have realized that Indian Butter Chicken needs an awful lot of cumin.Then again, I don't ever really use cumin, and I wasn't supposed to use it in the first place >.<

Anyways, I decided on a whim this morning that for lunch the family would have some deliciously cultural Butter Chicken. The only other time I have eaten butter chicken was when my sister was in grade 9 and brought it home from her foods class with a piece of naan bread soaking in it. It was delicious though! Before I ever saw it, I thought it was a whole chicken thoroughly soaked in melted butter and roasted before being fried in a large vat of boiling butter. Now I know that 1: Butter burns like heck so you can't fry anything with pure butter and 2: Butter Chicken is like bite sized chicken in this spiced cream/milk and tomato sauce.

I subscribed to that allrecipes newsletter thing and because I rarely check my email, about once a month I have to go through it and check about 180 messenges or so from allrecipes :( The good thing is, I found that SUPER easy butter chicken recipe! It calls for cream, garam masala and tandoori masala, which I had absolutely none of, but that was ok. Here's my altered version, but I'll post the original at the bottom of my post. This makes enough for 2-4, depending on how much you eat.

This is the substitute for the garam masala. Mix all the ingredients together ahead of time in a custard cup-super easy! It makes approx. the amount needed for this recipe.

1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp crumbled bay leaves
1/16 tsp ground clove

 For the tandoori, just use a guideline of 75% cumin and 25% paprika. Now you're set to go!

Butter Chicken Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

3 1/2 tablespoons flour

2 cups of regular milk

1/4 cup butter

1 cup of tomato sauce

3/4 tsp garam masala

salt to taste

cayenne pepper (optional-I left it out)

1 cup frozen veggies

1 tablespoon butter

1 or 1/2 onion, minced

2 tsp garlic cloves, minced

11/2 - 2 cups diced cooked chicken breast cubes

1 tablespoon (or to taste) tandoori masala

Because I have no cream, I used the white sauce technique with the olive oil, flour and milk to thicken the milk into a cream-like consistency. (At least as close as I can get to it)

Just heat up the oil in a medium saucepan a bit and add the flour. Whisk well until it looks like a lumpy ugly paste of sorts. (Sorry, no pictures) Make sure you stir this constantly because it will burn incredibly easily. If the paste looks more like flour frying in a bunch of oil, add a bit more flour. Cook the paste for about 5 minutes, or until it doesn't smell starchy anymore. Then turn the heat off and SLOWLY, gradually add the milk, mix well so there are no lumps at all. Now the milk might seem too runny, but just start heating it up on medium again and let some extra water evaporate while whisking it. It doesn't burn as easily at this stage so you can leave it for short periods at a time.

While your cream is processing, melt the 1 tablespoon butter on low and slowly caramelize the onions with the garlic.. It will take a while, but you can leave it for a while without it burning.

When your milk has thickened enough for your taste, add the butter, tomato sauce, salt and cayenne. NOT the veggies yet! Now bring it on a LOW simmer (Don't want it to burn!) and let it simmer for 30 minutes, stirring ocassionally.

When your onions are done, set it aside. Now toss your chicken with the tandoori masala (if you really want-curry powder works too) in a bowl and set aside. I bought a rotisserie chicken from my supermarket and this was the leftovers. There wasn't nearly enough, so I added a bunch of frozen cooked shrimp as well.

After simmering for 30 minutes, add the onions/garlic to the sauce and simmer for another 12 minutes, adding the veggies halfway. Meanwhile, saute your chicken in a bit of oil in the skillet or wok. The shrimp gave off an awful lot of water, so I had to cook the water off before adding the sauce. Mix the sauce together with the chicken. If it seems to watery, cook some of the water off until it is your desired consistency.

Place on a serving plate and garnish with cilantro. Eat it with some rice, or this even makes a great Butter Chicken sandwich. :) Enjoy guys!

It looks a tad like stew...

 What do you think? Win, or fail?

Want the regular recipe? It makes about 50% more, so it will ask for more ingredients than the altered version. CLICKIE

Amigurumi Love

***sidenote: Blogger kept crashing on me, so this is my third time trying to publish something today***

They are the cutest little bastards EVER! An Arigurumi is a small, crocheted doll. The word originates from Japan, and they are usually in the form of some adorable animal. Here in North America, the term Amigurumi tends to refer more to larger crocheted animals.

You should tell by now that I am practically dying to make an Arigurumi doll right now. I definately cannot handle the Cuteness (with a capital C) of these. My knowledge is a bit limited--I barely know how to crochet, although I have made a white crocheted hat before. What I do know is that it is quite simple. I've read a few articles on what you need to get to start your own animal.

1. Materials
Materials are just a bit vague-and you'll probably have them if you crochet a bit.

A size G/4.25mm or F/3.75mm hook.
- These are the most commonly used hooks for arigurumi, But sometimes it can go up to an 8H/5mm hook. If the pattern doesn't specify, look at your yarn label and get a 1 or 2 smaller a size than recommended.

Yarn
- Typically, it's worsted weight. But some patterns will tell you what to get, and if you're making your own pattern; what the hey! Get any yarn you want!

Yarn Needle
- The yarn needle is used to sew different parts of the amigurumi together; like the tail, or the ears.

Polyester Fiberfill
-Basically: stuffing. A bag of fiberfill will probably give you plenty enough to make a bunch of these guys.

2. Stitches
 -Some must know stitches/techniques are:
              - Magic Circle
              - Single Crochet
              - Decreasing
              - Increasing
              - Chain (obviously)
              - Working in the round

I think that's it! Amigurumi basics, that's all. I found a wonderful other blog teaching you these things: Click Here. You could also look on Youtube as well. For free patterns, Google them. There's tons floating around on the internet. I recomend searching the lionbrand Amigurumi patterns. They have pictures of the finished product and look pretty easy.

I can't wait for the weekend! Right now for the finals coming up, I barely have any room to cram info in my head during schooldays. D: Plus I need to finish that knitting.

I hope you guys DO try this out. It's really fun, I've been told, and all the end products look great!


ARE NOT THEY CUTE? :)

Half a Knitters MILE stone!!!

Dear all: I have reached half a knitting milestone. That is all.

I rather like this picture

it goes on and on and on...

It's actually big enough to make a dress

Do you see how big the thing is? No? Well, here's less of a pretty picture for comparable sizing
                                                                     
                                                                     

And another less than pretty pic

 Not bad for an amateur knitter methinks :)    


I finished these about two days ago. HALFWAY done! I came across this knitted stole pattern (I know-- 'stole' sounds weird) and blindly started it. It only took a quick trip to Wal-Mart for a big ball of yarn the color my receiver wanted and then 30 minutes desperately searching through my cardboard box of supplies before this project got underway.

When I first started this, it had been way too long since I had touched a knitting needle. It took about 2 months to get the border done because I kept undoing it. *sigh* But then it took about a month of furious knitting before the project reached that size.

This pattern calls for two 2 1/2 foot pieces to be knitted and then grafted together on the top with a Kitchener stitch. Let me tell you; I have no idea what the Kitchener stitch is. I know it vaguely connects to sock knitting, and that it all. But that's what Youtube and Google is for, right? Well, I moved my piece of knitting to another needle that I wasn't using. And suddenly

TADA! HALF A MILESTONE!

This stole is my first project that I have attempted to really, truly complete. My first big project, anyway. Now, unfortunately, comes the heavy other half of this particular milestone. Another 2 1/2 foot piece.

pathetic.

 What I really find amazing is that I finished the border of the second part in just 2-3 hours. Which is great compared to two months and considering how slow I am.

      Here's how the new piece looks ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~->

 <~-~-~-~-~-~-~   And compared to the big piece

 It's quite teensy. But to think of it, it looks like a great ruffle. :)

As I have said; that is all.

Nommable roots?

EAT IT! Chock full o' healthy good stuff (of god knows what) and chewy-ishly yummy at the same time. Know what it is? ? Cassava. Cassava roots, in a cake. I've come across a couple odd cakes or two, (make way for POTAHTO cake!)  but this one was sort of familiar, because it's also called Cassava Bibinka. *What a coincidence! I like bibinka!* Cassava Cake is from the Philipines, where cassava roots are abundantly found. Here in North America, not so much. Except maybe in Mexico, I've never been there. I found this wonderfully easy cassava cake recipe, which only requires you to take a short trip down to your local Filipino goods store or T&T if you have it there.

***If you don't want to scroll all the way through the posts, I'll put the recipe in a clump down below.***

What you need is;

2 packages of frozen grated Cassava.
1 bottle Macapuno (coconut strips)
1 can condensed milk
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup butter/margarine, melted.

You'll need to defrost the cassava packages in the fridge overnight, or in the microwave, first. A bunch of water will leak out, so be sure you put it in a bowl. For the Macapuno, you can just use 1/2 the bottle, if you've got a superbly keen addiction of sweetness, feel free to put the whole bottle in!

preservatives much? ;)

This makes a 2-quart dish of cassava cake. First, preheat your oven to 350F. Then mix together your melted butter and cassava in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. This could also be done with a mixer, but being lazy, I just stirred the heck out of it with a wooden spoon. The butter MUST MUST MUST be really well mixed in! Or else you'll form pools of melted butter on the top of the cake whilst you're baking and it'll basically fry the top of your cake. Now mix in the condensed milk and coconut milk:

GLOOP!! Condensed milk.

This reminds me of Coconut Bubble Tea. Mmmm...

And add your Macapuno strings.

WORMS???

Now mix it into something cake-batter looking.

Lumpy cakes!

I lined my glass baking dish on the bottom with banana leaves, since I had some on hand. If you don't have any, just grease the bottom and sides very, very, well. This cassava cake likes to stick.

That leaf doesn't look so square :(

Now pop it in the oven!

Bake it for 1-1/2 hours. The original recipe said 45 minutes, but it wasn't even close to done. I suggest you just put it in for at least an hour, and bake it until it doesn't look like soup in the middle anymore.

Voila!

Golden brown to perfection! (I think) A tip: some people like to put cheese on top of it. If you want to try, just lightly sprinkle it with cheese and pop it back into the oven for 5 minutes or until the cheese melts.

I hope everyone tries this, because it's a culturally different type of cake, and something worth trying. Bye!


Oh, and the condensed version of the recipe:

2 packages Frozen Grated Cassava (thawed)

1 Bottle Macapuno (coconut strings)

1 Can Condensed Milk

1 Can Coconut Milk

¼ Cup Butter (melted)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix together the cassava and the butter until thoughroughly combined. Mix in everything else, and pour into a well-greased/banana leaf line 2 quart baking dish. Bake for 1-1 1/2 hours.

MERRY CHRISTMAS WORLD!

Merry xmas!!!! yesterday was really busy, so I'll be posting up the stuff I made today. A real quick post today basically, it's christmas after all! I made bread pudding and eggnog yesterday.

The bread pudding was ok, but it wasn't completely cooked yet, maybe that's why it was  mushy. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

10 slices white bread, cut into cubes
1/4 cup margarine, melted
1-2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 eggs
3/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups hot milk
1 pinch ground nutmeg

 

 

First, preheat the oven to 375F. Then, cut your bread up into cubes. Then mix the cinammon and butter together (1 or 2 tsp of cinnamon to your taste) and pour it over your bread cubes in a bowl. Toss the cubes before transferring it to a 2 quart baking dish. The dish might seem a bit small, but trust me, it's just the right size.

See? Exactly right.

In the same bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until dissolved. Stir in the vanilla and salt and whisk the hot milk in GRADUALLY. You don't want the egg to curdle!

No curdles :O!

Now pour the mix all over your bread cubes...

And sprinkle the nutmeg over top before leave it to soak for 5 minutes.

Before 5 minutes

After 5 minutes. Look different?

Pop it in the oven for 35-45 minutes, or when you insert a knife in the middle, it comes out clean. While this was baking I prepared the turkey

TURKEY!

It was basic; chop up some onions, celery and carrots with some baby potatoes to fill the bottom of the roasting pan and rub the turkey with a lil' salt and pepper and butter. Ta-da! By then, the bread pudding was cooked, at least I thought it was. You see, I didn't check it :( Oops!

Not bad at all

I popped the turkey in for about 3 1/4 hours then made my eggnog. 

Ingredients
6 eggs
3 cups milk
8 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, ground

Pretty thick, considering we didn't use cream, but make sure you mix and refridgerate it well. THIS CONTAINS RAW EGGS. Anyways, in a large bowl, beat the eggs using an electric beater 

 

 

By turn, add milk & sugar.

Sugah

Milk

Continue beating until mixture thickens slightly. Add in the vanilla essence & ground nutmeg.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled (at least 3 hours).

Eggnog :)

Looks good? It's pretty good, but I suggest you cut the vanilla down by half or by 1 tsp at least, it's strong. Later on in the day, we finally got to eat that cheesecake! I took a picture of it finally.

See them blotches? :S

I didn't put any coolwhip on top--too lazy--but the icing was from that snowman decorating cupcake thing from a day or two ago. It was scrumptious, by the way, but we only ate half of it. 

I wish everyone a merry Christmas and a fantastically Happy Holiday! Don't forget it's boxing Day tomorrow :)

Day 3!

Baking fiesta day 3! I only got to make 1 thing today, but I think it's gorgeous-looking. :) Do you know the book Hello! Cupcake; by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson? There's this cute cupcake decor for Christmas with cupcakes iced and decorated as snowmen and trees. As you should already have guessed, I'm making that today!

If you look on Google, it's actually pretty hard to find a normal, plain vanilla cupcake recipe with no cream or extra pizazz added. It took me a while. Finally, I found one. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients for Cupcakes:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk

 

 ****These bake at 350F. Makes 12 regular cupcakes, 24 mini cupcakes.****

The directions are really simple; basic cake method. 

1. Sift together dry ingredients in separate bowl. 

2. Cream the butter with the sugars together. Mix in vanilla and add eggs in one at a time, beating well after each addition.

3. Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately to the egg mixture, starting with the flour and ending with the flour. 

4. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes for regular cupcakes and 10 minutes for mini cupcakes.

OK, so I didn't have buttermilk on hand. If you don't, just put in about 3/4 of a tablespoon in a measuring cup, then fill it with milk all the way to the 3/4 cup line and let it stand for at least 10 minutes after you mix it.

LOL a bit messy...

For this cupcake project, you need 9 large cupcakes and 7 small cupcakes, or you can adjust the number for the height/amount of trees or snowmen you want to make

CUPCAKES!

Make sure the cupcakes are completely cooled before you start decorating them. Now on to the icing:

I found this most delicious buttercream icing on the internet, from allrecipes.com. Here it is:

Ingredient for Icing

 

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/8 teaspoon salt

4 cups confectioners' sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons milk  

It's really easy: Cream the butter until soft. Add salt and half of sugar gradually, blending after each addition. Then add the egg and vanilla; blend well. It should look like this:

Add remaining sugar, alternately with milk, until of right consistency to spread, beating after each addition until smooth.The final product should look like this:

The final product is a bit yellowish, but it's pretty pale. If you want, you can substitute the egg for two egg whites, or for a stiffer icing, use two egg yolks. The double egg yolks will give it a more definite yellow tinge to it. Now it's time to decorate the cupcakes!

For this you'll just need some coconut and decorative candy, green food coloring and a piping bag with a tip.

Make the snowman first. Here are the cupcakes you need to make the snowmen:

Look at that random iced one

You should have enough to make 2 tall snowmen and one medium snowman. Ice a large cupcake and dip/sprinkle the top with coconut.

Then ice a second large cupcake and dip it in coconut. But this time, put icing on the bottom of it to 'glue' it to the bottom cupcake. Then take a mini cupcake and decorate it's face with sprinkles, candy, gel or something.

Does it look a bit constipated to you?

For the head of the snowman, just 'glue' it on it's side so it looks like a snowman head. Then decorate it. I rolled out some soft candy for the scarf and arms, used icing for the buttons and the chocolate kiss on the top sort of looks like a hat.

C'mon, it looks hatty enough!

Make another one the same as this, then make another one, except take out the middle part for a shorter snowman. Set the snowmen aside. Time for some TREES!

Tint your icing a good shade of green and fill your piping bag with a star-shaped tip.

Just a plastic bag with a plastic tip

BUT the tip is STAR shaped

Now go ahead and 'glue' the trees together. One tall one, 2 medium ones and one baby one. The baby one is just one mini cupcake, so don't worry about that. Make sure you glue them on together first.

 

Now just pipe little star shaped spikes around the edges:

And it should look like this:

Make your other 3 trees, and decorate them if you want. All I did was put a reeses pieces on the top, it looked good enough. Arrange them somewhere, so they look nice.

 Final Product!!

Delicious-looking?

Aw!

Aren't they the cutest things? 

That's all I made today. It took a pretty long time too, and now we're completely out of milk. *Gasp!* I was going to make bread pudding, but the recipe needed 3 cups of milk. :( And I made the bread for it all and everything. Hopefully, I can go shopping tomorrow, last minute xmas shopping too. :P Well, see you!

Day 2!

Baking day 2. Means 3 days until Christmas! Today was the day where I was sort of out of whack. Still, I managed to bake the stuff I wanted to. Lemon bars and cheesecake anyone?

Actually, lets start with this morning. I was planning to wake up early so I could make my lemon bars in the morning. But guess what? I didn't get up until it was almost eleven. Luckily there was leftover soup (and donuts! :D ) in the fridge for lunch , and then I managed to get the lemon bars in the oven before 12:00. That probably explains why they turned out a bit odd. Are lemon bars supposed to taste over the top OH my GOODNESS lemony? It looked OK. Or at least a bit nicer than disgusting. As my sister loves to say: they looked very interesting.

Yeah, the camera's pretty fuzzy, but you get the idea. I put them on this stand thing made up of plastic cups and plates. Not very Christmasy but sufficient enough.

Some more pictures

Haha, the plate's so messy

Best pic of the three. What do you think?

The cheesecake. Where do I start with the cheesecake. How about the frozen cheese? Have you ever frozen cream cheese before? Well, it turns out they lose an awful lot of their moisture and ends up more like ricotta instead of  a creamy spread-like mix that doesn't crumble into bits when you try to work with it. Well, I used it anyway. To tell you, it worked fine. The cheesecake turned out fine too, I guess. I put it in a 10 inch springform pan, that was way too big so the cake resembles a thick pancake, but it wasn't overcooked; so maybe that was the intention of the recipe poster. It looks marbled because I'm making this double layer pumpkin cheesecake. Too bad it's not supposed to be marbled, because it looks like there were random blotches of white from the layer underneath that resurfaced. I knew I didn't pour it in carefully enough. On the upside, that cake is DELICIOUS. It's like pudding or a custard and it tastes absolutely wonderful. I got it out of it's pan and tasted the bits that got stuck onto the pan, and I think it'll be good once I pipe some coolwhip on top of it. I didn't get any pictures (oh no!) Because I just put it in the fridge and I really don't want to take it out after playing around with the spaces in the fridge just so it could fit.

I actually got my baking goal finished early, so I started learning an awesome new song on the piano... The Pirates of the Caribbean theme song! YEAH! I heard it on youtube and it just sounds amazing. Hopefully  I can learn at least 3/4 of it before the winter break, because after winter break are the finals for all my subjects. But here's the video I listened to:

That is just awesome. Awesomeness wrapped in an aura of pure awesome. Just saying :)

Bye for now!