Meet My New Babes – Ms Miserable Oaty, Ms Sweet and Sour and Little Ms Corny

It was a busy weekend as usual. But the highlight was my three new bakes. This time round, I scored 2 out of 3, an improvement over the pathetic 1 out of 3 two weeks ago. These were all new babes, uh.. bakes, I mean -- oat bran muffin, lemon squares and sweet corn cup cakes.

As the name says it all, Ms Miserable Oaty failed miserably. I’m still not sure why… somehow, my lucks with muffins have not been good recently. I followed the recipe to a T but the sides and top were burnt and the inside just couldn’t be baked fully. It was edible but just didn’t look good. Maybe next time I’ll add some flour since the recipe only called for oat bran, egg white, sugar, oil and applesauce. Or maybe I think I may have set the temperature wrongly – an absolutely no no for any baker.

Anyway, let me move on to happier bakes – yes, my first attempt at making lemon squares while not perfect, was nice (the real verdict will be out when I get the guinea pigs in my office to try them). But Ms Sweet and Sour (left) can certainly do with a makeover or some stitching up. Parts of the topping cracked and some parts were too ‘wet’. And even though I cut down the sugar by 30%, it was still too sweet. I realised I should have waited for the base to cool down before I put the white chocolate chips so that they will not melt and result in the topping being too wet. Or I could add a bit more flour.

The last bake is sweet corn cupcakes. This was supposed to be a corn swissroll. But I was too lazy and decided to just pour the batter into paper cups – and voila, Little Ms Corny (below) was born. To confess, I’m a terrible baker, I couldn’t fold in the flour properly and didn’t stir the melted butter evenly so much so that there was too much butter at the bottom of the bowl. But through the mistake, I realised those at the top with very little butter tasted much better and lighter. This means I can cut down on the butter by at least 30%.

Even though I’m really tired, I’m really happy. No time to try new bakes as I’ll have to concentrate on baking cookies for Chinese New Year ; )