Where to start?

Maybe, in the spirit of fairness, I should begin by saying upfront that my flatmate Mona is not a horrid person. Neither is she grossly unreasonable. She is actually quite agreeable and understanding. She doesn’t object to me blasting the heating because she thinks it’s unfair to make me live in cold conditions in the name of electricity-saving, and she doesn’t object to me using the kitchen and cooking at all sorts of odd hours, or frying bacon in the morning and smelling up the whole flat.

We have, however, had oven issues, which came to a head today. She walked in on me making muffins and immediately objected to my use of the oven, very firmly, albeit politely, and explained that the oven ate electricity like a black hole, and that she never used it herself for this reason. Therefore, she said, if I were to keep using the oven, I would have to fork out extra for electricity.

Feeling extremely put-upon I protested (probably weakly, as assertiveness is not my strong suit) that this had not been made clear to me before I moved in, and that I had never ever had problems with using the oven elsewhere before, and that I felt it was a given in ads that said “all bills included, use of kitchen” to mean that I was free to use the oven as I liked. Whereupon I was told that in Mona’s 5 years of flatsharing she had never shared with anyone who used the oven regularly, if at all, and that she had in fact lived in a flat once where her landlord expressly forbade use of the oven because it was expensive.

This rather flabbergasted me so I was kind of speechless for a while. It seemed impossible, and ridiculous, to me to restrict oven use in this flagrant manner, and more importantly, to just assume that I would know about it without making it clear from the start. I pointed out that my frustration in this matter stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t informed of this upfront, and Mona’s (again, apologetic, but firm) counter-argument was that had I told her upfront that I liked baking, and used the oven lots, she would have quoted me a different rent. The oven, she said, cost ten times as much as the gas stove, and she didn’t think it was fair on her to be paying for it since she doesn’t use the oven at all, and she is charging me very cheap rent anyway.

Again, maybe this is just me, but is oven usage really the sort of thing one needs to be clear about when negotiating tenancy?? Maybe I’m naive, maybe I’m just… ignorant, and stupid, but I felt (and still feel) so much that the onus should have been on her to tell me about the oven policy, rather than on me to tell her about my oven habits. Who discusses oven usage when meeting prospective housemates/landlords? For that matter, who has draconian oven policies like this anyway? The most bizarre thing about it all to me was that while Mona seemed to think it was entirely normal, I just… couldn’t (and still can’t) quite wrap my mind about it.

It was pretty clear to me anyway at that point that we were at an icky deadlock; while we both understood where the other person was coming from, we both felt that it was the other who should’ve been upfront about this matter from the start. I was close to tears and I didn’t want to argue anymore, so I told her I would pay the extra during billing periods when I had used the oven, and not when I hadn’t. We had some semi-reconciliatory banter about muffins, and she left me to finish up.

The thing is, financially, I don’t mind paying more, since it is true that my rent is incredibly cheap. I suppose ultimately what really bothers me is that I wasn’t told about this right off the bat. I suppose, at the end of the day, it is one of those frustrating, annoying, hair-tearing matters of principle; whatever principles of fair play I have are screaming out against my capitulation and telling me I have been very unfairly dealt with, that I should fight for the right to use the the oven, as it was on that assumption that I moved in, that I should at the very least stand firm and refuse to pay extra for this month (but do so for future months now that I have been informed).

I don’t know what to do. I tried not to cry about this while baking, though the heart had gone out of me; it was in a very dour and joyless fashion that i finished baking my muffins. I don’t even particularly feel like eating them now (which is good news for my office I guess). I don’t know if I am just being a whiny baby. I don’t know if I should feel as upset and ill-treated as I do. I just… sigh. And I don’t want to write this off as a bad flatshare and go out of my way to keep to myself. I want to try and make this work. We’re both civil and polite people with similar interests, so it must be possible to reach some kind of equilibrium, right?

I rarely post entire recipes, mostly because everything I make is yanked off the internet anyway and I can just link to the originating post. But I will make an exception for these truly mouthwateringly stupendous apple muffins from (where else) smitten kitchen, because I don’t think it’s so much a solo recipe as a technique.

The magic of this set of instructions is that gives you an amazing base for any kind of fruity muffin. I plan to try it with apples and blueberries, peaches, and bananas – unless my colleagues get sick of muffins first…

I have even converted the ingredients to sensible metric measurements, for your convenience!

Apple Muffins
Makes 12 large or 18 medium muffins

140g whole wheat flour
140g all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
113g unsalted butter, at room temperature
95g granulated sugar
95g dark brown sugar, packed
1 large egg, lightly beaten
236ml buttermilk or yogurt
2 large apples, peeled, cored, and coarsely chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 230°C. Grease and flour muffin cups.
2. Mix together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
3. Cream the butter in a large bowl. Add the granulated sugar and 42g of the brown sugar. Beat until fluffy.
4. Add the beaten egg and mix well. Mix in the buttermilk gently. (If you over-mix, the buttermilk will cause the mixture to curdle.) Stir in the dry ingredients, then fold in the apple chunks.
5. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, sprinkling the remaining brown sugar on top of each muffin.
6. Bake for 10 minutes, turn the heat down to 200°C, and bake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool the muffins for 5 minutes in the tin, then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe Notes

• I used all plain flour because I had no whole wheat. It was still yummy, but I suspect it would be even better with whole wheat.
• If you don’t have buttermilk (I didn’t), substitute a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar + however much milk you need to make up the 236ml. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes before using it.
• I used light brown instead of dark brown sugar. It was fine.
• 5 minutes baking time after turning the heat down to 200°C was enough for me. Muffins came out perfect.
• I used an electric handheld mixer for every mixing step up to the buttermilk. I handmixed that plus the dry ingredients, and then gave it another quick blitz with the electric mixer before adding the apples.
• Speaking of buttermilk, when you get to that step, you may feel (as I did) that something has gone horribly wrong because it won’t mix properly. The butter-and-egg mixture kind of floats in the liquid in clumps. Do not panic. It will all even out once you add the flours.
• If you check out the comments at smitten kitchen, you will see that this recipe is virtually endlessly flexible, e.g. you can use sour cream/yogurt instead of buttermilk, doesn’t matter if you have no egg, can sub applesauce for half the butter, throw in a banana or some nuts if you like… really, go wild!

It has been a truly stressful week at work so far for everyone and I have been arriving and leaving nearly an hour early/late every day so far this week (and it’s only Wednesday!) just to make a dent in my workload, so tonight in an omg-i-need-to-destress! moment I chopped up six apples into tiny pieces. And then I made an apple cake. Which is this very moment in the oven as I type, making my little room smell absolutely delicious (thanks, Smitten Kitchen!) and making me very hungry.

Yesterday it struck me all over again, en route to Waterloo to meet Debbie, how placidly British people put up with the craptastic public transport system: the train in front of ours on the Northern line broke down and after being trapped in between Mornington Crescent and Euston for positively ages, we pulled very slowly into Euston, whereupon our driver mumbled sheepishly that, erm, the train at Warren Street was broken and, erm, wasn’t going anywhere, and he reckoned our best bet was to get off here and hop onto the Victoria line instead, because “this train will be here for quite a while”.

And of course with the mass exodus of people from the Northern line onto the Victoria at Euston, human traffic slowed to an epic, molasses-like crawl. Everyone was inching onwards step by step, like a zombie horde, I was pushing 20 minutes late, really hungry, knew there wouldn’t be enough time anymore to grab dinner before having to leg it over to the National Theatre for All’s Well, still stressed from work, and quite cranky as a result; of the innumerable times I have been inconvenienced by the Tube and by TfL as an organisation, this was probably the first time I had seriously considered filing a complaint.

As I occupied myself through the zombie shuffle by wording a polite yet suitably annoyed email in my head, I heard an announcement that there were “minor delays on the Charing Cross branch of the Northern line” and nearly laughed out loud. Suddenly it all struck me as absurdly ridiculous – honestly, if TfL considers a train breaking down and having to throw all their passengers off a bunch of subsequent trains “minor delays”… what complaint can I make that would possibly register? And why is TfL like this? And what’s going to happen in 2012 when the Olympics come here and whole masses of sports fans are trapped on a stuck train together?! /rant

Anyway, I did thankfully make it on time for the play, though Deb and I had no time for dinner and had to grab some Krispy Kremes instead (not the healthiest of substitutions but yummy nonetheless). I’ve never seen one of Shakespeare’s problem plays before, and after seeing All’s Well that Ends Well… yeah, I can understand the “problem” tag. It struck me as oddly jarring in critical parts, especially in the portrayals of Helena and Bertram; I can’t decide if I’m supposed to like them, or why Helena likes Bertram at all, as he is sort of a useless prat, or whether it’s misogynistic or positive towards women, there seems to be a bit of both (but then again that vacillation is so Shakespearean, isn’t it – it ended on a really ambiguous, unresolved note too, as Debbie pointed out afterwards). It’s pretty rare that I don’t take to a Shakespeare play right away, the only others I can think of are Taming of the Shrew and Romeo & Juliet (but really, who likes R&J??), but I found it difficult to outrightly enjoy All’s Well and I suspect it has to do most with the play itself rather than the production, which was beautifully staged and generally well-acted. I’m glad I saw it though and did much prefer the conciliatory second half to the first half, but I so much entirely prefer The Winter’s Tale, which is the most recent other Shakespeare I’ve seen.

And to my horror, going to the theatre is starting to remind me of work instead of being a respite from it – perusing the National’s brochure, and looking round their posters and spaces, all these subconscious assessments and comparisons kept popping up in my head, and a never-ending litany of work tasks I needed to accomplish looped nonstop in my thoughts! Yikes.

Everything bad about living alone comes to a head when you are sick. Suddenly the glorious abundance of me-time is not having anyone to fix you a nice simmering pot of porridge with ginger, the freedom to throw my things around and have my place as messy and homey as I like it is helplessly watching the washing pile up and the stains accumulate as I stumble about sleepily, and everything comes to a magnificent standstill in my Sudafed-induced coma. I don’t often feel this, but this morning it hit me anew, this thirsting to have someone else around.

But amid the throb throb throb in my head I’m thankful to have colleagues and a manager who order me to get out and go home when it’s good for me, and who tell me that I should just take Monday off if I’m still ill all weekend and let Monday be my weekend instead. A 12-hour sleep last night and good spell of fresh air this afternoon have put me almost right again; I’ve even regained enough of an appetite to want to bake up another batch of the best peanut butter cookies in the world and hoard them all for myself this time round (having expended a great deal of time and effort baking a birthday cake I don’t even like for colleagues last week; I was told it was delish, but it tasted of walnutty coffee to me, and all I could think of while eating it was dangit why ruin perfectly good coffee cake with walnuts? more importantly, why had this horror been perpetrated at my hands in my very own kitchen? oh the things i do to please the crowd)

Before I go off on another tangent and sound like I bake all the time (I really don’t. I just write about it because it’s the most interesting thing I do which isn’t work, sleep, and watching old anime) – work is really picking up, and I find myself now at the unwelcome yet not wholly dissatisfying point of having so much to accomplish I am unable to keep it all in my head and have to keep very detailed little notes and reminders in Outlook. There is a funny little joy to signing your name to an official letter, to having something you wrote approved, and the perverse writerly part of me thinks I will always enjoy this aspect of marketing most – writing the copy, writing things to be printed, creating the bit of text that will sell the show – it’s silly, I know, but I feel I will never get tired of it, not in the way that I can imagine getting tired of many other things.

But fortunately for all parties concerned, I am too tired to properly wax lyrical about my work right now – so medicine, and bed. (Maybe cookies first.)

I could get used to this – unseasonably warm weather on weekends, as recompense for crappy weekday weather when I’m in the office with an unlimited supply of hot tea anyway, hanging out with one of my oldest dearest friends as if time had hardly passed, going out for yummy food (Jamie’s Italian at Canary Wharf is every bit as good as the one in Oxford – though i have to disagree in principle with the idea of serving bucatini carbonara – it just does not taste right for some reason), walking the streets of London aimlessly once more – something I haven’t done for a while.

In between hanging out with Wanyun and Andy this weekend I spent an afternoon baking coffee walnut cake for an office birthday tomorrow, as it had been brought to my attention that that was said birthday-person’s favourite cake, but it is strange baking something you don’t actually like (I don’t like walnuts). I feel like I can’t tell if the cake is good because it tastes… well, like something I don’t like! Not repulsive, or horrendous, or anything like that, but just not my thing. And as I am still pretty rubbish, sadly, at dealing with layer cakes, I wound up having to carve my cake up into a funky hexagonal shape so that the sides would be even. This problem is mostly caused by the annoying fact that my two cake tins, which purport to be 9″ and were bought from different stores, are in fact of slightly differing sizes, meaning either Tesco or the little cookware store in Brixton are liars >:O

Also, how does one transport a whole cake on a 1.5 hour public transport commute without a cake box/cake stand/device made to transport a cake? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Red Velvet Cake is one of life’s great mysteries (to me). It has an unpinpointable taste that makes it impossible to describe what kind of cake it is. I don’t think it’s chocolatey enough to be chocolate, and it’s not a butter cake, nor a sponge cake, nor a pound cake. Also, it owes its renown pretty much entirely to red food colouring, which is ridiculous considering that you could red-food-colour almost any other cake you want. You could even have a red cheesecake if that floats your scarlet-loving boat. And as Deb of Smitten Kitchen (where I got this recipe) points out, red velvet cake could be any other colour you want, so this red thing is really kind of mindboggling.

But, as is also observed by Deb, people loooove red velvet cake. I freely admit to feeling an inexplicable attraction towards it, even when I know that this is an attraction borne entirely of artificial colouring. People especially love it when it is baked in cupcake form. Here in the UK, I suspect this is due to the famed Hummingbird Bakery’s version of it (they do do a cake form but I far more often hear people talk about their red velvet cupcakes). And as I was after an impressive dessert recipe for my colleagues to commemorate my last days of work at my current theatre, I decided I should finally give red velvet cake a go. I shan’t reproduce the recipe here because I pretty much used the one from Smitten Kitchen word for word (except for some quanitity adjustments for a smaller cake), but I shall have a good long rant about the painstaking process that is cake-baking…

Which segues nicely to how not to bake a cake, point 1: when a recipe tells you to lump some butter in the bottom of your pan and place pan in oven “for a few minutes until butter melts”, don’t let your butter burn, as I rather stupidly did! If you, like me, associate the smell of burnt butter with popcorn and movies, this will make your cake smell of popcorn and movies. And taste a little like it too (the bits of it that came into contact with the burnt butter bottom, anyway). Point 2: when the recipe says to line your pan with parchment paper, there’s probably a reason for it… it would’ve made my cake NOT taste like popcorn, at the very least >__>

I also struggled almightily with the components of the recipe itself. Who has 3 cake tins lying around? Seriously? Well I don’t… and on top of that, the UK doesn’t contain cake flour, canola oil or white vinegar. Cake flour I can understand because I’ve never heard of it in my life, but canola oil and white vinegar definitely exist in Singapore (the oil at least I’m sure of!), so what gives, London? I wound up reducing the recipe by one-third and making it one fat layer instead of a few, then slapping all the frosting on top of my one fat layer, and using vegetable oil in place of canola, the latter of which turned out to be an icky mistake :/ it’s not as disastrous as it could’ve been. But there’s definitely a strange, lingering, oily aftertaste to the cake. Argh! Next time I shall try it with rapeseed oil instead, which is apparently the closest thing the UK has to canola (and I didn’t bother doing this research before going out grocery shopping, because I had no idea canola oil didn’t exist here… annoying country differences).

In the absence of a standing electric mixer with a bowl that the recipe called for, I had to make do with a handheld mixer instead. I don’t think it really made a difference in the end, but I did find myself having to juggle a lot more things at one go. Oh and I had no white vinegar. Did I mention that already? I highly doubted that malt vinegar would be quite the same, so I substituted lemon juice, which… I suspect wasn’t strong enough because the expected tangy taste is barely there at all. I suppose it is quite possible that my lemon juice, being Tesco house brand, is of substandard quality.

And then! After all was done and the cake was in the oven, and I had washed up and wiped the table and was feeling good about it all, I realised to my horror that I had forgotten to add vanilla to the cake. Cue panic removal of the cake pan from oven, throwing in vanilla, and mixing it up in the pan itself, totally ignoring the fact that it had started to bake and bits of crusty top were forming. Alas. I don’t know if this really affected the cake much, but I would rather advise that you not do it if possible to avoid…!

Happily, it didn’t turn out all disastrously – the middle of the cake (i.e. everywhere that didn’t touch the popcorny burnt-butter sides and bottom) actually tastes pretty good. If you, erm, try to ignore the faint oily aftertaste. And the cream cheese frosting is golden. This is hands down the best frosting I have ever made in my life. Not that I’m very experienced at frosting, but this is really, really good, and so easy; I’m definitely nicking the same frosting for other cakes!

My last day of work at the current place isn’t till next week. I had deliberately made an early trial run of this cake with the idea in mind that I would definitely screw up and need a second run to perfect it for my colleagues T____T I can’t decide whether I’m happy or not to have been proven right. But at least it doesn’t taste so terrible that I can’t eat it. And now that you all know what not to do when making red velvet cake, you can all have a good laugh at me and hopefully go off and make lots of lovely red velvet cake yourselves with Smitten Kitchen’s fantastic recipe, which I can sample in future ♥

Okay, baking-type people, help me out here with this conundrum. I tried to bake cocoa-based brownies the other day (I prefer cocoa brownies to chocolate because they tend to come out fudgy, which I like, rather than cakey, which… well, I might as well bake a cake then, right?). I popped my butter, cocoa and sugar into a bowl, and set the bowl in a wide skillet of warm water to melt together. Only it didn’t, not properly anyway. Instead of the smooth melty substance I was expecting I got a kind of lumpy, half-solid mush, and nothing ever really melted. Sugar grains definitely didn’t. I attempted to bake it anyway, and predictably, it emerged from the oven like… hot lumpy half-solid mush. The taste was fine, but the texture was completely wrong. I could feel the sugar grains and cocoa powder separately, and the butter kind of leaked all over the place as a greasy mess.

What went wrong? I’ve made this recipe before with the exact same method and measurements, with good results, so it can’t be the recipe. Unless I grossly mis-measured something, in which case – what would it have been? Sugar? Cocoa? Or was it that my hot water bath wasn’t hot enough/water level wasn’t high enough? I really like this recipe and want to re-attempt it, so if anyone has any idea what can cause your ingredients not to blend properly like that, please float them. I’m baffled. (I am not a baker by nature, I’m more of a throw-random-things-together kind of cook…)