Sanctuary from The Mad World
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. - Orson Welles

Servings: about 40 pieces.

My first encounter of Gougère was in a restaurant in Dijon. Sure I’d had Choux Pastry in the form of eclairs and Indonesian Kue Sus (choux pastry filled with vanilla cream) but I’d not tasted the savoury ones before and I was blown away.

Little did I know that it was so easy to make. This is my first attempt using the fool-proof recipe from French Laundry (Modified). I ate a few of them for lunch with parsley omelette. Very complimentary.

Step-by-step instruction can be viewed here.

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I used to love the buttery and crumbly Walker’s Scottish shortbread but recently, I am bothered by the ‘factory’ after taste. I scoured the internet to find a recipe because shortbread is actually very easy to make especially with this trick. Instead of rolling the dough, use an ice-cream scoop to form the soft dough into rounds. No sticky dough on plastics, no smears on counter-tops!

Some recipes call for the use of rice or corn flour but I think it’s crumbly and ‘melt-in-the-mouth’ enough with all-purpose flour. So I skip it. It’s important to use the sea-salt though. It truly makes a ton of difference.

The recipe below is modified from the wonderful 101 Cookbooks.

Ingredients:
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A break from the never-ending London stuff…

Thanks to A, my search for the perfect one is well and truly over. I know I tried various versions here but, gentle reader, this is it.
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I was long due to settle the cookie debate in NYT brought to my attention. I am not keen on using NYT’s recipe because I do not want to stock up on the flours so I chose Chubby Hubby’s chocolate laden recipe without realizing that it is not strictly cookies but brownie cookies. I was suspicious of the 35g flour but for some reason just went and made it.

But I didn’t regret it one bit! It was amazing. Even my husband who doesn’t like sweet things couldn’t stop munching on it. The cookie takes on an interesting crispy outer layer which yields to melting , chewy sponginess of brownies. There is no further need to discuss the chocolaty flavour. Lindt never fails me.

S, CH’s wife, made the cookies to sandwich banana ice cream. I can just imagine how perfect such texture to accompany ice cream.

Modified from Chubby Hubby which is in turn from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course.

Meanwhile…. the quest for chocolate chip cookies goes on.

Ingredients:
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Servings: 15 small muffins

Reading a post on savoury cheese and sausage muffins, I realized I’ve never made savoury muffins before and I can imagine it’s going to be delicious for my weekday lunch. So I tweaked my trusted muffin recipes from Marie Claire: Breakfast by replacing some of the flour with corn flour for gritty textures to match the savoury flavours. This is it:

Ingredients:
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