u/damester104

Recipe: here

For Geometric week, I wasn't that much inspired at first since my attitude towards baking was that I wasn't so concerned with the look of my bakes as much as the taste, think the opposite of what Amaury Guichon would do, but when I remembered about Penrose tiling patterns, I got to work.

Cutting cookies is such a hassle but I also realized the labor of love that goes into handmade cookies like these. The flavor is very plain since they're sugar cookies with just a touch of pandan and sakura flavoring for the green and pink ones, respectively. They were also firm to bite, and some of the pink sakura cookies got a little toasty since I forgot to monitor their baking time. Overall, I got to learn cutting cookies, rolling them in a uniform thickness, and managing their soft/hardness by bringing them in and out of the fridge.

Added FYI for the slightly math nerds, here is a link for Penrose tiling. Long story short, if you had tiling that were uniformly squares or triangles or hexagons, they were periodic i.e. their patterns repeat, whereas with Penrose tiling, they were aperiodic, i.e. their patterns do no repeat.

Recipe: here

For low sugar week, I went with finding recipes that use sugar alternatives (as also said in this week's preview post), and I landed on dates, since I wasn't keen on modifying existing recipes and just lowering the sugar content. Found a decent date cake recipe online, and so I tried. The result is a pleasantly sweet and tender cake that you could brag about being "no added sugar" since the dates cover the sugar part.

And for added information, the recipe calls for 9 oz. of dates, which is around 250 grams, and this source has stated that 2 dates worth 48 grams has around 32 grams of sugar, so that's two-thirds of the date being just sugar. If we apply that ratio to the cake recipe, then the whole cake recipe has around 167 grams of sugar from the dates alone, and dividing by say 16, each cake slice has approximately 10.5 grams - not bad for something advertised as no added sugar.

Recipe: here

For breakfast week, I wanted something savory since I always pick sweet and this prompt was just the perfect time to go the other way. But upon searching for savory bakes, I always find the ones I liked to utilize puff pastry, which I don't prefer to handle especially in the now sweltering heat of Southeast Asia. So I just adopted a brioche recipe and added a filling, and for this case, I chose processed cheese and skinless longganisa, which is just a sausage without a casing.

The only thing I didn't follow on the recipe is how the butter was incorporated. Without a mixer, brioche dough is much more tedious to work with and knead by hand due to its stickiness, but because I had prior breadmaking knowledge, I had the idea to just knead the sticky dough whilst coating my hands in softened butter. This way, I could knead the dough and incorporate the butter at the same time. I approximately did the kneading for around 30-40 minutes, rested, and then split the dough in 12 because the pack of longganisa I bought had 12 pieces.

I simmered the sausages in a small amount of water and covered it with a lid to essentially steam it and cook it internally, and then once the steam has dissipated, added a tiny bit of neutral onto the pan to shallow fry it and have the outside get some color. Once cooked, I let them cool, sliced sticks of processed cheese, and proceeded to wrap each sausage and cheese in the split dough balls. Arranged them in a tray and baked as per recipe.

The brioche is unassumingly tasty, not the kind that bursts with flavor, but because of the egg and fat content that's satiating to the taste buds. The sausage and cheese just adds enough flavor and salt to the bite to make it even a better experience.