Green Tea Cupcakes & Bread Knots!

So today is Friday... You know what that means... BAKING DAY!!!

I wasn't intending to make cupcakes until this afternoon. I just thought, "what would it taste like if I added green tea to cupcake batter?" So I made it right after I came back from class. (I had to go to Tesco to buy flour and other stuff which I'll write about later in this post.)

The hardest part of making these was when I ground the tea leaves. I have a green tea leaf mill and I didn't know how much I needed for this so I kept grinding until I thought was enough. It took about 5-10 mins just for grinding. I had to have several rests because my arms hurt. :P

Anyway, I added green tea to the flour/sugar/salt mixture until it looked light green, then added egg,milk and oil, put the batter into silicone cupcake cups (bought @ Poundland) (very nice products; you don't have to put oil or anything because it doesn't stick and you can use it over and over again.), put some toppings I thought might be good, (in the photo below from top right: sunflower seeds, not ground green tea, no topping, oats, drinking cocoa, pumpkin seeds) and baked them. All the toppings were delicious (yes I ate all of the ones with toppings.) But cocoa and oats and sesame seeds were especially good.

 Here is the same batter baked in honey jar. My Singaporean classmate asked me if I knew about "brandied cherry cupcakes" and I googled it later and found that it was cupcakes baked in jars. So I tried that with my honey jar. It turned out a bit messy because the batter touched the sides of the jar and it doesn't look as elegant as the one I googled but its a similar thing, I think. (It just dawned on me that the reason why I got the urge to make cupcakes was because my class mate asked about this.)

 Here are more of the same cupcakes. No topping.

 After the cupcakes, I began my bread baking, which I was initially intending to do. I've been watching video podcasts called Daily Bread by Harwood Podcast network and this one seemed easy and pretty so I decided to make this one today. This was the first time to actually KNEAD a bead with my hands. The last time, I just used my spoon. I liked the feel of kneading the bread because the dough was near body temperature (because yeast doesn't activate properly if you use cold water). It was sort of an intimate moment. And the dough turned out good, unlike last time when I had to keep adding flour because I didn't know how much 1 cup of flour was in grams.

The only thing that was a problem was that I don't have a big enough baking tray to put all 16 knots on. So I had to bake 8 at a time. It turned out fine in the end. I think I'll go to Poundland tomorrow to buy another baking tray. Then I can leave one in the kitchen so that others can use it when they use the oven. Right now, no one is clever enough to do so and the oven is dirty as hell.

I finished all my bread baking just in time for the group of Azerbaijanis (the ones who mess up the kitchen every week.) to come in. I reported them to the welfare officer on Monday and she said she'll tell the resident tutor to talk to him firmly (that will be the 3rd time) and if that doesn't work, I'll have to tell her again. Wonder how the kitchen will look like tomorrow morning.

I've been eating up most of the food on my section of the fridge this week. This is because I wanted to clean out my place. The fridge was starting to smell like public toilets. Only sauces and a bag of brussel sprouts were left today. I wiped out my part and put in the stuff I bought from tesco. I didn't buy any veg because I discovered there is a "real food shop" and I want to try the veg there. I'll go to that shop this weekend.

Stuff I bought from tesco were; milk, flour, low fat fake-butter (substitute for butter when baking/cooking) green olives (I want to bake Olive Bread sometime in the near future) and paprika.

For tonight's dinner, I had spaghetti. Just spaghetti, vegetable oil, cheddar cheese and 3 olives. This is because I didn't want to use my brussel sprouts (they are for my lunch tomorrow) and I wanted to try the olives.
Let me tell you, olives were invented by Gaga. (I'm not going to say god because I don't believe in that shit) They are absolutely delish! Even though I bought the cheapest tesco ones (79p), they taste real good. I remember not liking them when I was little but now that I'm appreciating many new foods, I think they are really nice. I even tried kimchi at my Korean friends' house last week and found it good.

I think I'm falling love with food. :) <3