Streusel coffee cake with peaches... and some photos from the last few months of absence

Its been so long since my last post that I got a surprise logging into blogger - Its got a fresh new look! I think I like it, though its taking me a bit more time to navigate around looking for the right buttons.

I don't really have a good reason for not blogging the last few months.  Its not like I've stopped having fun in the kitchen - I just haven't been motivated to take photos and documenting the experience.  One contributing factor is I've been baking / cooking more towards the evening so there is not much daylight available for pictures, and I still haven't quite figured out how to work around the mood lighting we have at home.  Another "excuse" (if marginally acceptable) is the unbearably hot and extremely humid summer weather we've been getting here in Hong Kong - it makes me lazy!  Though it also means we've been getting quite a bit of days with clear blue skies - see photos below (part of the Victoria Harbor taken from the 75th floor of International Commerce Centre;).  Ironically, as I'm writing this the sky outside is turning grey and gloomy, and a thunderstorm is clearly brewing...

Let's me get back to the title of this blog before we continue to digress: I made a peach streusel coffee cake last Saturday afternoon and managed to squeeze in this shot (below) next to the window  right before sunset.  I had some peaches at home that were fully ripen, and found this recipe on the internet: http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/peach-streusel-coffee-cake.html.  Its the first time I've made something with streusel - I used 1/4 instead of 1/3 cup of brown sugar specified in the recipe as I didn't want something too sweet.  In my next attempt I would also reduce the amount of granulated sugar slightly as well.  The coffee cake was moist and blended beautifully with the peaches and streusel.  Truly perfect for an afternoon snack with coffee or tea, especially after a good swim under clear blue skies!  

So what else have I been up to this summer?  I only have a couple of fairly decent shots to share; mostly taken late in the evening, so I hope you'll excuse me if the photos are not quite up to standard...

Top right and bottom left: banana walnut cake; 
Top left: unbaked maracon shells; 
Bottom right: completed macaron shells (can't quite remember what I filled it with) 

This was another batch of maracons: plain shells with poppy seeds filled with salted caramel filling. 

Following our impromptu home made pizza experiment, Herr Scherrer & I did continued making more pizzas at home, though with a little more planning:

Impromptu home made pizza

Out of the blue, Herr Scherrer had a sudden inspiration to make our own pizza for dinner last week. I've never attempted preparing pizza dough from scratch so it became an impromptu "experiment".

It was a weekday night after work so we didn't have a lot of time. No time to plan for proper ingredients. It was like a surprise pizza challenge - we had to cope with whatever ingredients we happen to have at home. A quick google search and I found this pizza dough recipe from Jamie Oliver: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pizza-recipes/pizza-dough, and thankfully I had all the ingredients listed in my kitchen. I threw everything into my trusted bread machine and cut the rising time to 45 minutes as we were getting hungry. =P

While I worked on the dough, Herr Scherrrer planned the pizza toppings - he popped his head into the fridge and dug out mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach. Basically whatever he could find! We had a jar of tomato pasta sauce which we spread on the rolled out dough. We also went with our intuition and added olive oil, herb spices, salt and pepper.

The end result? It was surprisingly yummy for an impromptu pizza put together without much planning. Will definitely try it again with different toppings!