Pizza Heaven!

If I could have pizza everyday of the year, I'll be the happiest guy alive! Such is my love for the Italian creation that I consider it a shame that I don't have a recipe for good ol' homemade pizza. Don't get me wrong - the authentic Italian ones I managed to gobble down in Italy many years ago still lives in the memory of my taste buds as the best pizzas ever. But unfortunately, the pizzas available here where I live are sad shadows of their Italian cousins; oily, overpriced and ever shrinking.

My mum did make pizzas in the past but somehow the dough always seemed to have a pungent yeast odour even after baking and the smell really put me off both eating and attempting homemade pizzas. But my mum did chance upon a recipe that didn't seem too heavy on the yeast and was pretty different from the previous recipes we attempted.

So we gave it a go today!

I was over the moon when the pizzas came out of the oven perfectly done and without that horrid yeast odour! We went for two flavours - tuna and a sort of spicy curry chicken - on a thin crust pizza that was crispy but not too dry and hard. The best thing about pizzas is their versatility..the number of different topping combinations at your local pizzeria should give you an idea of what I mean! It just never gets stale when it comes to pizza toppings.

Almost ran out of cheese for the last one! Guess I got a little too cheese happy when I was loading on the toppings and the cheese oh glorious cheese for the first two pizzas...can you blame me seriously?! Give the recipe a try..I promise you won't regret it. Parmesan and mozzarella heaven beckons!

Summertime Muffins

I had this recipe on my mind ever since I saw it on a blog a couple of weeks back and I knew I just had to try it someday - the sooner the better! However, as it turned out, I would only get to try this out about 2 days ago what with all the other things I had to strike off my to-do list first.

Actually the pictures that came along with the blog post for this recipe drew me in and made me go "I have to try this!". I love the lemon and blueberry combination anywhere and I think lemons go well with almost all berries anyway!

The recipe was by Ms Garten, whose TV shows I'm a big fan of, so that meant I was even more eager to try this one out! I wasn't too sure about using fresh blueberries though as the kind of blueberries I get here tend to be more tart and sour than sweet, and the last thing I wanted were sour muffins!

So out went the fresh berries and in came the dried ones which apparently were coated in sugar or something as they were terribly sweet...more evidence that the natural stuff is always better for you! What I loved about this recipe was the ease of it - mix dry into wet ingredients, combine both and you're pretty much done. Less mess and less clean-up equals happier me.

One problem I had - that was entirely my fault - was that the muffins had quite large tunnels and empty pockets inside. I think this was due to over-mixing the batter when I was adding the flour to the wet ingredients and the amount of gluten formed probably caused this "tunneling" effect.

Other than that, I think this is a great recipe that should be in your arsenal. The muffins were light, not too sweet and had that summer time feeling that is quite simply irresistible!