Thlovecarousel: Foodalog: Virgin attempt at Quiche making!

Yes, my hostel has this Buaya week, where it is something like angel and mortal. Hence, I've decided to reward my Buayee aka mortal by baking quiche!

You might be wondering what the hell is a quiche.

Quiche (/ˈkiːʃ/ keesh) is a savoury, open-faced pastry crust with a filling of savoury custard with cheese, meat, fish or vegetables.

Quiche can be served hot or cold. It is part of French cuisine, but is also popular in Britain, particularly as party food.

I got the recipe here :)

Filling

Crust

Ingredients:

Flour ($2.50)

6 extra large eggs ($2.30)

Unsalted butter ($4.95)

Onions ($3.25)

Olive Oil ($6.30)

Bacon ($1.95)

Pure/heavy cream ($4.90)

Nutmeg ($3)

Gouda cheese ($6.70)

White button mushrooms ($3.45 per box)

*not in the picture*

Milk ($2+?)

Salt ($0.45)

Sugar ($2+?)

Water (FOC)

Pepper

So technically, if you look at the amount of ingredients needed for the recipe, you'll only need about $30? haha.

Quite expensive, but still, it's definitely fun (and tiring) to make it!

Since the crust needed more time, I had to make it first.

First, mix the flour, salt and sugar together. You're supposed to use a food processor, but since mine broke down, I had to do it manually. :(

Second, add in half of the frozen butter cubes and mix it (If you have the food processor, you'll have a much easier time than I had). For me, I used a potato masher LOL

*I cut the butter into cubes and frozen them the night before*

Third, add in 3 table spoons of ice cold water. Mix.

Add a tablespoon of water at a time until you get a consistency like below

When you pinch it, it sticks :)

Pardon my red finger, I stained it with food colouring D:

I used 4 tablespoons of water. It doesn't matter if you add more, as long as you don't have too much it'll be fine :)

Fourth, place your dough on a clean surface and knead it! Use your wrist/heel of your palm to push it down and forward. I have no idea how to explain to you, but do you remember people making pasta/bread and they knead the dough? Ya, that HAHAHA

Fifth, wrap it with cling wrap and chill it in the fridge for AT LEAST an hour.

So while waiting for my dough to chill, I went on to make my rainbow cupcakes!

These were for my Buaya aka my angel.

These were the ingredients needed :)

You can get all the relevant information here because I made them before!!

AWESOME RAINBOW-LICIOUS CUPCAKES!

Sixth, bring the chilled dough out and place it on a LIGHTLY flour-ed clean surface.

Seventh, roll it into a log.

I did this because I didn't have a pie/tart pan. So I'm making small ones. Hence I need to split the dough. If you have the pan, just roll it out into one huge ass circle and place it in the pan :)

Eighth, split it into however many parts you desire :D

Ninth, roll each portion out in a circle.

Tenth, grease the pan with butter (it'll be better than oil because butter has a nicer aroma)

Eleventh, place the rolled out circle dough pieces into the tray/pan

Remember to poke holes on the base of the dough. (see the holes in the picture? :) )

Twelfth, put them into the freezer to freeze for 30 min

Thirteenth, remove the tray/pan from the freezer after 30 min.

Fourteenth, line the crust with parchment paper/aluminium foil. Then fill at least 2/3 of it with beans/rice. Then pop it into the oven for 15 min at 350F or 174C.

The purpose of this is to blind-bake. This prevents the crust from puffing up during the bake, so the beans/rice act as weights and the parchment paper/aluminium foil prevents the beans/rice from sticking to the crust.

So while waiting for the crust to bake, prepare the filling :)

Fifteenth, chop up all of your ingredients! Note that for quiche, you can add whatever you like as the filling. So you realise I added bacon instead of strictly following the recipe?

You can google and find a lot more varieties of quiche fillings. ^^

*Remember to dry the mushrooms after you wash them to prevent the filling from being to watery*

Sixteenth, add olive oil to the pan.

Seventeenth, fry your onions. This is to allow the aroma of the onions to come out.

Eighteenth, add in your bacon.

Nineteenth, add in your mushrooms.

Twentieth, stir and fry until you get soft golden brown mushrooms!!

Remember to season ok? It's ok if the mushrooms are slightly on the salty side as the crust and milk portion of the filling would balance it :)

Note that you might get too much liquid oozing out from the mushrooms, don't panic! Just drain the water :)

Once you're done with the filling, set it aside and move back to the crust!

(I shall stop numbering, I'm like trying to test my spelling -.- )

Okay, once the 15 min is up, remove the rice/beans and parchment paper/aluminium foil and bake the crust for another 10 min or until golden brown :)

Something like this :)

While waiting, you can make the other part of the filling! The fats HAHA.

Why? Because there's eggs, cream and milk LOL.

The recipe calls for heavy cream, I googled for alternatives but ended up realising that heavy cream is just any cream that has 35-45% milk fat. This is definitely higher than that of milk and yogurt. I got this from cold storage :)

1/2 cup of heavy cream

3 large eggs

1/2 cup of milk

MIX UNTIL YOU GET A SMOOTH CONSISTENCY :D

Next, you prepare the cheeseeeeeee

This is an expensive cheese man :(

The recipe called for Gruyère cheese, but I've googled and found that Gouda/Swiss cheese can replace it. Swiss cheese is kinda expensive, so I wouldn't choose it. Cold storage always has tons of variety of things, but I just can't find Gruyère cheese. So no choice lo!

I'd suggest you not use cheap chesdale cheese as those cheap cheeses wouldn't melt as nicely as the expensive ones. Reason why I always love expensive cheeses. (My parents always scold me for being picky)

So you cut the cheese (if they are in slices) or grate them.

Then place some at the bottom of the crust.

The recipe wanted 1 and a 1/2 cups of cheese, but heck, if you like a lot of cheese, then put more! if your crust can hold that much la.

Put in your mushroom filling.

Cover the filing with cheese again (YUMMEHHH)

Pour in your milk filling with a small spoon so it won't get too messy. (your life would be so much easier if you made one huge ass one instead of teeny tiny ones. Haha )

The recipe said bake for 30-35 min. But it is all up to you. I felt that my crust were brown enough, plus, the ingredients in the filling are all quite edible. So, I baked my quiche at 100C instead of 174C at the start and checking it every 10 min.

You'll definitely have to bake for at least 30 minutes. Just use a toothpick to poke the quiche to see if the centre is cooked ^^

And when it's done, it looks damn delicious!! Remember to wait till the top turns golden brown as well! It looks so much more delicious.

Just look at this and compare haha. The golden brown looks so much more appetising *drools*

Now for some food porn!~~

The crust tasted much like that of a pie. My friends even asked if I bought the crust dough! hehe. I think if you chose to bake the quiche with the filling at 174C for 30 min, the crust might turn out too hard :(

*drooling*

It tasted so delicious I want to have more!! HAHAHA.

But I shared it all :(

Okay, now more pictures of my awesome rainbow cupcakes :D

If you want to know more about how to make these awesome pretty things, click here.

Ah, and the reason why my cupcakes over flowed was because I filled them way too high. They were only supposed to be 1/2 to 2/3 full. But because I had 7 layers, I had no choice :(

I used nutella as the frosting this time as I was lazy to make my own. No time :(

I have no idea why this batter rose so much :(

It looks like some geography picture, the geothermal thingy you know? HAHAHAHA.

But the cupcake liner looks awesome as usual :)

Maybe I should do a layered cake next time ^^

Anyway, it took me about 7 hours to finish everything. Well, the cake part was pretty fast since it was from a cake mix. The only tedious part was the layering of the colours evenly.

The most tedious part of the quiche was the crust. It was so much work D:

But it was worth it!!

Many of you keep asking me where to get ingredients and all. I myself didn't know and had no one to ask. But I always head to NTUC/Fairprice first as I know the things there are cheaper. Then whatever that I cannot find at NTUC, I'll go over to cold storage as it has a humongous variety of items. :)

So, just try your luck! I mean every outlet might differ in the things they sell, so I cannot tell you exactly where.