Cinnamon Swirl Butterscotch Beer Bread

I have always admired technocrats who scour the world for best practices in areas such as defence, education and nation building, which they then adapt to the needs of their own countries.

I approve of this 'if-this-practice-works-in-one-system-can-it-work-in-another' line of inquiry.

I try to emulate this mode of thinking as best as I can.

Tonight, I ask myself, "If cinnamon swirls work great in cake, why not in bread?"

You can tell, I nurture my technocrat tendencies in as many areas of my life as possible.

I don't merely just ask the difficult questions, I also execute and implement.

Hence: Cinnamon Swirl Butterscotch Beer Bread!

Just look at its crunchy crust.

Then slice it up and feast your eyes on the exquisite patterns the cinnamon swirl make on the yellow-ish coloured background of the bread.

Next, take a bite.

Once your taste buds register the taste of the cinnamon swirl butterscotch beer bread, the alarm system in your head goes off. Your brain will start convulsing. You get disoriented but you don't know why.

So you take another bite to understand what in the world is happening. With that second bite, the receptors on your taste buds scramble to conduct an emergency meeting with their counterparts in the brain.

And then it hits you why.

Because the only fault of this Cinnamon Swirl Butterscotch Beer Bread is that it had the nerve to look like the Cinnamon Swirl Cream Cheese Pound Cake but taste nothing like.

Presenting my case: Cinnamon Swirl Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Compare that with the Cinnamon Swirl Cream Cheese Pound Cake Imposter a.k.a Cinnamon Swirl Butterscotch Beer Bread. Mucho resemblance?

It was all much too confusing for me.

And that, to be honest, was its only flaw. It wasn't that the bread tasted bad. It was just that this turned out looking like the cake that it wasn't, and for some reason, sets off cognitive dissonance in my mind which interferes with my enjoyment of the bread itself on its own merits.

But if you are a better person than I am, and know not to judge things by how they look, here's the recipe.

Leading leftovers: Melted butter, whey, beer, butterscotch

Cinnamon Swirl Butterscotch Beer Bread (adapted loosely from Bakeat350)

Bread:
2 1/2 cups self-rising flour
3 tbs brown sugar
10 ounces room temperature beer# + whey
2 tbs melted butter (you can use up to 1/2 cup if you want. Plain beer bread will work fine with just flour and beer)

Filling:
2 tbs Butterscotch sauce (mine was hardened in the fridge and cut into cubes)
1 tbs ground cinnamon + 1/8 cup of brown sugar (for cinnamon swirl)

# Bakeat350 recommends dark beer but I used Stella Artois because I have Niid-Tu-Git-Reed-Of-Levtofers-syndrome

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees celsius. 
2. Prepare and grease a 9-inch loaf pan.
3. Sift the flour and add to the mixing bowl.
4. Add brown sugar and stir into the flour.
5. Add the beer gradually and stir until combined.
6. Add one third of the beer bread batter into the prepared loaf pan.
7. Here are my hardened pieces of butterscotch sauce...

I poured these pieces of the butterscotch sauce on top of the sprinkling of the cinnamon-sugar combination.

8. Next, top over it, the next third of beer bread batter.

9. On top of this layer of beer bread batter, sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar combination and butterscotch sauce.
10. End off with last third of the beer bread batter at the top.
11. Take your spatula and make swirling motions in the batter to create cinnamon swirls.

12. Pour melted butter over the batter before baking for a crunchy crust. You can also do this in the last 3 minutes of baking.
13. Bake for 1 hour. 
14. Check for doneness and remove immediately from pan and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

What would the Bungling Chef do next time?

• The butterscotch pieces disappeared into the batter, so if I do want butterscotch chunks, I may have to get bona fide butterscotch chips.
• Beer bread works great with herbs, but not so much with cinnamon.

But really, has there been anything Nutella can't fix?

Mee Goreng (Attempt Numero Deux)

One of my earliest memories of my late great-grandmother is how she would lovingly pick vegetables out from my food because I refuse to eat any food with vegetables in it. All this while coaxing me that vegetables are actually good for me, and I should try them next time.

I was young brat then who was stubborn, confused and didn't know what was good for her.

The only thing that has changed since then is that now I am no longer young.

So I thought of her again as I was cutting vegetables and deliberately putting them into my mee goreng decades later.

And I'd like to think that my late great-grandmother would have been proud of that.

Mee Goreng (adapted from the Little Techow)

Fresh yellow noodles, 400g (blanched in boiling water briefly)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
mushrooms, 100g (sliced and immersed in hot water)
1/4 cup green peas
Leafy vegetables (e.g. chye sim)
Half a big onion, sliced thinly
Half a tomato, sliced (optional)
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 stalks spring onions, chopped

Seasoning: (mixed together)
4-5 tbsp tomato ketchup
3 tbsp chilli sauce
1 tbsp sweet soy sauce
Pinch of salt
Water (about 200ml)

1. Mix the seasoning together in a separate bowl.
2. Heat some oil in a wok. Add onion slices to the oil and fry until they turn translucent. Add garlic and fry until fragrant.
3. Throw in spring onions and vegetables. Add water if too dry. Fry on medium heat till slightly cooked.
4. Add tomato slices and yellow noodles.
5. Pour in seasoning. Toss noodles to make sure all the ingredients are mixed well.
6. Add the green peas and mushrooms.
7. Push the noodles to sides of the pan to create a well in the middle. Add some oil, and scramble eggs.
8. Toss the eggs and mix well to distribute it to the rest of the noodles.
9. Serve!

What would the Failed Chef do next time?

• Somehow, I still feel that the seasoning is just coating the noodles rather than being well-integrated. It could be my method - perhaps I need to fry over high heat (though I'm wary of burning it!).