a pinch of sugar

Peppermint Meringue cookies

2009-12-24T16:27:00.005-05:00

Meringues are really simple desserts, but they never really appealed to me because they are kind of plain. But I ran across these in flipping through my Martha Stewart Cookies cookbook, and they caught my attention as being perfect for the holidays. Plus, the peppermint adds a kick of flavor that makes them a little more interesting.

The only thing I changed was to add a pinch of salt to the egg whites, and also I didn't do the chocolate ganache that the recipe called for (they're supposed to be made into sandwich cookies).

I think the source of all difficulties with meringues are doing the egg whites correctly. One thing being out of whack -- the bowl being a little dirty, the egg whites being the wrong temperature, anything else -- and you'll keep whipping and whipping forever and nothing will happen. Meringues won't work at all unless the egg whites can hold their shape on their own enough to keep the cookie shape. Like so:

Set up a pastry bag with a star tip, and then paint stripes of red food coloring on the inside. I had red food coloring in gel form, which had solidified pretty... solidly... because my baking things had been in the garage for most of the fall and winter. Add a few drops of water to the gel to soften it up until it's kind of like the consistency of paint. Then, paint stripes. It doesn't have to be super precise.

If everything's going according to plan, the meringues will pipe out like little star cookies:

Also, I'm not usually a fan of parchment paper because it seems like a waste of paper, but they're pretty much required for this recipe -- meringues are sticky!

After a long, slow bake, the cookies will be dry and crunchy.

Happy holidays! I'm doing another cookie tomorrow, so we'll see if I can get that posted soon.

Peppermint Meringues

Recipe adapted from Martha Stewart

3 large egg whites
3/4 cup sugar
small pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon pure peppermint extract
red gel paste food coloring

Preheat oven to 175 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Fit a pastry bag with a small open-star tip. Paint two or three stripes of food coloring inside the pastry bag.

Put egg whites and sugar and salt in a heatproof bowl, and set bowl over a pan of simmering water, and stir gently until sugar has dissolved and mixture is warm to the touch (2-3 minutes). Remove from heat and beat eggs with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. Mix in peppermint extract.

Fill pastry bag with 1-2 cups of meringue. Pipe small (3/4 inch high) star sheets onto the parchment paper. Refill bag as necessary, and repaint stripes each time.

Bake cookies until crisp but not brown, about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Let cool completely.

Yield: 5 dozen cookies
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Difficulty: Medium

Snack Box bento (21)

2009-12-24T12:11:00.001-05:00

This is kind of old, but I must clear this photo cache! I had packed this for a snack for when I was working over the summer. It's a fairly small bento, so it doesn't hold much, but it's super convenient.

On the bottom tier, I made four pickle onigiri, wrapped in seaweed. (To see how to make them, go to this older post.) On the top, orange slices, and cucumber slices.

They stack up and strap together like so:

Adorable, right? The box is actually my sister's - she bought it online somewhere, I am not sure where.

Blueberry Crumb muffins

2009-12-18T11:50:00.003-05:00

This is a recipe I adapted from a Dorie Greenspan recipe for "allspice crumb muffins" (which comes from this cookbook of hers, aka my baking bible). I was having trouble finding a satisfactory blueberry crumb muffin recipe, so I just used hers, but I took out the allspice and I added blueberries instead.

I folded about 1 cup of fresh blueberries into the batter. I imagine frozen would work just as well. (I made these in the summertime - ha! shows you how long I've been sitting on these photos - so I just happened to have a lot of blueberries to use.)

Scooped into the muffin tin (remember an ice cream scoop is your best friend!):

Mixing together the crumble topping (you can do this ahead of time, too):

Feel free to leave it chunky. It'll make it crunchier in the end. Evenly distributed among the cups:

Aaaand out of the oven:

Blueberry Crumb Muffins

Recipe adapted from Dorie Greenspan

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into bits

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line or butter muffin tin.

To make topping: put flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a small bowl and toss together. Add in the cold butter bits, and toss to coat, then use your fingers to rub the butter into the dry ingredients until you have irregularly shaped crumbs. Set aside the mix in the refrigerator while you prepare the batter.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir in the brown sugar. In another bowl, whisk the melted butter, eggs, milk, and vanilla together until well combined. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry, and fold together quickly to blend. Fold in the blueberries. The batter will be lumpy.

Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups, sprinkle some streusel over each muffin, and use your fingertips to gently press the crumbs into the batter.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from the mold.

Yield: 12 muffins
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Corn bread

2009-12-14T18:06:00.003-05:00

Okay, this came from Thanksgiving dinner, but you have to forgive the delay because... law school final exams! You can understand, right? There is a temporary lull in the storm, however, so I have some time to post this recipe for you.

I made cornbread to go with Thanksgiving dinner. This cornbread also holds together really well (doesn't crumble terribly), so I'm willing to bet this makes for a great stuffing if you're so inclined. I took this recipe from allrecipes.com, and made a few changes.

This recipe is very good for efficiency because it's all done in one pot. If you have a cast iron skillet (which I don't -- I know! -- sadness), you can bake the corn bread in it, too, and no need to even dirty up a baking pan.

I love cornmeal -- it feels cool. Yes, feels. But I find few occasions to use it.

Basic changes were that I reduced the original recipe from 2/3 cup of sugar to ½ cup, which turned out perfectly fine. I also changed the ratios of cornmeal and flour (instead of 1 to 1, I made it 1 ¼ cup cornmeal and ¾ cup flour). Also, I added some chopped frozen corn into the batter at the end.

I baked this in an 8" cake pan because my mom was currently using our square pan for another dish (and so it goes on Thanksgiving).

If I had my druthers, I would've used a smaller pan to get more height, but it still tasted great. And there you go. Cornbread.

There will be more recipes coming soon! (I have a backlog.) Next, blueberry muffins.

Grandmother's Buttermilk Cornbread

Recipe adapted from allrecipes.com (bethanyweathersby)

½ cup butter
½ cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 ¼ cup cornmeal
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup chopped frozen corn (defrosted)
½ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8 inch square pan.

Melt butter in large skillet. Remove from heat and stir in sugar. Quickly add eggs and beat until well blended. Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into mixture in pan. Stir in cornmeal, flour, and salt until well blended and few lumps remain. Fold in corn. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Yield: 9 servings
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Sweet Potato pie

2009-11-26T10:44:00.006-05:00

I'm always in charge of desserts on Thanksgiving in my family. Last week, I asked my mom to get some ingredients for a sweet potato pie, and she was utterly shocked because my dad had been talking about making sweet potato pie, too. (This is shocking because we usually go with apple or pumpkin in my family. I don't think we've ever had sweet potato pie.) He even got a recipe from one of his coworkers in the bakery department (my dad works at Whole Foods).

So there you go. Sweet potato pie it is.

I used the recipe my dad gave me -- which is a printout, but I have no idea where it came from. They were using it at Whole Foods, though, and it looked fairly accurate, judging from how my pumpkin pie normally goes. The only thing I changed was that I took out the shot of brandy in the recipe.

The recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of sweet potato, and I think 3 medium sweet potatoes were plenty.

Yes, I'm using a potato masher. Call me a traditionalist.

Because I am impatient, I actually mashed the potatoes while they were still hot. So, while those were cooling, I rolled out a pie crust dough that I prepared earlier.

I think I've already told you all this trick before, but a good way to transfer the crust into the pie plate is to wrap it loosely around the rolling pin, and then lift, and unroll it on top of the pie plate.

Trim and scallop the edges, and then pop that back in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the filling. (If you're so inclined, save the scraps of dough, and roll them out again. Cut out shapes to put on top of the pie! Makes an otherwise uninteresting-looking pie more fun. Don't forget to chill those cutouts, too.)

By now, the potatoes should be cool enough, and the recipe is super easy. (Also, the recipe calls for an electric beater, but it came out just fine whisking by hand. Yep, me = traditionalist. Or lazy. I hate getting out the beater and washing the pieces.)

Pour out the filling and place the cutouts on top as you like.

This pie could not have been accomplished without my dad (who gave me the recipe) and my mom (who made the leaf cutouts). I have little talent for such things, but my mom used to be an art major. If it were me, I would have used a cookie cutter or something (regardless of whether or not we had any leaf cookie cutters - if it were up to me, we'd probably have had little Christmas trees on top). Anyway. At the end of the day, you get something like this:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pie Crust

Recipe adapted from allrecipes.com (Jan Bittner)

½ cup vegetable shortening
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
½ cup cold water

Mix shortening, flour, sugar, and salt together with a fork or a pastry blender until very crumbly. Add water a tablespoon at a time and mix lightly with a fork. Only add just enough until the dough starts to hold together (you probably will not need the entire half cup).

Butter a pie plate. Roll gently on a floured pastry cloth to about an inch larger than pie plate.

Roll dough carefully onto rolling pin, lift to pie plate, and unroll. Press into pan. For a single-crust pie, trim with a small knife to about 1/2 inch beyond rim. Fold up, and pinch so edge of pie is raised from rim.

Servings: 8
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Difficulty: Medium

Sweet Potato Pie

Recipe courtesy Whole Foods(?), adapted by me

1½ cups firmly packed mashed cooked sweet potatoes, room temperature
3 eggs, room temperature
½ cup white sugar
1/3 cup milk, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt

Prepare pie pan, and place in refrigerator, covered in plastic wrap, while preparing the filling. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place mashed sweet potatoes in a large bowl. Using an electric mixer on low speed, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the sugar, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt. Beat until well blended.

Pour the filling into the pie shell (and, if you have them, arrange any pastry cutouts on top). Set the pan on a baking sheet.

Bake on the bottom oven rack until a knife inserted 1 inch into the center comes out clean, about 50-60 minutes. If the pie crust browns too quickly, loosely drape some aluminum foil over it. Do not overbake.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Servings: 8
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 50-60 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Kugelhopf

2009-11-23T21:01:00.002-05:00

Kugelhopf is a German bread/cake that reminds me a bit of Italian panettone, but without that sourdough taste that panettone has. It's a very soft and airy raisin bread, basically.

I didn't have a Kugelhopf pan, so a Bundt had to do.

The mise en place.

It's a very... um, sticky! dough. Because this is bread, with yeast, you still need to knead it, but all the kneading happens with a wooden spoon. There's quite a lot of pull on the dough, so that's not as easy as it sounds. (Of course, it's much easier if you have a stand mixer with a dough hook. But for those of us who cannot afford such luxuries... it's all elbow grease.)

This recipe is kinda funny because you have to keep slapping down the dough after it rises. To keep it from over-poofing, I suppose. I mean, overall, it's still rising, but I guess you need to keep it in check somewhat. Mid-poof:

Maybe there's a reason why people put this bread into a Kugelhopf pan (it looks like a tall turban). Somehow the Bundt pan made this a little anti-climactic. It's too short! But still tasty, indeed. After it's all baked and cooled:

See below for the recipe!

Kugelhopf

Recipe courtesy Dorie Greenspan

1/3 cup moist, plump raisins
Scant 1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/3 cup just-warm-to-the-touch whole milk
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
3 tablespoons sugar
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter
Sugar, for dusting
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Bring a little water to a boil in a small saucepan and toss in raisins. Turn off the heat and let steep for 2 minutes, then drain the raisins and pat them dry.

Put the yeast and milk in the bowl of a stand mixer and, using a wooden spoon, stir until the yeast is dissolved. Add the flour and salt and stir just to moisten the flour.

In a small bowl, beat the eggs and yolk together lightly with a fork. Fit the mixer with the dough hook, if you have one, and, working on low speed, pour in the beaten eggs, mixing until they are incorporated. Add the sugar, increase the speed to medium-high and beat until the dough comes together and smooths out a little, about 5 minutes. Reduce the mixer speed to medium and add the butter in 4 to 6 additions, squeezing each piece to soften it before adding it and beating until each one is almost fully incorporated before adding the next.

When the butter is blended in, the dough will be very soft. Increase the mixer speed to medium-high and beat, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed, until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and climbs up the hook, about 10 minutes. Remove the bowl from the mixer, and stir in the raisins.

Scrape the dough into a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until nearly doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours.

Deflate the dough by lifting it up around the edges and letting it fall back into the bowl. Cover the bowl again and put it in the refrigerator. Slap the dough down in the bowl every 30 minutes until it stops rising, about 2 hours. Then, if you have the time, let the dough rest in the refrigerator overnight.

Generously butter a 9-inch Kugelhopf mold (8- to 9-cup capacity) and put the chilled dough in the pan. Cover the pan lightly with buttered parchment or wax paper and let the dough rise in a warm place until it comes almost to the top of the mold, 2 to 3 hours.

When the dough has almost fully risen, center a rack in the oven and preheat to 375 degrees F.

Remove the paper and bake the Kugelhopf for 10 minutes. Cover the pan lightly with a foil tent and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes, or until the Kugelhopf is golden brown and has risen to the top of the pan.

Meanwhile, line a baking sheet with foil and place a rack over it. Remove the kugelhopf from the oven and unmold it on the rack.

To soak the cake: Melt the butter and gently brush the hot cake with it, allow the butter to soak into the cake. Sprinkle the hot cake lightly with sugar and cool it to room temperature. Right before serving, dust the Kugelhopf with confectioners' sugar.

Yield: 8 servings
Prep Time: (including rests) 6 hours
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Medium

Flutterby bento (20)

2009-11-15T13:30:00.006-05:00

Another one I never posted. This time, it comes with a recipe!

Pretty simple lunch - I only used one partition this time. It just goes to show that good bentos are all about putting together something that you want to eat and enjoy. On the left is creamy farfalle pasta (multicolored, flavored with tomatoes, spinach, and beets, I think) with mushrooms and asparagus. And on the right are some potstickers that I had leftover from before (the frozen kind, I don't have the time these days to make dumplings from scratch...).

Did you know "farfalle" is Italian for butterflies? Well, now you do.

The farfalle was great by the way. If you're getting to the point of late spring or early summer, good way to use up some asparagus is with this recipe.

Creamy Farfalle with Cremini and Asparagus

Recipe courtesy Giada de Laurentiis

1 pound farfalle pasta
3 tablespoons butter
1 pound cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 pound thin asparagus, trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup mascarpone cheese
pinch of grated nutmeg
¾ cup walnuts, toasted
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the farfalle and cook until al dente, stirring occasionally, about 12 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup of pasta water.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and sauté until tender and most of the juices have evaporated, about 5 minutes.

Add the asparagus and sauté until the asparagus is crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Add the farfalle. Stir in the mascarpone and nutmeg and toss until the cheese coats the pasta, adding the reserved cooking liquid 1/4 cup at a time to moisten. Stir in ¾ cup of walnuts.

Season the pasta, to taste, with salt and pepper. Mound the pasta in a large bowl. Sprinkle with the Parmesan and remaining 1/4 cup of walnuts. Serve.

Yield: 6-8 servings
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Jam Thumbprint cookies

2009-11-11T16:08:00.003-05:00

Shortbread cookie with toasted coconut and a strawberry jam center.

These cookies are probably my favorite ones to make because I've been making them for so long. It was one of the first cookie recipes I tried, and did well, enough so that it sparked my interest into expanding into other genres of baked goods (aside from cake and pie, I mean). I also liked to make them around the holidays to give out as gifts, so they have a holiday connotation in my mind, too.

This is a shortbread cookie. Which means. Yes. Butter.

If you do the math, each cookie only has like a 1/2 tablespoon of butter, though.

I like to make this dough in a large Tupperware container, because it needs to be chilled for 30 minutes before making the cookies. So pop on the lid, and you are good to go.

(FYI - I don't think the chilling is super necessary. I've done it both ways, and the cookies are no different. Also, it might even be better to not chill because the dough is crumbly and it's actually easier to handle when it's warmer and the butter is softer.)

The fun part! The cookie-making. For efficiency's sake, I like to do all the cookies at once, rather than rolling, smashing, and jamming each cookie one by one.

Take a golf-ball sized chunk of dough, and dip about half of it in egg wash. Then press that half into some sweetened coconut.

I do this for all the cookies first, and line them up on a baking sheet.

Huh, in that form, they look like a different dessert, don't they? (Bonus points if you guess which.) Next is pushing your thumb in. It doesn't matter if you use your thumb or not -- keep in mind the dough is pretty crumbly so you want to make sure the edges don't split too much when you do this.

Then spoon in the jam. Back in the day, when I had the money to do this, I'd do blackberry, strawberry, and apricot -- and there'd be a whole spectrum of different cookies to choose from. Today, it's just strawberry.

Out of the oven.

Mmmm. Like little circles of happiness.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies

Recipe adapted from Ina Garten

3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
7 ounces sweetened flaked coconut
fruit jam

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream together the butter and sugar until they are just combined and then add the vanilla. Separately, sift together the flour and salt. Add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar. Mix until the dough starts to come together.

Dump on a floured board and roll together into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. (If you have a scale they should each weigh 1 ounce.) Dip each ball into the egg wash and then roll it in coconut. Place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and press a light indentation into the top of each with your finger. Drop 1/4 teaspoon of jam into each indentation.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the coconut is a golden brown. Cool and serve.

Yield: about 30 cookies
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 20-25 minutes
Difficulty: Medium

Nutella cupcakes

2009-11-05T00:11:00.009-05:00

Yellow cake with Nutella (chocolate hazelnut) frosting, sprinkled with chopped toasted hazelnuts.

Ha! It's been months, I know. But that's what happens when you're a student -- the tide of busyiness ebbs and flows. Hopefully things will now settle down a bit and I can post some of the pictures I have saved that I have not yet posted. Starting with some cupcakes.

This particular cupcake is all about the frosting. The cake is nothing special, although it is admittedly difficult to achieve a nice yelllow cake that is soft (without becoming pound cake) and dense (without becoming cornbread).

Scooping the batter. Ice cream scoops are essential if you want to scoop batter with any efficiency and evenness (otherwise some cakes will burn while others are not yet done baking)!

Like I said, this is all about the frosting. Luckily the density of Nutella meshes well with frosting, although you're going to have to cut the butter down and add a bit more powdered sugar to get the liquid/dry ratio right. I would alternate adding powdered sugar and then Nutella, and be conservative with your additions, until it comes out how you like.

I was pleased! This ended up just the right consistency for a frosting that held its shape well.

And the glamor shot, after the hazelnuts were added on top. (Just toast the nuts in an ungreased skillet pan for a few minutes, until you can smell the oils starting to come out and see them start to brown a little.)

Nutella Cupcakes

Cake recipe adapted from Ina Garten, frosting recipe my own

3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
5 extra-large eggs at room temperature
1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup milk

1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
¾ cup Nutella (or any hazelnut chocolate spread)
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup chopped toasted hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, add the eggs, 1 at a time, scraping down the bowl after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and mix well.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In 3 parts, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the batter, beginning and ending with the dry. Mix until just combined.

Line a muffin pan with paper liners. Fill each liner to the top with batter. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Remove to a baking rack and cool completely.

Meanwhile, make the frosting. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, on low speed, cream together butter and vanilla. Add the confectioners' sugar, 1 cup at a time, alternating with ¼ cup Nutella, and mix until smooth.

Frost the cooled cupcakes, sprinkle with hazelnuts, and serve.

Yield: about 18 cupcakes
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: about 30 minutes
Difficulty: Medium

Carrot Spice muffins

2009-06-18T20:44:00.003-04:00

Okay boys and girls, here's a quickie. Muffins, in fact, are super quick. And I feel that the true art of the muffin has been lost in this era of giant greasy oil balls and itsy bitsy mini-muffins.

So. The muffin, the true muffin, is a quickbread. In a cup.

The dry ingredients. Note the spice component of the "carrot spice" muffins.

Shredding the carrots. An old-school box grater is a friend to all. No one believes me, in this age of food processors and microplanes and mandolins. But seriously, y'all. Box grater.

Mixing the carrots, coconut, and pecan into the batter. The trick with muffins is DO NOT over-mix, for the love of god. That makes the muffins tougher and more bread-like. Even if there's some bits of flour left in there, totally okay. Better to leave them in than risk over-mixing.

After they come out of the oven:

See the bits of carrot?

This recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan's Baking, From My Home to Yours, and I know I said I'd put up more recipes on here for you all, but I am not quite sure about the copyright issues related to recipes from books. So pick up a copy of your own, or get yourself over to allrecipes.com (this recipe from allrecipes.com is close to Dorie's, by the way).

Icebox bento (19)

2009-06-14T07:31:00.002-04:00

Just a quick post to show one of my older bento boxes.

On the sides, halves of a caprese sandwich (tomato, mozzarella, and basil) on ciabatta bread. In the middle, slices of pluot and green grapes. I stuck the grapes in a silicone cupcake liner.

Happy bento!

Homemade Crackers and Hummus

2009-06-06T18:49:00.007-04:00

Okay, so YJ told me making hummus is easy. So I figured it was about time for me to attempt it. And what better to accompany hummus than some homemade olive oil crackers? Indeed.

The recipe I found online used semolina flour, an Italian flour that is sometimes used to make pasta.

All the ingredients mixed together (including the olive oil):

The dough is very... pleasant? To handle, I mean. It's slightly tacky, but not sticky, and has a nice pull to it, even though there is no yeast. It's like magic dough. So cut the dough into twelve equal pieces, and roll them into balls to rest for a bit.

(While they're resting, you can make the hummus. But more on that in a minute.)

Then use a rolling pin or a pasta roller (but who owns a pasta roller, seriously?), roll each ball as thin as you can without tearing it. It does feel a little bit like making pasta. Maybe I should try that sometime, hmmm. Anyway, after rolling, use your hands to stretch it a bit more, like pizza dough. I like to just let the weight of the dough pull upon itself.

Lay them out on a baking sheet or a pizza stone. I sprinkled the crackers with sea salt, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds.

Bake! And keep an eye on the crackers towards the end, because they can burn pretty quick. Break them up and serve. (You could also score them before baking if you are really concerned about even-shaped crackers. I think they look more homemade with a free-form break.)

Okay, hummus is super easy. Get your blender or food processor. Chuck everything in.

Blend, drizzle in more olive oil to get the consistency desired, and let it go until smooth.

Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, paprika, and the crackers!

Wow your guests at your next get together. Here are the recipes I used:

Olive Oil Crackers

Recipe courtesy 101 Cookbooks

1 ½ cups semolina flour
1 ½ cups white whole wheat flour (or all-purpose flour)
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 cup warm water
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
toppings you like – sesame seeds, poppy seeds, coarse sea salt

Whisk together the flours and salt. Add the water and olive oil. Mix and knead on a floured counter-top or in a mixer for 5-7 minutes. The dough should be just a bit tacky - not too dry, not too sticky to work with.

When you are done mixing, shape the dough into a large ball. Cut into 12 equal-sized pieces. Gently rub each piece with a bit of olive oil, shape into a small ball and place on a plate. Cover with a clean dishtowel or plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for 30-60 minutes.

While the dough is resting, preheat your oven to 450F degrees.

When the dough is done resting, flatten one dough ball. Using a rolling pin or a pasta machine, shape into a flat strip of dough. Pull the dough out a bit thinner by hand. Set dough on a floured (or cornmeal dusted) baking sheet, poke each cracker with the tines of a fork to prevent puffing, add any extra toppings, and bake for 6-8 minutes, until deeply golden.

Repeat the process for the remaining dough balls. Let cool before eating.

Yield: 12 large crackers
Prep Time: 60 minutes (including the rest)
Cook Time: 15 minutes
Difficulty: Medium

Hummus

Recipe adapted from allrecipes.com (RC2STEP)

2 cups canned garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained
2 tablespoons tahini paste (add more if desired)
1 lemon, juiced (add more if desired)
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon red pepper flake
2 garlic cloves, smashed
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided use
½ teaspoon paprika

Place the garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, salt, red pepper, and garlic in a blender or food processor. Blend, and drizzle in 1 tablespoon olive oil as the mixture is being blended. Continue to blend until smooth.

Adjust to taste (add more tahini, salt, lemon, etc. as desired).

Transfer mixture to a serving bowl. Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil over the mixture, and sprinkle with paprika.

Yield: 2 cups
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: none
Difficulty: Easy

Berry Bread Pudding

2009-05-31T19:51:00.005-04:00

I had a lot left over from when I made challah bread, so it was about time for some bread pudding. I made a bread pudding using strawberries, since they're in season and it seemed like a good summery thing to make.

Also! While I am thinking about it -- another good thing to do with old challah is slice it up for French toast. This bread is awesome for French toast, I promise you.

Cubing the old bread:

You then soak the bread in this milk and egg mixture. While the bread marinates, line the bottom of the ramekins with sugar and sliced strawberries:

Press the soaked bread on top:

The bread has to soak a little bit more before going onto the oven, so leave them alone for a while. (Now's a good time to do some dishes!) Then bake.

When the puddings are done, you can tell since they puff up like little cakes and turn golden brown. When they are mostly cool, invert to serve. Garnish with more berries and drizzle with lemon syrup.

Enjoy! I got the recipe from Tyler Florence of Food Network, see below:

Berry Bread Pudding

Recipe adapted from Tyler Florence

butter, room temperature
4 eggs
¾ cup whole milk
¾ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon zest
½ cup sugar, plus more for dusting and topping
approx. 2 ½ cups old brioche or challah, cubed
2 cups mixed berries (blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries), plus more for garnish
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon water
1 lemon, zested and juiced

Butter and sugar 6 (6-ounce) ramekins.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, cream, vanilla extract, lemon zest, and sugar. Combine well with a whisk - then let it settle so there are no air bubbles on the surface.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Add bread to the custard mixture and toss to combine. Equally divide the berries among the ramekins and top with the bread mixture. Gently press down so they are packed evenly. Sprinkle with more sugar, then refrigerate for 10 to 15 minutes to let soak.

Bake for 25 minutes in the center of the oven. The pudding is ready when it has puffed up and the custard is set. The top should be a golden color. Remove and allow to cool slightly.

In a mixing bowl, combine sifted powdered sugar, water, lemon zest and juice.

Once the pudding has cooled slightly, invert onto an individual serving plate. Drizzle the lemon fondant over warm bread pudding and serve with extra fresh berries.

Yield: 6 servings
Prep Time: 25 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Scallion Pancakes

2009-05-25T19:23:00.008-04:00

Alright, so I am going to make an effort to post more recipes directly on here. I was too lazy before, but I figure I might as well. It's good for my own record-keeping purposes, too.

So! We'll start off easy. Scallion pancakes are a Chinese flatbread, very similar to its Indian cousin, parathas. I've always liked them because of their chewy layers -- the consistency makes them more interesting than other breads.

First, mixing the flour and water into a dough. If you want to know something interesting -- a LOT of Chinese doughs start out this way: a simple mixture of flour and hot water. Dumplings, wontons, potstickers, you name it -- what usually changes is the type of flour you use.

After kneading (it's kind of relaxing to knead hot dough, if you ask me), you have to let the dough rest for a little bit.

Cutting the scallions in the meantime.

So you split that dough ball into 6 smaller pieces. Roll each one out into a thin circle. Brush the circle with a layer of vegetable oil. Now, those of you who have done pastry before will recognize this is sort of a short-cut version of doing a buerre block folded into a détrempe. The oil, rolled and flattened and separating the dough, is what makes the peel-away layers that are characteristic of these pancakes.

Add salt, and scatter some scallions on. Then, roll up the dough circle.

Take the roll and wrap it into a tight coil.

Okay, this might get dicey since oil and onion pieces might squirt out at you -- but work with a firm and gentle hand and roll out the coil into a pancake again.

Pan fry them on a griddle. Don't literally fry them -- all you need is enough oil to keep the pancake from sticking. Some folks like these oilier -- I have to confess I am not one of them. They taste good either way, so don't feel obligated to oil them up.

Slice and serve!

See below for the recipe. They're easy! Hope you give it a shot.

Scallion Pancakes

Recipe adapted from those of Jennifer Yu and Dorie Greenspan

1 cup cake flour
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
1 cup boiling water
3 teaspoons salt (approx.)
6 teaspoons vegetable oil (approx.), plus more for pan-frying
1 bunch scallions, minced

Stir the flours in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. Add the boiling water, and stir until a rough dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, or until smooth, kneading in more all-purpose flour as necessary. Cover with a cloth or wrap in plastic and let rest for 30 minutes, or longer if possible.

On a floured work surface, roll the dough into a rough log. Cut the log into 6 pieces. Keep the unused dough covered with a damp towel as you work.

With a rolling pin, roll out one piece of dough into a circle. Brush the top with a little oil and sprinkle with some of the minced scallion greens and salt. Roll up the circle like a jelly roll and pinch the ends to seal. Coil the roll into a snail shape, with the seam on the inside. Pinch the end to secure it and set aside on a lightly floured surface.

Prepare the remaining pancakes. Reflour the work surface and roll each coiled pancake out to 1/8 inch thickness.

Heat a tablespoon of oil on a flat, wide pan over a medium-low to medium flame until hot. Set the pancake in the oil and let fry until the bottom is crisp and golden. Flip the pancake, adding more oil as needed. Remove from heat, slice, and serve immediately, or reheat in the oven.

Yield: 6 pancakes (12 servings)
Prep Time: 45 minutes, including the 30 minute rest
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Challah

2009-05-21T12:25:00.005-04:00

Baking bread! Whoo! (Man, I love being back in a place with a real kitchen.) To be specific, I made challah.

Challah is a braided Jewish bread. The bread doesn't contain any milk or butter (it uses water and vegetable oil instead), making it parve. That also makes it considerably better for you than its French cousin, brioche.

The dough is pretty straightforward -- water, yeast, honey, a little sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, salt, and flour. I found a pretty good recipe over here, which also gives a handy guide for how to make a 4-strand braid. (I replaced some of the sugar in that recipe with honey.)

After the first rise, split the dough into 4 balls and roll them out to equal length (I got about 15 inches out of these).

Okay, the slightly tricky part. Lay out the ropes of dough and pinch one end together. Then, umm... well, just follow the King Arthur Flour instructions I linked above, haha. You'll know you're doing it right when it looks kinda like a squid.

When you're done, pinch the ends together and tuck them under. Et voila, a braided challah that looks super-complicated but really was not.

Cover and let proof until doubled in size, at least another half hour. Coat with egg wash, then bake in the oven! Be careful not to overbake, and you will be rewarded with:

It was great! Soft and warm and slightly chewy.

Also? This is a whole freaking lot of bread. The loaf is huge! Methinks there is some bread pudding in my future...

Home again, home again

2009-05-16T13:39:00.004-04:00

Taking a short pausa to move back home! That is it, 1L year is officially over, thank goodness.

The summer fruits and veggies are starting to come in, so that means there'll be some fun baking and cooking in store - hopefully starting next week. See you soon!

Pictured above: a latte from La Colombe, a coffee shop in Center City. Literally only a coffee shop - nothing but a bar, some tables and chairs, and coffee. None of those whatever-chino drinks, either. Reminded me of Italy, in fact. (Note the textbooks in the background of the picture.)

Audrey Claire - pappardelle

2009-05-14T18:01:00.003-04:00

So, in addition to food trucks and Quizzo, Philadelphia is also home to another phenomenon that is not nearly as prevalent in other cities: BYOs - usually small restaurants holed into renovated houses. Expect good, fresh food at fair prices. (A big plus, for a student on a budget.) Apparently due to Philly's strange history of alcohol laws, BYOs became pretty common, and popular.

So. I haven't really been to any worth noting, except one that I happened to like a lot. A LOT. Audrey Claire is sort of adorable (in terms of the decor and setting) and the food is amazing. It's the sister restaurant to Twenty Manning, which is a little more formal, and I think I prefer Audrey Claire.

I was happy to be with a group that ordered a lot of food! The appetizers were amaaazing. One of them was a humongous bowl of mussels.

Another one, which I liked best, was the pear and gorgonzola flatbread.

It looks plain, but it was good! For my main dish, I ordered the pappardelle, which was mixed with arugula, portobello mushrooms, pine nuts, and locatelli (a fancy type of romano cheese, I believe).

It photographed well! I was pleased. Very cute place, overall.

Strawberry Shortcake cupcakes

2009-05-09T20:29:00.004-04:00

White cake with strawberry inside, with fresh strawberry buttercream.

Kerry and I made cupcakes for Gary's birthday, and they were largely a product of trial-and-error. But came out fairly well!

See, Gary mentioned liking something strawberry-oriented for his birthday (or perhaps Kerry and I hallucinated that conversation because I can't remember what he said exactly). So Kerry had strawberries.

I made a white cake batter that usually goes over pretty well in cupcake form (it doesn't dry out too much - which is always a danger with white cake). And we placed slices of strawberries on top - since one of Kerry's cupcake books assured us the strawberry would sink into the cake during baking.

Perhaps they didn't mean for us to lay slices on top, because the slices didn't sink and simply stayed on top as the cake baked under it -- creating a kind of dried strawberry top. Perhaps my batter was too strong! Or perhaps we shouldn't have sliced the strawberries length-wise. Ah well.

We made a beautiful vanilla buttercream that promptly turned into soup when we mixed in the mashed strawberries. Ok, it wasn't pure soup, but close enough. Popping it into the fridge helped it to keep some body, though.

Despite the errors in our trial-and-error, they actually tasted very good at the end of the day.

Ladurée - macarons

2009-05-05T20:12:00.000-04:00

Because Yoon-jee is the best and kindest and most thoughtful person ever, she picked up a pack of macarons from Laudrée for me when she went to Paris over Spring Break. (I know!)

Ah, the little sea green bag and box. Better than a Tiffany's bag, for me. No, seriously.

You know how cupcakes are the big fad dessert in the U.S.? They're dying down now. And macarons are the talk of the dessert town in France, so I anticipate these becoming the Next Big Thing, if they aren't already. There are a lot of French pastry shops in New York already churning these babies out. And they're similar to cupcakes in that they can pair fun flavor combinations together, since they have the cookie part and the filling part.

I told her to get me an assortment of weird flavors, since I wanted to try something different.

These are just my guesses for the flavors, since YJ didn't remember what she got me. But from the background to the foreground, I believe we have: orange blossom, dark chocolate and passion fruit, lemon and green basil, rose, dark chocolate and raspberry, coffee, salted butter caramel, and violet cassis.

My favorites have to be the caramel (not too sweet! I like it), the rose (surprisingly light and you definitely taste the rose, it's so strange), and the lemon and green basil (refreshing).

I took a picture of the lemon and green basil because I thought the colors were interesting:

Someday, I wil be able to replicate that nice crackly, paper-thin cookie crust. Sigh...

Minimalist bento (18)

2009-04-30T02:11:00.001-04:00

Smack in the middle of finals. Looking back on some of my old bento box photos, I recall the days when I used to eat healthy lunches. Sigh!

This bento commits the grave bento-error of having some open gaps. Bentos are supposed to be packed super-tight (to minimize shifting). If I had some grape tomatoes, I would've totally stuck them in to help with the awkward gaps that broccoli creates. Oh well.

On the left, salted sushi rice packed with a strip of nori and some sweet pickle slices. (It doesn't taste as weird as it sounds -- it's basically deconstructed sushi.) In the middle, broccoli done up in a ginger-soy marinade. On the right, slices of pluot.

Ah, those halcyon days when I used to make my own lunch and not buy it from Wawa...

Banana Chocolate Chip pancakes

2009-04-29T09:17:00.003-04:00

More pancakes!

I'm going to keep saying this, because it continues to be true: pancakes are very easy to make from scratch. And there are plenty of good recipes all over the internet, like this one. There is no secret to them - you just have to mix it to together and you've got it.

Well, perhaps there is one secret - experiment and see what kinds of things you can do with the batter. It's all about making something you want to eat.

Take a banana and cut it up.

Some people like to mix in the banana into the batter, but I am a weird OCD person and I think that sometimes makes the batter stick to the pan. So ladle on the batter and then drop the bananas and chocolate chips on top, and then ladle a little bit more batter. (It's like a pancake sandwich.)

Then! Serve with more chocolate chips.

Mmm. Start your mornings off right, everyone!

Tea Eggs (Cha Ye Dan)

2009-04-13T09:28:00.004-04:00

Happy belated Easter! (Although I suppose today is Easter Monday...)

Here is a quick way to get a tasty egg snack. This is a popular food in China and is an easy way to prep eggs - a food that I will probably never grow tired of, so I appreciate any variation I can find.

First, boil a few eggs for a couple of minutes. Then, carefully remove them from the water (but keep the water in the pot!) and crack them lightly with a spoon.

Then, put a couple of tea bags into the pot of hot water that you haven't thrown out yet. I also add a dash of cinnamon, some dark soy sauce, a couple of teaspoons of sugar, and a piece of ginger. (Technically, I think you only need the tea bags.) Put the lightly cracked eggs back into the water and let it simmer for about.... 3 hours? Keep adding water as necessary to keep the eggs covered.

I only had time to do a 1 hour simmer, but the color and flavor still came through enough to make a great egg.

The white eggs turned brown!

And here's the fun part: open up the eggs and you see a pretty cracked-porcelain kind of pattern has soaked into the egg.

Eat plain (hot or cold) or with rice. :)

Cream 'n Sugar Bakery - cupcakes

2009-04-11T10:02:00.006-04:00

Kerry had a coupon for this bakery nearby, so we stopped in and got some cupcakes.

I got a pumpkin cupcake and a red velvet cupcake. (The tops got a little smushed during transport...)

Our consensus was that the cake was good, but the icing was kind of odd. It was alright, but we couldn't put a finger on why precisely it wasn't quite right - I suspect it was because there was more shortening than butter in the recipe, and shortening can leave a funny aftertaste in your mouth.

The red velvet cake was very good. And no artificial coloring! I believe it was just Dutch process cocoa and buttermilk, which gave it enough of a reddish tint without being all fakey.

The cupcakes were also... big? I don't know how to explain it, since they were the normal size cup, width-wise, but they were... tall? As if the cups had been filled to the brim with batter. More bang for your buck, which is a good thing.

I forgot to take a picture of the exterior, but here is how it looks on Google Maps, haha:

It's not a huge place, but I have to pay it props because it has homemade baked goods and candy and coffee, to boot.

And for something completely different, Nick linked to this INGENIOUS blog that I fell in love with. Somehow, it makes sandwiches artistic. Behold, Scanwiches.

Almond-Crusted Zucchini bread

2009-04-05T20:44:00.002-04:00

I've never made zucchini bread before, but I found a great recipe online at 5 Second Rule for whole wheat zucchini bread. I didn't have whole wheat flour on hand, but this came out very soft and hearty nonetheless. The ground almonds add some substance and moisture without making it oily.

Pulverizing the almonds:

Grating the zucchini. I think there must be a fancier way to get this done, but I love my box grater, and I use it a lot. It's great for cutting down carrots, zucchini, cold butter, whatever else for baked goods.

The recipe is not that sugary, either. It's all dark brown sugar, and not a lot of it, but does make it nice and soft and substantial. Folding the zucchini into the wet mixture.

I had leftover almonds, so I also sprinkled the top of the loaf with the ground almonds to make a crust.

And finally, cut and ready to eat.

It was actually quite delicious. Good way to sneak some vegetables into your diet.

Cobblestone bento (17)

2009-03-28T09:28:00.002-04:00

Yes, another bento lunch. Almost done posting all my old pictures, whew!

On the left, General Tso's eggplant, sprinkled with some sesame seeds, plus some broccoli that I did in a quick ginger-soy marinade. In the middle, brown rice with snips of seaweed for garnish. (I literally used scissors to snip off strips of seaweed. Homemade furikake!) On the right, some leftover corn on the cob, and pieces of pluot. I put the corn in one of those silicone baking cups to keep it separated from the fruit.

Beignets

2009-03-24T23:17:00.003-04:00

Happy belated Mardi Gras! (Although I suppose this post is coming at an unfortunate time - Lent! Ah well.)

So beignets are basically doughnuts. In French, the word means doughnut, but it can contain a variety of fillings - sweet or savory. The popularized version in the States originates from New Orleans - a plain puffy fried dough covered in heaps of powdered sugar.

Surprisingly, the dough is a straightforward yeast dough. Perhaps the only thing that is unique is that it calls for the use of evaporated milk?

Kneading. That's how you get the nice, chewy texture. You need to knead it thoroughly to relax the gluten in the flour.

Once the dough has rested and risen to double its size, roll it out and cut it into squares.

Let the squares of dough rest again for about 40 minutes.

Once the dough is about ready, heat up a thick-bottomed saucepan or whatever device you normally use to deep-fry. You only need a couple of inches of oil, because the dough pops to the surface immediately if the oil is hot enough. It puffs up prettily, too.

Dust with powdered sugar. I didn't go crazy with this because I don't like super-sweet things - weird, yes, I know, but there's sweet then there's a toothache. Cafe du Monde, the most famous place in New Orleans for beignets, pours like mountains of powdered sugar on top, no joke.

If you're thinking these are unhealthy, well... you're coming to the wrong food blog. However, I will say that these beignets were suprisingly light on oil. They were not greasy at all. Which I think is attributed to oil temperature. You need to get it hot enough that the dough basically cooks immediately as it drops in, which I think forms a sort of barrier and keeps the insides from absorbing too much oil. But don't make the oil so hot that the exterior is fried to a crisp before the insides cook adequately. It's a delicate balance.

Showing you the inside.

Yummmy. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Continental Mid-Town - grilled tofu

2009-03-21T10:27:00.003-04:00

I went out to dinner with a couple of friends earlier in the semester at the Continental Mid-Town, which is one of the many Stephen Starr restaurants in Philadelphia. Many of them are fusion-Asian themed - actually, I think all of them are. (Also, check out the Continental Mid-Town website. Possibly the best website music ever! I don't know why I like it so much. It's super cheery.)

Continental Mid-Town is in Center City, and it was pretty good, but maybe not worth the price tag for what you were getting.

The lighting was also horrible for photography purposes (very dim and slightly orange), but I did the best I could.

The Continental Mid-Town is a two-level restaurant, with some wicker chairs on the second floor that hang from the ceiling. Yeah, I don't know, either.

We got grilled tofu as an appetizer.

And I got pad thai for my main dish, but the lighting was so awful that I couldn't salvage any of the pictures of it. Sadness. Imagine a big bowl of pad thai with red chopsticks, and you've got the idea.

Leek and Potato soup

2009-03-15T23:24:00.002-04:00

Okay, figured I should post this before winter is completely gone.

One of my faaavorite soups of all time is leek and potato. It's a good, hearty winter soup, and it's ridiculously easy to prepare.

Possibly the most complicated part is cleaning the leeks. Leeks are like... giant green onions? That's how I think of them. Except they are sweet and have a very mild onion flavor, which makes them great for soup. Look for ones with a large white portion, and a shorter green portion. Their stalks are prone to having mud and dirt getting stuck between the layers, so you need to cut off the tough green part at the top, the scraggly bit of the bulb at the bottom, and then split the leeks in half lengthwise. Like so:

Then rinse out the insides thoroughly. I run the leek halves under the tap and rub my thumbnail over them, flipping them like a pack of cards.

The rest of the recipe is super easy. Chop up the onion into a small dice and the leeks into strips. Good opportunity to practice your knife skills - which is probably why so many cooking courses start with soups. A lot of knife work!

Melt down a couple of tablespoons of butter in a big pot. Toss in the onions and leeks.

Slice the potatoes. You don't even have to peel them! Just wash them and scrape off any blemishes. Once the onions and leeks are pretty much cooked, and soft, toss the potatoes on top.

Okay, my pot was slightly too small for this, but it still worked out fine.

Cover all that with vegetable stock (or chicken stock, if you like), and let it simmer until the potatoes are soft. Then, use a potato masher, and just mash the potatoes. Yes, inside the soup. Mash them until you have a consistency you like - you can go chunky or completely smooth, up to you. Then stir in a cup of cream and salt and pepper to taste.

And that's all. It's delicious and easy, trust me.

Chocolate Pudding

2009-03-11T18:28:00.002-04:00

My sister got me a set of green ramekins for my birthday! I've been wanting them for a long time to make creme brulee, souffles, and other custard desserts. I wanted to try them out immediately, so... chocolate pudding it is.

Chocolate pudding is such a great dessert, and is surprisingly low on added sugar. The recipe I have, which came from Ms. Dorie Greenspan, requires only a few added tablespoons of sugar, and tastes amazing.

This recipe also requires a lot of in-and-out in the food processor, but all the maneuvering is worth it because you get this silky smooth end product. Dorie, I find, is really good at the custard and curd desserts.

Anyway. Start with whizzing up your cocoa powder, cornstarch, eggs, vanilla, etc. mixture.

After you've got that together, the cornstarch/egg mixture goes on the stove top, and you cook it until it thickens.

In the meantime, cutting up the bittersweet chocolate block to melt it down.

Then the thickened cornstarch/egg mix goes back in the food processor, along with the melted chocolate.

More whizzing. And then, filling the ramekins. Aren't they adorable?

After 4 hours in the fridge and some whipped cream, all ready to eat.

Whoo! Seriously, once you try this stuff, you'll be amazed at how you ever put up with pudding mixes. There's an amazing depth of flavor here that just can't be beat.

Microwave Potato Chips

2009-03-08T11:32:00.003-04:00

Did you know you can make potato chips without a deep-fryer? Without oil, even? AND they will be crunchy? Impossible, you say.

Behold the power of the microwave.

Now, believe me, I was skeptical at first, too. But I was amazed because the microwave cooks and dries the potato slices to the point where they actually are very crunchy. This recipe was adapted from a post I saw at Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen.

First, you need to wash and slice a medium-sized potato. A mandolin slicer would be super-helpful here, because the slices need to be reasonably thin and also need to be reasonably uniform in thickness. Or you could just use a sharp knife and slice super carefully, like I did, since I had no mandolin to help me.

Then, take the turntable of your microwave and line it with parchment paper. The drying potatoes will tend to stick, which is why this helps. But I tried this recipe out with a paper towel, and they came out fine. I just needed to be careful when removing the chips, but they detached themselves with minimal fuss and no ripped paper, so.

Make sure none of the slices are touching each other. Season how you like. I used my handy little sea salt grinder for this. But other suggestions include cracked pepper, Old Bay, chili powder, and even a dash of cider vinegar.

The microwaving is not actually that tricky - you just need to pay attention. I microwaved on high for 3 minutes, then opened the door to let the steam out, and then microwaved for another 2 minutes. During that last minute, watch closely and stop it when you see spots of brown start to appear. It's a fine line between a crunchy chip and a scorched one!

In the end, your efforts will be rewarded.

I swear, they were super crunchy. You'll never even miss the oil.

Naked Chocolate Cafe - spiced hot chocolate and cheesecake

2009-02-27T17:38:00.000-05:00

So this year, a cute little dessert cafe opened up a block from school.

It's one of those places that's mildly irritating because it's trying too hard to be European. But I do like it, though, since it's all about the dessert and drinks, and so very few cafes are like that anymore. And if nothing else, it's a close-by place to get European-style hot chocolate - the kind that is basically like a bar of chocolate in a cup. I enjoyed it so much in Italy and Spain, and now I have it in my own backyard.

My cup of spiced hot chocolate. They're not kidding when they say "spiced." It's got a kick! It was like drinking chocolate-covered red hots. Really great on a cold day, I have to admit.

And my little mini-cheesecake. It was airy, tall, and tasty. No complaints from me.

I'll be coming back for the hot chocolate, if nothing else.

Remix bento (16)

2009-02-25T00:17:00.000-05:00

Yep, another one that I never posted. This one is made up entirely of leftovers.

On the right, slices of cucumber and pieces of pineapple and a cherry tomato.

On the left, leftovers from the previous night's dinner: rice and fu zhu stew (fu zhu is dried tofu skin - it tastes a lot better than the translation makes it sound). I stuck a cherry tomato in the middle of the rice to make it look less visually boring. Yes, I take those kinds of things into consideration!

In the middle, sliced bits of corn from the previous night's dinner - we had corn on the cob, so I just took a knife and ran it down the cob to take off the corn kernels. Also, leftovers from lunch at a sushi restaurant - two pieces of spinach sushi, one piece of takuan sushi, and half of an inari-zushi. Also a cherry tomato for a gap-filler.

Itadakimasu!

Cinnamon Swirl bread

2009-02-13T17:09:00.004-05:00

I made some cinnamon swirl bread from a recipe out of Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking: From My Home To Yours, one of my favorite cookbooks.

So here you have the mise en place. (I don't do this as religiously as I should. I normally just grab stuff out of the cabinets as I need it, but I'm trying to reform...)

This dough is very... wet. Incorporating the flour:

This is a yeast-based bread dough, which means that it requires some form of kneading, wet or not. For those of us without stand mixers, this means some old-fashioned elbow grease, beating and beating the darn thing with a wooden spoon.

It's actually quite a workout because the dough starts to bind and cling to itself and resist you (as yeast doughs do). Like so:

Eventually, you will be rewarded with a dough ball. Which you cover and let sit so it can rise.

Unfortunately, I made this in the middle of winter and my house is cold. I was dumb and I should've put the dough in my oven (with the temperature on low), but I just left it and forgot about it. It didn't rise as well as it should've! Oh well.

Sprinkling on the cinnamon and sugar and rolling the dough up:

Roll all that and tuck it into a loaf pan, and let it rise some more.

And despite having a not-very-well-risen dough, the bread still came out beautifully.

This bread is excellent with some sweet butter. And leftovers are great for French toast, too.

Thank you, Dorie! You never fail me.

Spicy Peanut noodles

2009-02-08T12:12:00.003-05:00

This recipe comes from Moosewood Restaurant, which is a pretty well-known vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, NY. They have a slew of vegetarian-friendly cookbooks,but you can find some of their recipes online, including this one, which I kind of bastardized for my own purposes.

First, boiling the linguine noodles in my rice cooker. You don't have to worry about breaking the noodles (unless you like shorter noodles), just let them sit in the water for a minute, and then the bottom half will get soft, and you can push the top half down into the water.

I also used the steamer basket on my rice cooker to steam some broccoli while the noodles cooked.

Chopping the broccoli:

Whisking the sauce together. Peanut butter, warm water, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, chili oil, and red pepper flakes.

Cutting the cucumber. Half the cucumber vertically, then scoop out the seeds. Cut out slices horizontally, and you have little half-moon cucumber pieces.

Aaand that's basically it. Once the noodles are cooked, the rest is assembly. I cubed some extra firm tofu, and tossed that with the sauce, cucumbers, and noodles. (Drain the noodles, but don't rinse them cold - the sauce will stick better to the unrinsed noodles.) I tossed the broccoli in a quick marinade of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and minced ginger.

Plated up:

The original recipe didn't call for tofu, but I thought that added more... substance? Especially since I don't eat these noodles with anything else but broccoli. The peanut sauce goes great with the tofu, so I really do recommend adding that in. Buon appetito!

Sweet Potato pancakes

2009-02-03T09:46:00.005-05:00

Pancakes are actually super easy to make. If you have the time to make them out of Bisquick mix, you definitely have the time to make them from scratch. And when you do that, you can tweak the recipe as you like.

So take a large baked sweet potato and scoop out the insides.

Whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, sugar).

Pour together the wet ingredients (buttermilk, eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla and cinnamon and nutmeg if you like).

After combining the dry and the wet, fold in the sweet potato.

All pancake instructions say to wait until you see bubbles and the edges start to look dry before flipping. Listen to those instructions. That's exactly what happens. Like so:

Whoo hoo. Big stack of pancakes, ready for serving.

You don't need me to tell you to use real maple syrup, do you? You don't, because all you need to do is look at the ingredient list of those big name "maple syrup" brands and see high fructose corn syrup listed as a primary ingredient to see why. Look at the bottle next time, and buy the brand that only has 1 ingredient listed: maple syrup. Who would've thought?

Philly Diner - Belgian waffle

2009-01-30T20:32:00.010-05:00

So, I walk a couple of blocks to the grocery store every weekend. On the way, I pass by this diner - which is the only 24-hour diner in the immediate vicinity, a fact that doesn't go unappreciated by the college student population surrounding it. In fact... I have a very clear memory of my first time eating there, during orientation week, like around midnight. Good times.

Anyway. Paid a revisit in the daytime with Haine.

I'm not endorsing this restaurant, by the way. Just documenting. It's not that great. In fact, it's kinda bad. They do eggs and sandwiches okay.

In an unknown or questionable diner, I always find a Belgian waffle to be a safe bet. And that is what I ordered:

It has a Liberty Bell in the middle! Awww.

It's good if it's late and there's nowhere else you can go. It's good if you're hankering for some pancakes and eggs. Otherwise... not so much! Haha.

Amish Apple Dumpling

2009-01-23T20:08:00.003-05:00

So as opposed to so-called "Amish" friendship bread, apple dumplings are actually a typical Amish dessert. I love to get them from the farmer's market by my school.

This is a good way to use a disc of pie dough if you want to try something different.

Start off by making a syrup by boiling brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, butter, and water.

Peel and core 3 apples. You don't really need a special tool to core an apple. If you have the straight kind of simple peeler, and then you can use the tip to poke in and twist.

Make sure your apples are pretty dry (otherwise they'll melt the dough). Cut an 8 inch by 8 inch square (approximately) out of the pie dough. Stuff pieces of butter and brown sugar and cinnamon inside the apple. It doesn't matter if it doesn't all fit or if it spills over, since it's going to leak out anyway.

Wet the edges of the dough with water, then wrap the apple, pinching the seams tightly together.

Place the wrapped apples in a greased baking dish. Take the syrup (which should be cool now), and brush the dumplings all over. Be generous. (Actually, the normal recipe says to pour the syrup over the dumplings, but I thought that seemed a bit excessive.)

While the dumplings baked, I occasionally "basted" them with more syrup.

And there you go! Like a little fat apple pie.

Curry bento (15)

2009-01-18T09:21:00.002-05:00

Another one from the archives. I'll finish posting all these eventually!

On the left, Japanese curry and rice. I made the curry out of those Golden Curry instant packs, and I've never had them before, but they're kinda... sweet! They're even sweeter than Chinese curry. Not very spicy, even though I got the "medium" flavor one. I added onion, carrots, potato, and a crumbled-up soy burger. Yaay.

In the middle, cucumber slices and a couple of grape tomatoes. Also, a little bit of Chinese sponge cake. On the right, some rice crackers and supremed orange segments.

Poached eggs

2009-01-13T20:59:00.005-05:00

Okay, I admit it - sometimes I just like to take pictures of food. Eggs are quite pretty! And delicious. Like so:

Poached eggs are admittedly difficult. Well, they are for me - I don't know about you! I'm giving you what few pointers I know (because I have yet to truly perfect the poached egg) and walk you through it.

So take a room temperature egg, and break it carefully into a small dish. Don't break the yolk! That's the best darned part.

Okay, I have no photos of this next bit, because it was difficult enough to monitor my poor egg while taking pictures, too. But bring a pot of water (give yourself quite a few inches) right up to a boil but not quite there -- when you see the bubbles start forming for the boil, you're good to go.

Using the handle end of your slotted spoon, make a whirlpool in the water. Sort of... slowly drizzle the egg into the swirling water. It'll look like a mess for a little while, but stick with it. Encourage the swirling or push the whispy egg whites in as necessary. (This is where I always mess up, because a lot of my egg whites just cook and... float away.)

My final product (minus a bit of egg white...):

Now you have poached eggs to do what you will. But sometimes simple is the best! My favorite is just on toast. So let that dry while you toast a slice of bread.

I like the bread to become the plate. So I butter the bread, place the egg on, salt and pepper, and poke it to let the yolk come out.

I eat up most of the egg. And then I smash the remaining bits around:

Eggs and toast. Yay!

Banana Cream pie

2009-01-12T13:25:00.004-05:00

Bananas layered with brown sugar pastry cream, topped with whipped cream, in a pastry crust.

So I had some leftover pie dough that I needed to use before I went back to school. Nothing seemed to be presenting itself as a filling, until I spotted some ripening bananas in the fruit basket. And so, we're doing the comedy staple: banana cream pie.

Start off with egg yolks.

Which are mixed together with brown sugar, cornstarch, vanilla, and hot milk.

You cook it over the stove, whisking constantly, until it bubbles and thickens into a custard. It'll look something like this:

The custard needs to chill, so let the bowl rest inside a bigger bowl of ice and cold water, and whisk it occasionally to keep it from developing a skin. (Alternatively, you could put the custard in the fridge, but make sure to place some plastic wrap directly on the custard to prevent a skin from forming.)

A banana cream pie filling is not baked (it's a cold pie), so you need to blind bake the crust before. A good time to do this is while your custard is chilling.

So fit the pie dough over your pie plate. Butter a sheet of aluminum foil and wrap it, butter side down, over the pie dough.

Pour some sort of weights into the pie dish to keep the crust from puffing up. You can buy weights for this, but dry beans or uncooked rice work just fine. There is no shortage of uncooked rice in a Chinese household.

So bake that and let it cool.

Then, the fun part! Spread some pastry cream over the bottom of the pie crust. Layer on slices of banana.

Keep going, alternating pastry cream and banana layers until you get to the top.

Then, whip up some heavy cream and a little bit of sugar and vanilla to make whipped cream. Spread it all over like you would icing on a cake.

You can eat it straight-away or let it chill out in the fridge for a bit.

The keep time is kinda iffy because the whipped cream starts to dry out and deflate after a while. But with a tasty pie like this, you shouldn't have to worry about that.

Cheddar Cheese biscuits

2009-01-07T20:09:00.007-05:00

Biscuits are pretty easy to make if you just take a few extra minutes to prep the dough. Seriously, they're one of the easiest baked goods to make - how else did they get on the dinner table, every day, for generations? So I don't want to hear any more about biscuits that come out of a cardboard tube, ya hear?

First, whisk around your flour, baking powder, and salt. (You don't even have to sift!) Then, cut some cold butter into bits. You can shortcut this by grating the cold butter on a cheese grater (I've shown you this before). But I couldn't find my cheese grater, alas, so I just cut the butter into bits.

Then, using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour. This sounds weird, but go with it. It's not a baking euphemism -- literally, rub the butter between your fingers. Just make sure all the bits of butter are covered and incorporated.

Then, pour in your buttermilk, or milk.

Toss the mixture together with a fork, until it starts to clump together. Then, add the shredded cheddar cheese. I like to use sharp cheddar here, because the flavor comes through better.

Mix all that together, and knead the dough a couple of times until it all pulls together like this:

Using a light touch (you don't need to knead it to death), flatten the dough out with a rolling pin until it's about 1/2 inch thick. Cut out biscuits with a biscuit cutter or a drinking glass. You know how it goes: press, turn, and pop out.

The biscuits, ready to go into the oven. (And yes, I know, I am wasting trees by using parchment paper here, but I have a whole roll in my kitchen that no one is using.)

And there you go. In 15 minutes, you've got hot biscuits for dinner.

Remember, no more eating out of cardboard tubes!

Smashed Avocado sandwich

2009-01-02T13:01:00.003-05:00

Sometimes the simple things are the best. Putting together the right combination of the best ingredients makes for a great simple meal.

So take an avocado.

When picking avocados, go for the ones with dark skin. It's probably best to pick the firmer ones in the store (less likely to bruise or smush during transport) and be patient and let them ripen fully at home (let them sit at room temperature). An avocado is ready to eat when you give it a squeeze in your hand and you feel it give a little.

Toast some of your favorite bread (I like the seven grain wheat bread for this one - nutty breads work well with this). Halve the avocado, and scoop out one half onto the hot toast.

You can store the other half until you're ready to use it. Just squeeze some lemon over it (to keep the avocado from turning color), pop it in a plastic baggie, and put it in the fridge.

Smash the avocado and spread it around the toast. Sprinkle on some salt, black pepper, and a drizzle of a nice olive oil.

Close up your sandwich, serve with some chips (and I like a good tart orange juice as well), and you've got yourself a great little lunch. If you move fast, the toast will still be hot -- and that's just a beautiful thing.

Sure, it doesn't sound like a lot, but something about the combination of the nutty, buttery avocado with the sweet olive oil and the hot crunchy toast... It's a sandwich I've come to love. (Romaine lettuce and plum tomatoes also make great additions.)

Apple pie

2008-12-31T17:19:00.003-05:00

Golden Delicious apples in a cinnamon and brown sugar caramel with a lattice pastry crust.

I have to admit, I've never been an apple pie person. And although I bake, I have never actually randomly had a desire to eat anything I've ever made (okay, except for red velvet cupcakes).

This is the apple pie that made me love apple pies. This is the apple pie I sometimes dream of eating when I want something sweet and satisfying. No lie.

So here we go. A pie crust I made from one of Dorie Greenspan's recipes, I believe. Thawed and rolled out:

Fitted onto the Pyrex pie plate:

That goes back into the fridge to set up again, while I prep the apples. (And I need to note that, at this point, you need to pull out the top crust dough to let it thaw.) I prefer Golden Delicious apples for baking - they're firm, but not as sour as Granny Smith, which means they usually require less additional sugar.

Peel, core, slice about 6 apples. I dunk all the slices in a bath of water and lemon juice, so that they won't turn brown while I do my other prep work. This also helps the apples to tighten up and keep their shape.

Heat together butter, flour, brown sugar, white sugar, and cinnamon:

Once the mixture is heated and melted, let it cool for a bit. Drain the apples, and toss the two together:

Toss in some more flour, and pour the apples into the prepared pie pan. After which, the whole thing will look like this:

Your top crust dough should be ready for rolling at this point. I roll it out, and cut strips out of it with a sharp knife. (You can use one of those pastry cutters to get the scalloped edges, if you want, but I'm all about efficiency here.)

Lattice the top with the dough strips. There is apparently one easy, correct way to do this, but I have always alternated strips and carefully wove them over and under. So one horizontal, then one vertical, and keep going. Pinch and seal the edges.

Aaaand... after baking is done:

Apple pie. I've learned to love it; I'm sure you will, too.

Snickerdoodle cookies

2008-12-31T16:58:00.004-05:00

For this holiday season, I made big batches of snickerdoodle cookies as presents (rather than buying separate presents). There's a lot of cost savings in there! Yes, it takes time, but that's the one thing I actually have now that we're on winter break.

Snickerdoodles are actually, ingredient-wise, very simple cookies. They don't even require any vanilla!

So here we go, creaming together butter and sugar (without a stand mixer, I have to do this creaming process by hand, which is probably the most difficult part of the whole thing), and then adding eggs, one at at time:

Add in sifted flour, salt, and baking powder. Stir until the dough comes together:

Make a cinnamon sugar mix (about 2 parts sugar to 1 part cinnamon). Pull off small golf-ball sized chunks of dough and roll them in the cinnamon sugar:

Place the dough balls on a baking sheet. I say to flatten them a little, too, because if you don't, I think the cookies come out a little too chunky. To each his own, however, so do as you like.

After the cookies come out of the oven:

Candy bags are cheap and available at any craft store, so I think it's worthwhile to buy them. It makes it much easier to wrap up and distribute whatever goodies you've got to give.

Happy holidays!

Rouge bento (14)

2008-12-31T16:47:00.002-05:00

Yep, another bento box. This one unintentionally had a red theme.

On the right, a really rough potato salad that I tossed together last minute. Red potatoes left over from the previous night's dinner, tossed with kidney beans and cherry tomatoes (also from the previous night's salad). In the middle, some rice crackers and papaya chunks. On the end, an improvised strawberry shortcake - pieces of a leftover Chinese egg cake with some sliced strawberries on top.

Mom's Potato Salad

2008-12-31T16:27:00.005-05:00

Potatoes are comforting. Perhaps it's all the starch. But there's no other food that, all by itself, just lends itself to so many incarnations - all of them lovable. Who doesn't have great feelings of fondness towards fries, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, hash browns, etc.?

I kind of feel that way about my mom's potato salad. Being Chinese, we were never that big on potatoes, except for the summertime, when my mom made potato salads for picnics.

First, peel and chop up a couple of potatoes. Relatively small, but not so much so that they'll disintegrate after boiling.

Bring salted water to a roiling boil. (See, told you rice cookers weren't just for rice.) Drop the potatoes in.

Once the potatoes get cooked to the point where they break apart when they are poked with a fork, cut the heat and drain the potatoes.

Add 2 tablespoons of sweet relish, a couple of hard boiled eggs (diced), a tablespoon of mustard (Dijon would be good here, but regular yellow is just fine), and a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise. I didn't have any relish on hand, so I just chopped up some sweet pickles.

Mix it all together thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Simple, but good! For some variety, you might want to try some of the spicy relishes or chutneys as an alternative to the sweet relish.

All American bento (13)

2008-12-31T16:11:00.004-05:00

Yep, from the archives again. I'm determined to post these all eventually, just to get them out of the way. This is one in honor of school lunches everywhere.

On the right, some leftover potato salad, dressed up with a dash of paprika, and a few apple bunnies. In the middle, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I used strawberry jam, and also tossed in some flaked coconut (for the hell of it, I guess). And on the left, half of a banana, some carrot sticks, and some Goldfish crackers as gap fillers.

The complete lunch. In a side container, I've got some Greek yogurt and honey and blueberries.

Chole (Chana Masala)

2008-12-31T15:39:00.004-05:00

Chole, or chana masala, is probably my favorite Indian dish. It's the best food to make ahead - and in fact, probably gets better if left to marinate and let the spices really combine and settle in. I like to make a big batch on Sunday, which gives me an easy meal, ready to reheat whenever, when I am too lazy to make anything else or to go out. I've made it so many times I can probably make it in my sleep. And I never get tired of it.

Mine, admittedly, is a somewhat bastardized version with subpar spices. But it's good enough for me - I enjoy it quite a lot. I've modified my recipe for dorm room cooking.

First, chop up a small white or yellow onion. (If I had to state a preference, a sweet yellow onion might do well here.)

Then, mince some garlic and stem ginger. I go for about 2 tablespoons worth of ginger and 1 tablespoon worth of garlic.

Put the onion and garlic and ginger in a large microwave-safe bowl. (If you're cooking on the stove, do it the normal way: toss all of that into a large skillet over medium-high heat with some vegetable oil.) Toss in your spices: 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 3 tablespoons curry powder, 1 teaspoon chili powder (yea, like the kind used for making bean chili), 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes. Give or take, haha. I usually end up adding more spices at the end, to taste, anyway.

Stir all that together, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and microwave on 60% power for about 8 minutes, depending on your microwave. Enough to let the onions soften. You'll definitely notice the difference when the onions are cooked. If you're unsure, pop the bowl out and check periodically - poke them to see if they're softened.

It'll look like this:

Then, toss in 1 small can of unseasoned tomato sauce, 1 can diced tomatoes (drained), 2 tablespoons sugar (to counteract the sourness of the tomatoes) and 2 cans of chickpeas (drained).

Stir it all together, cover with plastic wrap, and microwave on 60% power for about 10 minutes. (Stop it at the 5 minute mark to give it a stir. This is the point at which you'd add more of whatever seasoning you deem is needed.) Note that canned chickpeas are ready to eat, so really, at this point, all you're doing is heating the dish through and letting the spices combine.

Serve with basmati rice.

Yes, it doesn't sound like much, but this dish is a winner, trust me. Just looking at that makes me hungry...

Hot Cold bento (12)

2008-12-31T15:23:00.005-05:00

Another one from the archives.

On the right, some white rice and chickpea curry (which tends to go by various names, so I am not clear on what it should be called - chana masala seems to be the most common name). Want to know how to make it, you say? Hold on tight, m'dears, it's coming.

In the middle, carrot sticks and supremed orange segments (in a foil baking cup, to keep the orange juice from running into other things). On the left, some Fruity Cheerios (which are kind of like Froot Loops? except apparently better for you? I dunno).

Peanut Butter M&M cookies

2008-12-31T15:05:00.002-05:00

These cookies aren't particularly notable, baking-wise, but I thought I'd show them to you for posterity's sake. And they're cute!

What's going on with these cookies is that I took the chocolate chip cookie recipe from here. I replaced 1/2 a stick of butter with an equal amount of peanut butter, and I replaced the chocolate chips with M&Ms.

Dropping the cookies. (Please note that I was baking with my friend Mariko in her room, and she had no pans. So we improvised a baking pan out of several folded sheets of aluminum foil. Worked out just fine.)

And voila! Delicious peanut butter cookies. Like a peanut butter cup, but better.

(I love how the plate kind of matches, too.)

Ramen (but better)

2008-12-31T14:49:00.005-05:00

Umm... hi? I know, it's been months! But you have to forgive me, as I was swamped with schoolwork once the first semester of law school kicked in. Hopefully, I'll be able to post more regularly from here on out, as law school supposedly gets "easier" as you go along. (But please note the air quotes.)

I have accumulated a fair amount of food photos to show you (things I made over these past few months that I never got a chance to post), so settle back and enjoy the ride. We'll start off easy with the dorm room staple - ramen!

I um... eat ramen a lot more than I should. :\ I make myself feel better about this bad habit by making it as healthy as I can. If you think the following recipe is unusual... well, some variant of this is the way my family always makes ramen. Some sort of vegetable green and meat/eggs always get added in. It's a good way to use up leftovers. (Say no plain noodles! That's just boring.)

First off, I get the water boiling in my rice cooker. (Rice cookers are not just for rice! Just dump some water in there, and turn it on and put on the cover, and you'll have a happy boil in no time.) Once it's at a boil, I add the noodles and seasoning. I only use about half the seasoning packet that comes with the ramen. There's a lot of unnecessary sodium in there, and you really are better off flavoring the ramen as you like it.

I also add a couple of handfuls of baby spinach. (Now you know what to do with those leftover salad greens, right?)

I always have a couple of hardboiled eggs handy for a quick breakfast. While the noodles cook, I slice up a couple and put them in my soup bowl. Once the noodles are soft, I dump them into the bowl, on top of the eggs. Then some seasoning with ground black pepper and Sriracha hot sauce, and there you go - a meal fit for a king.

Nothing better on a cold day, let me tell you.

Caprese sandwich

2008-09-15T00:37:00.004-04:00

This past weekend, I went with a few friends to the Italian Market, in south Philadelphia. It's purportedly Philly's oldest open air market. I was mainly attracted by the promise of super-cheap produce and the famous DiBruno Bros. cheese shop.

Establishing shot of 9th Street:

It's not the nicest area, I have to tell you. But you come to expect that in Philly -- everything is just ever-so-slightly.... grungy. But! All of the outdoor produce stands were, as promised, super cheap. For only about $3, I got 1 pound of green grapes, 2 peaches, and 3 plum tomatoes.

Can't say that the cheap feature holds true at DiBruno Bros., though...

Nanda, mugging for the camera so that the cheese mongers don't think I'm a crazy person who is trying to take pictures of the cheese (except I am...):

It's a smallish shop, but it was packed. Evidently popular. I've been to their shop in Center City, which is newer and bigger -- more like a high-end grocery store. I have to say I like this Italian Market shop better, because the focus here is definitely the cheese. I got a ball of fresh mozzarella ($8) and a small chunk of parmigiano reggiano ($5).

My haul from the Italian Market, at the end of the day:

What to do with fresh mozzarella and tomatoes? Make a delicious Caprese sandwich, of course.

Caprese means "from Capri," an island in Italy. A Caprese salad is made of mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and olive oil (and salt). The Caprese sandwich sticks that combination between two slices of bread. I didn't have any fresh basil, alas, so basil pesto would have to do.

I love ciabatta bread. It's great for sandwiches (particularly panini-style sandwiches), because the interior is soft, but the crust is hard enough to stand up against any threat of sogginess. It also has that sourdough tang that I really love.

A small roll of ciabatta, sliced:

I spread basil pesto on the bottom, then layered on slices of mozzarella and plum tomato. I also seasoned the thing with a bit of salt. (I suppose pepper would be ok if you want it, but I think it strikes out the basil flavor too much.)

Sliced up and ready to eat:

Yummy! I love food.

General Tso's Eggplant

2008-09-14T19:44:00.003-04:00

You all know General Tso's. I believe that this dish (primarily, the spicy sweet sauce) is not actually Chinese. I think it's about as Chinese as chop suey, if you get my drift. In fact, I know it is, because my dad (who cooks in Chinese restaurants) tells me that it's probably named after some dude who created the sauce by accident, and people ended up liking it a lot.

And the sauce has a LOT of sugar, if you didn't already guess that. But it probably contains even more than you think.

Despite all that, I really like the sauce. I do. It's probably all the sugar.

I made this recipe because I like the General Tso's taste. But all I've got is a rice cooker. So while I cooked some rice, I steamed all the vegetables in the steamer tray and tossed them in the sauce. (Don't microwave vegetables, even in a steamer bag. Microwaves zap out the nutrients, which defeats the whole purpose of eating fresh vegetables, doesn't it?) I microwaved the sauce, though, because there aren't that many nutrients in the sauce to begin with...

Cutting up the broccoli head:

Steaming the broccoli:

I had to do it separately, since my steamer basket is too small to handle too many vegetables. :( After the broccoli cooked, I set it aside in a bowl.

Cutting the eggplant:

Steaming the eggplant:

While the eggplant and the rice finished up cooking, I made the sauce.

Mincing the ginger and garlic for the sauce (I use the "attack it until it looks small enough" approach):

Whisking together all the sauce ingredients:

Since the sauce has cornstarch, all you have to do is get the mixture to the right temperature (around the boiling point) to get the sauce to thicken. I microwaved the mix (in a bowl, covered with plastic) for about 2 minutes. I popped it out, gave it a stir, and microwaved it again for another 2 minutes.

At the end, the sauce should turn sorta translucent, and it'll look like this:

Scoop out the eggplant, toss the vegetables in the sauce, and serve with rice. (I like the short grain brown rice.) Yaaay.

Admittedly, the sauce doesn't stick that well to eggplant, because it's... slick. It would work better if the eggplant had been breaded and fried, but I don't have the convenience of a stove. :( Regardless, the taste is all there. What more can you ask for, really?

I wrote up the recipe here. Put the sauce on whatever you like -- I particularly enjoy it on tofu.

Corn (an ode)

2008-09-10T20:10:00.003-04:00

You know what I love?

Indeed, indeed. Not that frozen stuff, but the real honest corn on the cob. Maize has a weird evolutionary history in which the disproportionately huge ear became the dominant cultivar purely because humans chose to domesticate that particular mutation. But that's a story for another day. Point is, we are here, and corn is here, and it is delicious.

Corn is under-appreciated, I feel. Boiled to the point of perfection (hot, but still crisp, and not mushy), it's like... good-for-you candy. Truly.

That pictured above is an ear of sweet corn that I got from a farmer's market that shows up every week nary a block away from where I live. I bought 2 ears for 50 cents each: one white, and one "popcorn" colored one.

So I can basically roll out of bed and get farm fresh fruits and vegetables (and jam and cake and pie). Jealous much?

This one in particular is part of the Farm to City initiative here in Philly. My exploration of this farmer's market is how I came to meet some Amish folks for the first time. True story. (No Amish are in that photo above though, sorry.)

Little known fact is that a rice cooker doesn't just cook rice. (Which I have proved to you before, and will continue to prove.) Boiling the corn in my rice cooker:

Mmm. Fresh corn on the cob, with butter and salt.

Go get some corn on your plate! It's the season for it right now, so shoo, shoo.

The Real Le Ahn Chinese Food Truck - Singapore noodles

2008-09-08T17:15:00.006-04:00

I'm labeling this post under the heading of "restaurants" very loosely - of this I am aware.

So, I'm in Philadelphia now. The things that you don't know about Philadelphians (particularly the students) that you will find out quickly once you start living here is: 1) they love this game called Quizzo and 2) they love food trucks.

I didn't get it. See, in DC, food trucks are to be regarded with skepticism and you are not to buy anything that is not prepackaged. Not so in Philly. Here, food trucks are one of the essential sources of sustenance for a student on a budget. They're all over campus, and we even have a map of the approved food trucks in the area. They're cheap, and apparently, most of them are pretty good.

There are clusters of them in certain areas. This is the south side of Spruce Street, between 36th and 37th, I believe.

We went to the Real Le Ahn Chinese Food truck. (Why "Real"? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that there's a truck called the Original Le Ahn on the other side of the street...)

Yes, people stand in line to eat at the food trucks. Again, don't really get it. Yet.

The menu has lots of vegetarian options! Made me happy.

I got the Singapore rice noodles with tofu.

On the whole, pretty decent for only $4.25. Huge portion, fresh vegetables, egg, and tofu. I am accustomed to a drier noodle with a stronger curry flavor, but I really couldn't complain. I had plenty left to save for dinner.

And you know what this means? I will be trying more food trucks in the future...

Benkyou bento (11)

2008-09-06T12:25:00.003-04:00

"Benkyou" is Japanese for "study," hahaha.

Anyway, if you all are curious as to what I eat for lunch these days, or what I bring with me to the library when I study... (You probably aren't, but I'll share anyway.)

It looks something like this:

In the morning, I make myself a vegetable and cheese wrap, and I cut it up into pieces to fit in the bento box. Then I cut up some sort of fruit (usually an apple, but peaches are in season now...), toss in some potato chips, and I'm good to go! It's enough to keep me going through a long study session...

The wrap is very easy -- I really never understood why people pay other people to put wraps together, especially vegetable ones. No cooking required!

I like a whole wheat wrap (you can find them near the pita bread in the bread section of the grocery store), baby spinach, cucumber, carrots, tomato, Swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, and a little mayo and mustard.

Oh, and don't forget the salt and pepper! They are essential. Can you see the pepper below?

Then, roll it up, hold it together with toothpicks, and enjoy. Really, really easy.

Wheat Berry Waldorf Salad

2008-09-05T09:17:00.004-04:00

This salad recipe comes from Whole Foods Market. It's my favorite thing to buy in their salad/take-away section, so I was pleased to find a copy of the recipe online.

Wheat berries are a mysterious food to me. (To many, I suppose.) But they are delicious, so I will let them continue to live in enigma so long as I can keep eating them. They are essentially the entire wheat kernel (kind of like a kernel of corn), minus the hull.

When you buy them raw at your local natural foods store, they look something like this:

I suppose that you normally boil them, but seeing as how I don't have a stove, I find that a rice cooker works wonderfully, too.

This is where the mystery comes in, for me. Wheat berries start out looking like brown rice, but then, after cooking, they become these shiny, plump little... berries.

I can't really describe what they taste like, but they taste just how you think they would, based on appearances. (And who says you can't judge a book by its cover?) Toothy, slightly chewy -- making them great in salad.

The Waldorf salad has its own little history, but this version of it includes apples, raisins, and walnuts.

Cutting up the apple:

Then, after all the seasonings and such are mixed in:

Ta-da! It's super easy to make, and it keeps for a decent amount of time. It's a good alternative to oatmeal in the morning, because I find that it keeps me reasonably satiated until lunch time.

You can find the recipe here, which I uploaded with my adaptations for dorm room purposes.

Caprino bento (10)

2008-09-01T22:36:00.003-04:00

Another one from the archives (that I never posted). I call this one "Caprino" because the sandwich has goat's milk cheese, and Caprino is an Italian goat cheese.

On the left, we have roasted red pepper hummus, sprinkled with paprika, and carrot sticks. In the middle -- a sandwich of fresh tomatoes, baby spinach, sundried tomatoes, goat cheese, and salt and pepper, on wheat bread. (If I were to make that one again, I would add fresh mozzarella, because it was lacking in... substance? If you get my drift.) On the right, pieces of an apple, and some small pieces of my blueberry lemon yogurt cake.

I also had a side container filled with Greek yogurt, honey, and blueberries. I tried to arrange the blueberries to look like a fish. (Can you tell?)

Man, I could really go for some of that cake right now....

I would like to thank the Academy...

2008-08-30T18:02:00.001-04:00

Oy, do you folks remember that I entered this berry recipe contest in July?

I won second place! *cabbage patches*

Thanks to the KI staff for trying out the recipe and enjoying it.

You can read more about it here.

Returning to dorm life

2008-08-26T11:14:00.005-04:00

Hi, everyone. I am now writing to you from the comfort of my dorm room at law school.

I know that the focus of this blog was originally to write about my baking exploits, but that's inevitably going to change now that I don't have... an oven... (But that will not limit this baker! After all, the Chinese are known for their steamed cakes.)

I'll keep you all posted about my culinary exploits during my stint at school -- the restaurants I try, the dorm-friendly recipes I'll try to create, and eating on a budget. All with the limitations of a $40/week budget and cooking with only a fridge, a microwave, and a rice cooker.

Ambitious, yes, and I hope you all will share the ride with me.

In season map

2008-08-21T15:41:00.002-04:00

I've linked to resources that can help you figure out which foods are in season, but this is the best one I've found by far. It gives you the seasonal crops, by U.S. state. You just need to select the month, and then click on the state of your choice.

It's quite handy! It also gives you recipe ideas for any foods that pique your interest.

Apple Pecan Turnovers

2008-08-19T16:56:00.003-04:00

I had a roll of phyllo dough leftover from that time I made baklava. It's been sitting in my freezer, waiting to be used, so I made apple turnovers.

I think turnovers are a good recipe to introduce the use of phyllo, a pastry that intimidates people for some reason. The only thing you really need to remember is to let the phyllo sheets thaw completely before using, and to keep a wet towel covering the phyllo while you're working so it doesn't dry out. (Well, I guess that's two things.)

I found that two large apples was plenty to make 8 turnovers. Cutting up the apples:

The original recipe I found for these turnovers suggested using dried cranberries. I didn't have any on hand, but I had pecan pieces, so I used those. Cooking the apples with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, pecans, and a little butter:

While I let the apple/pecan mixture cool down, I prepared my phyllo, which had already been thawed. I placed one sheet of phyllo down, and brushed it with melted butter. Then I repeated the process with two more sheets of phyllo. I sprinkled the last sheet with ground almonds (the original recipe called for crushed cookies, but I didn't have any).

Then, I used a sharp knife (really sharp! so the phyllo won't tear) to cut the sheets in half lengthwise. The recipe I used said you could get 4 strips out of one set of sheets, but I thought that would be way too skinny -- I didn't want teeny-tiny turnovers...

Spoon some of the (now cool) filling at one end of the phyllo strip.

Then, turn it over! Just fold it into a right triangle, and keep flipping it over until you reach the end of the strip. Don't worry -- by the time you get to the end, you'll have flipped it enough times to cover all the open edges.

I brushed the top side with more melted butter, and sprinkled more ground almonds on top.

All the turnovers, ready to bake:

And ready to eat:

These aren't hard to make, trust me! And they're delicious. Like little pies that fit in your hand.

Cinnamon Buns

2008-08-17T20:19:00.003-04:00

Cinnamon buns kind of take a lot of time. They're usually made out of a yeast dough, so it requires a lot of inactive prep time to let the dough rise. There's no way around it -- if you want fresh cinnamon buns for breakfast, I suggest waking up early and then taking a nap while the dough rises. (Which is what I did.)

The recipe I found on allrecipes.com called for heating milk, sugar, and vanilla in a saucepan. Then you stir in yeast, flour, and salt.

After the mixture rises for an hour:

Then you add more flour, and knead out the dough into a rectangle.

Brush on a layer of melted butter:

Sprinkle on cinnamon and sugar:

Roll up the rectangle and pinch the seam. Cutting the rolls:

I placed them in a buttered baking pan. I spaced the rolls pretty close together so that all the sides would connect as they baked -- that way, they're nice and soft on all sides.

After the buns bake:

I made a quick icing out of confectioner's sugar, milk, coffee, and vanilla. I love how easy icing is to make -- take confectioner's sugar and a little liquid, and you've got icing. I suspect it has to do with the fact that confectioner's sugar contains some cornstarch...

After the cinnamon buns are iced:

There you have it! Soft and yummy cinnamon buns.

Totally worth the wait!

Banana Rice Pudding

2008-08-17T18:34:00.000-04:00

Being Chinese, rice is a given at any dinnertime meal. It's the same as bread, you know? That also means, at any given time, we have a lot of leftover rice in the fridge:

One day, I was perusing the fridge for something to eat, and I felt a hankering for rice pudding.

Rice pudding is typically made from fresh rice, but I modified the recipe a bit to use leftover rice. I mixed some leftover rice with sugar and milk:

Raisins are also typical in rice pudding, but I didn't have any on hand. So I diced up half of a banana instead.

Adding the banana and some vanilla extract to the milk/rice mix:

Bring to a boil, and simmer until the milk cooks down. It won't look like much to start, but your patience will be rewarded in the end.

Ta-da! Banana rice pudding.

It's also a decent alternative to oatmeal, if you're looking for something tasty for breakfast.

Perfect Chocolate Chip cookies

2008-08-14T18:12:00.000-04:00

No, really.

Pardon me while I wax philosophical for a moment.

Sometimes I feel that the measure of a real baker is if they can make a great chocolate chip cookie. You'd think something so basic wouldn't be so challenging, but there's a lot that can go wrong with cookies -- moreso, even, than cakes, in my opinion.

There are no other baked goods on which perfection rests more heavily on mouthfeel. Bakery-style chocolate chip cookies have to go the whole nine -- they have to be soft on the inside, crisp on the outside, chewy, and not overbaked. (Unless, of course, you enjoy Chips Ahoy cookies. If that is the case, I'm not sure why you're reading this.) If you think about it, it's not hard to replicate the taste of a chocolate chip cookie. The difficulty is all in mouthfeel.

I had given up on cookies, because it made me sad that I want to be a baker and I still couldn't make a good chocolate chip cookie from scratch. No more, dear friends.

I heard a lot of great things about the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Baking Illustrated, so I decided to forgo my trepidation and tried the recipe out.

Results? See for yourself:

It's everything that you would think would be contradictory in one cookie: soft, crisp, chewy, and tasty. I am in loooooveeee with this recipe. It's seriously perfect. Let me backtrack and show you some other pictures.

Mixing in the chips:

Ready to be baked:

And again, just because they're so pretty:

I am not sure what it is. I suspect it has to do with the fact that the brown sugar to white sugar ratio in this recipe is 2:1. (If you want the recipe, let me know. Too lazy to type it up right now.)

Whatever it is, I am done. I am happy. And chocolate chip cookies no longer scare me.

When in doubt...

2008-08-11T00:49:00.003-04:00

...ask Mom.

So I was over at Nanda's house this evening, trying to make French macarons (I'll tell you all about our sorry failed attempt later, with visual aids). I got to chatting with her mom, and Nanda mentioned how I tried to make naan.

I told her how I couldn't get it to bubble on both sides, and she said, "Oh. You have to keep flipping it over." She demonstrated with a few waves of her hand, and it was literally like flip-flip-flip, nonstop. That is why my naan was a flapjack on one side.

They need to put these things in the recipe! You know how it's said that folks always withhold something in their recipes -- just so that any attempt to recreate their food won't be quite the same. Sigh.

So there you have it. Keep flipping. And don't forget to ask Mom.

Frappuchino cupcakes

2008-08-09T17:39:00.004-04:00

Mocha coffee cake with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, dusted with cinnamon.

This cupcake came together rather on a whim, because I had a bottle of mocha frappuchino from a coffee shop chain that shall remain nameless. But I didn't feel like drinking it. So, what to do? Naturally, we make it into a cupcake.

I used a normal cake batter recipe, except I poured in mocha frappuchino instead of milk:

I also mixed in some instant coffee crystals (which dissolved nicely) to add extra coffee flavor to the batter.

After all that is mixed in:

Filling the baking cups:

While the cupcakes were baking, I made a Swiss meringue buttercream. I've tried making a Swiss meringue buttercream before, but I was disappointed when all I got was a curdled soup. I tried again, this time making sure that all the sugar dissolved into the egg whites before whipping them. I also whipped the butter separately before adding it to the meringue.

It worked! It came out a lot better this time.

Mid-decorating:

I topped the whole thing with a dusting of cinnamon, and there you go. A frappuchino cupcake.

The coffee flavor didn't come out as strongly as I would've liked, so next time, I'm going to add even more instant coffee. But tasty, nonetheless. :)

Mini Lemon Cream tarts

2008-08-05T20:14:00.006-04:00

French lemon cream and whipped cream in a mini sweet tart crust.

So, I had one lemon left in the fridge. What to do with one lonely lemon? A normal person would probably make fresh lemonade.

Obviously, I am not a normal person.

I took one look at that unsuspecting lemon, and my first thought was, "I could really go for a lemon tart right now." And I recently saw these adorable new pastries at La Madeleine -- mini lemon tarts. So I decided to make some of my own.

I took the recipe for Dorie Greenspan's lemon cream tart (from her cookbook). I divided her recipe for the lemon cream so that I was only making a third of it, and I divided her recipe for a sweet tart dough in half. (Amazingly, when you take the lemon cream to a third, you only really need 1 lemon. Mwahahaha.)

First, the tart dough. Cutting butter into flour and confectioner's sugar:

Then, slowly drizzle in an egg yolk. This is how the mixture looks after pulsing in the egg yolk:

It looks really crumbly, but it binds together well when you press it. I greased and floured a mini-muffin tin and pressed the tart dough into each cup:

Pop them into the freezer for 30 minutes to get them to hold their shape (that way, you don't need weights in the cups), and cover them with foil to keep them from burning as you bake. The original recipe called for blind baking the crust for maybe 25 minutes? I don't remember. I ended up only baking them for about 12.

All done and cooling:

Now. Onto the cream. I love making creams and curds. I find that they're easy to make, not too sugary, and impressively delicious. Rubbing the zest of one lonely lemon into the white sugar:

Then you whisk in one egg and lemon juice (juice the heck out of that one lemon, but hopefully that's all you'll require). Then, cook the entire mixture on a double boiler, whisking constantly.

This is on the double boiler, as the curd starts to set:

Once it gets to that point, per the recipe, set it aside to cool for 10 minutes. Then, pour the lemon mixture into a food processor or blender, and blend in the butter. I ended up using two tablespoons less than the original recipe would've required -- but I felt there was enough butter in there, and it tasted fine to me. Taste as you go!

Lemon cream, all done:

Since there's room temperature butter in there, the cream will finish off rather liquidy. It'll be lemon soup. No fear! Put it in the fridge overnight and by morning, it will have set, and you will have a beautiful thick lemon cream.

I piped the cream into the mini-tarts. Then, I made a really quick whipped cream using my last dredges of whipping cream and some confectioner's sugar, and piped little dots of cream on top of each tart.

Happiness! Now that is how to use a lemon.

Oven Baked Fries

2008-08-04T17:08:00.004-04:00

I made some fries today for lunch. I've never made them before, but I figured it wasn't that hard.

I cut up two baking potatoes into large French fries. I was sort of surprised by how few fries two potatoes produce. The photo below shows how many fries I got out of one potato. Only 15, tops. Imagine how many potatoes you're really eating with those huge orders of fries at a restaurant...

Then, I blanched the fries for a few minutes in boiling water:

After removing the fries from the water, I did a quick toss with vegetable oil, salt, and Old Bay seasoning. Then, I spread them out in one layer on a baking sheet and put them in the oven at 425 degrees.

The instructions I found online seemed to indicate that the fries would only need about 15-20 minutes for baking potatoes, but I found that, in my oven, it took closer to 25-30 minutes. I flipped the fries over halfway through.

Et voila.

If you ask me, these came out fairly tasty for being oven-baked at home. They were crispy enough (maybe I need to increase the oven temperature next time), and the insides were nice and soft.

Triple Berry Upside-Down cake

2008-08-03T17:07:00.006-04:00

Upside-down strawberry, blueberry, and raspberry yogurt cake.

Sophie over at Key Ingredient asked me to participate in their July berry recipe contest. My submission for this was basically what I felt like eating at the time -- I wanted a nice, dense cake with good berry flavor.

First off, I greased and floured a spring-form pan. Then, I lined it with berries that I had tossed with sugar and lemon zest. (Strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries.) Too bad they won't look this pretty in the end:

The cake is a yogurt cake based on Ina Garten's recipe for lemon yogurt cake (sans lemon syrup). This one I enjoy a lot because it has a nice most and dense crumb, which is exactly what I'm looking for here. There is no butter in this recipe. Only yogurt and 1/2 cup of vegetable oil.

The dry:

The wet:

All blended together and poured over the berries:

Immediately after it comes out of the oven. Don't worry if it's messy! It actually makes it look nice and homemade (in my opinion).

Inverted onto a serving plate. I dusted this with confectioner's sugar, but that's up to you. I like it for the pretty factor, but the extra sweetness isn't really necessary.

Serve with fresh whipped cream and enjoy!

For once, I actually typed up my recipe. (I had to, since it was required for the contest, hah.) I am normally too lazy. But if you would like the recipe, it's right here. This might go without saying, but that berry combination isn't set in stone. Use whatever proportions you like! (This works for any fruit, really. Don't be limited to pineapple! Try it with fresh peaches -- I guarantee it will be awesome.)

Naan

2008-07-31T15:23:00.000-04:00

Yep, finally. I've been trying to make these for forever, but I never managed to get up early enough on a weekend to get it done in time for lunch.

Naan is a type of Indian flatbread that is made from a yeast dough. One of my favorites! And after looking at the recipe and realizing it wasn't so hard after all, I decided to make my own.

The yeast, sitting in warm water:

To that, you add a little milk, bread flour, a little sugar, salt, and an egg. After kneading that mixture for a bit, you come out with a dough ball that looks like this:

(Told you it's easy.) Cover the dough ball and let it rise in a warm place for an hour. Then knead it a bit again, and pull off pieces of the dough and roll them into small balls (about the size of a golf ball).

Let those rise for another half hour (covered). Then, take the balls and roll them out into thin disks:

While you're rolling out the dough balls, get the grill (or frying pan or whatever) going. Also melt down about 1/4 cup of butter. (No worries, you won't need it all unless you like your naan kinda greasy. Some people do.)

Oil down the pan and toss on your first naan. You should see the bubbles coming up on the top side as it cooks. Like so:

Once the bubbles start going, you're probably ready to flip. So brush some melted butter on the top side, and then flip away.

The only sad thing is that the bottom ends up looking like a flapjack, but what can you do?

The top looks perfect, though. And they were great! Nice and chewy, and they're GREAT when they're hot.

Serve with your favorite curry! I also happen to enjoy them with a good thick chili, too.

Woo Lae Oak - green tea ice cream

2008-07-27T23:11:00.004-04:00

I recently went with Grace to Woo Lae Oak, my favorite Korean restaurant in the DC area. Oh my goooodddd, I love their dolsot bibimbap. :)

Anyway! For dessert, we ordered green tea ice cream. One of my favorite ice cream flavors! It was the first time we ordered it from this particular restaurant, and I don't know if it was the lighting or what, but it looked beautiful. So beautiful that I was compelled to take a picture, even though I am not normally a person who takes pictures of her food at restaurants.

Yeah, it was the lighting. Had to be.

It was great! Nice and soft. In some restaurants, it's icy and as hard as a rock, and you can tell that it's been sitting in the freezer for forever. But not this one! Just as tasty as it looked.

Curious about how to make it, you say? Well, I don't have an ice cream maker, so I can't provide you a practical example, but I found this recipe, which seems pretty on the money.

Cherries (an ode)

2008-07-27T19:23:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I get in these moods where I just want to eat and eat and eat a particular thing until I get sick of it (or burst, whichever comes first). Then I don't want to eat that thing again for... months. Luckily, it's usually something healthy -- although I did have a time where I could NOT get enough of those White Cheddar Natural Cheetos...

And luckily, this time, I am in the mood for something both healthy and in season! (Well... the season is ending for them now. Booo.) Folks, I'm talking cherries.

Look at these beautiful Bing cherries I got on sale today ($2.50/lb! not bad):

They're just... fun to eat. They're like peanuts, but sweet. And unlike peanuts, you can eat a lot of them without getting a funny greasy taste in your mouth. My analogy is terrible, but maybe you catch my meaning. Read all you like about cherries over here and here.

Did you know (according to Wikipedia), Bing cherries are named after a Chinese foreman who worked for the horticulturalist who developed the cultivar? Lucky for us the dude was nice enough to name it after his foreman. Otherwise they'd be called Lewelling cherries, and that's no fun at all.

You really don't want to know how many cherries I packed away this past week. Still not tired of them yet!

Mint Swirl brownies

2008-07-23T22:50:00.003-04:00

Brownies are pretty easy to make, actually. You can find lots of good recipes on allrecipes.com to suit your brownie desires. Whether you like cakey, chewy, sticky sweet... I guarantee you they're all pretty decent recipes. Fight the temptation to use box mixes!

I think my recipe actually came from allrecipes, too -- and it's my favorite. It's nice and moist, but not sickeningly fudgy. (It also gets better after sitting overnight for some reason. Straight out of the oven, it's like chocolate cake, but as it cools and settles, it's a nice thick brownie.)

The wet and dry ingredients. (The cocoa powder is underneath the flour, so you can't see it, but it's there.)

All mixed together:

I whipped together a mint icing using milk, confectioner's sugar, and peppermint extract. I also added some drops of green food coloring in for posterity's sake.

I drizzled the mint icing over half the brownies, since my sister doesn't like mint brownies.

Then, after the brownies baked, I was sad to see that the swirls were not very noticeable. So I spread the rest of the mint mixture on top (like icing) while the brownies were still warm. If you spread it thinly, the top will dry and crackle. I don't know why it does, but I think they look prettier this way.

The green color didn't come out that great, so if you want them to be REALLY green, you need to make it a whole lot greener from the start.

But they tasted awesome. Like an Andes chocolate bar... in brownie form...

I cut them up and wrapped them in candy gift bags to distribute. :)

PB&J cupcakes

2008-07-22T13:31:00.001-04:00

Peanut butter cake with grape jelly buttercream and candy topping.

Sorry I haven't updated in so long! My internet has been down, and I've been running around so much lately that I haven't had a chance to sit down and update this thing, even though I've had pictures ready for ages.

So I wanted to make a cute cupcake for my friend Ana's birthday. It's no secret that her favorite colors are purple and pink, so I decided to make a cupcake that would match these colors. Fortunately, I've been wanting to try making a peanut butter and jelly cupcake for quite some time, so this was a great opportunity!

First off, I replaced about half of the butter in my normal cupcake recipe with peanut butter. And that's the only change I made, really.

The butters and sugar:

This is what the mix looks like after it's been beaten until "light and fluffy":

And this is what it looks like after the rest of the ingredients (flour, eggs, buttermilk, etc.) have been added. Doesn't it look delicious?! It smelled really good, too -- nice and nutty. I just kind of wanted to put my face in it, but I restrained myself.

While the cupcakes were baking, I made a grape jelly buttercream. The concord grape jelly actually made the mixture look kind of pink, so I used some purple color gel to make the color stand out more. The grape flavor didn't actually come through that well in the buttercream, so in hindsight I would recommend using something like grape fruit juice concentrate to get the real grape flavor.

I actually made mini-cupcakes, which I thought would be cute and easy to eat at a party. Mid-decorating:

I colored some fondant pink, and I used pink Skittles to decorate the mini-cupcakes. The color contrast doesn't actually stand up well under the camera flash, but you can still read it.

For comparison's sake, here is another batch of mini-cupcakes I made for my other friend, Sakisha, whose birthday we were also celebrating. (It's red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I've already made that cupcake before on this blog, so I didn't feel like I needed to go step-by-step on this one.) I colored some red fondant for the letters, and I used red Skittles. (Sakisha happens to like red.) This one shows up way better because of the white frosting.

And, finally, the PB&J cupcake, close up:

More posts to come soon!

Paper bag popcorn

2008-07-14T21:27:00.006-04:00

Hey, so.... who knew you could make your own microwave popcorn without having to buy those expensive boxes that only give you 3 bags of popcorn?

The thought didn't even occur to me, but here's the article at wikiHow.

And! You can season it however you want! I'd think that some butter and Old Bay would make for some great popcorn. (Hey, I'm a Marylander -- Old Bay is in my blood.) I'm gonna try it once I buy some popcorn kernels.

Be careful, though -- watch out for the bag and popcorn burning.

Firecracker cupcakes

2008-07-13T00:46:00.006-04:00

Layered blue velvet, white, and red velvet cake with vanilla buttercream icing and Pop Rocks candy.

Obviously, these were made for a 4th of July party. I got the idea for this cupcake based on a firecracker cupcake recipe I saw online -- mostly the Pop Rocks idea. I made my own cupcakes to better resemble those popsicles of the same name. The Pop Rocks candy on top is the "firecracker" bit.

I split my batter into three equal portions. I actually made the three batters individually, because it occurred to me that I didn't know how I could evenly split the batter apart after the thing had been mixed together, since I didn't know what the total volume would be. It took a little more work to do three separate, but at least then I knew I would have equal proportions of each color.

The blue velvet and red velvet batters each have a bit of cocoa powder and food color mixed in. The white batter is just a basic white cake recipe.

I then used my cookie scoop (a mini ice cream scoop), and layered in first the blue, then the white, then the red batter into each cupcake liner.

The cupcakes, ready to go into the oven. It doesn't look like much, but believe me, it took a lot of work to get to this point!

After they come out of the oven. And I bit into one, to show what the insides look like:

The cupcakes, mid-decorating. The buttercream came out sort of custardy-looking, because I've been playing around with the butter/shortening proportions in my buttercream recipe. This one is mostly butter, so it looks very... buttery! But I thought the icing was nicely light and very tasty -- it doesn't hold up too well in hot weather, though.

Toppings-wise, I ran into a major problem. I could NOT for the life of me find any Pop Rocks at the supermarket. And I didn't get a chance to visit the convenience store before the party, so I had to compromise the topping for the cupcake. It made me sad -- that was the whole point of the cupcake!

What I used instead were blue raspberry Skittles and red decorating sugar. If I had my way, these would be topped with Pop Rocks.

By the way, if you try this and you want to use Pop Rocks -- I would recommend holding off on adding the Pop Rocks until right before you serve, as I would think the icing would cause the candy to react if left sitting for too long.

Happy (belated -- late post, I know) 4th of July!

Nanda's Awesome bento (9)

2008-07-06T13:12:00.003-04:00

I took these photos ages ago, but I neglected to post about them! Felt I should remedy the situation.

Nanda is the most awesome friend ever. Because, after seeing me obsess about bento boxes on this blog, she got me an actual bento box for my birthday. Joy of joys!

It has two movable partitions and a clear lid with locking metal handles. I love it so much.

On the left, there are some celery sticks and half of a fresh peach, diced. I cut up some carrot chunks for gap fillers, too.

In the middle, some leftover pad thai jae from a weekend lunch with my friends. I rearranged the leftover vegetables into an aesthetically appealing display.

On the right, some snacks that were also part of Nanda's birthday present to me. Raspberry yogurt covered pretzels and some toasted spiced soy nuts. I kept them separate by placing them in cupcake liners.

The whole thing:

In a smaller container, I packed myself a snack. It contains the rest of the peach, diced, and some baby carrots. I also have a packet of Stonewall's Jerquee, a soy-based jerky substitute. (It's not spectacular, but I like it when I want something salty to chew on.)

Peach Cobbler pie

2008-06-29T19:01:00.006-04:00

Yellow sweet peaches with cinnamon crumble topping in a pastry crust.

Admittedly, this pie is due to an episode of Pushing Daisies, in which a customer says something like: "What is that amazing smell I'm smelling?" To which Chuck (who is holding a pie) responds, "Is what you're smelling Georgia peach cobbler?" "That's exactly it." "Then I'm the guilty Georgia peach. :)"

Anyway! Ever since seeing that, I've been wanting to make a peach cobbler pie.

So I started off with the crust. Pulsing together the flour, salt, sugar, and butter in a food processor:

After slowly dripping in a couple of tablespoons of ice water and pulsing the mix some more, the dough particles start to roll together into a ball:

Then, you turn all of that out onto a floured surface. Press it all together into a flat disk and refrigerate for about an hour.

In the meantime, clean and peel and slice some peaches. Rather than pink Georgia peaches, I used yellow sweet peaches. As I cut and sliced them, I dropped them into a bowl of acidulated water (water and lemon juice) to keep them from turning brown. Apparently, the lemon juice also helps to keep the peaches intact as they bake (rather than disintegrating onto peach pulp).

Then, I drained the peach slices and mixed them together with some brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, and honey.

I also mixed in some flour, a little bit of cornstarch, and salt, and tossed the whole mix together with my hands.

By this time, the pie crust was ready to go, so I rolled out the cold disk and pressed it into my pie pan. I put a thin layer of plain bread crumbs on the bottom to keep the crust from getting soggy.

How the pie looks after pouring in the filling:

I made a quick crumble topping using flour, butter, oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Then, I covered the peaches with the crumble mix:

Brush the edges of the pie with egg wash, and then you're ready to bake! How the pie looks, after coming out of the oven:

It was a delicious pie! I love yellow peaches, and after baking, they are all nice and soft (but still substantially intact). This pie actually reminded me of apple pie, but with peaches. I think it's a keeper.

Strawberry Fields cupcakes

2008-06-26T22:28:00.004-04:00

Strawberry cake with strawberry vanilla swirled buttercream and confetti sprinkles.

I attempted to make a strawberry cake that was actually... strawberry cake. Too often I find that strawberry cakes are white cakes with strawberries or strawberry jam stuck in between. I basically adapted a yellow cake recipe to get what I wanted.

At the point where you normally add buttermilk, I doctored the buttermilk by whisking in some strawberry jam and a few drops of red food color:

Okay, yes, I am aware that it looks like I'm mixing Pepto Bismol into my cake batter. But bear with me, for after all the mixing is done, the batter will look something like this:

I recently got a new mini-muffin pan, so I wanted to try it out. All the cake batter, spooned out and ready to go:

After baking:

I made a basic vanilla buttercream frosting and divided it in half. In one half, I put in a bit of red food color and strawberry jam. The swirl effect didn't come out as nice as I would've liked -- I think it's because I tend to squeeze my piping bag unevenly, so one half gets pushed through before the other half. Whoops?

I nearly ran out of frosting! I had to pipe small amounts onto the mini-cupcakes, but I think that makes them look cuter. Sort of like petit fours, no?

The strawberry cupcake, ready for its close-up:

Buttermilk Biscuits

2008-06-26T22:07:00.002-04:00

I made biscuits over the weekend for a family dinner. Biscuits are super easy to make, so I expect you all to give it a try when you want to eat biscuits -- instead of using the canned stuff.

You don't even need to sift your flour. Just give it a quick whisk (along with salt and baking powder) in the bowl:

You can cut in the butter by cutting it with a pastry cutter or two knives. Or you can do what I do and save yourself a lot of time -- use a box shredder to shred the cold butter into nice small pieces.

Once you rub in the butter pieces and stir in the buttermilk, you'll have a loose, sticky mass of dough. It'll look something like this:

After a brief knead or two, turn the whole thing out onto a floured board and roll out the dough into a thick, even layer. (About half inch thick? These biscuits don't rise that much, so roll it to the thickness you want them to be.)

Cutting out the biscuits with a circle cutter:

Everyone lined up on the pan:

And waiting to be eaten! These didn't brown as nice as I would've liked, because I had to stick them on the bottom rack of the oven since my mom had other food cooking on the upper rack.

Tasty, though.

Spiced Pear Friendship bread

2008-06-17T23:43:00.004-04:00

So I wasn't planning on making this recipe, but this past weekend, my cousin gave me a starter for Amish Friendship Bread. I've never tasted it before, much less made it. And you know me -- I'm a sucker for trying new things.

Amish Friendship Bread is like a baker's version of a chain letter. You will receive a starter (made out of flour, milk, and sugar) which has leavening properties and will be the base for the batter. (Sort of like a sourdough starter, but sweeter.) You take care of the starter for ten days -- at which point you will have enough starter to share with three friends, and a portion for yourself to make into a loaf of friendship bread.

I hesitate to call this "Amish" because this recipe is not Amish, and I hate inaccurate misnomers like that. I mean, the recipe calls for instant pudding mix for goodness' sake.

Anyway!

This is what my cousin gave me, along with a battered copy of a recipe:

Because of the natural bacteria that gathers in the starter as it ferments, this starter is supposed to be your leavener. Back in the days before instant yeast, this is how you made bread rise (or you could've borrowed yeast from a brewery, but that's another story).

If all is going well, the starter should be a milky color (not pink) and it should bubble if you leave it alone. This is how the starter looks, after leaving it alone for a day. Notice the bag is all poofy? I didn't blow air into it -- that's all due to the starter. You will occasionally need to release the air out of the bag as the starter ferments.

At the end of the dictated ten days, I put my batter together. The other thing? This "bread" seems to be more like a quickbread (like banana bread).

Here you can see the starter, getting things... started:

I modified this recipe a lot. I cut the oil and the sugar in half, and I didn't even bother with the instant vanilla pudding mix. I added in half a cup of applesauce to make up for the reduced oil. I also added in about... a third of a cup of vanilla yogurt to replace the missing pudding mix. For extra moisture, I wanted to toss in an apple because I thought it'd pair nicely with the cinnamon flavor this bread has going. But I didn't have any apples! A diced pear would have to do instead.

The recipe said that the batter is supposed to be split between two loaf pans. But judging from the amount of batter I had, I was skeptical. It seemed like enough for only one loaf. I followed the directions anyway, and I split the batter between a loaf pan and some star-shaped baking cups that Sakisha had given me.

While baking, the bread rose okay, but -- after seeing some pictures of Amish Friendship bread online, I was expecting it to deflate as it cooled. So.... I turned it upside down. What kind of nutcase lets her bread cool upside down? Well, it reduces the bread's chances of falling, right? Plus, just as I guessed, the bread didn't bake that tall anyway, so the loaf pan kept the bread from being smushed by the baking rack. Just don't loosen the bread before you do this:

The star cups were adorable, though.

Ta-da! Spiced pear friendship bread.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of this -- if only because you put so much work into prepping the starter, without any noticeable difference. It tastes fine, but it's about the same quality as any banana bread. And despite using a starter, the recipe still called for baking soda, which I believe is the reason for most of the leavening in this bread. I think you could pull the same thing off with a decent quickbread recipe, which doesn't need a starter at all.

Guess this baking chain letter is like any normal chain letter -- a lot of talk, without much to back it up.

The cutest cupcake in the universe

2008-06-15T22:34:00.003-04:00

I ran across this video while perusing some baking blogs, and I HAD to share it with everyone. It combines two of my greatest loves: cupcakes and Diet Coke.

OMG TOO CUTE.

The video was made by Bakerella, as a tribute to the cupcake comics over at Cakespy.

Four 'n Twenty pie

2008-06-15T15:00:00.003-04:00

Blackberries and raspberries with white chocolate and almonds in a double pastry crust.

Okay, so this pie is a little something of my own invention. I wanted to make an interesting blackberry pie, so I came up with what I like to call Four 'n Twenty pie, which combines a lot of my favorite flavors together.

First, I rolled out some pie dough that I had prepared earlier. (I think making pie dough is kind of a pain, because I need to pull out my food processor and then clean it up, so I usually make a lot at once, and then roll out the disks and freeze them for later. Ta-da! Your own frozen pie dough, ready to go.) I let two disks warm up a little, then I rolled both out flat. I lined a pie plate with one of them, and let the other one sit, and put them both back in the fridge for the time being.

Then, I mashed some of the blackberries into a juicy pulp, like so:

Then, I heated the mashed blackberries in a saucepan over medium heat until the mix bubbled and reduced. I set the sauce aside to cool, and heated some white chocolate and heavy cream in a double boiler:

While the white chocolate melted and the blackberry sauce cooled, I got the rest of the pie ready. I took the two parts of the crust out of the fridge. I lined the bottom crust with a thin layer of almond crumbs (I had pulverized some almonds in a food processor the day before). This keeps the bottom crust from getting soggy, in addition to adding a nice crunch and nutty taste.

Then, I tossed my remaining blackberries and raspberries together, along with some flour and sugar. I hesitate to give the precise measurements, because it depends on the sweetness of the fruit you're using. Taste the mix, and if you think it tastes good, you've got it. (Add more sugar or lemon juice to adjust as needed.) Some folks dot their fruit with butter at this point, but I don't recommend it, because butter dulls the taste of most fruit (with apples being the exception).

I also tossed in my blackberry sauce (now cooled), and mixed the whole thing together by tossing it gently with my hands.

In the pie plate:

The white chocolate had melted by this point (you know, the great thing about a double boiler is that you basically get the water to a simmer, and you can safely ignore the thing until you're ready for it, because the chocolate won't burn). So I drizzled a good amount of it over all the fruit.

Then, I very very carefully laid the second pie crust on top of the pie plate. I pressed down on the rim and pinched the edges together to seal it. I also cut slits in the top crust to let the air escape.

I wanted to cut out a cute little bird in the middle of the crust (it'd be a blackbird, get it?), but I didn't want to chance it. At this point, I was just glad I successfully maneuvered the top crust on.

Into the oven for about one hour. I had to put foil on the edges to keep them from browning too quickly. Which worked out just fine. As the pie cools:

Whoo-hoo! Isn't it pretty? I love pie.

Blue Sky cupcakes

2008-06-13T00:03:00.003-04:00

Lemon syrup cake with blueberry buttercream, topped with fondant star.

With Father's Day coming up, I wanted to make a blue-ish cupcake. Yes, a strange desire, I know. But work with me here.

I am also a big fan of the flavor combination of lemon and blueberry, so I thought it'd be great to bring them together in a cupcake.

For the cake part, I added lemon zest to the batter.

And, while the cupcakes baked, I made a simple syrup using lemon juice and granulated sugar. While the cupcakes were still hot, I drizzled the lemon syrup on top to let it absorb into the cakes.

I made a blueberry buttercream using blueberry preserves. Problem being, blueberries are actually... purple. I ended up with a nice lavender color, which I doctored with a few drops of blue food coloring to make the color stand out more.

I colored a ball of white fondant with yellow food color. Then, I made fondant "suns" (I guess they're really stars, but again, work with me here) using a fondant cutter.

The cupcakes, all assembled:

And here's the glamor shot. I've been trying to improve my food photography skills. Does it show? :)

And indeed, it was a tasty cupcake. You can never go wrong with this flavor combination.

My kingdom for a... box

2008-06-11T23:18:00.004-04:00

I wish Wilton's cupcake boxes came in a size larger than just 6 cupcakes. They're sort of inconvenient when you have to carry a lot of cupcakes to a party, you know?

Actually, I imagine that you can make your own cupcake box by buying an appropriate size box from the arts and crafts store, and fashioning a cupcake holder insert out of cardboard. Hmmm.

Hey, for those into food photography, take a look at this and this. I found it somewhat informative! (It's stuff I kinda already knew, but it didn't hurt to see it spelled out.)

Zongzi

2008-06-10T23:22:00.007-04:00

Is anyone familiar with the Chinese sticky rice that's wrapped in bamboo leaves?

(Photo from Wikipedia.)

They're called zongzi in Mandarin (but to us Cantonese folks they've always been dong). Anyway, they're yummy and wonderful. They're normally stuffed with some sort of savory filling. Although there are sweet ones that you can eat by dipping them in sugar.

I have fond memories of making zongzi with my grandmother when I was little -- she would wrap up the rice and fillings in the bamboo leaves, and I'd help her tie up the zongzi with string. My dad made some this past weekend, which is what made me think of them.

Actually, I'm willing to bet a lot of Chinese folks made zongzi this past weekend, because the making of them is part of the tradition of the Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu in Mandarin and Tuoan Ng in Cantonese), which fell on June 8th this year.

The savory ones aren't vegetarian-friendly, really, but I can envision a great savory one stuffed with salted egg, peanuts, mung beans, and chestnuts. Which, yes, doesn't sound that tasty, but trust me. Mmmm.

To Bake - June

2008-06-02T22:49:00.007-04:00

It's summertime! Gotta love it. And my goals for this month are... Drum roll please...

- Naan (which I tried to make last month, but never got to)

- Four 'n Twenty pie

- Blue Sky cupcakes

- Strawberry Fields cupcakes

- Biscuits

- Peach Cobbler pie

Pie tips

2008-05-31T11:08:00.001-04:00

I am slowly learning my way through the minefield of pie baking. For those who are learning along with me, I find that this handy site has great tips for any pie baking questions you have.

I feel like pies have been neglected in this era of trendy cupcakes and such. Someone needs to bring them back! (Watch out, cupcake fans, I'm about to utter heresy.) I feel cupcakes are inherently... sort of selfish? I mean, you just have your one cupcake, for you and you alone. But a pie? Now that is something to share. Pies are inherently... homey.

Anyone ever see that movie, Waitress? If any movie can make you love pie, that one can. :) And the TV show, Pushing Daisies, naturally.

Banana Split cupcakes

2008-05-31T10:42:00.002-04:00

Banana cake with strawberry buttercream, topped with chopped nuts and chocolate syrup.

I wanted to make these cupcakes for a while. It's quite a simple concept, but I haven't seen the flavor around a lot. Think about it -- banana cake, strawberry buttercream, chopped nuts, and hot fudge on top. Mmmm.

I only made a half dozen of these cupcakes (basically cut my recipe down by a third), so I only smashed about half a banana to put into the batter.

Alright, so it ended up being seven cupcakes in total. What is that? A baker's half dozen?

While the cupcakes were baking, I made my buttercream. It's the basic buttercream, but I added strawberry jam in there. And I'm sure you all know this already, but when you're filling your piping bag, be sure that there aren't any air pockets! You don't want to be on a piping roll, and then suddenly have your work be ruined when your piping bag decides to cough out on you. Literally!

The cupcakes, cooled and mid-decorating. (I drizzled Hershey's syrup on top, and sprinkled on some chopped peanuts.)

What these banana split cupcakes REALLY need? Maraschino cherries! Wouldn't they have been PERFECT?! I thought so, too. I combed my entire supermarket looking for maraschino cherries, and I couldn't find them. Not even in the mixed drink section. SIGH. Imagine there are maraschino cherries on them, because that's what I imagined they'd have.

I'm giving some of these cupcakes away. I had found these cute little cupcake boxes at the arts and crafts store. They're perfect! And they have these cup-holder-type holes to keep the cupcakes in place. Ha, take that, Magnolia.

Ta-da! Remember to imagine the maraschino.

Macaroon cheesecake

2008-05-31T10:41:00.001-04:00

Coconut cheesecake in graham cracker crust, topped with toasted coconut and served with pineapple topping.

The folks at work had been asking me for another cheesecake for a while, so when I saw that cream cheese was on sale at Giant this week, I took it as a sign to finally follow up my peanut butter cheesecake with something else. But what?

Coconut seems to be on my mind this month. Macaroon cheesecake it is!

I took a cue from my key-wi lime pie and after pressing in the graham cracker crumbs, I dusted the bottom of the crust with shredded coconut.

In my normal cheesecake batter, I substituted the regular milk for coconut milk.

I also added some shredded coconut into the cheesecake batter. With the added sweetness of the coconut and the coconut milk, I cut the sugar in the recipe by half a cup.

While the cheesecake baked, I toasted some shredded coconut by heating it on a frying pan. I also made some pineapple topping (diced pineapples, lemon juice, honey, apricot jam), just in case folks wanted a little something extra.

The final product, all assembled. I didn't want to take the springform pan apart just yet, so bear with me. But you get the idea.

It was quite good! :) I'm pleased with the results.

Key-wi Lime pie

2008-05-30T23:26:00.002-04:00

Kiwi and lime custard in coconut graham cracker crust with coconut meringue.

PIE. I actually love making pie, and I'm sad that I haven't had the opportunity to share my pies with you yet. But summer is a-comin', so that will soon be remedied. Like, now.

This pie originates from this idea I had about key lime pie. Which, you know, is kinda boring by itself. To me. So I decided to sort of temper and sweeten the flavor of the lime with some kiwi!

I juiced about.... 2 kiwis and 3 limes. Treat kiwis the same way you do when you juice anything -- stick a fork in and twist and squeeze.

Don't worry too much about the kiwi seeds. They add character.

Next, I softened up some sweetened coconut by boiling it in evaporated milk. I let it sit, and thicken, and it became this sort of chewy macaroon mass of coconut.

I had my pie plate ready with an already-baked graham cracker crust. (I'm using a glass pie plate here, since I know I'm going to be sticking this thing in and out of the oven, but I'm pretty sure a disposable plate would work fine, too. But why use disposable when you don't have to, eh?) Once the crust and the coconut mix were cool, I spooned the coconut onto the bottom of the crust, making this sort of coconut layer on the bottom.

On top of that, I poured my kiwi-lime custard. Which was probably the easiest part of this whole thing -- egg yolks, condensed milk, and juices.

Into the oven it went. While the custard baked, I made a meringue using egg whites and sugar. I also mixed in some shredded coconut at the last minute.

Once the pie was out of the oven and cool, I spooned the meringue on top. Don't smooth it out! I intentionally made peaks and valleys in the meringue to make it look better once it finally gets toasted.

Under the broiler it went. I really wish I had a blowtorch! I had been meaning to get one, but never did, so I had to settle for sticking it under the broiler and just watching very closely. Turn it as necessary -- this should only take a minute, so don't leave the pie under the broiler and walk away!

After that, stick it in the freezer to let the custard set and harden.

All the layers, once it's cut:

It was quite tasty! Not quite as sour as a normal key lime pie, but still tart. Nice and chewy from the coconut. The light meringue compliments the heavy custard nicely.

Chocolate Pecan cookies

2008-05-18T22:19:00.003-04:00

Chocolate chunk cookies with pecans and oats.

I made another batch of cookies for Irene's birthday. These were just of the normal variety, because I still hadn't quite figured out how to hide the banana flavor just yet.

Just your garden-variety cookie. I chopped up a block of semi-sweet chocolate into chunks, and chopped up some pecans. Those, along with some rolled oats, went into the cookie batter.

All mixed together, onto the baking sheet they went.

Now, you're wondering about me using parchment paper for baking. Yes, it does help in that your cookies don't stick to the baking sheet, but I am under the belief that you just need to grease and flour your baking sheet really well, and parchment paper isn't really necessary. Reduce your paper waste if you can, you know?

Having said that, you wonder why I'm baking with parchment paper. This paper above was actually reused from the time I made the vegan cookies. The vegan cookie batch was my first time using parchment paper on a baking sheet -- just to see what everyone was fussing about -- and I honestly could not see any obvious benefit from it.

So this is me, telling you, baker a baker, that you really don't need it. Trust me, because I've tried it.

Anyway!

I boxed the cookies and shipped them off to Irene's lab, where she's spending half the summer doing bird research. I hope they keep well!

Vegan Tropics cookies

2008-05-11T22:46:00.004-04:00

Vegan cookies with banana, pecans, and coconut.

For Nanda's birthday, I wanted to make her something vegan, since she always shares her vegan goodies with me. So I did some research about vegan baking (something I had never tried before). I found some great tips on The Post Punk Kitchen website (I already own this girl's cookbook, which is great, too).

I wanted to naturally make vegan cookies -- meaning, I didn't want to cop out and use an egg replacer. So I went the banana route, which can be a good substitute for eggs. (Half a banana per egg.) I also used vegan margarine in the place of butter. Which is basically all you need to worry about in terms of making cookies vegan! Yay!

Now, the problem with putting banana in anything is that it makes the whole thing taste like banana. Indeed. It doesn't matter much in something like... brownies, because the chocolate does well to mask the banana. Well, here, I went with the banana flavor, instead of fighting it. Nanda isn't a fan of chocolate, so I incorporated some shredded coconut, pecans, and rolled oats, to make a sort of tropical-themed cookie.

As they're waiting to be put in the oven:

The banana makes the cookies come out a lovely golden color. And the coconut and oats give the cookies a great chewiness that I love. (I love cookies that are crisp on the outside and chewy inside. And these were! Yay!)

That really wasn't too bad at all, for my first attempt at vegan goods.

Red Velvet cupcakes

2008-05-11T21:22:00.004-04:00

Red velvet cake with cream cheese icing and red decorating sugar.

Apologies for not updating! My internet was down for a grand total of two weeks, so I didn't get a chance to update my baking activity as it was happening. I'm back-dating these entries in May to more accurately reflect when and what I made.

Red velvet cupcakes always confound me. As a kid, I was never quite sure what they were made of, and even now, knowing exactly what they are, I still can't quite figure out what it means to be "red velvet."

Red velvet is a Southern cake recipe that is basically known for its color. The theories range -- some folks think the red is from the reaction of the cocoa powder and vinegar and buttermilk, some think it's because Dutch processed cocoa (more widely available then) was reddish, some think it's from food color, some think it's from beet juice.

Me? I'm of the modern opinion that red velvet just means a red cake with a little bit of cocoa powder in there to make things interesting. Oh, also, use buttermilk. But you had already been doing that with your cakes anyway, right? ;)

In the following picture, I had added red food color and about half a cup of cocoa powder to my buttermilk. I incorporated that mixture into my batter, along with my flour mixture.

After the two are mixed together...

It looks like blood cake batter! Count Dracula would be happy.

Now, for this cake, I made a cream cheese frosting, but I made the grave error of attempting a frosting with lowfat cream cheese. I have made cream cheese frosting before, but always with normal whole fat cheese. I just wanted to see what would happen with the lowfat variety. Disaster! For some reason, the confectioner's sugar disintegrated the cream cheese, causing it to lose its firmness. I had basically made cream cheese frosting soup.

Tasted good, though.

The lesson here is to use whole fat everything in baking! :) What was I thinking?

I carefully ladled the frosting on top of each cupcake so that it wouldn't drip off, and let the frosting set in the fridge.

You know what? It doesn't look bad, all things considered. And it tasted awesome.

To Bake - May

2008-05-06T22:48:00.005-04:00

With growing season rolling around, I'm hoping to take advantage of any fruits that crop up. I can't wait for June, which is peak berry time, which means -- PIE TIME. (And other berry related desserts. But mostly pie.) In the meantime, I've got some other baked goods to tackle.

- Red Velvet cupcakes

- Vegan White Chocolate Chip cookies for a friend's birthday (this is pending me finding these nondairy white chocolate chips... if not, I'll devise another vegan cookie)

- Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies for another friend's birthday

- Key-wi Lime pie

- Naan

- Macaroon cheesecake for work

- Banana Split cupcakes

Olive bread

2008-04-30T22:10:00.006-04:00

Huh. I realized I made baklava this month, too. Guess April is Greek month here.

So this Greek restaurant near my workplace has great olive bread. I've never had olive bread before -- I don't even particularly like olives -- but I loved this stuff. It had a nice thick crust, dusted with salt, and a good soft chewy center. The olives added a different layer of flavor.

And lo! I found an olive bread recipe in my Williams-Sonoma baking book. I modified it a little bit (an extra knead, less flour, and some more salt), with good results.

The first knead was sans salt and olives. I find that cookbooks never tell you to knead bread dough enough. The more you knead, the better. That's where the bread consistency comes from -- the kneading relaxes the gluten in the wheat and creates the chewy texture. Otherwise, you'd be making a cake. And! Cookbooks always tell you to add salt immediately into the dough -- which is not a good idea, since salt inhibits the yeast.

Here's me, kneading the dough. This is the second knead, just after I added the Kalamata olives and a bit of sea salt.

Then, I let the dough rise some more. Then, there was a little bit MORE kneading. I shaped the dough into a free-form loaf and let it rise some more on the baking sheet. After that final rise, I dusted the top with flour, coarse sea salt, and cut a slash into the top of the dough. (The cut helps the crust to develop by giving the dough room to expand.)

After baking:

Pretty no?

What it looks like inside:

How does it taste? Oh my GOD. It was so great. Don't need anything else -- except maybe a nice thick stew for dunking the bread. This turned out exactly like the restaurant's. I could eat this stuff all day long, no joke.

Raspberry Crumble bars

2008-04-30T21:57:00.003-04:00

Who doesn't love crumble bars? My sister likes them a lot (it's her favorite dessert at Starbucks), so I made them for her. I can outdo Starbucks any day, pshah.

They're actually very easy to make. The only slighty complicated part is "cutting" the cold butter into the flour and oat mix. I found an easy way to cut the cold butter down into more managable pieces is to use a box grater.

After that, it's smooth sailing. About 2/3 of the flour-oat crumble mixture is pressed down into the bottom of the baking sheet. I suppose you could use homemade jam at this point, but I just used store-bought raspberry jam. If I was being really ambitious, I would've probably mashed some fresh raspberries in, to add texture and taste.

Then, loosely sprinkle the rest of the flour-oat mix on top of the jam, and you're ready to bake! Totally easy, right?

As the bars cool. The light on my stove make them look yellower than they are.

These guys didn't last long in my house.

Maximum satisfaction from minimum effort. I love it!