Foodie Love ♥

Cookies & Cream Cheesecakes with a Twist

2011-06-13T19:27:00.000-07:00

{Sliced in half}

I made Martha Stewart's Cookies & Cream Cheesecakes again yesterday. But this time, I did something a little different...

{Prep for my cheesecakes}
I made a batch of 24 regular-sized cupcakes and 12 mini-cupcakes. Since you can't fit a whole Oreo at the bottom of the mini ones, I had extra Oreos left over. So I crushed them and used them as a garnish.

{All ready to go}
What do you think? I think they look pretty nice.

I made them to give out at work. I work with many people on a daily basis but I never get to see them face-to-face. So this was my opportunity to: 1. finally meet them in person and 2. give them a little token of my appreciation for always being so kind and cooperative with me.

I personalised each cupcake with the person's name. They were all very thankful that I took the time and energy to bake for them and go around the lot to give them out. Success!

{Personalised cheesecakes}

Creamy Macaroni & Cheese

2011-05-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

{Mini serving of mac&cheese}

I had printed out the recipe for smitten kitchen's adaptation of Martha Stewart's mac-n-cheese over a month ago. It might have been two months ago. I bought all the ingredients, but somehow I never got around to making it. Probably because the April AHS potluck never happened. And the May one kept on getting delayed. But last night it finally happened. And the day before, the mac-n-cheese finally happened.

Another excuse I have for not baking and/or cooking lately is because I got a new job! So I've been uber busy dealing with that. But this Friday we got out early because of the long weekend, so I had time to make miniature mac&cheese in addition to the large casserole dish version. The macaroni and cheese is really good. Everyone at the potluck loved it. And I think it's pretty darn good too. My only complaint is that I used too little bread, which was my fault because I was too lazy to cut more slices of the loaf I had. Tsk tsk Esther. But other than that, it was a success!

And side note, I recommend halving the recipe that smitten kitchen posted. So what I'm posting below is the halved version.

Martha Stewart’s Creamy Mac-and-Cheese
Makes 6 servings

1/2 stick unsalted butter, plus more for casserole
3 slices white bread, crusts removed, torn into 1/4- to l/2-inch pieces
2 3/4 cups milk
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt, plus more for water
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 1/4 cups (about 9 ounces) grated sharp white cheddar cheese
1 cup (about 4 ounces) grated Gruyère
1/2 pound elbow macaroni

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter a large casserole dish; set aside. Place the bread in a medium bowl. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt 1 tablespoon butter. Pour the melted butter into the bowl with the bread, and toss. Set the breadcrumbs aside.

2. Warm the milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Melt the remaining 3 tablespoons butter in a high-sided skillet over medium heat. When the butter bubbles, add the flour. Cook, stirring, 1 minute.

3. While whisking, slowly pour in the hot milk a little at a time to keep mixture smooth. Continue cooking, whisking constantly, until the mixture bubbles and becomes thick, 8 to 12 minutes.

4. Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in salt, nutmeg, black pepper, cayenne pepper, 1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese, and 3/4 cups Gruyère; set the cheese sauce aside.

5. Cover a large pot of salted water, and bring to a boil. Cook the macaroni until the outside of pasta is cooked and the inside is underdone, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer the macaroni to a colander, rinse under cold running water, and drain well. Stir the macaroni into the reserved cheese sauce.

6. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish. Sprinkle the remaining 3/4 cups cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup Gruyère, and the breadcrumbs over the top. Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes. Transfer the dish to a wire rack for 5 minutes; serve.

{In the large casserole dish; I left it in the oven a little longer so it's more browned/crispy}

IKEA Swedish Coffee Rolls

2011-04-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

{Swedish Coffee Rolls}

Wow, it's been a long time since I last baked! I was actually told to not bake desserts anymore by my mother since I was spending all this time and money on making these desserts but just giving them away since I wasn't making them for any specific event (such as a potluck). Instead, I should focus on food that we would be consuming ourselves. So I made Pioneer Woman's Sour Cream Noodle Bake again a little over 2 weeks ago. And then it was my birthday, which I make a week-long celebration out of, so I was too busy stuffing my face with (free) food to even think about baking. Last week I finished up all the leftovers. I also went to IKEA last week. I love that place. My mum wanted us to try making their Swedish Coffee Roll Mix so I bought it. I usually don't like buying box mixes, since I believe in baking from scratch, but I doubt I'll ever make Swedish coffee rolls from scratch so I decided to try this.

{Mix from a Box!}
I finally got around to making them yesterday. They were pretty easy to make, especially since I now have an actual legit rolling pin (thanks Keri!). After making the dough and rolling it out, I applied margarine and sprinkled sugar and cinnamon. Then we made rolls, let them rise, then did an egg wash and sprinkled brown sugar on top. And then they just popped in the toaster oven for around 10 minutes! (I actually left them in for 15 minutes though.)

{Cooling Down}
I had actually split my dough in half, so I made two batches, 12 rolls each. That is why the rolls look so small compared to the ones on the box. They looked and smelled pretty good, but they weren't so great taste-wise. Maybe it's because I don't drink coffee? So I've been eating them with strawberry jam for breakfast. Yum!

Orange-Vanilla Bean Cupcakes with White Chocolate

2011-04-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

{Delicious}

Those cookies were good. Really good. But the thing is, I'm not the biggest fan of cookies. There's a reason why I never felt compelled to make them before. And now that I have, I didn't feel like making them again. I'm weird like that.

But I still had my bar of Lindt white chocolate. Yes, I know it's good until November 2011. But that bar is so tempting! I would eat it whole if it stayed in my house much longer. So what to make? After going through all my bookmarked recipes and not really finding anything that called out to me, I pulled out my trusty Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook yesterday to see what she had for me. And you know what? She did not fail me. Her Orange-Vanilla Bean Cupcakes looked really good and were perfect since we had oranges in the house! I figured that oranges and white chocolate would compliment each other so this would be the perfect cupcake to put my white chocolate in. Score!

{Ingredients}
Orange-Vanilla Bean Cupcakes with White Chocolate
Makes 12 cupcakes

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup heavy cream (I used whipping cream since that's what I had at home)
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
1/4 cup fresh orange juice (from 1 orange)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract (I also added 1/4 tsp lemon extract for a little extra citrus oomph)
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup regular sugar and 1/2 cup vanilla sugar)
2 vanilla beans, halved length-wise, seeds scraped and reserved (I used 1 vanilla bean)
2 large eggs
2/3 of a 4.4oz Lindt white chocolate bar, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350 °F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, combine cream, orange juice, and vanilla extract.

2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter, sugar, vanilla bean seeds, and zest until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of the cream mixture, and beating until just combined.

3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. (Mine were a bit more full since I had added the white chocolate). Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes.

{All cooled down and ready to be frosted; can you see the white chocolate peeking out?}
Since it was already dinnertime by the time the cupcakes were done (I started them really late), I decided to hold off on the frosting until today. For my frosting, I decided to modify Martha's Cream Cheese Frosting for this particular cupcake.

Cream Cheese Frosting with Orange Zest
Makes 2 cups

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
6 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low. Add sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, and then vanilla, and then zest, and mix until smooth and combined, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.

I decided to garnish them with some white chocolate shavings. This is completely optional, of course.

{White Chocolate shavings on top}
I loved looking at and smelling the cupcakes. You can really smell the orange and I love that you can see the vanilla bean seeds in the cupcake. The cupcakes are a little denser than I would like them to be, so next time I would probably use a little less flour. But they were delicious. There wasn't a lot of white chocolate inside, but there was enough. I would probably use the whole bar next time though. The vanilla flavour is very subtle, probably since I only used one vanilla bean instead of two. I might compensate with more vanilla extract next time. But overall, they are a hit! And they are so beautiful to me. I hope you agree~

{And there's white chocolate inside!}

Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies

2011-03-30T21:10:00.000-07:00

{Crispy and Delicious}

I haven't baked cookies since high school. But for some reason, I really wanted to bake cookies today. I was debating between a few of my bookmarked recipes, but smitten kitchen's Crispy Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies won me over. How can you resist something that has that title? And the pictures she posted! I wanted to eat them up right away. I did have to go buy a couple of ingredients, but it was worth it. I absolutely adore white chocolate.

{Ingredients}
Crispy Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies
{smitten kitchen adapted the recipe from Cook's Illustrated}

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter, slightly softened
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
6 ounces good-quality white chocolate bar, chopped
(I used a 4.4oz Lindt bar. Lindt is SO good. And the 4.4 oz was enough for me.)
1/2 teapoon flaky sea salt for sprinkling on top
(I don't have fancy sea salt; I used Trader Joe's)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and table salt in a medium bowl.

2. Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Scrape down bowl with rubber spatula, then add egg and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Scrape down bowl again. Add flour mixture gradually and mix until just incorporated and smooth. Gradually add oats and white chocolate and mix until well incorporated.

3. Divide dough into 24 equal portions, each about 2 tablespoons. Roll between palms into balls, then place on lined baking sheets about 2 1/2 inches apart. Using fingertips, gently press down each ball to about 3/4-inch thickness.

4. Sprinkle a flake or two of sea salt on each cookie (I sprinkled a lot more ^^#)

5. Bake until cookies are deep golden brown, about 13 to 16 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through. Transfer baking sheet to wire rack to cool.

{Ready to be baked}
So even though I'm baking in a toaster oven, which is obviously smaller than a regular oven, I was ambitious and decided that 1. I'm going to use both racks at the same time and 2. I will fit 12 cookies on each rack.

Yeah, that was probably not the smartest move. Especially since I let the batter just sit while I went and ate dinner. Did that affect it? I'm not sure. But look what happened:

{Cooling down}
The cookies really spread out, which I don't think they were supposed to do. Next time: putting them in the oven right away. If not, I'll probably stick them in the fridge so that they won't spread in the oven.

But despite the spread, the cookies were still DELICIOUS. I love oatmeal cookies and adding white chocolate to them made them heavenly. I still have another bar of Lindt white chocolate left (they were on sale) so I will be baking white chocolate cookies again soon. Stay tuned! ;)

Sour Cream Noodle Bake

2011-03-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

{Half Devoured}

Ree Drummond is awesome. My friend introduced me to her food blog, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, a few years ago and I was instantly hooked. Her food looks and sounds SO GOOD. She has great humour and is so talented. The problem is me. I usually avoid cooking and just stick to baking. But I also like to use my butter in moderation. Mainly because it's the least I can do about suffering from obesity. One thing I can say about Ree is that she loves butter. She does not fear it like I do. But she also leads a very active lifestyle whereas I have gone to the gym maybe 8 months in my entire 3 year membership. And even then, it was 1-3x a week. So despite bookmarking so many of her recipes, I never make them.

But then she posted her Sour Cream Noodle Bake recipe. Whoa, no butter? And whoa, it's easy and straightforward to make? AWESOME. So with my March AHS Potluck coming up, I knew this was the one.

I made the lasagna-wannabe on Friday since she said you can make it beforehand if you want. It really was easy! But even I find ways to mess up things that are supposed to be easy. So my one note to you would be to not cook the noodles early. Because I did. And drained them. And set them aside. And by the time I got around to them, they had clumped together. Not good. I will be making this dish again, so next time I will be sure to cook my noodles after my sour cream mixture is ready so I can mix them together when the noodles are fresh and still very pliable. But apart from that, it is 100% mess-up-proof. THANK YOU REE. And thank you for your detailed step-by-step instructions with accompanying pictures. SO HELPFUL. If you are like me and need visual accompaniment to the written recipe, check out her post.

Sour Cream Noodle Bake
Servings: 8

1-1/4 pound Ground Chuck
(You can use any ground beef, but this is the one Ree recommends. Ground Chuck has 20% fat so it's yummier.)
1 can 15-ounces Tomato Sauce
(I used my 1 can 8 oz. Prego Traditional. I love Prego so this was great for me.)
1/2 teaspoons Salt
Freshly Ground Black Pepper
8 ounces, weight Egg Noodles (Recommended: No Yolks, Extra Broad)
1/2 cups Sour Cream
8 oz. Cream Cheese
1/2 cups Sliced Green Onions
1 cup Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Brown ground chuck in a large skillet. Drain fat, then add tomato sauce. 1/2 teaspoon salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Stir, then simmer while you prepare the other ingredients.

Cook egg noodles until al dente. Drain and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine sour cream and cottage cheese. Add plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Add to noodles and stir. Add green onions and stir.

To assemble, add half of the noodles to a baking dish. Top with half the meat mixture, then sprinkle on half the grated cheddar. Repeat with noodles, meat, then a final layer of cheese. Bake for 20 minutes, or until all cheese is melted.

Serve with crusty French bread.

{Ready to be baked}

I recommend baking it the day of. Since I had it in the fridge for over 24 hours, 20 minutes was not enough to fully heat it up or melt the cheese on top. I got impatient after 10 more minutes and gave up. I microwaved leftovers for lunch today and that was much better. I think since the casserole dish was cold, it was just that much harder for my dish to heat up yesterday. Next time I'm going to bake immediately after and I think that's going to make it much better. I also really recommend following Ree's suggestion and grating your own sharp cheddar cheese. Either that or avoid Sargento Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese. It was disappointing.

I also served my guava lemon cream cheese muffins for dessert yesterday. Helen had brought strawberries and they definitely complimented the muffins well. And made them prettier! Success!

{With strawberries!}

Guava Lemon Cream Cheese Muffins

2011-03-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

{Guava Lemon Muffins with a Cream Cheese Surprise inside!}

After not baking for over a month, baking that cake was like taking a breath of fresh air. I didn't realise how much I missed baking until I baked again. And then I couldn't get baking off of my mind. I needed to bake again! But what? I didn't want to go out and buy new ingredients, so it had to be something that I could make with stuff I had at home. I also had a jar of guava marmalade that I wanted to use up, so I kept that in mind while looking through my bookmarked recipes.

I finally decided on Two Peas and Their Pod's Blueberry Lemon Cream Cheese Muffins. Y'all know that I love cream cheese and I bought a few packages from Ralphs since they were on sale, so this was perfect! And it asked for only lemon zest and no lemon juice, which was again perfect because the lemons from my backyard are tasteless. They grow to be absolutely humoungous (they look like grapefruit) and therefore have no taste. But they do provide a lot of zest! I decided that I would substitute guava marmalade for the blueberries and everything would be fine.

WRONG. I really need to think things through before I randomly make changes to recipes. Read my story to find out what went wrong and what changes I will be making next time.

Guava Lemon Cream Cheese Muffins
Makes 12 muffins

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
Zest of 1 large lemon
1/4 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1/3 cup skim milk (I used 2% since I don't buy skim milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup guava marmalade

Cream cheese filling:
3 tablespoons cream cheese
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon sugar

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin pan or line pan with muffin liners. Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon.

3. In a small bowl, add the sugar and lemon zest. Rub sugar and zest together, until fragrant. Add to the flour mixture and whisk again.

4. In a separate medium bowl, mix canola oil, egg, milk, and vanilla together.

5. Incorporate the wet ingredients into flour mixture. Add slowly and do not over mix. The batter will be lumpy and thick. Add 2/3 cup of guava marmalade.

6. In a small bowl, mix together the cream cheese, lemon zest, and sugar until smooth. Fill each muffin cup half way with batter. Next, add about 1 teaspoon of cream cheese filling to each muffin cup. Cover each cup with remaining batter so you can’t see the cream cheese filling. Top the muffins with the remaining 1/3 cup guava marmalade. Sprinkle each muffin with turbinado sugar.

7. Bake muffins for 17-20 minutes, or until muffins are golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Let muffins cool on a cooking rack.

{Cooling down}
As you can see, the muffins did not turn out as expected. I had put the cream cheese filling as a small ball in the middle of each muffin. MISTAKE. The cream cheese exploded, hence the craters in the middle of my muffins. Also, mixing in the guava marmalade into my batter made my muffins really sticky. And I think I probably sprinkled too much turbinado sugar on top. MY BAD.

So this is what I'm going to do next time (if there is a next time, which is up in the air since I did use up most of my guava marmalade):
-- I will not mix in guava marmalade with my batter. I am going to LAYER my muffin! Well, marble it? I'm going to put in some batter into my muffin tins, then pour some guava marmalade on top, then put in the cream cheese filling, then more batter, then cover with some guava marmalade. As a result, I'll probably only use 1/2 to 3/4 cup of guava marmalade total.
-- I will make more of the lemon cream cheese filling! I did not have enough in my opinion so next time I will be sure to make more. And this time, I will put it in my cupcake as a LAYER and not a tiny ball prone to explosions.

Hopefully those will fix the mistakes and make the muffins better. Not that the muffins were bad, but they did not meet my expectations.

If any of you decide to go ahead and make these, with my modifications, please let me know how they turn out! I also welcome any other suggestions you may have :)

{The one that exploded the least}

Apple Crumb Coffee Cake

2011-03-22T18:56:00.001-07:00

{Apple Crumb Coffee Cake}

I bought this on Amazon and it finally arrived the other day.

I was so excited. My first springform. Forget springform, it's my first (cake) pan, period. And it comes recommended by Cook's Illustrated so I dreamt of making fantabulous cheesecakes with it and being able to do non-traumatising water baths (since it has handles!). But I don't think things through. First off, I don't have a baking pan to put water in. I used a casserole dish last time. And guess what? This does not fit in any of my casserole dishes. In fact, it barely fits into my toaster oven by itself.

Therefore, I'm not sure when I'll be making cheesecakes again. Which is sad because I have several bookmarked recipes that I was ready to try out.

But that doesn't mean I can't use my springform! I promised my mum I would bake her a cake this month for her birthday (which actually passed over a week ago ^^###) and I finally baked one today.

I made The Noshery's Big Crumb Apple Coffee Cake. It looked and sounded good and I love the fact that she has so many pictures to go along with the instructions! For an amateur like me, that is so helpful. So thank you Meseidy! :D

{Ingredients}

Big Crumb Apple Coffee Cake
(which Meseidy adapted from smitten kitchen who got it from the NY Times. I actually bookmarked smitten kitchen's recipe so does this mean I can check that off my list as well?)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease an 8-inch-square baking pan. (I, of course, used my new springform).

Apple Filling

1/2 pound apple, trimmed (I just used two Granny Smith apples.)
1/4 cup sugar (I had vanilla-infused sugar that I had made before so I used that.)
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Toss diced apple with sugar, cornstarch and ginger. Set aside.

Crumbs

1/3 cup dark brown sugar (I don't have dark brown sugar so I used light brown sugar instead.)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, melted
1 3/4 cups cake flour (I used 1 cup cake flour and 3/4 cup regular flour since I was running out of cake flour)

In a large bowl, whisk sugars, spices and salt into melted butter until smooth. Then add flour with a spatula or wooden spoon. It will look and feel like a solid dough. Leave it pressed together in the bottom of the bowl and set aside.

Cake

1/3 cup sour cream
1 large egg and 1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup cake flour
1/2 cup sugar (here I again used my vanilla-infused flour)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons softened butter, cut into 8 pieces

To prepare cake, in a small bowl, stir together the sour cream, egg, egg yolk and vanilla. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and a spoonful of sour cream mixture and mix on medium speed until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds. Add remaining sour cream mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition, and scraping down the sides of bowl with a spatula. Scoop out about 1/2 cup batter and set aside.

Scrape remaining batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle apples over batter. Dollop set-aside batter over apples; it does not have to be even.

Using your fingers, break topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size. They do not have to be uniform, but make sure most are around that size. (I actually made my crumbs a lot smaller.) Sprinkle over cake. Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean of batter (it might be moist from the apples), 45 to 55 minutes. Cool completely before serving.

{My new springform!}

For the most part everything turned out the way it should. I did get a lot of juice from my apples, which was a little worrisome. I think that made my batter runnier and so my springform ended up leaking a bit in the toaster oven. Luckily I was prepared and has a baking sheet lined with aluminium foil on a rack below the pan. And you know what? The cake turned out fine. I thought I didn't have enough apple in it, but it turned out to be the right amount. My crumbs were nice and crunchy which I enjoyed. It is a bit of a messy cake however, since I had so many crumbs. Perhaps that is why The Noshery had such big crumbs...

My only critique of it is that I probably shouldn't have used the vanilla-infused sugar. The cinnamon was the strongest spice so I couldn't taste the vanilla at all. I should probably wait and use the vanilla-infused sugar for a dessert that really emphasises the vanilla taste.

{Slice}

Corniest Corn Muffins: Round Two

2011-02-17T15:22:00.000-08:00

{Corniest Corn Muffin}

Instead of making buttermilk biscuits again, I decided to make another batch of corn muffins.

Since the buttermilk is expiring this weekend, I guess this is it. Goodbye buttermilk. It was nice knowing you.

{Cooling down}

Eel Avocado Roll

2011-02-15T13:11:00.000-08:00

Living at home has its perks. Look what was waiting for me when I came back from the gym:

{Eel Avocado Roll}

My mum had prepared lunch for me as a reward for consistently going to the gym. Doesn't it look so professional?

{Delicious}

It's an eel avocado roll with picked radish. And eel sauce drizzled on top. Delicious!

Buttermilk Biscuits

2011-02-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

{Fluffy and buttery}

Did you notice that I had bought a large carton of buttermilk for the corn muffins? I wanted to buy a smaller carton but that was all Ralphs had at the moment. But what to do with all that buttermilk? Especially since the expiration date is 02/20/11. I searched through my bookmarked recipes and found a recipe for buttermilk biscuits that I wanted to do. This would be perfect since it meant that I wouldn't have to buy bread at the market for breakfast!

So I went off to the market today and bought turbinado sugar. I never knew such sugar existed before! You learn new things every day...

Buttermilk Biscuits

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp turbinado sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt (I used sea salt)
8 Tbsp cold butter
3/4 cup cold buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. In a food processor, combine all dry ingredients. Pulse to aerate.

Cut cold butter into 1/2 inch cubes and scatter over the flour mixture. Pulse 12 times. (I ended up pulsing additional times.) The mixture should look like cornmeal. You should still be able to see pea sized pieces of butter.

Dump the mixture into a medium sized bowl and add buttermilk. Mix swiftly until just combined.

Using an ice cream scoop, scoop biscuits onto a baking sheet. Do this quickly so as to keep the mixture as cold as possible. Bake for 15 minutes. Serve warm with butters.

{Ready for consumption}
Sunday Suppers had also posted a recipe for jam butters which looks very promising, but I decided against it. The biscuits themselves are very buttery so I think using just jam is fine. It also makes me feel healthier ;) The biscuits are also delicious with just margarine.

I still have so much buttermilk left. I do plan on making the biscuits at least one more time, and maybe another round of corn muffins, but after that.. I'm not sure what else I can do with the buttermilk before it expires. Do you have any suggestions?

Corniest Corn Muffins

2011-02-05T20:38:00.000-08:00

{So corny}

Dorie Greenspan has awesome recipes. I've bookmarked so many of her recipes (via various food bloggers) but I don't think I've ever gotten around to a single one yet. But that has finally changed.

One of my friends--and a former colleague--hosted a BBQ today at his apartment. Another ex-coworker's wife said that she would be making cupcakes, so I was at a loss as to what to make. I had already made guava swirled cheesecakes for my former colleagues earlier this week so I wanted to do something that wasn't a dessert. I knew he was going to go all out and cook a lot of food so I decided to do an appetizer or maybe a side dish. I looked through my bookmarks and decided I would make cornbread. I love cornbread. With corn in it. It turns out most of the cornbread recipes I had bookmarked didn't use corn, just cornmeal. Ridiculous! Cornbread is not cornbread without actual corn!

Well, Dorie came to the rescue. With smitten kitchen. Thank you Dorie Greenspan for putting corn in your corn muffins and thank you smitten kitchen for sharing it with the world.

{Ingredients}

Dorie Greenspan's Corniest Corn Muffins
Yield: 12 regular-sized muffins or 48 miniature ones

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 tablespoons corn oil (I used grapeseed oil)
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 cup corn kernels (I used more like 1 1/3 cup, the equivalent of a can) – fresh, frozen or canned (in which case they should be drained and patted dry)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg, if you’re using it. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, melted butter, oil, egg and yolk together until well blended. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. The batter will be lumpy, and that’s just the way it should be. Stir in the corn kernels. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes (I baked for 20 minutes, but I'm using a toaster oven), or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

{Eat me}

Guava Swirled Cheesecakes

2011-02-01T17:43:00.000-08:00

{Chomp!}

I was always waiting for unemployment to start my cooking/baking. With working 40 hours a week and spending 15 hours in traffic, I did not have much time to dedicate to food making. But now that I'm unemployed and have all this time on my hands, I don't have two important things: 1. money to buy ingredients to make the food and 2. people to eat the food that I make. #1 is actually a bigger problem than #2 because I can actually force people to drive by and pick up my goodies, but I'm too cheap to go out and buy ingredients.

But I knew I was going to stop by my former office today, so I wanted to take advantage of this to finally bake something. But what? I still had a lot of guava puree left from all the quesitos that I had made, so I decided I wanted to do something using the guava. And what goes best with guava than cream cheese? I looked through my Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook and found the perfect recipe to use: Raspberry Marble Cheesecake (also known as raspberry swirled cheesecake). Except instead of raspberries, I would be using my guava puree!

{The ingredients, minus the guava puree}

Guava Swirled Cheesecake
Her recipe makes 32 "cupcakes" but I could only make 24 (I only have 4 muffin pans) so I had to divide the ingredients accordingly. The below recipe is for 24 cupcakes.

1 1/8 cups finely ground graham crackers (use a mini chopper or food processor)
2 1/4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 1/8 cups plus 2 1/4 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 lbs cream cheese, room temperature
Guava puree (I don't remember how much I used, sorry!)
Pinch of salt
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 large eggs, room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 325 °F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Stir together ground graham crackers, butter, and 2 1/4 tablespoons sugar. Press 1 tablespoon crust mixture firmly onto bottom of each lined cup. Bake until set, about 5 minutes. Transfer tins to a wire rack to cool.

2. {This is where you are supposed to create the raspberry puree. I'm omitting this since I already have guava puree}

3. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat cream cheese until fluffy, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. With mixer on low speed, add remaining 1 1/8 cups sugar in a steady stream. Add salt and vanilla; mix until well combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until just combined after each.

4. Spoon 3 tablespoons filling over crust in each cup (this is how much the original recipe asked for, I used a bit less). Dollop 1/2 teaspoon guava puree in a few dots over each (I ended up using more since I had so much leftover; it also makes it look prettier!). With a wooden skewer or toothpick, swirl sauce into filling. Place each tin in a roasting pan (bake in batches, if necessary); pour enough hot water into pan to come three-quarters of the way up sides of cups.

5. Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Carefully remove tins from water bath and transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate (in tins) at least 4 hours (or out of tins up to 5 days in airtight containers). Remove from tins just before serving.

{All cooled down and ready to be chilled}

Quesitos de Guayaba.. Part Trois

2011-01-30T13:16:00.000-08:00

{Beautiful}

I told you that I would try making these again and I did!

This time I split the puff pastry sheet into three pieces before rolling it and that helped. I also used a full sauce bottle this time and that worked well with the thinner pieces. It may have taken three tries but I'm slowly getting the hang of it! I got each "square" to be pretty big and thin; they were able to fold over very well which was promising.

{Very well wrapped and ready for the toaster oven}

I used regular cream cheese this time so the taste was wonderful. Shared a few with a couple of people at church today and they loved it. Yay! I'm done with making these for now, but now I know that I can add these to my repertoire :D

{Ready for the trip to church}

Quesitos de Guayaba.. Part Deux

2011-01-23T14:39:00.000-08:00

{All ready for consumption!}

Last night was the first AHS Potluck of 2011!

Since I still had leftover guava puree, I decided to make another go at The Noshery's Quesitos de Guayaba. I had bought puff pastry sheets a few days ago and I had vegan cream cheese leftover from the carrot cake cupcakes. I only had enough left, however, for half the recipe.

Once again, I was reminded that I really need to get a rolling pin. This time I used an empty glass vase that I found. Not a good choice. The sparkling cider bottle was better because it was still half full so it had weight to it and therefore actually pushed down on the puff pastry. The empty vase had almost no weight to it, and I also rolled even less this time around, so the squares ended up being even smaller than they were last time. Oops. And then I had left the sheet out for too long so it was really sticky and hard to get off the parchment paper.

{Ready for the toaster oven!}

But it came out okay, right? I had my mum help with filling the pastries which is why they look nicer ;)

However, because I barely rolled, the puff pastry really puffed.

{Look at the puff!}

So I still need to work out kinks in my execution of this recipe. I still have one more puff pastry sheet and a lot of guava puree left, so I will have to try again!

Flavour-wise, however, it was still good. Although using the vegan cream cheese definitely muted the flavour quite a bit. Thankfully, no one else seemed to notice and the pastries received rave reviews.

In case you are wondering, I will be blogging about the potlucks on my main blog from now on and only blogging about my creations here. Thanks for reading!

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

2011-01-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

{Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting}

I am so grateful that I am not lactose intolerant. Unfortunately, there are people who suffer the unspeakable and are unable to enjoy dairy products. A few of my coworkers are such people. There is one coworker in particular, however, who I felt really guilty towards. He has always been so nice and helpful but he can never enjoy anything I bring to the office because literally everything I make involves dairy in one way or another. So I finally asked him what he wanted. He said carrot cake.

Luckily for me, the oh-so-very-talented smitten kitchen has a carrot cake cupcake recipe that sounded awesome. I had bookmarked it a long time ago and yesterday was finally time to use it.

Carrot Cake
I halved her recipe since I was only making a dozen cupcakes. I also left out a couple of ingredients; please refer to her site for the entire recipe.

1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup sugar
3/4 cups canola oil
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups grated peeled carrots (this used up 3 carrots for me. I also grated them by hand.)

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Line 24 cupcake molds with papers, or butter and flour them.

Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger in medium bowl to blend. Whisk sugar and oil in large bowl until well blended. Whisk in eggs 1 at a time. Add flour mixture and stir until blended. Stir in carrots, walnuts and raisins, if using them. Divide batter among cupcake molds, filling 3/4 of each.

Bake cupcakes 14 to 18 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of one comes out clean. Let cool in pans for five minutes or so, then transfer cakes to a cooling rack. Let cool completely before icing them. Since I bake in a toaster oven, times are always different for me. I ended up baking it for about 20 minutes and then using the convection function for about 5 before the cupcakes were fully done.

{Cooling down after the toaster oven}

She also makes her with a maple cream cheese frosting but I didn't have any maple syrup. And I couldn't use cream cheese. What is a girl to do? Google vegan cream cheese frostings. I ended up using the one on Food.com.

Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting

1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine (softened)
1/4 cup vegan cream cheese, softened (Tofutti) (you can find this at your local Whole Foods)
2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream together margarine and cream cheese until just combined. Use a handheld mixer to whip while adding the confectioners' sugar in 1/2 cup batches. Mix until smooth and creamy, then mix in the vanilla. Keep tightly covered and refrigerated until ready to use.

I made this last night as well, plopped it all into a piping bag, and then left it in the fridge overnight. I think I took it out too early this morning before frosting, however, as the consistency wasn't perfect. I tried my best to pipe it like smitten kitchen, but I am such an amateur. With no hand coordination. I had to give up on some of them.

{Cupcakes with frosting piped two ways}

But it's the effort that counts, right? My coworkers didn't complain. In fact, they loved the cupcakes. And I have to say, if I hadn't made the frosting myself, I wouldn't know that it was "fake" cream cheese. I am definitely open to making more dairy-free baked goods in the future. Does my recipe also count as being vegan-friendly?

{Cupcakes all ready to go!}

the village idiot

2010-12-08T12:48:00.000-08:00

Last night was our department's annual holiday dinner party. We had it in the private dining room at The Village Idiot (on Melrose). I had never been there before but it had positive reviews on Yelp so I was excited to try it out.

I didn't have my camera with me (I know, gasp!) and my cameraphone isn't very good, so you are going to have to settle for just words.

Our party had a total of 16 people, so the head of the department ordered several appetizers for the table:
Pan-seared meatballs, marinara sauce, oregano, pecorino romano, provalone: I didn't try this so I can't offer an opinion. The dish comes out with three large meatballs.
Rock shrimp and scallion fritters, ruby red grapefruit relish, creme fraiche: I love shrimp so I had to have this. I like it with the relish; it was pretty good (but not amazing).
Crispy pork belly, fried green tomato, spicy citrus slaw: This must not have made it to my end of the table because I didn't even know we had ordered this. I obviously didn't try it, but one coworker raved about it.
Warm shorizo stuffed bacon wrapped dates, roasted pepper tomato sauce: We ALL agreed this was the BEST. I am definitely a fan of this one.

For my entree I ordered their steak and potato pie. I had Yelp'd the place beforehand and the meat pie received many compliments so I figured it was a good choice. That and I love potatoes. And you know what? Yelp did not let me down. Although Moffett's chicken pot pie still remains my favourite meat pie, this one was not bad. Everything was cooked well and the dish came together quite nicely. I was especially proud of my choice after seeing how the people around me reacted to their dishes. One coworker ordered the "no face": sauteed yellow squash and zucchini, maitake mushrooms, green lentils, braised escarole, jalapeno pesto. It was "eh". Another coworker ordered the "no legs": cornmeal crusted catfish, black eyed peas, tri pepper sausage, mustard greens, san marzano tomatoes. It was "okay". Another coworker ordered the "two legs": roasted half chicken, herb risotto, mushrooms, swiss chard, chili flakes, parmesan. She loved everything EXCEPT the chicken. Another coworker ordered one of the "four legs": oak grilled hanger steak, grilled broccolini, cherry tomatoes, grilled endive, roasted red pepper butter. He made it very clear that he hated his dish. The ones who ordered the pub burger (they also all got the fried egg on top) seemed to enjoy them. And the one coworker who ordered the grilled pork chop LOVED his dish. So overall, the consensus seems to be that the food is just okay.

Dessert was delicious. We ordered several helpings of two desserts:
House made chocolate chip cookie: This was a large cookie, kind of like BJ's pazookie but not as big. And it comes on a plate. It was so warm and fresh and gooey - loved it.
House made doughnuts, guava syrup, tossed in cinnamon sugar: THIS WAS AMAZING. We all thought the chocolate chip cookie was awesome until we had the doughnuts (came with three on a dish). The doughnuts blew us away. They were so light and fluffy but you pour the syrup on it and it's just MELT IN YOUR MOUTH DELICIOUS. ♥

So since it's a gastropub and everyone loves alcohol, everyone ordered various beers and wines. I unfortunately don't have much to say here since I'm not much of a drinker (although I do love my vodka mixed drinks). I ordered a heavenly heff. It was okay. I didn't taste bananas. Was I supposed to? Who knows. People seemed to like it on Yelp so I got it. Whatever. Nothing will ever compare to the Speight's Dark Ale that I had in New Zealand. Now that is love.

Overall, the dinner party was great. I don't really get to socialise with my department much so it was really nice to get to spend time with them in a nice, relaxed environment. I made a new friend, which was the highlight of my week. And we all played White Elephant, which is always a fun gift game to play in a group. Good times :)

I Met Joy!

2010-04-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

{Joy and me!}

Do you know Joy the Baker? That is such a silly question. Of course you do! She's a celebrity in the baking/blogging world. Well, her events/catering firm On The Lamb held a cooking demo at Surfas yesterday. When she blogged about it I immediately knew I had to go! Strawberries are my most favourite fruit ever and I've been a fan of Joy the Baker since, I have no idea how long. And it's in Culver City! Not too far away.

So I dragged my mum along yesterday. We learned about Strawberry & Balsamic Basil Soda, Strawberry & Arugula Salad, Strawberry Black Pepper Biscuits, and Strawberry Banana Cream Pie (which Joy also blogged about). DELICIOUS! Thank you Joy, Rachel, and Whitney for sharing these delicious recipes~!

{Strawberry & Balsamic Basil Soda}

{Savory Plate}

{Strawberry Banana Cream Pie}

Peepshi: Peeps Sushi

2010-04-07T19:46:00.000-07:00

{My Peepshi}

My weekly newsletter from Serious Eats featured Peepshi and I made the mistake of sending the link to a coworker. She immediately demanded that I make it for our work potluck, since it was for Easter, and I said okay. Not the greatest idea.

Peepshi: Peeps Sushi
6 Peeps per roll, 1 Peep per handroll, 1 Peep per nigiri
1 box of Rice Krispies Treats
1 box of Fruit by the Foot

{Ingredients}
1. Slice off six 3/16th inch slices lengthwise from a Rice Krispies Treat (I totally guessed at this).
2. Execute six Peeps of your colour choice by decapitation. Cut off more neck than you think is appropriate. If necessary, you can trim off more later.
3. Portino out a length of Fruit by the Foot slightly longer than the Rice Krispies Treat slice.
4. Flatten and elongate the Rice Krispies Treat slice slightly and shape it into a hollow circle.
5. Take a Peep head and tuck it into the top of the hollow Rice Krispies treat cylinder. Use a toothpick or tip of a knife to help get it snug.
6. Wrap the Fruit by the Foot strip around your roll. Some folding and nipping may be necessary to get the cleanest look.

{All done}
It's been a LONG time since I had Peeps and so I totally forgot what they taste like. No offense if you are a Peeps lover, but they don't taste very good. I love all things sugar, but Peeps are just.. bleh. I wish I had known that before I embarked on my mission. It seemed easy enough, but I must really suck at this. Plus my hand-eye coordination sucks. So it was a lot harder than I thought making Peepshi. And messier. Well, stickier. But it was fun to eat the leftover Rice Krispies. Couldn't eat the leftover Fruit by the Foot because it kept on sticking to my teeth. And I could just hear my dentist yelling at me so I stopped.

The potluck was today so I brought these to work. People thought they were cute. They liked them. So I guess it's a success? But I'm never making these again. Nope nope nope.

{From Serious Eats: what Peepshi are supposed to look like}

Roasted Banana Cupcakes, An Encore

2010-03-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

{Roasted Banana Cupcake}

We had a potluck at work yesterday to celebrate St. Patty's Day.

I made my banana roasted cupcakes again.

Don't they look delicious?

{All ready to eat!}

Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes

2010-02-21T17:22:00.000-08:00

{Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes}

We had our Valentine's AHS Potluck last night. I decided to put my Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook to good use and make her Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes. The awesome thing about this recipe is that it combines Oreos and cheesecakes--two loves of mine--AND doesn't require a water bath! I'm terrified of making cheesecake because of the water bath, but here I can have my cake and eat it too!

{Ready for batter}

Another great thing about this recipe is that you put an Oreo at the bottom of the cheesecake. It's a pleasant surprise for everyone who eats one! It was a big hit at the potluck :D

Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes
The below recipe makes 30. I used it to make 24 regular and 12 mini ones.

42 Oreos, 30 left whole and 12 coarsely chopped
2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
Pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 275°F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each lined cup.

2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add sugar, and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla.

3. Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand. Divide batter evenly among cookie-filled cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate (in tins) at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.

{Out of the toaster oven}

dineLA 2010: RockSugar

2010-02-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to RockSugar with Christina for dineLA. Her treat since she knows I'm poor--thank you luvvie! ♥ I took pictures when we got there, and then I forgot to take pictures again until dessert! How horrible.

{Posing with my dessert}

Appetizers
Crispy Chicken Samosas, with Cilantro Yogurt This was my choice. The samosas were warm and crispy and I enjoyed them. And the yogurt dip complimented them well.
Indian Stuffed Flatbread, with Beef, Onions and Spicy Homemade Ketchup
Grapefruit Jicama Salad, with Red Cabbage, Candied Pecans, Rau Ram and Ruby Grapefruit

Entrées
Caramel Chicken, with Ginger, Chilies, Cilantro, Red and Green Onions
Malaysian Salmon, with Bok Choy, Roasted Red Pepper, Celery, Ginger and Chilies
Princess Shrimp, with Tempura Shrimp, Roasted Thai Chilies, Peanuts and Palm Sugar Glaze I absolutely LOVE shrimp, so of course I ordered this one! But without the peanuts, obviously. This was good, although I was not happy with the portion size.

Desserts
Warm Coconut Doughnuts, with Passion Fruit Sauce
Caramelized Banana Custard Cake, with Milk Chocolate Ice Cream, Malted Creme Anglaise and Nut Brittle
Crème Brûlée (Mango and Sweet Corn) Since crème brûlée is my favourite dessert ever, I ordered this. Two mini crème brûlées came out--one was mango and one was sweet corn. Since I love mango, I thought I would enjoy that one more, but I actually ended up liking the sweet corn one better. I think it was more subtle and it pleased my taste buds better.

Overall I had a nice time there. We were on the balcony however so it got really cold, but we didn't want to sit inside since it was too loud. The place was also a bit too dark for me. I get that they're trying to create a nice ambiance, but this was a bit too much. Although I must say that they do have a nice restroom. They must have spent a lot on décor--the entrance to the restaurant alone is like entering some grand temple. But even though I did enjoy the dinner, I would not go back. I thought it was expensive enough for dineLA, but I saw their regular menu and wow, the prices are ridiculous. For those prices, the food better be DAMN good, and I'm sorry RockSugar, but your food isn't that great. But if you want to come here for dineLA, I say go ahead. Especially if someone else is treating ;)

Chicken Teriyaki Drumsticks

2010-01-24T18:57:00.000-08:00

{Marinating drumsticks}

Our January 2010 potluck was last night. With the help of my mum, I made chicken teriyaki drumsticks. The marinade is a sauce that she makes and I do not remember what went into it. Not that I'm allowed to tell--I think it's her secret ;)

Just wanted to share pictures with you and let you know that I made something that wasn't a dessert!

{Delicious and ready to eat}

gnocchi slavery

2009-03-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my turn to host dinner for Gardenia and Keri. But I did not have any menu prepared and I didn't get home until around 1pm. Which doesn't sound very wow, but it is considering I had not been home since Friday morning, thanks to a long and exhausting (but definitely worth it) trip to Disneyland on Saturday. Since I had nothing up my sleeve, I thought about just doing my staple broccoli and cheese casserole and whipping up some Betty Crocker mashed potatoes to go with. But my mum thought that would be taking the easy way out so I went through my bookmarks to see if there was a recipe I thought I could pull off.

[pic of gnocchi]

I finally decided on Smitten Kitchen's Gnocchi with a Grater. Since I don't have any pasta makers or whatever other gizmos you need, I always considered pastas to be out of my reach. But if I could do it with a grater, wow. That would open doors for me! Doors of yummy potato-y goodness. And it's all thanks to Brett Moore at About.com. His post on how to make gnocchi using a grater is revolutionary. I quickly ran to Trader Joe's to buy everything I needed for my dinner menu and got started on cooking.

Gnocchi
2 pounds of Russet potatoes
1 1/2 to 2 cups of flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 large egg

1. Preheat your oven to 350-400°. Prick the potatoes all over with a fork, and bake them on a baking sheet for 45 minutes to one hour (I did them for 50 minutes), or until they are fork-tender. For best results, turn the potatoes over halfway through the baking time. Let the potatoes cool slightly.
2. Peel the potatoes and then grate them into a large bowl. Add the lightly beaten egg and the salt to the potatoes and mix well with a wooden spoon.
3. Add the flour to the potatoes a little at a time, using only as much as you need so that the dough will not stick to your hands. When the flour has been incorporated, bring the dough together with your fingertips.
4. Dump the dough and any remaining floury bits onto a slightly floured surface. Knead the dough as you would bread dough. Press down and away with the heel of your hand, fold the dough over, make a quarter turn, and repeat the process. Knead for about 3-5 minutes.
5. Form the dough into a ball and then divide it into 6 smaller balls. On a lightly floured surface, roll out one of the six pieces using your fingertips into a long rope about 3/4 inch thick. Cut the dough into 1 inch pieces.
6. You can cook the gnocchi as it is now, but traditional gnocchi has ridges. To create the ridges, press each piece of dough against the tines of a fork. With your finger, gently roll the pressed dough back off the fork. This takes a little practice. If you find the dough sticking to the fork, dip the fork in flour before you press the dough against it.
7. Place the gnocchi in a single layer on a lightly floured or parchment-lined dish. If you’d like to freeze them for later use, do so on this tray and once they are frozen, drop them into a freezer bag. This ensures that you won't have one enormous gnocchi mass when you are ready to cook them.

At first, I was doing pretty well. I actually chopped the potatoes after grating them because I felt the pieces were too big. Don't ask, I'm strange about these things. But the point was, it was going smoothly. As it should. The directions are easy enough. But then the time came to add the flour and make the sticky mess not so sticky.

It didn't happen. I ended up using three cups of flour and the whole blob was still uber sticky. I finally gave up and ended up flouring my hands and just making each little ball individually and adding a little flour as I did so to make it all work. That's where the slavery part came in. I slaved in my kitchen for way too long doing that. Not fun. But it worked.

I ended up making sixty six pieces before I stopped and stuck the rest in a floured container to do later. Now came time to cook the gnocchi. Typical recipes require cooking them in boiled water. But Deb had mentioned a recipe by Heidi at 101 Cookbooks that did not involve even a drop of boiling water. I decided I wanted golden, crispy gnocchi and went for that method.

[add picture of gnocchi in pan]

Golden, Crispy Gnocchi
Heat a couple tablespoons of clarified butter (or olive oil) in a large well-seasoned (or non-stick) skillet over medium-high heat. Add the gnocchi in a single layer and toss to coat with the butter. Let them cook until they are golden brown on the bottoms and then use a metal spatula to flip the gnocchi. Cook until they are golden all over. Salt, transfer to a platter and set aside.

Heidi added fresh shell beans, chanterelle mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes while Deb added grape tomatoes and cranberry beans, but I wasn't having any of that. I'm a huge fan of both sundried tomatoes and pesto, so I got Trader Joe's Sun Dried Tomato Pesto and added that into the skillet when the gnocchi were finished cooking. Yum.

I also spread some garlic spread from Claro's Italian Market (which I already had at home) on a French baguette I had bought from Trader Joe's and toasted that to add to the gnocchi.

[pic of me with food]
Don't you think it came together beautifully?

For dessert, I was originally going to make Hungry Girl's Tirami-DO (I had previously made it for a potluck at UCLA and it's quite easy!) but Trader Joe's didn't have their Lady Fingers! According to the employee I spoke with, it's a "seasonal item" and wouldn't come in until later this year. So I just bought their Tiramisu Torte, which was quite yummy.

[pic of torte]

In all, I would like to say that my dinner was quite a success. I was very proud of myself for actually making gnocchi (although I did have help from my mum, thank goodness) and succeeding. I had bought two containers of the sun dried tomato pesto from TJ's yesterday, and I have more gnocchi dough at home, so I will be making more for myself to eat this week! :D

artery clogged goodness

2009-03-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

Our "family portrait." We can be very serious if we want to.
(Picture © Tiffany)

This past Saturday was our March potluck and I actually cooked this time! Everyone who knows me knows I absolutely love potatoes. I also really love eggs (check out I Love Egg!), especially runny eggs. They are my true love in the egg world. So when I saw Paprika-Spiked Home Fries with Poached Egg on Serious Eats, I knew I would have to make it. And the potluck provided the perfect opportunity. Blake from Serious Eats adapted the recipe from Smitten Kitchen, so I quickly ran over there to look at Deb's recipe and I was, well, smitten.

[pic of dish]

Home Fries
1 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch cubes
3-4 tablespoons (salted or unsalted, your choice) butter
1 onion, finely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Seasoning of your choice: Garlic powder or salt work great, as does smoky Spanish paprika or chopped chives

1. Arrange potatoes in large microwave-safe bowl, top with 1 tablespoon butter, and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Microwave on high until edges of potatoes begin to soften, 5 to 7 minutes (I did 6 minutes), shaking bowl (without removing plastic) to redistribute potatoes halfway through cooking.
2. Meanwhile, melt 1 tablespoon butter in large regular or nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened and golden brown, about 6 minutes. Transfer to small bowl.
3. Melt remaining tablespoon(s) of butter in now-empty skillet over medium heat. Add potatoes and pack down with spatula. Cook, without moving, until underside of potatoes is brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Turn potatoes, pack down again, and continue to cook until well browned and crisp, 5 to 7 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue cooking, stirring potatoes every few minutes, until crusty and golden on all sides, 9 to 12 minutes. Stir in onion, seasonings of your choice and salt and pepper to taste.

I managed to get one side of the potatoes all brown, but that was it. The rest of the potatoes didn't want to turn brown, no matter how long I cooked them or how long I stirred them or left them alone. So sad.

(Picture © Tiffany)

When the potatoes are about ten minutes off, you're supposed to start preparing to poach the eggs. Except I've never poached an egg before. And much to my alarm, neither had my mum. Uh oh. Luckily, Deb provided step-by-step instructions on how to do so!

How to Poach an Egg
1. First, heat a pot with a few inches of water in it.
2. Put a splash of vinegar in the water. This helps tighten up the egg.
*IMPORTANT: You don’t want boiling water. You don’t want simmering water. You want very hot water at the point right before it simmers. Once it gets there, turn the temperature down a bit so it doesn’t bubble. If your water has already begun boiling, bring the temperature down to below the boiling point.
3. Break an egg into a small dish. It is always easier to slide the egg in from a dish.
4. Make a whirlpool with your spoon, spatula, whatever you’re using.
5. Slide the egg into the middle of the whirlpool with your other hand.
*IMPORTANT: Don’t panic. Seriously, it’s going to look a little chaotic in there for a moment. You’ll probably have a little white fly off that you had wanted to keep attached to the egg. Breathe. It's okay. It will still work out.
6. The reason for the whirlpool is that it really helps the egg stay together, wrapping the white around the yolk. However, you can help it along too with your spatula or spoon by gently pushing it all in as it initially sets. If your egg has stuck to the bottom of the pot, just slide the spatula very very gently underneath after 30 seconds or so of cooking.
7. A few minutes later, your mostly-perfect egg should be ready. (I look for an egg that wobbles, but just a little, when nudged with the spoon, about 3 to 4 minutes of cooking time.) Scoop it out with a slotted spoon and let it drain on a folded paper towel.

Since there were four of us, that required four eggs. I made my mum deal with poaching the eggs, but we put the first one in prematurely so that did not work out so great. I ended up eating it and yeah--not so good. But by the fourth one, they came out pretty well. My mum had become quite decent at poaching eggs. But she says that there's a simpler method that Koreans use, so I will ask my aunt about it when she comes to visit next month. And if that fails, then we're buying those gizmos they sell that make poaching idiot-proof.

So after you finish poaching your eggs, there is one last step:
Taste the home fries for seasoning, and dust with almost all the paprika. Remove to plates, top with eggs and sprinkle remaining paprika, lots of fresh black pepper, and a sprinkle of salt.

[pic of enchiladas]

Christina came bearing chicken enchiladas, which would kill you if they could via your arteries. They were quite delicious though, so I'm not complaining.

[pic of corn pudding]

Crystal came with corn pudding. It tasted like butter. Which meant it was really delicious, but probably shortened my life span a little.

[pic of white chocolate fruit tart]

And Tiffany came with an oh-so-lovely white chocolate fruit tart! She used All Recipes' White Chocolate Fruit Tart recipe and it came out beautiful. She thankfully made substitutions for the heavy whipping cream and used reduced fat cream cheese instead, but it still tried to kill us anyway. Ah, and she also changed some of the fruits to go with what she had at home. Here's the original recipe:

3/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
FILLING:
1 (10 ounce) package vanilla or white chips, melted and cooled
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 (20 ounce) can pineapple chunks, undrained
1 pint fresh strawberries, sliced
1 (11 ounce) can mandarin oranges, drained
2 kiwifruit, peeled and sliced
GLAZE:
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1. In a small mixing bowl, cream butter and confectioners' sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add flour; mix well. Press into an ungreased 11-in. tart pan with removable bottom or 12-in. pizza pan with sides. Bake at 300 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack.
2. For filling, in a small mixing bowl, beat melted chips and cream. Add cream cheese and beat until smooth. Spread over crust. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Drain pineapple, reserving 1/2 cup juice; set juice aside. Arrange the pineapple, strawberries, oranges and kiwi over filling.
3. For glaze, in a small saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch. Stir in lemon juice and reserved pineapple juice until smooth. Bring to a boil over medium heat; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Cool; brush over fruit. Refrigerate for 1 hour before serving. Refrigerate leftovers.

Top Row: Paprika-Spiked Home Fries with Poached Egg, Chicken Enchiladas
Bottom Row: Corn Pudding, White Chocolate Fruit Tart
(Picture © Tiffany)

Our fobby picture, of course! (Picture © Tiffany)
Standing: Tiffany, Crystal; Sitting: me, Christina

valentine's potluck

2009-02-16T12:19:00.000-08:00

As the title of this post can tell you, we had our potluck on Valentine's Day this month! Because we are each other's sweethearts. ♥ But of course some of us also had other sweethearts, which meant they were absent. We lost Candace, Christina, Jenny, and Joyce. So it ended up being a sweet cozy event with me, Crystal, and Tiffany! ^^

Since we lost our main carnivore cook, I decided that it was up to me to provide the meat. But this did not really occur to me until really late, so luckily my mum was able to save the day! We had marinated pork strips in the fridge that she cooked, and she also made some kalbi that she had bought in the morning as well. Yay! :D

[I will add pictures.. eventually]

Since we were providing the meat, I needed someone to provide the starch. So Crystal brought over a packet of mashed potatoes from Betty Crocker which I quickly whipped up.

<
Crystal points to our creation~ (Picture © Tiffany)

Crystal also bought yummy banana cream pie from Marie Callender's while Tiffany brought two desserts: the melkterts she had made before as well as ono butter mochi. Yum!

Top Row: The Entrées -- Mashed Potatoes, Kalbi, Pork BBQ
Bottom Row: The Desserts -- Melktert, Banana Cream Pie, Ono Butter Mochi
(Picture © Tiffany)

Our fobby Valentine's Day pose ♥ (Picture © Tiffany)

Another one, with a balloon from me mum (Picture © Tiffany)

sparkling reunion

2009-01-19T13:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was our first AHS potluck of 2009! Why on Sunday, you ask? Because Lois is in town! And that was the night that she could make it. We will do anything to hang out with Lois ;) And it was a wonderful reunion! In addition to our normal Arcadia group--me, Christina, Tiffany, Jenny, Crystal, and Candace--we also had Lois and Jamie! Yay for friends coming in from out of town! Good times~ ♥

So I decided to be adventurous this time and make Sweet Potato Pot Pies. I had found the recipe much earlier on 101Cookbooks and always wanted to make it, but never got around to it. Until now. My mum thinks it's amazing that I can be so adventurous in the kitchen when I have no skill/experience to back me up, hahahahaha. But hey, it worked out really well!

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium white or yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 1/2 to 3 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/4-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt (plus more to taste)
1 tablespoon adobo sauce from a can of chipotle chilies (or more to taste)
1 cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen
2 cups cold whole or low-fat milk
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 box puff pastry dough (allow 20 to 30 minutes to thaw)
1 egg white

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large pot over medium-high heat, add the oil, onion, garlic, sweet potato and salt. Saute, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. Stir in the adobo sauce and corn.

In a small bowl, combine the milk and cornstarch, then pour the mixture into the sweet potato pot. Leave the heat at medium-high for a few minutes to bring to a boil, stirring constantly, and cook until the filling starts to thicken, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and season with more salt to taste. Pour the filling into small ovenproof bowls, each three quarters full.

Cut a piece of puff pastry dough to fit over each bowl, with some overlap. Place the dough on the bowls and fold over the edge of the dish. Brush the dough lightly with egg white (this creates a golden crust).

Using a fork, poke a few holes in the top of each pie to allow steam to escape, and bake until the crusts are tall and deeply golden, about 15 minutes. Tip: Bake the potpies on a baking sheet lined with foil in case some of the filling bubbles over.

Serves 4 as a main course.

[insert my pictures of my yummy dish, kekeke]

But there were a few bumps in the road. First off, sweet potatoes--much too expensive. So I went for yams. Secondly, where do you find puff pastry dough?! I could only find puff pastry shells, so I bought those. (I later found that they have puff pastry dough at Trader Joe's! Next time..) And they were too small for the ramekins that I was using! (I only had two so Christina let me borrow her set of 4, thanks!) So the end product really looked nothing like what I was aiming for. And I didn't use any egg whites or poke holes with forks. And I ended up leaving it in the toaster oven an extra 10 minutes. But you know, everyone said it was yummy, so I am very happy.

[insert more pictures of my yummy dish, kekeke]

Crystal bit off of my standard dish, the broccoli and cheese casserole, and made her own. I still say that mine is yummier because I actually chop my broccoli so you can't taste the icky thing so much *beams*

[pictures of casserole]

Candace came with yummy samplers of all these fruit tarts! I tried the key lime, apple, and banana cream ones (yes, I am a pig). I think the banana cream was the best :D

[pictures of tarts]

Jamie came with scallops wrapped in bacon, which reminded me of Fabio from Top Chef: "This is Top Chef, not Top Scallop!" Oh how I love that man.

[pictures of scallops]

Jenny came with turkey pinwheels from Costco, while Lois brought pan-fried radish cakes. Also apparently known as Chinese luo bo gao.

[pictures of pinwheels + radish cakes]

Christina was amazing and brought basmati or "rice from Chipotle" (she tried to make their yummy rice at home), Chile Verde, and Grand-père dans le sirop. Literal translation from French? Grandfather in the syrup. It is apparently a very popular dish in Quebec and among French Canadians.

[pictures of all of Christina's dishes]

And Tiffany brought her aunt's sticky rice (yo fan, also known as "oily rice") as well as her own Creamy Berry Coffee Cake, which is adapted from Allrecipes' Creamy Peach Coffee Cake. She actually made her own blueberry "preserves," and added raspberry reserves to the crust. Amazing.

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup cold butter
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 teaspoon almond extract

FILLING:
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup peach preserves (Tiffany replaced this with blueberry)
1/2 cup sliced almonds

1. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour and sugar; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Set aside 1 cup for topping. To the remaining crumb mixture, add the sour cream, baking powder, baking soda, egg and extract; beat until blended. Press onto the bottom and 2 in. up the sides of a greased 9-in. springform pan.
2. In a small mixing bowl, combine the cream cheese, sugar and egg. Spoon into prepared crust. Top with preserves. Sprinkle with reserved crumb mixture; top with almonds. Place pan on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-50 minutes or until filling is set and crust is golden brown. Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Carefully run a knife around edge of the pan to loosen; remove sides of pan. Cool for 1-1/2 hours before slicing. Store in the refrigerator.

Doesn't it look so good? (Picture © Tiffany)

The entrées. (Picture © Tiffany)
Top left: Bacon-Wrapped Scallops, Broccoli Cheese Casserole
Top right: Chinese Yo Fan, Turkey Pinwheels, Chinese Luo Bo Gao
Bottom left: Luo Bo Gao, Chile Verde, Chipotle Rice
Bottom right: Sweet Potato Pot Pie

The desserts. (Picture © Tiffany)
Top: Mini Fruit Tarts, Creamy Berry Coffee Cake, Grand-père dans le sirop
Bottom left: Mini Fruit Tarts
Bottom right: Grand-père dans le sirop

What would a potluck be without a fobby group picture? I think we are so cute here! (Picture © Tiffany)

You can see more pictures in Tiffany's FB album Food Fest 2009 ^^

christmas potluck

2008-12-29T08:36:00.000-08:00

Saturday was our last potluck of 2008. It has been quite a good year for food and cooking. Well, baking, since, according to Christina, baking is not cooking. Sigh. Anyway, I would like to say that it was our best potluck yet. The food was all wonderful, and everything went together really well. Everything was nicely balanced. I think Top Chef would have been proud of us. *^^*

Our Christmas Feast~! (Picture © Abby)

Abby came back for vacation, and it was so nice to see her again! The potlucks just weren't the same without her~ She made yummy heart-shaped brownies for dessert, and of course half of them were nutless for me ^^ She also brought pretty rose champagne!

[pic of champagne]
[pic of brownies]
(I will be adding my pictures later, I promise)

Abby's beautiful brownies (Picture © Abby)

Our beloved Abby opening the champagne~ (Picture © Tiffany)

Tiffany made Chinese "Chicken" Salad (using turkey) as well as raspberry and raisin rugelach, which came out burnt (totally not her fault), but still yummy! That is the magic of Tiffany. No matter what happens to her food, it's still yummy. The recipe was adapted from Raspberry and Apricot Rugelach at Allrecipes.com.

[pic of salad]
[pic of rugelah]

1 cup butter, softened
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 cup dried apricots, chopped (she replaced this with raisins)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 cup seedless raspberry preserves
1 tablespoon milk

1. In large bowl, with mixer at low speed, beat margarine or butter with cream cheese until blended and smooth. Beat in vanilla extract, salt, 1 cup flour, and 1/4 cup sugar until blended.
2. With spoon, stir in remaining flour. Divide dough into 4 equal pieces. Wrap each with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours or overnight.
3. To Prepare Filling: In medium bowl, with spoon, stir walnuts, apricots, brown sugar, 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons white sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon until well mixed.
4. Line 2 large baking sheets with foil and grease foil.
5. On lightly floured surface, with floured rolling pin, roll 1 piece of chilled dough into a 9-inch round, keeping remaining dough refrigerated. Spread dough with 2 tablespoons raspberry preserves. Sprinkle with about 1/2 cup apricot filling; gently press filling onto dough. With pastry wheel or sharp knife, cut dough into 12 equal wedges. Starting at curved edge, roll up each wedge, jelly-roll fashion. Place cookies on foil-lined cookie sheet, point-side down, about 1/2 inch apart. Repeat with remaining dough, one-fourth at a time.
6. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
7. In cup, mix remaining 2 tablespoons sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon. With pastry brush, brush rugelach with milk. Sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar.
8. Bake rugelach at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) on 2 oven racks about 30 to 35 minutes until golden, rotating cookie sheets between upper and lower racks halfway through baking time. Immediately remove rugelach to wire racks to cool. Store in tightly covered container.

Since it was our Christmas potluck and also the last one for 2008, my mum was kind enough to make her famous baby back ribs for us. SO yummy. Thanks mummy! *^^*

[pic of ribs]

When there are ribs, what else do you need? Bread and mashed potatoes! So Christina came to the rescue, making really delicious cornbread and mashed potatoes!

[pic of cornbread]
[pic of mashed potatoes]

AND she also made Bavarian Apple Torte! Wow. I love Christina.

[pic of apple torte]

Isn't it beautiful? (Picture © Abby)

Cheers!!! (Picture © Tiffany)

THE FOOD. (Picture © Tiffany)
Top left: Baby Back Ribs, Cornbread, Chinese "Chicken" Salad
Top right: Heart-shaped Brownies
Bottom left: Rugelach, Mashed Potatoes, Baby Back Ribs
Bottom right: Bavarian Apple Torte

Our group picture! (Why am I the only fobby one?! ^^#)
Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009~! (Picture © Tiffany)

thanksgiving potluck

2008-11-17T11:17:00.000-08:00

Our potluck group is starting to go back to normal, yay! It happened this past Saturday and I decided to make it Thanksgiving themed. You can decide whether we succeeded at that or not. So as I do every Thanksgiving (with the exception of last year), I made my broccoli cheese casserole. Unfortunately, since I hadn't made it in about two years, I pretty much forgot everything and it came out a lot "thinner" than usual, for lack of a better term. But it was still yummy! :D

[pics to come later]

Jenny was originally going to make turkey meatloaf, but she couldn't find the correct baking dishes! So she went to Costco and bought meatloaf, beef tips, and garlic mashed potatoes. I love garlic mashed potatoes. I must find them when I go to Costco next time!

[pics to come later]

Tiffany came bearing desserts, as usual. She made yummy persimmon cookies (although some had nuts *glare*) and egg tarts! And Christina ended up bringing dessert as well! Dorayaki! My mum loves those. Crystal and Candace couldn't make it, but Crystal came by and dropped off a yummy fruit tart that they bought from Merengue~ *^^*

A picture of all our dishes, courtesy of Tiffany.

Tiffany's pictures of the desserts: Dorayaki, Fruit Tart, and Egg Tarts.

Tiffany captured Jenny cutting into the fruit tart~

Group fobby picture! (© Tiffany)
Tiffany, Christina, me, Jenny

cooking faux pas

2008-10-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

On Saturday a couple friends of mine decided to host a Halloween party. I decided that I wanted to bake something in honour of the occasion, especially since I hadn't seen them in over a year and also to congratulate them on their wedding a couple months ago. Yes, a dozen cupcakes for all of that. I am cheap. But what to make? I went through all the recipes that I had bookmarked, wondering what I should do. It should, after all, be somewhat Halloween-y. I finally decided to make mini cheesecakes and use red + yellow food colouring to make them orange. There you go. Halloween theme right there. But then my mum nixed the idea since we didn't have everything to make perfect cheesecakes. Hmmph. Searching for Halloween dessert recipes, I kept on getting things with apples. I couldn't understand the connection until my friend explained that it's probably because people bob for apples at traditional Halloween parties. Got it. I didn't want to do the applesauce cupcakes again because (1) I've already done them twice and (2) that would mean buying more applesauce. Which means doing the recipe a fourth time to finish it. So I searched through all my bookmarks and then found, aha!, apple pie cupcakes.

This lovely recipe for apple pie cupcakes comes from Alpineberry. Although, technically, I guess the credit should go to Donna Hay Magazine #27. Either way, not my recipe.

Cupcakes
2 1/4 all purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
9 ounces (2 sticks plus 2 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened at room temp
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp finely grated lemon or orange zest
1 cup (8 fluid ounces) whole milk

Preheat oven to 325F. Line 24 4-fl-oz-capacity muffin wells with paper liners.

Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Set aside dry ingredients.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides if the bowl occasionally. Beat in the vanilla and grated zest.

On low speed, add the flour mixture and mix until flour is barely incorporated. Add the milk and mix until just smooth.

Divide the batter among lined muffin wells, filling each well about 2/3 full. Top with the apples (see below).

Bake at 325F until a cake tested comes out clean, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from pan and cool cupcakes on cooling racks. Make sure cupcakes are completely cooled before frosting.

Apple Topping
3 tbsp (40 g) unsalted butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 granny smith apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

Place butter and sugar in a large fry pan over low-medium heat. Stir to dissolve sugar. Add apple slices and cook for 8-10 minutes or until apples are lightly caramelized. Remove apples from pan and let cool completely.

Cinnamon Frosting
12 ounces (3 sticks / 340g) unsalted butter, softened at room temp
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the confectioner's sugar and cinnamon and beat for another 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Frost the cupcakes with an icing spatula or piping bag. Optional: Lightly dust frosted cupcakes with 2-3 tsp ground cinnamon.

I ended up changing a few things. First off, I didn't use her cinnamon frosting. I had just enough cream cheese frosting to do another batch of cupcakes, so I decided to use that. Which was good because I ran out of cinnamon anyway. Didn't even have enough for 1/2 tsp. How sad. And then I accidentally ended up using twice as much vanilla extract. Oops. And, I'm not sure about this, but I might have put in a little extra flour. My bad.

Since this was the last of my cream cheese frosting, I decided to put it all in a Glad bag, cut a hole in one end, and "pipe" it out that way. I put the frosting out of the fridge for too long, however, so it ended up looking like a melted gloop, as you can see.

So here comes my horrible cooking faux pas. I didn't eat one of my cupcakes. What kind of chef doesn't taste his/her own creation before giving it to other people?! But I was running late for the party so I was out of the door as soon as I finished frosting the cupcakes. I had planned on trying one when I got to the party, but I forgot. And I made other people eat them! What is wrong with me?! On the plus side, they all said it was good, although one friend made the observation that it was a bit dense (thereby supporting my theory that I put in a bit too much flour). But I am ashamed of myself. SIGH. And now I'll have to make it again because I have no idea what it tasted like. FAIL.

cozy date

2008-10-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

The AHS potluck was this past weekend. And this time I actually made my second batch of applesauce cupcakes (reference Saucy Cupcakes for more info). But thanks to people's busy schedules and lack of communication, Jenny was the only one who showed up. And it was her first one too! Not a good first impression I fear. But it was nice having dinner together and catching up, as I haven't seen her since uni. As a result of it being just the two of us, however, the potluck ended rather quickly. I guess I'm just not that interesting XP

Anyway, this time I remembered to take more pictures! Whoo hoo~

My cupcakes out of the toaster oven, cooling down.

A close-up. Does it look yummy?

Arranged on a huge platter, waiting to be frosted.

Frosted and ready to be eaten! Yum!

Our potluck! My cupcakes, with Jenny's turkey/broccoli casserole and pasta, along with half of an avocado that she brought.

The two of us posing with our cupcakes! Yummy! *^^*
(And I thought the last potluck was small :P)

chimichanga goodness

2008-09-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

So our potluck was this past weekend. Did I make another batch of applesauce cupcakes? No. Why? Let me tell you the story. So within the past month three of our friends left. Abby went to go to law school in Washington, D.C., Katie moved to NYC for a job, and Elaine left for uni in Amsterdam. That already cut down on our numbers. But then Joyce's uncle came into town, Crystal's mum's birthday was on the same date, Christina was going to stay in LA, and Candace and Helen were MIA. Who did that leave? Me and Tiffany. Guess what? We're both dessert people. Desserts do not equal dinner, even though that would be nice. So Tiffany and I decided that we would forego baking and instead have a date at Paco's Mexican Restaurant, which is across the street from my house. Good food (you can read my review on Yelp).

And then, surprise surprise! Christina joined us for dinner! Well, kind of. She wasn't hungry. She also didn't realise that we opted for dining out so she had brought steamed chicken, which is now sitting in my fridge. So we all had dinner together at Paco's. Good times.

Not a very flattering picture, I realise. And Tiffany cut out my food! My delicious chimichanga!

Since I hate beans, I made Christina eat them. Kekeke.

Christina's pro photo-taking skills. You can see all of Tiff's yummy food (steak and chicken fajitas).

After dinner we came back to my house where we just chilled and watched TV. Crystal joined us after her family dinner to hang out. Good times.

Our smallest potluck gathering ever. But we're still cute, yes?

Note: All pictures in this post are courtesy of Tiffany.

saucy cupcakes

2008-09-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

Like I mentioned last time, I used one of Sweetnicks' recipes on Monday night. She had a recipe for applesauce cake, but I decided to turn it into cupcakes. Since I've never made this recipe before, I needed to taste it before giving it to my coworkers, and I didn't think it would look so good to bring in a cake with a slice missing. So I made cupcakes.

Applesauce Cake with Cinnamon and Brown Sugar Frosting
There is a pdf that you can download for your convenience.

Cake:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch of ground cloves
1 stick butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 cup applesauce

Frosting:
6 ounces brown sugar cinnamon cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons butter, softened
3/4 cup confectioners sugar (more as needed to reach desired consistency)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8 inch square baking pan. In a bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, salt and ground cloves. Add butter and sugars and beat well until fluffy. Add egg and beat until well blended. Add applesauce and blend well. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cake cool completely in pan. Make frosting: beat cream cheese and butter together until smooth. Add sugar and vanilla extract and mix until well blended. Spread frosting on cooled cake, cut and serve.

I later found that Sweetnicks also has recipes for applesauce muffins!
4/16/04: Applesauce Muffins
7/14/07: Applesauce Muffins from The Hey Girls

But I like cupcakes better than muffins ^^ I did stray from Sweetnicks' recipe in that I didn't make her frosting. I had cream cheese frosting left over from the last time I made cupcakes (yes, it was a long time ago but it was refridgerated and still good, I promise!) so I just used that. I was in the middle of watching TV while making the cupcakes, so I didn't even think about taking pictures. And then I forgot to bring my camera to work the next day TT_TT

Luckily, my co-worker had a camera that I could use. Unfortunately, it was so ghetto it didn't even have a macro setting (I didn't know there were cameras without that!). Following are the pictures that I took with the ghetto camera as well as with my cameraphone.

A shot of half of the cupcakes that I made~

A close-up of one cupcake.
As you can see, I used Christmas cupcake wrappers.
Quoting the wonderful Mandy Sutton, "It tastes like Christmas!" ^^

[Cameraphone pictures have yet to be uploaded]

Since I still have all the ingredients (and I normally don't eat applesauce), I will probably make these again for this month's potluck. All my coworkers enjoyed them, as well as a couple friends that I met up with for dinner that night. The potluck is this upcoming Saturday, so look forward to a post next week about that! ^^

the omnivore’s one hundred

2008-09-09T15:23:00.000-07:00

Apparently last month VGT set off a craze: The Omnivore's 100.

I found out about this looking through Sweetnicks' posts (I used one of her recipes last night. I will blog about it once I've uploaded pictures). Andrew from Very Good Taste (UK) decided to create The Omnivore's 100 and I have decided to join many others in this activity. Please go to his post on it to find out more information on this activity.

Here is what you do:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you've eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

Cate from Sweetnicks is on a listserv for the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and was following their results/comments on this. Apparently the highest score of things eaten she's seen is 98--WOW! That is amazing.

The Foodie Love Omnivore's Hundred:
For your edification, I included the Wikipedia links for most of them.

~~1. Venison~~ (Never never never! Poor Bambi..)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
~~4. Steak tartare~~ (Not a fan of steak. And according to Wiki, it can be made from horse meat! The horror!)
~~5. Crocodile~~ (WHY would I want to eat this?)
~~6. Black pudding~~ (EW. Blood.)
7. Cheese fondue (I want to!)
8. Car p (Not a fish fan.)
9. Borscht (Not a vegetable soup fan, but maybe.)
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari (yummy!)
12. Pho
~~13. PB&J sandwich~~ (Never ever ever! PB makes me nauseous. More importantly, I'm allergic.)
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (Hmmm, this sounds appealing..)
19. Steamed pork buns
~~20. Pistachio ice cream~~ (Ew nuts!)
21. Heirloom tomatoes (I eat a lot of tomatoes, but I don't think the seeds were 100 years old..)
22. Fresh wild berries
~~23. Foie gras~~ (Liver?! Ew.)
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese (Sounds kind of gross..)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche (Me *love*.)
28. Oysters (Not my thing.)
29. Baklava (I'm pretty sure I've had this, but I have no idea how if it has nuts..)
30. Bagna cauda (The Stinking Rose. So good!)
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (Yum!)
33. Salted lassi (I've had mango lassi, and I'm saying it's close enough. Yum!)
34. Sauerkraut (And I did NOT like it.)
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea (Good stuff~)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
~~40. Oxtail~~
~~41. Curried goat~~
~~42. Whole insects~~ (EWWW! EWWW! EWWW!)
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala (Yum!)
48. Eel (Yum!)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (SO good)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi (I might have, but just to be safe I said no.)
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle (I want to try this though.)
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (Most are 4-6% so I guess not. But I want to now that I know about this!)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads (Thymus glands? o.O)
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
~~66. Frogs' legs~~ (Can I say EW?)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
~~68. Haggis~~ (No offense, but gross.)
69. Fried plantain (Good stuff.)
~~70. Chitterlings, or andouillette~~ (EWWWW.)
71. Gazpacho (Don't remember. Maybe I have, maybe I haven't.)
72. Caviar and blini (I eat salmon roe and crepes. Close enough.)
73. Louche absinthe (I want to try it someday.)
74. Gjetost, or brunost
~~75. Roadkill~~ (WHY?!)
76. Baijiu (Oooh. Sounds intriguing.)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
~~78. Snail~~ (Ew. No.)
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini (I want!)
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
~~86. Hare~~ (Never! Rabbits are my friends.)
87. Goulash (Probably? But not sure.)
88. Flowers
~~89. Horse~~ (NOOOOOO! How can you even THINK of doing such a thing?! *dies from horror*)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox (I'm allergic to salmon, so no.)
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta (Probably? But not sure.)
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
~~100. Snake~~ (Again, WHY?)

WOW. That is just SAD. I've had 33 things on this list. I might have had a few others, but I'm not too sure so I didn't count them. 33 out of 100. I fail. This just shows that I really am a picky, not-so-adventurous eater. What about you?

tot ziens

2008-08-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

My apologies for the late post! Tiffany was late in posting up her pictures, so I will blame this on her.* (Thanks to Tiff, I no longer bother with pictures at potlucks. Abby and Candace always take pictures too, but they never share them!) Because of the hot weather and scheduling conflicts, we skipped July and had our August potluck on the 2nd. Mainly because Abby decided she didn't love us anymore and would flee to the East Coast on the 7th. *cries*

Since my visiting family members were flying back on the midnight flight to Seoul on the 2nd, my mum decided that Saturday evening would be when we were hosting the annual family BBQ at our house. My mum's pork and beef BBQ are very famous, so my friends were lucky that our potluck coincided on the same day. I thus didn't cook but instead piggybacked on my mum's cooking, keke ^^

Our entrées! Salad + dressing, cornbread, spicy bean/pepper paste, pineapple, BBQ, lettuce/etc

My mum provided everything in the picture above except for the cornbread, which Tiffany made from scratch! The way dinner was supposed to be eaten is that you take something green, put some rice on it (not shown in the picture), put some BBQ on, add some spicy paste sauce, add a piece of pineapple, and stuff the whole thing in your mouth! It is absolutely delish. Seriously. If you haven't had Korean BBQ, you must check it out! Mmmmmm..

Helen's cornbread stars

So we had a new potlucker this time around, a fellow AHS and UCLA alumna, Helen Tang! Since we are horrible at coordinating, she also made cornbread from scratch, but she did hers in the shape of cute little stars (Tiffany was a bit jealous :P). Both cornbread dishes were quite yummy.

The desserts! Belgian waffles, fruit, Italian ricotta cheese pie, tiramisu, chocolate mochi with strawberry filling

What potluck would be complete without desserts? Crystal and Candance bought fruit and tiramisu from the nearby Fresh & Easy supermarket, while Christina brought chocolate mochi with her from Taiwan! She would have made something, except she literally got off the plane a few hours before the potluck! What a trooper~ Tiffany made the riccotta cheese pie (in addition to her cornbread), and Abby brought the yummy Belgian waffles with her from Belgium! She had just arrived back from her trip in Europe. Yumminess was enjoyed all around.

From left to right: Candace, Crystal, Tiffany, Elaine, Helen
Me, Christina, Abby

Awww, our group photo! I think it came out quite cute ^^ This will be the last potluck for a while for two of our members. Like I mentioned earlier, it was Abby's last potluck because she is going to D.C. for law school. Hopefully we'll be able to schedule a holiday potluck with her when she returns on break, but other than that, no Abby :( This will also be Elaine's last potluck, because she is leaving mid-August to go to the University of Amsterdam. "Tot Ziens" means goodbye in Dutch and so I felt it was an appropriate title for this post. I will miss you two dearly~!

*All pictures in this post are courtesy of Tiffany.

toad surprise

2008-06-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

Our June potluck was yesterday, and we had two surprise guests: Katie Salisbury, whom some of us hadn't seen since high school, and the lovely Jamie, who was totally unexpected! Since Christina didn't come out, however, we did not beat last month's in number, but we did tie~ ^^

Abby, being a healthy veggie bringer as always, cooked broccoli. Katie made pasta and also brought mum-made chocolate chip cookies. Candace made beef strips and steamed veggies, while Crystal made banana bread (minus the nuts for me!). Elaine made Mediterranean Spinach Pie, and Jamie came bearing her requested chicken salad along with her homemade wontons. Tiffany made two desserts: Sfingi (Italian doughnuts) and Queijadas (Portuguese egg custard). And I made Toad in the Hole!

Top left: Broccoli, Pasta, Toad in the Hole, Chicken Salad
Top right: Toad in the Hole!
Bottom left: Choco Chip Cookies, Sfingi, Queijadas, Banana Bread
Bottom right: Mediterranean Spinach Pie
(Picture © Tiffany)

So, as you can see, I actually cooked for this potluck! I was originally going to make a different dish, but I didn't have enough time (I went to go see Kung Fu Panda! That was awesome ^^) and so decided to go with the simple English dish of Toad in the Hole. I found this recipe at the Great British Cookbook. I love how simple the recipe is, although that makes it even sadder that my end result didn't come out like their picture did TT_TT One of my friends was confused when I called my dish "toad in the hole" because she thought it involved eggs, and that is another English dish that does go by the name. It is, however, more commonly known as "Eggy in the Basket." To learn more about Toad in the Hole, visit its Wikipedia page.

Makes 4 servings
25 Gram Butter (1 oz)
450 Gram Sausages (1 lb)
The best sausages to use for this dish are flavoursome ones like Lincoln or Cumberland sausages. But other herby sausages can be used, including vegetarian ones. I used Johnsonville's Butcher Shop Style Cheddar Smoked Sausage.
110 Gram Flour (4 oz)
1 Egg
300 ml Milk ( 1/2 pint)

Pre-heat oven to 220 °C / 425 °F / Gas 7.

Place butter and sausages in a 25 x 30 cm (10 x 12 inch) roasting tin. Cook for 10 minutes (or longer if you like your bangers very well done).

Sift the flour into a bowl. Break in the egg. Gradually add half the milk, beating to form a smooth batter. Pour in the remaining milk and beat until quite smooth. Alternatively, add the flour, milk and egg to the liquidiser and blend until smooth.

Pour the batter into the roasting tin and bake for 40-45 minutes, until the batter is well risen and golden.

[I will add MY pictures of the potluck later on]

Everyone loved my dish, so I was very happy ^^ And instead of playing Taboo, as we usually do, we decided to end the night by playing Apples to Apples. It was quite interesting~

whoopie for whoopie pies!

2008-06-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

I baked for the office again, and this time I made Lemon Whoopie Pies, another recipe from Joy the Baker. She got it from the Big Fat Cookie Book. I had never heard of whoopie pies before this, but they looked yummy so I decided to give it a try (I had to have a coworker help me decide what to make as all her recipes sound so appealing!). You can find out more about whoopie pies here on Wikipedia.

Lemon Whoopie Pies
makes 8 giant cookies
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons (3/4 stick) usalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 large egg
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk

Position a rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and butter the paper.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter, sugar and lemon zest until smooth, about 3 minutes. Stop the mixer to scrape the sides of the bowl as needed during the mixing. Add the egg, lemon juice and vanilla, mixing until blended, about 1 minute. The batter may look curdled. On low speed, add half of the flour mixture, mixing just to incorporate it. Mix in the buttermilk. Mix in the remaining flour mixture just until it is incorporated and the batter looks smooth again.

Drop heaping tablespoons (about 3 level Tablespoons each for a giant cookie) of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing them about 3 inches apart. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the tops feel firm, about 12 minutes. With the exception of a time line at the edges, the tops of the cookies should not brown. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets for 10 minutes, then use a wide metal spatula to transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

The cookies didn't come out as well as Joy's did, mainly because she's better at this than me (obviously). But also because I was just using our small toaster oven, which my mum says definitely has an effect. Just because I can't do them all at the same time, so of course they're not all going to come out the same size. And since the batter was just sitting outside and the baking sheet is warm, the following batches don't hold their shapes as well as the first batch, as you can see above (the ones on the right were the last ones I made).

Lemon Cream Cheese Filling
6 Tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 3/4 cup powdered sugar

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on low speed, beat the butter, cream cheese, vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice until thoroughly blended and smooth, about 1 minute. Add the powdered sugar and mix until smooth. If the filling is too soft to hold its shape, chill it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Turn half of the cookies bottom side up. Leaving a 1/4-inch plain edge, use a thin metal spatula to spread each one with about 1/4 up of filling. Gently press the flat bottoms of the remaining cookies onto the fillings.

Wrap each cookie in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hr. Serve cold. The wrapped cookies can be stored in the fridge for up to 4 days.

Joy recommends that the whoopie pies be consumed a day after baking, so I made them Wednesday night (once again, with Top Chef! Wednesday just seems to be cooking night :P). It took me a while, but I got them done. My mum was nice and made the lemon zest and lemon juice for me (from a lemon from our backyard!), which was very helpful. I was much better at using the hand mixer this time around, so everything went pretty smoothly. Until it came time to make the filling. I ran out of powdered sugar after 2 cups. I didn't know how well regular granulated sugar would work, so I sifted half of cup and added that.

Overall, I think they came out well. My mum and I both liked them, and my coworkers liked them too! Unfortunately several people were out of the office today, so I have leftovers, even after talking one co-worker into taking two (there is an ice cream social going on currently downstairs so there is less appetite for my whoopie pies). But I'm happy. I have a lot more recipes (from Joy and other food blogs) bookmarked, so hopefully this will become a lot more frequent. The AHS potluck this month is next Saturday (the 28th), so we'll see what I make for that! *^^*

red velvet love

2008-06-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

For the past two weeks, I had been shadowing an employee whose last day is today. He has taught me everything about the position he possibly could and has been very kind and helpful. As a token of appreciation (and also to make everyone else in the department like me), I decided that I would make something for him (which would also be an excuse to finally use my new hand mixer!). The question was, what would I make? I spent quite a while researching this online, finding many cute foodie websites and a lot of good recipes. And then I found it. The perfect dessert. Red Velvet Cupcakes. I love red velvet.. anything. So even though this recipe obviously wasn't going to be a healthy one, I had to make it.

The recipe I used belongs to Joy the Baker, who has adapted it from a book called Demolition Desserts. She also seems to be a big fan of red velvet cupcakes, as she has posted this recipe TWO times on her site!
January 24: Red is the new Vanilla
March 12: Red Velvet Whopper- the cupcake

Buttermilk Red Velvet
8 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temp
1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temp
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups cake flour
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup buttermilk
scant 2 Tablespoons Red Food coloring

1. Preheat the oven to 325. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda. Add the kosher salt after sifting and set aside. Measure out the buttermilk and red food coloring. Add the dye to the buttermilk for easier incorporation later.

2. Cream the butter and the sugar using an electric mixer, until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, letting the eggs beat for 1 minute in between additions. Scrape down the bowl in between additions.

3. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the wet ingredients. Start by adding one third of the flour mixture. Mix just to incorporate. Add half of the buttermilk. Add another one third of the flour mixture. Mix to incorporate. Add the last half of the buttermilk, followed by the last third of flour.

4. Spoon into paper lined cupcake pans. Check the cupcakes after 12 minutes. Makes 12 servings.

For the frosting recipe she provides, it works for 24 cupcakes or a two layer 8-inch or 9-inch round cake, all of which require one to double the cupcake recipe above.

Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
8oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-4 tablespoons milk
4-6 cups powdered sugar depending on desired consistency

Cream the butter and cream cheese together in an electric mixer. (Be sure that the two are at room temperature. Cold cream cheese or butter can make your frosting lumpy.) Add the brown sugar and vanilla extract, and beat for about 2 minutes. Turn off mixer and add 2 cups of powdered sugar. Turn the mixer on a low speed so the sugar doesn't fly out of the bowl. Slowly add more sugar alternately with the milk until you reach your desired consistency.

Another recipe that I later found (but did not try out) is by chockylit.
Red Velvet Cupcakes with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting

Since I did not come into work today, I had to make the cupcakes Wednesday night so I could bring them in on Thursday. So after work on Wednesday, I went to my neighbourhood Ralphs and bought all the ingredients that I didn't already have at home. And after dinner, I proceeded to put it all together.

Since I only have a hand mixer and no mixing bowl (yes! finally using the hand mixer!), using the hand mixer was a bit messy. I didn't navigate between the speed settings the way I should have. But I have learned my lesson, so next time should go a lot more smoothly (one hopes). Overall, it was a long and messy experience, but I was just so happy to be using my hand mixer and cooking again. And making red velvet cupcakes, no less! Unfortunately, I didn't have enough red food colouring, so it didn't come out as red as it should have, but it had the obvious "I am red velvet" look to it so that was okay.

Not only did I forgot to take pictures of the process or the final product, but I didn't bring my camera with me to work! Ghetto cameraphone time.

I think what bothered me the most was the amount of butter and sugar that went into this recipe. As a girl who had been diagnosed as obese at one point in her life (and is still battling with it), this recipe worried me. But it was red velvet cupcake, and I wasn't going to skimp on anything. I just can't ever make this recipe ever again. I ended up quieting my conscience by having my cupcake, and only that one cupcake, for lunch yesterday.

I am happy to say that the cupcakes were a hit with everyone in the department! And I know it wasn't that they were just saying that to be nice, because most of them actually went out of their way to tell me that they really enjoyed the cupcake. So thank you Joy! I look forward to trying out more of your recipes ^^

spreading the love

2008-05-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

Our May potluck was our biggest yet! Tiffany was back, and we got Joyce and Candace (both AHS alumni but not Bruins) to join us!

Our gathering, from left to right:
(standing) Candace, Crystal, Joyce, me, Christina, Abby
(sitting) Tiffany, Elaine

Since I bought the hand mixer last week, I was determined to use it. I had even found a recipe I wanted to try (Hungry Girl's Vanilla Crème Pumpkin Cheesecake). But the potluck was at 7pm last night, and I wasn't able to get home until 6:50pm. Yes, I cut it close. So I had to opt for a quick and easy food choice, so I glanced around the kitchen and reached for my box of Betty Crocker instant mashed potatoes. I know, I feel guilty about it. I did try to make it slightly better by mixing in garlic salt so it was garlic mashed potatoes, haha.

And then Elaine came bearing mashed potatoes TT_TT And steak strips. Hahahaha. Her mashed potatoes were a la Idaho, so they were slightly different. And since everyone decided to come late to the potluck, my mashed potatoes ended up being a bit hard. No longer soft and fluffy. Sadness.

Abby came bearing marinated mushrooms, which were a hit despite my refusing to eat them (I don't do mushrooms XP). Joyce came bearing "made from scratch aka food court" chow mein, and Christina came with her flatbread and yummy tzatziki (Greek cucumber dip). Then later she busted out her mascarpone cheese cupcakes with blueberry topping! Craziness. Crystal came with spinach dip and chips and also chocolate chip cookies, while Candace brought risotto and steak and chicken kabobs with her own avocado dip. Very love filled. Tiffany, bless her, came with THREE desserts! She gets very self-critical with her desserts, so she had to make three. She had cheesecake with blueberry topping, mochi with strawberry wrapped in red bean, and red bean cream puffs. She is beautiful and amazing ♥ All in all, lots of good food and definitely good times, with Taboo afterwards ^^

Once again, pictures are courtesy of Tiffany. Thanks Tiff! :D

Top left: Tortilla Chips + Avocado Dip, Tzatziki
Top right: Marinated Mushrooms, Mashed Potatoes,
Steak Strips + Mashed Potatoes, Chow Mein
Bottom left: Beef Kebabs, Chicken Kebabs, Lemon Risotto
Bottom right: Blueberry Cheesecake, Mochi, Red Bean Cream Puffs, Mascarpone Cheese Cupcakes, Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since the mushrooms were such a big hit, Abby was kind enough to share the recipe:
1 lb fresh cremini mushrooms
2 T extra virgin olive oil
2-4 T white wine vinegar
1-2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 cup minced onion
2 t fresh minced oregano
2 T fresh minced Italian parsley
sea salt, to taste
1/2 t black peppercorn
1/2 t coriander seeds

Clean mushrooms and remove stems. (Abby kept the stems since she didn't want to waste them.) Simmer mushroom caps in salted water for 5 minutes or until tender. Drain and transfer to a bowl. Combine with olive oil, vinegar, garlic, red onions, oregnao, parsley, salt, peppercorns, and coriander. Sitr. Taste and adjust seasoning to your liking. Marinate in fridge for several hours or even overnight. Room temperature to serve.

my first hand mixer

2008-05-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

I have returned from Palm Springs and I now have--dun dun dunn--a hand mixer! I am very proud of my purchase ^^

It is the Cuisinart Power Advantage™ 7-Speed Hand Mixer. I got it at the Crate & Barrel Outlet store in Cabazon Outlets for $35 ($15 cheaper than retail!). I called my friend and had her research it online while I was in the store in order to make sure I was getting the best deal, hahaha.

Hopefully now that I have a hand mixer I will be more motivated to bake. I haven't really entered the baking world since I figured it would be too difficult for lazy ol' me without a mixer of some sort. I think I was especially traumatised after trying to make banoffee pie with Christina our junior year at UCLA and I realised while we were making it that I needed to whip the whipping cream. Thanks to my use of two forks, I was able to whip half of it. And then Christina ran to her apartment a couple blocks over to get her Cool Whip. That banoffee pie did not turn out the way we hoped. Well, the way I hoped since I'm the only one that has actually eaten the real thing. So we renamed it the banaramel pie (banana+caramel instead of toffee). Christina and my roommate both loved it, but I was sad. One day, I will go back to England and walk into a EAT and buy their banoffee pie.

Anyway, our monthly AHS potluck is this upcoming Saturday, so hopefully I will use my hand mixer for the event~

april potluck: banoffee pie love

2008-04-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

We had our April Potluck last night! And this time, we branched out: Crystal has now been added to the potluck crew! Another AHS alumni, she had been excluded previously because she went to UCI, but now that she's back in Arcadia (and literally 5 minutes from my house), we brought her in ^^ This time, she also brought her family friend Justin (a non-AHS-er! Gasp!). And while Tiffany couldn't make it, we had Gavin (another AHS alumni and Bruin) join us. We had so much food!

But not many entrees. I again cheated and had my mum cook for the event ^^# She made kimchi pancakes. Gavin also cheated and bought duck. Elaine, who came late, ended up making pasta in my kitchen a la Tuna Helper. So we had our three entrees. (There are no pictures of the entrees, sorry! This is what happens when Tiffany doesn't come :P) But we had four desserts! This is what happens when you don't coordinate the food, hahahaha.

Abby made yummy mango pudding, Crystal used the lavender and rosemary from her herb garden to make shortbread cookies, Justin cheated and bought coffee cake, and then Christina, in honour of my birthday a week ago, made me BANOFFEE PIE! *^^*

Abby's mango pudding

Justin's coffee cake

Look what Christina brought me! *^^*

It was a la Paula Deen, who had made it in an episode that aired the previous night. Thanks mainly to that one slice, I consumed more calories at dinner than I was supposed to eat in an entire day O.O

2 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
10 tablespoon butter, softened
3 large bananas
1 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Mix graham cracker crumbs with softened butter and press mixture into 9" pie plate. Bake for 5-8 minutes at 350.

To create toffee filling, caramelize the sweetened condensed milk. Pour the condensed milk into a 9x12x2 glass-baking dish. Cover with foil and place dish inside a larger poaching pan. Add water to poaching pan until half way up sides of baking dish. Bake at 300 for an hour and a half.

Once both the crust and toffee filling are cooled, spread half of evenly inside crust. Slice the bananas and layer on top of filling. Pour remaining half of filling over bananas, spreading evenly. Whip the cream with the confectioners sugar and vanilla and spread on top of toffee filling and bananas.

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Difficulty: easy
Yield: 8 servings

monthly gatherings

2008-03-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

So I was traumatised from my failure at making smoothies and gave up on cooking altogether. But no matter how much I suppressed it, the urge to cook was determined to come out! And with my unemployment, I'm stuck at home all the time and I get lonely. So I decided it was time for another potluck.

I mentioned before that in university my high school friends and I would meet and have cooking fests. It was a good way to keep in touch, especially since so many of my high school friends came to UCLA with me. So in uni, our group consisted of me and my friends Christina, Abby, Lois, and Elaine. Dena used to join us until she got too busy. Now, however, we have rotated Lois out (since she's now on the east coast) and rotated Tiffany in (she was unable to participate before since she attended UCSD). So we are the (O.G.) AHS potluck crew. We were finally able to coordinate our schedules and have a potluck last night! And we agreed that we would make this a monthly event, so I will be forced into cooking at least once a month from now on. Hopefully I would cook more than that, but you know that will be the bare minimum. Yay :D

So this is the five of us.
From left to right: Abby, Tiffany, Elaine, me, and Christina.

BTW, these pictures are courtesy of Tiffany, who is always kind enough to take pictures at our potlucks. Christina and I also usually take pictures, but Tiffany's the only one who is good at posting them up online (thanks Tiff!).

I actually didn't end up cooking for this potluck. I forgot why. But my mum is a fantastic cook and made all these beautiful California Rolls.

These are the milk tarts (melktert) that Tiffany made. She is our resident pastry chef (she had made egg tarts at our last "food fest").

Elaine's yummy German pancake! Topped with lemon juice and confectioner's sugar.

Dutch Babies (Elaine's German pancake, thanks for sharing the recipe!)
2 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup flour

1. Blend/mix ingredients together
2. Melt butter in pie pan
3. Bake for 20 minutes at 425 degrees

Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of Abby's dish: fried rice. But it was quite yummy! Christina didn't have time to cook so she bought sherbet from Fresh & Easy across the street from my house. So that was our first potluck for 2008! Look forward for more to come~

smoothies: FAIL.

2008-02-03T16:33:00.000-08:00

Like I mentioned before, Hungry Girl has put me back into the mood to cook. I had tried one of her recipes before, the I Can't Believe It's Not Sweet Potato Pie, and despite the fact that I had difficulty with it (my first time with butternut squash), it was a hit at the Thanksgiving dinner I went to (in 2006). This time, however, since I hadn't cooked in quite the while, I decided to start out small and try out a couple of her smoothie recipes yesterday.

Thick & Creamy Banana Caramel Smoothie
(1 smoothie: 130 calories, 1.5g fat, 220mg sodium, 27g carbs, 1.5g fiber, 7g sugars, 3g protein = 2 Points)
1/2 small banana
2 oz. 8th Continent Light Vanilla Soymilk (or another light vanilla soymilk)
1 cup crushed ice
3 packets SPLENDA
1 JELL-O Sugar Free Pudding Snack, Dulce de Leche or Creamy Caramel
*Optional: Cool Whip Free and banana slice; for topping

Combine all ingredients in a blender. Blend on high until smooth. Pour into a glass, and top with fat-free whipped cream and banana slice.

I couldn't find the Jell-O Pudding Snack that it required, so I used a different packaged one. I don't know if that was why, but it tasted nothing like what I had hoped for. Conclusion: do not make. Just go to Coffee Bean and buy theirs. So yummy.

Orange Dreamsicle
3 oz. Langer's Diet Orange Juice Concentrate
2-3 packets of Splenda
1/2 cup light soy milk (regular or vanilla)
1/2 cup water
4 ice cubes
1 tsp. vanilla

Blend until smooth. Makes one 85 calorie beverage. (2 pts.)

This one I actually used everything listed. But it still didn't come out as expected. SIGH.

To summarise the experience, they were a disaster, as you can tell. They did not taste at all like what I expected them to, and I couldn't figure out why. All I can think of is that I must have done something wrong. I had lost my cooking touch. TRAVESTY. And there are no pictures because I was so devastated. Couldn't even think of taking pictures. Just ended up throwing everything away. Yes, they were THAT bad. SIGH.

cooking fever

2008-01-30T12:22:00.000-08:00

In high school, I had taken an elective course called Food Science. Through this class, I came to realise my love of cooking. I have always loved good food, and my sweet tooth (which unfortunately leads to the annual discovery of cavities) is nothing new.

With my laziness and busy schedule, however, I have not often cultivated this love of food and cooking. In university my friends from high school would get together and we would have potlucks on a regular basis. But since graduation, I think we have only had one (or maybe two) cooking sessions. And then I went to New Zealand.

I was not able to cook in New Zealand. The closest I came was when I would make ramen at the boarding house, and when I was travelling cooking consisted of microwaving. So you can imagine my delight in coming home to a wonderful kitchen. But since I had been craving my mum's cooking (which is amazing), I was content to just consume all her cooking for a couple of weeks. Good homemade food. How I had missed that. But thanks to Hungry Girl and her daily newsletters, I have been bitten by the cooking bug again. I have recently started to look up recipes (both from Hungry Girl as well as other sites, such as Food Network) and have decided to create a blog for me to write about my foodie adventures.

And the result is this. Foodie Love ♥

I hope that the adventures will be fun and successful, and that you will enjoy them along with me as well~ *^^*