炸酱麵 Bean Paste Pork Noodles

炸酱麵 also known as zha jiang mian or bean paste pork noodles (my translation), is a dish where bean paste is used to make a sauce and cooked with minced pork. My mom also adds 豆乾 (dried tofu) that is diced into this dish, which is a childhood favorite of mine. Whenever my mom made this dish, I would eat one bowl after another until I felt like my stomach would explode. XD After a really long time of not cooking these noodles, my mom decided to make them for me on 10/9/10. I was soo happy! It was actually to celebrate the end of my SATs because I don't want to take anymore SATs after the one I just took on 10/9/10.

My mom usually cooks these noodles with hand pulled noodles bought from a supermarket, but last week she made them with regular thin noodles.





I'll share the recipe one day when my mom makes them again.

Next time, maybe I'll try making homemade noodles too with this recipe. :)

Cinnamon Rolls

I made cinnamon rolls on 10/10/10. :) So "today", I decided to make cinnamon rolls after setting my eyes on a particular recipe by Pioneer Woman. I actually wanted to make this a few weeks ago, but I didn't feel brave enough, didn't have the time, and didn't want to make something so rich.

Cinnamon Rolls
Recipe from Pioneer Woman
halved, makes around 20 rolls depending on width

Ingredients
2 cups milk
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
1.8 tsp instant yeast
4 cups of flour
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (I used a bit less)
1/2 cup butter, use enough to spread over the whole rectangle and reserve the rest for the glaze
1/8 cup cinnamon
sugar, I directly sprinkled it onto the dough

So I halved the recipe and made 17 rolls, each were 1 1/2 inches thick.

First, I scalded the 2 cups milk, 1/2 cup oil, and 1/2 cup sugar. I mixed it together on medium fire and let it cook up until just before it boiled. By then, the milk started to look a little foamy. The oil isn't supposed to meld together with the milk even after you stir it, so if you see a layer of oil don't worry.

I had to let the mixture cool for around 1 hour or so, it was pretty hot today too.

I used instant yeast, also known as bread machine yeast, instead of using active dry yeast. I only used 1.8 tsp of the instant yeast which is around 1 tsp+ 3/4 tsp+ 1/8 tsp because instant yeast is more "concentrated" than active dry yeast.

Instead of letting the yeast sit in the milk mixture for 1 minute, I just dumped the yeast into the mixture and proceeded to mix in the 4 cups of flour without waiting. I think I might have miscounted the cups of flour, but I'm not sure. I used a 1/3 cup to measure out the flour and I wasn't 100% paying attention. I stirred it until the dough just came together.

Then I set it aside for 45 minutes because something came up and I had to leave the house. I was worried that the rising time wouldn't be long enough, but I had no choice but to quickly mix in the remaining 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder, and the salt. After I quickly mixed/kneaded it in, I put it in the fridge to rise. I came back home after around 30 minutes or so and the dough was looking nice and soft. The texture of the dough actually reminded me of pretzel dough.

Then I punched the dough down a bit and started to roll it out into a 30x10 inch rectangle.

After that, I melted around a 1/2 cup of butter when the recipe called for around 1 cup, but 1 whole cup would be way too much. After it was semi melted, I commenced brushing it on the rectangle. Note: if you don't want the rolls to be too messy, don't totally melt the butter, just melt it enough so that it's semi solid but still easily spreadable and then I used a pastry brush to spread it.

Sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon. I first added the cinnamon and then I added the sugar. Actually, it doesn't even need to be measured out. I definitely didn't use one whole cup of sugar. After that, start rolling it up from the side that is farthest away from you. Roll it up tightly and then cut the roll into 3/4-1 1/2 inch pieces. I cut them into 1 1/2 inch pieces, so I had to bake them longer than the called for time.

Put the rolls into a buttered pan and then let them rise for 20-30 minutes. I accidentally skipped that part because I wasn't looking at the original recipe, but my rolls still turned out. During the time they were baking, I was freaking out because I realized right then that I needed to let them rise when they were already baked for around 5 minutes.




Anyways, they turned out alright even though I forgot to let them rise more. I also prepared the glaze by using up the butter that came from my original 1/2 cup that I didn't use up. I added a little less than 1/4 cup of milk and a whole bunch of confectioner's sugar. I didn't measure it, I just mixed and kept adding until I got the consistency I wanted.

I baked the rolls until they were golden light in color and took them out of the oven and cooled them and poured the icing on top. Let the icing set and tada, it's done.

Review: my brother rated it a 9.5/10 which is very, very good. He said to improve it I should make them bigger. =) My dad couldn't stop eating it and I was a bit worried for his health and I felt guilty, but I just can't stop baking when I have the time.

I baked them in a 9 inch pans btw.


The texture was very good. Nice and soft. The icing was nice. Together, it tastes fantastic. It actually kind of reminded me of a donut.


More tips from:
1 Pioneer Woman
2 Bakerella

Variations:
Orange-Marmalade Rolls
Caramel Apple Sticky Buns
Chocolate Chip Cookie Sweet Rolls

Marble Cake

On July 12, I made marble cake for my cousin's birthday. I was lucky that the cake turned out okay. Recently, whenever I make cakes they always fail. Oh well, it's because I never made cakes from scratch until now. I got the recipe from a book I checked out at the library. I love looking at Chinese cookbooks, but sadly b/c of my limited Chinese reading skills, I can only understand the translated ones. I wasn't able to take a picture of the cross section because I gave it away, but I did take a picture of it in a loaf. The cake was very squat though, I guess I should have used a smaller loaf pan.

Update: I made this cake again a week/weeks ago. Time is passing so quickly that I lose track of it.

Marble Cake

Recipe from International Baking Delights by Lee Hwa Lin

Instructions rewritten for better understanding
Serves 10

Ingredients
2 eggs
3 tbsp of milk plus 1 tsp of milk
1 tbsp cocoa powder
95 grams butter/margarine (I used butter)
100 grams sugar, a little less than ½ cup
2 tsp vanilla extract
113 grams cake flour (I substituted with ¾ cup all purpose flour take out 1 ½ tbsp of it and add 1 ½ tbsp of cornstarch
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 350*F. Line a 4 by 7 inch loaf tin with parchment paper or grease the tin.
Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add in the vanilla and the 2 beaten eggs. Mix until uniform in mixture and the batter looks light and fluffy, this will take around 3-5 minutes.

Butter and sugar creamed together with eggs added in.

Sift the cake flour and baking powder. Add the flour mixture into the large bowl and beat it in, until there are no more traces of flour.

Texture of batter after flour is added in.

Add the 3 tbsp and 1 tsp of milk, mix until incorporated.

Take out 1/3 of the cake batter and put it in another small bowl to mix the 1 tbsp of cocoa powder. Just mix it in with a spatula so that there are no more traces of cocoa powder.

Pour in ½ of the vanilla batter into the loaf pan, smooth out the layer with a spatula. Add the chocolate batter, all of it, and smooth it. Repeat with the vanilla batter. Using a knife, make swirls in the batter to marble the cake. Bake for 35 minutes and cool on rack.



2nd time


Finished!
1st time




The cake was pretty buttery, but the texture was really nice. Maybe this cake can be classified as a butter cake too.

One Bowl Brownies

I made these brownies in 40 minutes (preparing and mixing) for my grandma's birthday (last month). They were a bit cake like and not super moist, but still a hit in the family. I kind of over baked it a bit and I also tweaked the recipe a bit, so it wasn't the original recipe's fault. It is very hard to resist eating these desserts.

Note: I didn't take any pictures b/c of the camera problem and the only reason I'm able to provide pictures in my last post was because I borrowed my uncle's camera and/or posted up a post that was long overdue. I was planning to bake it again to take pictures, but I barely bake recipes twice as I want to try out many new things.

One Bowl Brownies
Adapted from The Pink Peppercorn who adapted it from Bev Shaffer
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 cups flour
1 1/4 cup sugar (I didn't want to put 2 cups, a rough estimate would be 1 tbsp of sugar each piece!)
3/4 cup butter, softened (180 grams, original recipe called for 226 grams)
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla (I just estimated it, too lazy to measure)
1/2 cup walnuts (I just poked it in the batter because the batter was like cookie dough)
1/2 cup chocolate chips (Same as the walnuts, I didn't use the full amount though)

I used a 8 by 12 or so inch pan

Mix all the ingredients together. Yes, just mix.

What I did was to whisk the dry ingredients together to evenly distribute everything. Then I added the 2 eggs, butter and vanilla and used an electric mixer to beat everything together. It will be crumbly and dry, don't worry, keep on mixing. Mix until it starts coming together. Then, press the dough into your pan that was previously greased and add your toppings.

Easy peasy brownies. Very unique because I never made brownies that weren't in the form of a batter. The advantage of this recipe is that you don't need to melt chocolate.

One Bowl Buttermilk Cupcakes

I forgot if I mentioned this already, but for my family September is the month of birthdays. First, my grandma's, then my uncle's and then my dad's. My uncle and dad's birthdays are just one day apart and my grandma's birthday is 2 days before their birthdays. I also have quite a few friends whose birthdays also were in September. So for my grandma's birthday I baked her some brownies because I didn't have enough time to do anything really special. Then for my uncle's birthday I made these cupcakes. My dad's birthday was celebrated on my uncle's birthday and I ended baking a marble loaf cake for him a few weeks later, I'll share the recipe to that in a few days.

Back to the topic of cupcakes. I am not too confident in my ability to make cupcakes, but I wanted to try this recipe out because it seemed easy enough. I was a bit put off by one of the recent comments that said that the cupcakes turned out terribly (she subbed oil for butter though). However, I really wanted to bake something quickly before I went out to eat dinner with my extended family. On that same day I also attended a car wash fundraiser for marching band and went to Chinese school. So I quickly decided to make these and guess what, they turned out perfectly! The only thing I had to change was to bake for an extra 5 minutes. The cupcake was nice and moist, not overly so, and the chocolate taste was good. It was not a rich, decadent cupcake, but a subtle chocolate taste that you had to savor. The tops turned a bit smooth looking? They looked hard or something, kind of like a crust. If you let them sit out for a day or two, the tops of the cupcake starts to look moist and shinier. I didn't make any frosting to go with these though, I didn't have the ingredients/time.

One Bowl Buttermilk Cupcakes
Recipe from Baking Bites

Recipe from Baking Bites

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup sugar (I might have used 3/4 cup I forgot)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk, room temperature (I microwaved mine for around 10 seconds)
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350*F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.
Add buttermilk, melted butter, apple cider vinegar and vanilla extract. Stir until just combined.
Divide evenly into the prepared muffin tin and bake for 14-16 minutes at 350*F, or until a tester comes out clean.
Cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.