Oreo Swiss Roll Cake

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you all had a great time spending your day with family and friends.  There are many things to be thankful for, especially Jesus' birth.  I can't believe the year passed by so fast and we are quickly nearing the end of 2011 and the start of 2012!  I hope you all have a great last few days of 2011.

Since it is Christmas, I thought it would be fitting to post a recipe for an Oreo swiss roll cake because it resembles the yule log cake that is popular during this time  I have always wanted to make a swiss roll cake, but the thought of rolling up the cake and having it crack always deterred me from making this cake.  In addition, the many eggs that this type of cakes requires always scare me due to my fear of messing up the cake and wasting the ingredients.  However, I finally made this cake due to a carton of heavy cream that needed to be used up and a dinner party that I was going to attend.  I easily found the recipe for the Oreo swiss roll on Honey Bee Sweets.  (Btw, this post is alllll the way from September, Labor Day weekend.  I am sooo behind.)

This cake was easier to make than I expected.  I thought it would take around 3 hours, hands on, to make it.  However, I was able to finish making it in around 2 hours.  This cake turned out to be a pretty successful cake, ignoring the cracks that is.  I loved the texture, it was soft and spongy, not dense at all.  The oreo heavy cream filling sandwiched in the roll had a pleasant taste to it; it was mildly flavored and just right, not too sweet.  The oreos and cream tasted like cookies and cream ice cream, especially after you refrigerate the cake.

Here's the recipe for you to enjoy. :)  Thank you Honey Bee Sweets for sharing this delicious recipe!  I posted up a brief summary of the directions to help make my pictures more understandable.  Please refer to Honey Bee Sweet's recipe for the ingredients and better instructions. 

Oreo Swiss Roll
Recipe from Honey Bee Sweets

Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃 II

Recently, I just started college!!  It's definitely a new, exciting experience to go through.  College is somewhere that people have to become more independent.  The teachers now don't remind you to do your homework and things like that.  They now expect you to do everything and if you don't do it, a bad result on a test is what you get.  So after starting school back in September 22, I was "busy" with other things like getting used to college, dorm life, and making friends.  School isn't that hard, at least not as hard as I expected.  I'm enjoying school life I guess.  I'm dorming and I have two other roommates.  We get along really well. :)  I'm have lots of fun with them; they always make me laugh.  Also, my hall activities are pretty fun too.  Since I'm in an all-girls hall, the only all-girls hall in my school, my whole hall is pretty close.  We even had a hair and nail polish night where we just had fun.  Oh!  I also got a new job, at the Student Center.  Yesterday was the first day I worked and it was pretty interesting.  I think I like my new job. :D  Anyway, that's basically what has been happening recently, just wanted to keep my readers updated.  Now....on to the recipe. This is the one that is a continuation from my red bean paste post.

On September 9, I decided to make steamed peach buns, aka 寿桃, again because it was going to be my boss' and grandma's birthday.  Last time I made them, I messed up because it was too cold, so I didn't let the buns rise for a sufficient amount of time.  However, this time they were successful!  Both recipes are for sure very reliable.  Feel free to try both of them out.

Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃 II
Recipe from Vivian Pang's Kitchen.
 
 

Red Bean Paste

Hi  everyone!  It seems like I'm taking longer and longer breaks.  :/  Don't worry though, I'm not quitting yet.  If I do, I'll warn you in advance. :P  So just to ease back into blogging, I'm going to share a really simple recipe that I used to make red bean paste.  This little post will be followed by the real deal in a couple of days.  I won't tell you what it is now; you'll find out in a couple of days.

I got the recipe from Christine's Recipes.  Right over here.

Red Bean Paste

Ingredients
Red beans
Water
Rock sugar or regular sugar

Directions
Depending on how much red bean paste needed, adjust the recipe.  The amount of water needed in proportion for the amount of red beans is 3:1.  Remember to soak the red beans for a couple of hours before cooking the beans with an ample amount of water.  Don't cook too long so that the water evaporates and the beans are about to burn.  Cook it until the water is gone and the beans are soft.  If the beans are still pretty hard, add more water and continue cooking.  Make sure to keep an eye on the red beans.

After the beans are cooked, add sugar and mix until the sugar dissolves.

Then smush the red beans with a spoon or ladle until the red beans become paste.



Tada!


Easy peasy! :D  Btw, I forgot to add the sugar when the water was halfway gone.  So I added the sugar at the end.  If you happen to forget, don't worry about it, it's fine.  Have a great week everyone! :)

California Sushi

On the day of Mother's Day, my dad and uncle planned to make dinner for our moms (my aunt, my mom and my grandma). After I discovered that my uncle was going to make sushi, I rushed over to his house to learn how to make it. When I was little, I thought sushi was disgusting. However, after trying my uncle's sushi and tasting the weird, orange fish eggs, I found that sushi isn't that bad. Now I even go to eat sushi buffets!  I still don't like sashimi though.

The most complicated part of sushi is prepping. Cooking the rice, slicing the cucumber and avocados, cooking eggs, and etc. I think it is totally worth it though. If you go out to buy sushi, you spend $5 on a few pieces alone. If you make it yourself, you can make several rolls with $5 of ingredients.

California Sushi
Recipe from my uncle, who got it from a church friend

Makes 10 rolls, each roll may be sliced into ~10 pieces

Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃

Peach buns (寿桃), Sou Tao, are my favorite things to eat at Chinese buffets. I always love going to the buffets and stocking my plate up with these cute little peach buns, usually filled with lotus paste or red bean paste. When you bite into them, your teeth sink into a fluffy piece of bread and then you taste the sweet paste located in the center of these buns, what a nice surprise. These buns are also known as birthday buns because in the Chinese culture, these buns are eaten for longevity.

So I made these buns for my aunt's birthday and it took me two hours. I was very disappointed with the results because it was cold that day and I didn't let the bread rise long enough. The skin became really tough after steaming and I felt so let down. Next time, I'll let it rise longer...or at least let the dough double in size. I encourage you to try out the recipe though! :)

Steamed Peach Buns

Recipe from My Little Space.

Fettucine Alfredo

One day my mom didn't know what she should make for lunch, and we happened to be at Trader Joe's. I knew that my brother had been craving fettucine alfredo, so I decided to try making it myself. Instead of using fettucine, I ended up using linguine because I couldn't find it. These noodles are really easy to cook. All you have to do is melt the ingredients together and then mix it with the noodles and you're done. My brother liked it, except he thought it should have a bit more taste. I think he also thought that there was too much sauce. I kind of forgot because this was a few months ago.

Fettucine Alfredo
Recipe from Pioneer Woman.

Whole Wheat Loaf Bread

I've had this recipe bookmarked for the longest time! I didn't want to make the bread because the long proofing times made me a bit impatient. I don't like waiting for bread to proof because I want to know how the bread turns out as soon as possible. But after making the steamed buns and having to wait for 5-6 hours total, I realized that 1 and a half hours isn't too long. So on a school day, I made this wheat bread and some Boston cream cupcakes. Wow, I'm writing the post on August 3 August 13 and that seems like such a long, long time ago.

I liked how the wheat bread turned out. It was soft and it made a very good sandwich bread. The only con was that the bread gets soggy easily. However, this bread recipe is worth keeping. It's a very simple recipe with very good results.


Whole Wheat Loaf Bread
Recipe from Lena of Frozen Wings



My changes in pink.

Help Me

So these days, I have been too lazy to blog. Something that happened recently is that I'm going to be a bridesmaid. I already got my dress; it was the prettiest one I could find. Trust me, I went shopping at a lot of stores. However, it's a v-neck. So I just want to know, do you think it's too low cut, especially for a wedding? I'm debating whether to wear a black tank top underneath or not. Because if I do, it'll be super hot. The dress covers my whole back.



Thank you everyone, I would really appreciate it if you left a quick comment. The wedding is in 2 days...and I still don't know if I should layer it with a tank top. (My friend thinks it's fine, but my parents think it's too low cut.)

Sorry this has nothing to do with baking. Also, I promise to get back to comments left on previous posts. :D Thank you for your support. :D

Spam Musubi

Hi everyone, I'm still alive. Sorry for being such a bad blogger recently. I decided to take a very short break back in June...and it turned into a two month break! I didn't feel motivated/patient enough to blog, but now I'm back. I'll tell you what happened these past couple of months in more detail another day.

Here's something that I learned how to make in a cooking class, the beginning of freshmen year, or more specifically, the summer before. I learned that spam was a solid chunk of meat. Before, I had always believed that spam was some type of veggie. Anyway, I finally made this again after a few years. I made this with my friend J. We had a great time making it. It's a very simple recipe and delicious too.

Spam Musubi



Ingredients for one spam musubi
1 strip of nori seaweed
Cooked rice
1 slice spam
Furukaki powder to taste
Musubi maker
Musubi Cooking Sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp mirin (rice wine)

Directions
Mix the soy sauce, sugar, and mirin in a small pan or pot and heat, stirring until it comes just to a boil. Keep it warm at low heat.



Slice the spam however thick you want it.

Fry the spam slices in a little oil in a skillet. Once slightly browned, soak spam in musubi sauce.



Musubi Assembly
Line a musubi maker with nori so that both ends stick straight up out of it.
Put a ¼” layer of rice on tope of the nori that is in the maker.

My friend J. puts the rice on the seaweed.

Sprinkle a dash of furukaki powder on the rice. Lay one slice of spam on top of that layer.

Spread another ¼” layer of rice on top of the spam. Add another dash of furukaki on top of the rice. Fold over one flap of nori. Use the musubi maker “pusher” to press down on top of the nori wrapping the rice and spam. Fold over the other flap, press down again. Remove the musubi and enjoy!



Notes:
1. The extra sauce can be reserved and used as a dipping sauce.
2. The nori seaweed may need to be cut into two pieces. Make it so that the it will fit the length of the spam.

Pantry Chocolate Cake

I've always wanted to make this cake. The only thing stopping me was the dutch processed cocoa powder, which I didn't buy until recently. On Mother's Day I was supposed to make a cake, as per my dad's request, for Mother's Day dinner. I didn't know what I should make, but remembering how much my family enjoyed the Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake, I chose to make this easy peasy pantry chocolate cake. It is called pantry chocolate cake because supposedly all the ingredients used in this recipe should be available in your pantry.

This cake is super easy to make; it's for beginners. It only takes a few minutes to mix everything together and it's great if you ever want to bring it to a potluck or you're just craving some chocolate. I doubt anything could go wrong with this cake, unless you over mix or substitute the cocoa powder.

The cake was moist, but not as moist as Hershey's cake. Also, I reduced the sugar by a few tablespoons, so the cake wasn't too sweet. The frosting completes the cake and only takes a few minutes to make.

Pantry Chocolate Cake
Recipe from America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book
it can also be found here.

Croissants

Notice: Since blogger went down recently, I discovered that some of my comments have disappeared. I'll reply to your comments again when I feel like retyping what I said. Also, sorry if your comments disappeared from my previous post. I didn't delete them. :( I appreciate that you left comments though.

When I first started getting serious in baking, I shared some of the goods with my Uncle's family. One day, he came over to my house, saw some croissants on the table, and asked my mom if I made them. I didn't. The croissants were from Costco, but after hearing that, I always wanted to try making croissants. I wanted to learn how to make something new and complicated like croissants. However, I never felt compelled to do so because of all the time needed to make croissants.

After taking on my senior project, it was necessary for me to make croissants because it was one of my goals. The whole process took around a day. Soooo complicated! Pounding out the butter took me a while and rolling out the dough did too. I guess I need more muscle? I had to finish this late at night because I started making the dough and such in the afternoon, after Chinese school and work. I didn't even bake it until the next day because I had to leave it in the fridge as instructed.

I was pretty happy with the results, however for some reason lots of the butter leaked out. While that's a good thing calorie wise, it's also a bad thing because I don't think that's supposed to happen. I asked my brother to evaluate the taste and he said it tasted normal...which I guess is good. My friends on the other hand, really enjoyed it. One of them even thought that I bought the croissants and was only saying that I made them, haha. I think that's all I have to say about these croissants. I'll tell you if I think of anything else.

Croissants
Recipe from America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book
It can also be found here.
(Recently, I have been making a lot of things from that book.)

Chocolate Chip Muffins

I wrote this long post about these muffins and then I found out blogger crashed. I don't feel like repeating everything I said, so I'll just give a basic review. The muffins were good, but they weren't what I was looking for. I really like this mini chocolate chip muffins that are super moist, with the chocolate chips just melting in your mouth. This type of muffin is the one found in Costco. So when I saw this recipe, I was really hoping that the muffins would turn out like Costco's mini cc muffins. However, these are still good muffins. They're very good for beginners, because all you have to do is gather the ingredients and mix.

Chocolate Chip Muffins
Recipe from Cooking During Stolen Moments

Boston Cream Cupcakes

When I first got my baking book America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book and flipped through the pages, I knew I wanted to try making these Boston cream cupcakes. I made it my goal to try out this recipe soon, but the amount of heavy cream made me too scared to make it. However, I bought some heavy cream one day because I wanted to make fettucine alfredo for my brother's lunch. I only made it once and was left over with a almost full bottle of heavy cream. I decided to make these after switching back and forth between making the real sized Boston cream cake, truffles, and these cupcakes. One of the reason is that these cupcakes are part of my senior project. :)

I haven't been writing any blog posts recently so I have to catch up!

These cupcakes were delicious! My brother rated them a pretty high score, but a whole week passed so I forgot what the score was. I think I might have cooked the pastry cream a bit longer than I should have, but I'm not sure. The cupcake's texture was really soft and a bit moist. Just right! I really liked it, so much that I felt like eating a few cupcakes. The glaze was just right too. I had leftover glaze and pastry cream. My dad really liked these too, he only got to eat two because I gave most of them away. After work he asked me if there was any more left, but sadly there wasn't.

Boston Cream Cupcakes
Recipe from the America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake

I made this cake for my brother's birthday (beginning of April). Originally, I wanted to make this old-fashioned chocolate cake from America's Test Kitchen, except seeing all that butter made me change my mind. Instead, I chose this recipe that used the healthier vegetable oil for making a moist chocolate cake. This cake was so good that my family requested for another one the next day. So I made another one, and used some of the leftover frosting to frost part of the cake. I made the second cake with my friend and it only took a few minutes to whip up. It's always nice to have a helper when baking. :)

Because I baked two cakes at the same time, I had to put the cakes into the oven side by side. What happened was that my cake was puffier on one side than the other one because the sides of the cakes that were in the middle of the oven did not rise as much. To solve this problem, you can rotate the pans halfway through baking, or you can just match up the puffy side and unpuffy side of the two layers and make an evenly leveled cake.

This was my first layer cake ever and I was so excited to frost it. It was so easy to make. In fact, this recipe reminded me of the easy chocolate cupcakes I made before. Also, after tasting this cake and looking at it, I was reminded of that humongous chocolate cake in Matilda, the movie. I don't know if you ever watched it, but in the movie and the book, this boy was forced to eat a whole chocolate cake by the mean principal.

I was inspired to make this cake when I saw it here.

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake
Recipe slightly adapted from Hershey's

Giant Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these cookies as a snack that me and my friends could enjoy at my school's senior movie night. All the seniors who wanted to could go to the big gym, get free tacos and enjoy the movie Up. I never watched it before, so I was very excited. The movie was soooo cute! It was just like watching it in a movie theater, except there were echos so I couldn't understand what they were saying sometimes. :/ hahaa

It was the best school night ever because I usually don't hang out with friends on a school night.

Giant Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rotiboys

I wanted to make these buns after having my first taste of them from Oh My Buns! My grandma's brother's wife bought a few boxes of rotiboys and distributed it to each family. The bakery specialized in making these buns and once I saw how soft these buns were I really wanted to try making them myself. Whenever I see a delicious bread, I always want to hunt down the recipe and try it out.

As I was making this bread, I found it really difficult to knead the dough. It was very sticky, so I had to add a bit more flour. I also happened to use 220 gm of egg and milk. When the dough was rising, I was a bit apprehensive of the results because compared to the pictures on Hearty Bakes, my dough was toooo wet.

I started wondering whether I should make a topping or not. Doubt crept into me as I wondered if this bread would turn out successfully or not. In the end, I decided to make the topping because how can a rotiboy be a rotiboy without a coffee topping? I halved the topping recipe and found out that it was just right for all 10 buns I had. However, after baking them, the topping was too watery for me and slid off the bread too much. I think it's because of the egg I used; I used an extra large egg. I was a bit disappointed with how the bread looked. Maybe disappointed is an understatement.

Then my mom, dad and brother tried out the bread and they all liked it. My brother even rated it a 9, saying that it would be better if the topping had more flavor. I agree, the topping should have more coffee (I omitted the coffee paste). My dad said that it should be sweeter (I second that because I have a sweet tooth). My mom really enjoyed it. All in all, although the looks of this bread, for me, was not too appealing, you will enjoy this bread.

Note: It's soft because of the honey.


Rotiboys
Recipe from Hearty Bakes,
"Sweet Buns Recipe reference: 简单又好做小烤箱面包"

Steamed Buns 饅頭 (Mantou)

I wanted to share this the day I made it, which was some time this past week. I've made it several times since then and even tried the wheat version. I'll share those tips in a separate post. The post below is what I wrote a few days ago. If I don't post this post now, I don't know when I'll get around to posting it. So here it is! I'll continue adding pictures until there is the usual step-by-step pictures. I highly recommend this recipe!

I've always wanted to try making the mantou my dad made. It was always a treat whenever he made them. When he hasn't made them for a long time, I would request for them, dropping hints. :D One day I tried learning from him. Except, my family usually cooks without measuring. So I tried the best that I could to get the recipe and below is my sad attempt of remembering his recipe...

Well before that, I decided to try out Angie's recipe in the meantime because I was craving mantou. I feel like I would be able to eat mantou for breakfast, lunch and dinner, without getting sick of it. As I mentioned many times before, I love eating carbs! :D I really would eat that much mantou if it was healthy for you, but it isn't....too much processed flour. Ok, anyway, I found her recipe a long time ago, before I even started blogging. Back then, I did not know much about breads. If you asked me to make mantou last year, I would be confounded.

The bread turned out sooo soft! And it had skin! You can tell how excited I was. lol That type of mantou is my favorite. Now, next step is to make this wheat mantou, but still keep this nice texture. The only downfall was my baking soda not being mixed well enough....leading to these brown splotches. I also learned that adding sugar and yeast creates alcohol and mixing baking soda with this alcohol may cause brown spots. In my case it was brown swirls. Maybe next time I won't add sugar to my starter to see if the brown splotches still happen.

Chinese Steamed Buns with Starter
Adapted from Angie's Recipes



Uploaded with ImageShack.us Photobucket is maintaining their website now, so I'll just use imageshack for the time being.

Spring Break, my Blog's 1st Anniversary and Randomness

Today
I'm so tired right now! Right now I'm having a week of spring break and it's been a blast. I'm having so much fun just relaxing and not worrying about school...I should be studying for my AP's though, maybe in a few days. Anyway, today I woke up, rode my bike to work, came back home, ate lunch, went shopping, baked a sponge cake, and had a dinner cooked by my grandma with my extended family. At the dinner, I played wii at my cousins' house and I had so much fun. I can't believe it's already Wednesday though. Only a few more days of break is left!!

College and these past few weeks
These past few weeks I haven't been blogging as much, but I'm going to blog more now I think. I have way too many half-written backlogs. Recently, I just got all my decisions from colleges and I know where I'm going to go now. Although it wasn't my first choice and I was a bit disappointed when I got rejected to my top choice, I'm also thankful that I was rejected from my top choice school. Because now, the school that I'm going to go to is closer to home and if I wanted to, I can visit home every weekend to see my family (maybe even do a bit of baking :D) While waiting for the decisions, I wasn't worried because I knew everything was in God's hands and that He would take care of everything for me. :D Even if I got rejected from this one school, a few years later when I look back I will see what a great decision it was for me to go to the other school.

My Blog
I am so behind in blogging. I am baking much faster than I can post. Here's a "glimpse" of what I still have to post about:

giant double chocolate chip cookies
rotiboys
pita bread
chocolate layer cake
sponge cake
peach buns
cinnamon swirl bread
and a few more...

I also apologize for not posting the recipe for my mom's taro nian gao. After posting the first few nian gao recipes, too much time passed and I forgot how she made it. :/ I'll post it up one day, hopefully, when I get the correct recipe and better pictures.

Today is my blog's first b-day! I never knew blogging could be so fun. It all started when I first discovered a blog one day when I was just searching for a recipe. Discovering one blog slowly led to discovering another blog and another one. After a while, I decided that I should make my own blog too. :) I am so glad I did that. Now because of my blog, I have been able to make many friends among the blogging community. Thank you everyone for supporting me. :) I have so much to learn from everyone. I hope I can still update this blog frequently in college.

My backyard
Since it's already spring, I want to share pictures of the flowers in my backyard.

I also have these flowers in my backyard, but my friend "K" dropped by one day and gave me these flowers. She made my day! :)







These are called wisteria and they only bloom once a year. What's sad is that after rain showers all the flowers drop to the ground. It took many, many years for this vine to grow so tall.



These are my flowers. Flowers that I planted years and years ago. They always show up annually because they develop new bulbs each year.











My aunt gave us this little purple flower and it grew into this big bunch of flowers...I don't know what it's name is though.









Last of all....





Ok, thanks for making it this far. :D Have a good day everyone.