Pecan Tassies and ~Happy Thanksgiving!~

Hi everyone!!  Sorry for this late post on Thanksgiving...A day after it passed, but here goes!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  There are many things I am thankful for.  However, I feel like I don't always appreciate all the things I have.  This is something I have to work on.  The things I am thankful for are the usual: family, friends, house, food, and clothes.

For this year, the things I am especially thankful for is being able to find a fellowship at school that I feel like I fit really well in.  Another thing I'm extremely thankful for is meeting 4 international students who have changed my life.  I've been helping them improve their English, but I have also learned a lot from them too.  Also this year I'm living in an apartment as opposed to the dorms, so I have been cooking for myself.  I'm thankful that I am finally forced to learn how to cook because I never really liked cooking before.  I'm starting to enjoy cooking now too.  You know, the first time I actually cooked in my apartment, I set off the fire alarm.  T_T  To my credit, the alarm was really sensitive...but I can't believe I used Pam on a really hot pot and it just started smoking.  So now, I have started to use regular oil.  I'm also thankful for having a job so I can spend my own money on things I want without having to ask my parents for money.  Most importantly of all, I'm thankful for my readers!  Thanks for your support and advice.  I really do appreciate it. :D

So this year for Thanksgiving, I went over to S's house just like last year.  We had lunch at her house and the food was just delicious.  I really missed her and her family because the last time I saw them was last Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, S. was extremely busy with her schoolwork so I was only able to see her for 15 seconds...literally... LOL.  I knocked on her day, asked her how she was doing, and then left her alone.  However, I talked to her mom instead.  It was quite funny.  Her mom was like, "I never imagined a day where I would be having a conversation with you like this."  Her mom had seen me grow up, so that's why it was so "weird".  Anyway, I really enjoyed this Thanksgiving lunch with her family and several other families present at the potluck.

I made pecan tassies for the potluck.  They were all polished off. :D  Some people couldn't resist going back for seconds and thirds.  I actually made these pecan tassies the week prior, with one of the international students (J.)  It was quite funny because he had to help me with making the crusts and stuff and I usually bake with my girl friends. XD  I brought the pecan tassies to a potluck too the past week and got rave reviews.  Whenever people say that something I made tastes good, I'm not really sure how I should react because it's not like I created the recipe.  But yea, these tarts are really good.  I ate some and had a very hard time keeping myself from eating more.  Also, even my brother ate them!  (He dislikes nuts.)

These pecan tassies are super time consuming.  They take around 3 hours to make (from the very start to the very end).  I figured out that the best way to make the crust was to make the dough, then just roll the dough into balls, use one end of my rolling pin to squish the dough into the cupcake pan and press the ball into the edges of the pan.  Everything else is super simple.

Pecan Tassies

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake

I think close to a year has passed since I bought a can of pumpkin puree.  At that time, I had found a few pumpkin recipes that I really wanted to try out.  What I didn't realize was that those recipes required pumpkin spice, nutmeg, or several other spices.  So I never used the pumpkin puree I bought until now, when I finally bought some pumpkin spice.

This chocolate chip pumpkin cake was pretty good.  It was a little bit too sweet for my taste, and I'm someone who really likes sweets.  I had already adjusted the amount of sugar used in this recipe too.  Another tweak I made was decrease the amount of chocolate chips to only one cup because two cups would, in my opinion, overwhelm the cake.  Even when I only added only one cup, each bite of the cake had several chocolate chips in them.

I liked how the cake turned out though.  If you are someone who likes pumpkin pie, then you will like this cake because it tastes like pumpkin pie in cake form.  I gave some to my friend A. and she said that her family enjoyed it.  However, my brother, on the other hand, would not even taste the cake because he dislikes pumpkins. 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake
Recipe slightly adapted from Tracey's Culinary Adventures

Zebra Cake

As seen in my previous post, I attempted to make the Rose Ombre Cake for my grandma.  I wanted the cake to be something really special because it was her 80th birthday.  For my dad's birthday, I wanted to make something simpler and healthier (because the previous cake was super rich!).  So after changing my mind several times on what recipe I should use, I somehow remembered a recipe that I really wanted to try: the zebra cake!  Although I really wanted to make the cake for a long time, I never had the courage to make it.  Today when I finally made it, it was so much easier than I thought it would be.  This cake would be really difficult to mess up.  The cake wasn't grossly sweet because I cut the sugar down to 3/4 cups.  The texture of the cake was normal.  It was moist enough, but not super moist.  The bad part was that this cake was a bit bland, so you might want to make the zebra cake with a different cake recipe.  On the bright side, this cake is very pretty and I am sure that people will be impressed by all the stripes this cake has. 

Zebra Cake
Recipe slightly adapted from King Arthur Flour.

Red Velvet and Light Cheddar Cheese "Ombre" Rose Cake

The month of September is always a busy one for me.  Lots of my friends have their birthdays in this month.  This week it was my grandma's birthday on Sunday, then Tuesday was my uncle's birthday, today is my dad and K's birthday, on Friday is my best friend's birthday and on Saturday is another close friend's birthday.  So many people I know are born in this month!

This year was my grandma's 80th birthday.  So in order to celebrate this significant event, my parents and close relatives decided to have a surprise birthday party for her.  After several weeks of planning, the special day finally arrived.  For my grandma's birthday, the reception was held at my Uncle's church and several trays of food were ordered from a buffet.  Around 40 relatives showed up to celebrate her birthday.  Because it was a surprise party, my mom and I had to trick my grandma into getting on the car with us so we could bring her to the place.  My mom told her that she needed help with choosing some meat at the supermarket to barbeque.  At first, my grandma argued that it was too late to bbq meat among other things, but then after my mom's persuading she finally relented.  Then I had to bring this cake onto the car and because this cake was too difficult to put into a box or container, I had to hold it on my lap.  Bringing a cake on the car was suspicious because my grandma had no idea that there was going to be a surprise party, so I had to make up a story of how I wanted a special decoration for the cake and we needed to go to this particular store to buy the decoration.  Luckily, she fell for the story.  When we finally arrived at the church, everything was revealed to her and she had a blast at the party.  She was really happy and that was awesome.  All the lies were worth it. ;)

In order to celebrate her special day, I decided to bake a cake for her.  I quickly found this recipe on Honey Bee Sweet's blog.  It was not a hard decision to make because I had seen a few ombre rose cakes on tumblr and I really wanted to try making that type of cake.

Although this cake took me around 4-5 hours total to make it, it was worth it.  The cake is delicious!  Although I kind of messed up on the cheesecake part, many people still complimented me on the cake, saying that the cake tasted amazing, etc...  Also, the roses on the cake really impress people.  However, mine were a bit sloppy because of the hot weather and my hot hands.  At one point, the frosting was so soft that it wouldn't stay on the cake and slid right off like this.  In addition, I wasn't able to make my cake an ombre rose cake.  I was able to make it two different colors, but ran out of time to tint the frosting darker. 

Red Velvet and Light Cheddar Cheese "Ombre" Rose Cake
Recipe from Honey Bee Sweets.  Please refer to her blog for the recipe.

Funfetti Cupcake

So remember how I was supposed to post all my recipes from the Crazy Day?  Well, I haven't finished posting all those recipes yet.  One of the things I made on that day was funfetti cupcakes.  They turned out surprisingly well, even though they were the cupcakes that required 3 egg whites and I typically don't do so well with recipes that require egg whites.  Anyway, I didn't take any good pictures of the cupcake and only got a picture of a half eaten one. :P  So yesterday I decided to make some funfetti cupcakes again, except with a different recipe.  Something I didn't like about the first funfetti cupcakes I made was that they were too sweet.  In fact, they were sickening sweet.  Unless you have a major sweet tooth, you will not like that cupcake.  I'm really happy with the funfetti cupcakes I made this time though.  They were soft, moist and not too sweet.  I also made some frosting that turned out alright.  The cupcakes look really cute with the sprinkles in them.

Funfetti Cupcakes
Recipe from Sweet Tooth

Monkey Bread

The first time I made monkey bread was in a summer school cooking class.  Mr. I. introduced the recipe to the students and we made the easy version of monkey bread.  We used canned biscuit dough and cut each piece of dough into four pieces and rolled them into balls.  Then, we dipped the dough balls in butter and cinnamon sugar.  This was such a fun recipe.  My family enjoyed what I brought home so much that we made monkey bread several times at home.

While surfing the web, looking at recipes, I found this monkey bread recipe that starts from scratch.  I didn't actually make the monkey bread until a year later.  The recipe was really simple and the bread was very soft and fluffy. It also wasn't too sweet. (I didn't make a glaze.  Actually, I kind of forgot about...but the bread was sweet enough already so it didn't matter.)  This is definitely a must make recipe.  Monkey bread is like the best part of cinnamon rolls - the gooey, yummy centers.

Monkey Bread
Recipe from the Brown Eyed Baker, very slightly adapted.

Black and White Cookies

I always wanted to try making black and white cookies, but I never got the chance to because these cookies are very time consuming.  When I finally made these cookies, I was a little surprised at how cake-like the batter was.  Also, the cookies were easier to make than I thought they would be.  The hard part was frosting the cookies and making the chocolate frosting.  Because of the chocolate frosting, I spent around 3 hours, hands on, making these cookies.

These cookies were pretty good.  You'll like them if you like cake-like cookies.  The only downside of these cookies was that the icing was really sweet...and I put a really thick icing on these cookies when I was trying to make sure the icing looked perfect.  So I guess if I ever make these cookies again, I will spread less icing onto the cookies.  Also, one problem I encountered was the texture of the chocolate icing.  I don't know what I did wrong, but not only was the icing not very pretty, it was also really, really hard to spread.  I spent around half an hour trying to get the icing to the right consistency, but it still ended up different from the white icing.  In the end, I was extremely frustrated and vowed that I would never make these cookies again because icing these cookies was just too time consuming.  We'll see if I keep that vow. XD

I actually made these cookies for my brother because he wanted to bring some treats for his band council.  After he came back from his band activity, he told me that many people enjoyed the cookies.  However, there was one guy who said that my cookie batter was not mixed well enough...  :(  My brother consoled me by saying that the guy who said that was a very critical person, hahaha.

Black and White Cookies
Recipe from Simply Sifted.

Actually I have the hard copy of this recipe in my America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book, but I found the recipe online already so I will just give you the link instead of retyping up the same recipe.

Garlic Knots

One day, after eating at a restaurant called Mama...cita?, (I'm not sure if that's the right name.) That place was a pizzeria.  I really wanted to try making some garlic knots.  I tried theirs and it was delicious.  So in hopes that I would be able to reproduce something similar, I tried this recipe posted by Brown Eyed Baker.

The recipe was fairly simple and the bread was really fun to make.  However, it is the type of bread that becomes chewy and hard to eat after only one day.  It doesn't taste that bad the next day, but it's better to eat it the day of.  Also, there ended up being too much sauce leftover for me.

Garlic Knots
Recipe from Brown Eyed Baker

Boston Cream Pie

A long time ago, I made Boston cream pie cupcakes.  Those turned out surprisingly well, so today I decided to make the actual Boston cream pie.  Actually, my cousins returned from Taiwan just recently and one of them turned a year older when he was in Taiwan.  So, in order to celebrate his belated birthday, my mom said I should make a cake.  I spent a whole hour agonizing about what cake I should make and then finally thought of making the Boston cream pie.  Just the day before, I had made some fruit tarts, but I ended up with a whole tone of custard leftover.  So by making a Boston cream pie, I would be able to use up all that custard!

I believe that previously, I have attempted making the cake before....but I don't think the cake turned out that good.  So as a result, I never completed the pudding and glazing part.  This time, I thought the cake was still alright.  When I was beating the eggs, it seemed like it would be successful.  When I actually tasted the end result, the cake was kind of dry. :(  I don't really know what I did wrong with that...  My family enjoyed the cake, but I'm not sure if they're just being nice.  XD


Boston Cream Pie
Recipe from Lick the Bowl Good





Everything seemed to be fine when I was beating the eggs, but when I started folding in the flour I think I deflated the eggs.  Also, I don't think I mixed the butter and milk mixture well enough.  Anyway, this is how it turned out.


After I flipped over the cake, there were some lines left on it.


Slice the cake in half.




Cover it with custard/pudding.


Use the other half of the cake and make a sandwich.  Make sure to use the bottom half, that way the top of the cake will be smooth.




When you make the glaze, make sure to bring the heavy cream to a boil!  Otherwise, the glaze will never harden up...I learned this the hard way.  I didn't really pay attention to the instructions and the glaze wouldn't harden up at all.  I tried cooking the glaze longer with the chocolate already mixed in, but then the glaze curdled. :(

2nd Attempt:


Time to glaze the cake!



P.S. does anyone know why my cake is so short compared to Monica's?  Do you think it's because I deflated the eggs too much?  Thanks :D


P.P.S.  I wasn't able to continue the rest of my crazy day series because I felt like my pictures were too ugly to make a post with.  I will continue posting for that Crazy Day when I remake the items I made and take better pictures.

Espresso Chocolate Chip Shortbread

Wow, I can't believe it's been a whole month since I last posted a recipe.  I've been so busy with school and work that I kept on making excuses to not write a post.  Actually, I believe the last time I posted was close to the end of my winter quarter and then the weeks passed by so quickly when I was busy writing papers for my final exams.  That period of time was crazy!  It was the first time in my whole life that I wrote soo much!  I had to write a 10 page research paper for my education class and more essays for my writing class.  Now, I'm taking 20 units.  I decided to challenge myself because I felt like I had too much free time, which ironically, I did not use that time to write posts.  :/  Anyway,  here I am making excuses again. I would like to dedicate this post to I.S.  I don't know if you would like your name out on the internet, but yea. :)  Due to your encouragement, I wrote another post.  I'll try to post consistently...

Today, the recipe I'm sharing with you is espresso shortbread, from Annie's Eats.  Honestly, I never drink coffee, but I enjoyed these cookies.  I was too busy during the Crazy Day to taste these cookies, but they smelled good.  They were also really simple to make.  So if you're busy and you don't have enough time for hands-on stuff, make these cookies.  All you have to do is mix up the cookie dough which you can do in a matter of minutes, roll out the dough, and then chill it.  Easy peasy!

The cookies also look very cute and neat because all you have to do is cut them out in squares and then poke holes in them with forks.  


Espresso Chocolate Chip Shortbread

Oreo Cheesecake

Last week, I stayed at my school for the first weekend because Jason Chen came over to sing at a Taiwanese Festival that a club at my school was holding.  I don't think I'll be staying at school often because it was kind of boring.  Also, my week seemed really long afterward.  I felt like it was Wednesday when it was only Tuesday.  Anyway, I was too tired to start posting any things that I made on the crazy day.  But I don't want to neglect my blog for a long period of time again, so here I am again!

The first recipe I'll be posting is for an Oreo cheesecake.  I got the recipe from the blog Buns in my Oven.  This recipe is definitely a keeper!!  It is a really simple recipe that was not time consuming at all.  This cheesecake does not require a water bath, so you don't need to worry about that.

It  was a really tasty treat.  Simple to make, so you should definitely make it when you are crunched for time.  Also, Oreo lovers, you're in for a big treat!  The cheesecake has Oreo's in the crust and in the filling. :) Yummm.

Oreo Cheesecake

 

The Crazy Day

So every week at church, after service, there is a snack area called Sonlit Terrace. Every week people take turns bringing muffins, croissants and similar items.  Since it was the summer, I decided to sign up for bringing the snacks one day.  It was going to be a great excuse for a baking challenge.   I was so excited! I didn't decide what I wanted to make until a few days before and it was a hard decision.  I ended up with eleven things I wanted to make.

The items I made were:
Oreo cheesecake bites
Oreo cupcakes
Green tea cookies
Lofthouse sugar cookies
Chocolate chip cookies
Espresso shortbread
Double chocolate chip cookies
Funfetti cupcakes
Cheesecake brownies
Glazed lemon cookies
Almond biscotti

I will be Posting each recipe one by one because it would take forever to post all of it at once.  Here is a preview of all the things I made.


All these things took me 11 hours to make.  I was in the kitchen for the whole day baking. It was fun, but tiring.  With my brother's help I was able to frost the cookies and clean up without sleeping too, too late.  After my baking spree was over, I was soo tired that I couldn't fall asleep.


The end product. :)

Green Onion Pancakes 蔥油餅

From when I was small my grandma would occasionally make green onion pancakes, otherwise known as scallion pancakes 蔥油餅.  I really enjoyed eating the pancakes.
 
I was always interested in trying out this recipe and I got the chance when there was a potluck at my youth fellowship.  This is a post from a really long time ago, by the way.  I'm going to post about 11 items soon, but I'm getting this out of the way first.

My best friend was there when I made it and she really liked the end result.  I honestly don't remember too much about the tastes, but I think this recipe is worth making.  The only adjustment I would make is not use as much oil.

Green Onion Pancakes 蔥油餅 

Pan Pizza

After a long time of having this pizza in my to-do list, I can finally cross it off.  I have always wanted to try making some pizza, but I never got the chance until my mom's off day (the day she takes a break from cooking).  

The pizza was really easy to make and it reminded me of Pizza Hut's pizza. It had a nice crispy crust that tasted just right, due to the generously greased pans.   If you had a tiring day, you can make this pizza for an easy dinner.  I actually got the recipe from my book, America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.  The recipe also happens to be the same one that Tracey from Tracey's Culinary Adventures used.


Pepperoni Pan Pizza

 

Vanilla Cupcakes

Whenever I try to make vanilla cupcakes, I always seem to fail.  My first attempt at making these cupcakes was the browned butter vanilla cupcakes.  However, the butter clumped up when I added it into milk mixture.  After I baked the cupcakes, there were some holes in them where the butter melted.  The second vanilla cupcake I tried to make was too tough.  I had over mixed the batter, which resulted in a tough cupcake.  This time, however, I was able to make them successfully!

The recipe is from Williams-Sonoma

My friend helped me make them and she also really enjoyed eating them.  The cupcakes were not really moist, but they were just right.  They weren't really dry either. I think I might have decreased the sugar a little bit, but otherwise I didn't change the recipe.  The recipe is pretty straight-forward, so just click on the link below for the recipe. 

I haven't been posting as much recently, but I hope to change that.  I have a project for this blog and that is to write a post about my crazy, crazy day.  On that day, I made 11 different items...yes! 11, it is not a typo. :) 

Vanilla Cupcakes

Hoddeok 호떡 - Sweet Korean Pancakes

Recently last year, I got into K-pop and Korean dramas.  It all started with Personal Taste, a drama that my aunt recommended to me.  Ever since that drama, I have been watching many other Korean dramas.  My addiction led to an interest in Korean food and desserts, so as I was watching Maangchi's videos on cooking, I discovered this recipe for hoddeok 호떡.  When I found this recipe though, I was still at my college dorm.  So once I got home, I was catching up on the posts of people I follow and I saw the same recipe on Lena's blog. :)   This spurred me into action and I decided to make the pancakes in a couple of days.

The pancakes were easy to make and they turned out okay.  I really liked how the brown sugar melted in the pancakes, giving a nice caramelly filling.  The walnuts also gave the pancakes a bit of a crunch, in contrast to the soft texture of the pancake.  However, something I was unsatisfied with was the texture of the pancake.  The pancake was supposed to be soft and fluffy, but some of mine turned out chewy.  I'm guessing it's because of the squishing during the frying process, but I'm not sure, so I plan to try out this recipe soon again.  I just looked at reviews of this pancake and it turns out it is supposed to be a little chewy.  Anyhow, this recipe is really easy and the end result is tasty. 

Hoddeok
호떡




Recipe from Maangchi