x3Baking

Pecan Tassies and ~Happy Thanksgiving!~

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 07:20:00 +0000

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

Recipe from Brown Eyed Baker

I have not posted the recipe on my blog because I did not adapt it in any way. Soo, just refer to the link. :D I hope you do try out this recipe. It is well worth the results.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 01:06:00 +0000

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

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon pumpkin-pie spice
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar (original recipe called for 1 1/4 cups of sugar)
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1 cup chocolate chips (Original recipe asked for 2 cups)

Prepare a 9x13 inch pan.

Mix the flour, pumpkin spice, baking soda and salt together in a medium bowl. Cream butter and sugar in large bowl. Mix in the egg and vanilla, so that it is well combined. Add the pumpkin and mix it until just combined. The batter might look a litttle weird, but don't worry. Mix in the half of the flour mixture and then mix in the other half. Do it until it is just combined and then add in the chocolate chips.

Bake at 350*F for around 35-40 minutes. A toothpick inserted into the cake should come out with some crumbs. Cool the cake on a wire rack and then enjoy. :D

Zebra Cake

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:12:00 +0000

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.

Ingredients
3/4 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp dutch cocoa (must be dutch)

Preheat the oven to 350*F and grease and line a 8 or 9-inch cake pan.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar and the eggs together until it is light in color. Mix in the milk, oil and vanilla on low speed. Make sure the batter is smooth before proceeding to the next step.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Add to the large bowl and mix everything until it is just incorporated. The batter should be smooth. Take out two cups of the batter. I think I just estimated the amount. Then mix in the cocoa powder. Make sure to sift the cocoa powder before to ensure there are no lumps.

Now the fun part begins! Alternating the batter, put around a little less than a 1/4 cup of the batter into the middle of the greased and lined cake pan and continue doing that until there is no more batter.

Bake the cake for around 40 minutes to an hour.

Then enjoy :D

Red Velvet and Light Cheddar Cheese "Ombre" Rose Cake

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:06:00 +0000

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.

Here is what the batter looked like for the red velvet cake.

After it was baked, it looked like this.

My cousin helped me bake this cake too!

The cheesecake portion of the cake looked like this. I didn't mix it well enough though because after it was baked, the bottom of the cake was kind of dense.

While it was baking, I was freaking out because the cake looked like it was going to be lopsided, so I was really worried that I had messed up on the cake.

By the way, I made the cake layers the day before and just left them out overnight. I was wondering if I should refrigerate the layers, but I was afraid that the layers would become dry. So I just wrapped the layers with saran wrap.

The next day I made the frosting and was frosting the layers when this happened! Luckily I had frosting to cover it up.

I used a heavy duty ziploc bag as my piping bag.

Piping the top of the cake was really simple. The hard part was when I had to tint the frosting darker...and my frosting was melting a lot so I had to chill it. So I would suggest dividing the frosting into several portions and then coloring each portion like that.

Tada! It's all done. Sadly, you can't really tell the difference between my frosting colors. Also, the colors of the cake in each picture I just posted are a little different. Sorry :(, the different lighting and such caused this.

Here's what the cake looks like after you cut it. There's a dent on the top because that's where the candle was put.

Here are some rose piping videos.

Here is another video.

Thank you Honey Bee Sweets for this amazing recipe. Everyone really enjoyed this cake.

Funfetti Cupcake

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 23:17:00 +0000

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

1-1/4 cups all purpose flour

1-1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup sugar

6 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 large egg + 1 egg white, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup whole milk

2 tbsp rainbow sprinkles (I used nonpareils)

Please refer to her blog to see the recipe. There was one mistake in the recipe that I would like to correct though. The milk was omitted in the instructions. So basically, after you cream the butter and sugar, you add the eggs and mix until just combined. After that, add half of the flour mixture, mix until just combined and add half of the milk, mix. Then add the rest of the flour mixture, mix and then add the rest of the milk and mix. Then fold in the 2 tbsp of sprinkles and you can distribute the batter evenly into the cupcake pan.

Vanilla Buttercream

I halved the recipe and was still able to frost most of the cupcakes.

I frosted the cupcakes with a 1M Wilson tip. I also accidentally added the milk into the frosting all at once, so my frosting wasn't as defined.

Monkey Bread

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 06:09:00 +0000

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.

Dough:
2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1 cup milk, warm (I microwaved it for around 20-30 seconds)
1/3 cup water, warm (I used some hot water and mixed it with some lukewarm water)
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 package instant yeast
3¼ cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for work surface
2 teaspoons salt
Brown Sugar Coating:
1 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), melted (melt 4 tbsp at first and melt more when you need it, I had lots of butter left over.)
Glaze: (I omitted this.)
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons milk

Grease your pan with either butter or spray it with Pam, like I did.
In the original recipe it said to make the dough using a mixer, but I didn't have a standing mixer. What I did was mix together the milk, water, melted butter, sugar and yeast in a medium sized bowl. Then mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the milk mixture into the large bowl and mix with a wooden spoon. When the dough starts forming, you can start kneading with your hands so it isn't as messy. Continue kneading the dough until it is smooth. This might take 10 minutes or more. Then take the dough out and knead it on a floured counter and coat your large bowl with Pam and then put the dough back in and cover the bowl. Let it rise for around one hour, or until it doubles in size.

Mix the sugar and cinnamon together and melt the butter in a separate bowl
After the dough has risen, take it out of the bowl and roll it into a 8x8 inch square and cut it into 64 pieces.

Roll the pieces and dip into butter and then sugar. Then stagger the pieces in the already greased bundt pan. Make sure that the dough in the bundt pan does not reach the top, let it fill up to 2/3 of the pan. That way when the bread is expanding, it won't overflow the pan. With the extra pieces, feel free to make mini monkey bread cupcakes. Cover the bundt pan and let the bread rise again for around another hour.

Bake in the oven at 350*F for around 30-35 minutes. When the top of the bread is golden brown, maybe even a little darker, it is done. Before cooling it on the rack, cool it in the pan for 5 minutes. Then glaze it afterward... make the glaze by whisking together the powdered sugar an milk.

Wow! After typing this whole thing, I found out there was a version for hand kneaded monkey bread on the bottom....oh well.

Here's the dough after it has doubled in size.

Roll the dough out and then cut it into 64 pieces.

Dip the balls into butter and then the sugar mixture.

Set the balls into the bundt pan or whatever pan you want to use. You can also put them into muffic cups.

Let the bread rise once again.

Then bake...

I hope you enjoy it! It was sweet enough without the glaze. If you want to make it prettier or even sweeter, just add the glaze. :)

Black and White Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 07:01:00 +0000

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.

Here is what the cookie "dough" should look like.

Put some dollops of the dough onto the baking sheet.

Make sure not to make the dollops too big, otherwise they will turn out like this...

Icing the cookie with the white icing was simple, but the problem was with the chocolate icing.

Finally done! See how rough the chocolate icing is? It became a frosting instead of icing. -_- I tried my best though.

Garlic Knots

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 07:45:00 +0000

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

After the dough is ready, roll it out, cut it into strips, and then tie the strips into knots.

Cover the knots with plastic wrap and let it rise.

I let them rise in the warm oven so that they would rise faster.

After baking them, dip them in this sauce.

Enjoy!

Boston Cream Pie

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 07:08:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 06:02:00 +0000

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

I won't be posting the recipe because I did not make any changes whatsoever. At least, I don't remember making any changes. So here's the link! Enjoy. :D

Roll out the already made cookie dough and then chill it for a while.

After chilling, cut the dough into squares/rectangles or whatever shape you want them to be.

This is what they looked like before being baked. Poke holes in them using a fork. Then bake at 325*F.

Oreo Cheesecake

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 07:53:00 +0000

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

Recipe from here.

First, make the cookie crust and bake it for ten minutes.

Then make the filling.

Evenly spread the filling on top of the crust and bake it.

After baking it, it will look like this.

Then wait for it to cool and refrigerate it before serving.
Enjoy!

The Crazy Day

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:22:00 +0000

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. :)

At the beginning of the day and throughout the rest of the day, the kitchen was looking something like this.

A few items have been made already, many more recipes to go.

Now it's night, around 11 o' clock and I was still making things.

The messy kitchen at night.

Done frosting everything with the help of my brother.
I went to sleep after that. :) My brother was soo sweet. He offered to help me do the dishes too.

Green Onion Pancakes 蔥油餅

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:20:00 +0000

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

Find the recipe here.

Ball of dough, very smooth.

Sprinkle green onions on top of oiled dough.

Roll it up and then flatten it.

Cook on both sides for a few minutes.

Then you're done. :) For detailed steps, please refer to Sunflower Food Galore.

Pan Pizza

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:38:00 +0000

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

Recipe also found here.

Ingredients

1/2 cup olive oil, divided (I used extra virgin olive oil)
3/4 cup skim milk plus 2 additional tablespoons, warmed to 110 F (I used whole milk because that is what I have)
2 teaspoons sugar
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
Mozzarella cheese

Pineapple, pepperoni, etc

Tomato sauce (using some spaghetti sauce would be really easy and tasty)

Directions

Preheat the oven

Coat two 9-inch cake pans with oil. The recipe states 3 tablespoons of oil each, so that would leave a total of 2 tablespoons of oil left for the actual pizza dough. The purpose of greasing the cake pans with so much oil is to make the pizza's crust nice and crunchy. I decided to lessen the amount of oil, but not by much.

Mix the milk, sugar and 2 tbsp of oil. Mix together the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Slowly knead in the milk mixture into the large bowl. The instructions asked for a mixer, but I don't have a dough hook. Knead the dough until it forms a round ball and is smooth. Then grease the bowl and place the dough back in for the dough to rise in until it doubles in size.

After that, divide the dough into two and roll it into a ball. On a slightly floured surface, roll out the dough so that it has a 9 1/2 inch diameter, making sure that the crusts are thicker than the middle. Place them in the oiled pans and let them rise, covered, until puffy. This will take around 20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400*F.

After 20 minutes, spread the sauce on the pizza, leaving a 1/2 inch crust. Sprinkle as much cheese and toppings as you want and then bake for around 20 minutes until the crust is golden brown. Remove from oven and let the pizza cool down for about one minute and dig in.

*Originally the recipe called for pepperoni, but I just used pineapples instead. Feel free to customize the pizza to your own preferences.

*I made my own sauce too, using canned tomatoes and then cooking it with garlic and olive oil. However, the tomatoes tasted kind of bitter for some reason...

Vanilla Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:06:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:06:00 +0000

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

Beware! The dough is super sticky.

Oreo Swiss Roll Cake

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:58:00 +0000

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

For the cocoa powder I used Hershey's, so don't worry if you don't have Valrohna.

Heat up the vegetable oil, add the cocoa powder to it and mix. Then add the milk into this mixture and mix. Doesn't it look like a giraffe? My roommate loves giraffes!

Mix all of the ingredients in Set B (eggs, sugar, corn syrup, salt) together until it is very, very thick.
Beating the eggs was the hardest part for me. I had to beat it for around 8 minutes, maybe? I was beating it with a handheld mixer and I was annoying my brother terribly with the loud noise.

You will know you are done when the mixture is triple in volume and when lifting the beater, the mixture will slowly fall back to the bowl.

After sifting the flour and baking soda twice, fold it into Set B. Then add the cocoa mixture into the egg mixture. Do this very gently.

Pour the batter into your prepared baking tray. The dimensions of the tray should be 10" by 12", but my baking sheet was smaller than that. So, my cake roll ended up being thicker and I had to bake it for a longer amount of time. When I rolled it up, I had difficulty rolling it because it was so thick. Then the cake also cracker after being rolled. Luckily, the frosting covered it all up.

Make sure to line your tray with parchment paper and then bake the cake at 355*F for around 12 minutes.

While baking your cake, start preparing the filling by mixing the heavy cream until it looks something like this.

Crush some oreo crackers without the cream to add to the cream.

Mix them together.

After the cake is done, it'll come out looking something like this. This picture was taken when the cake had cooled down.

Don't worry about the wrinkles because when you roll up the cake, you won't see it anymore. Also, if the batter wasn't mixed properly some cocoa splotches might show up, but no worries the cream will cover that.

After the cake has cooled, spread the 2/3 of the cream on the cake, leaving a border of 2 inches. Roll up the cake from the shorter end. Eekss! My cake cracked!!

Now wrap the cake up in saran wrap and refrigerate for one hour, until the cake is sturdier. Then cover the cake with the rest of the cream, like so.

Cut or smash a few more Oreos to decorate the cake.

I added parchment paper to the sides of the cake so that the plate that the cake will be served will remain clean. When you're done with the decorations, just slide the paper out carefully.

Use some more Oreo cookie crumbs to fill in the white areas.

Tada! You're done! Now all you have to do is chill it for a bit more and serve.

Once again, Merry Christmas!!

Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃 II

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:10:00 +0000

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.

Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp sugar (I used regular instead of castor)
1 cup water, lukewarm
1 tbsp oil
red bean paste
3 drops of red food coloring with a few drops of water

Mix together the flour, cake flour, yeast, baking powder, sugar, and water.

Then add the oil.

Cover with saran wrap.

Let it rise for around 10 minutes or so.

Divide the dough into portions. Then let it rest for 5 minutes for easy molding.

Wrap each portion with a scoop of red bean paste or whatever filling you prefer. Let it rise for another 15 minutes.

Then make a indent on the peach bun with a spoon and then spray with red food coloring.

If you want, make some bunnies. :D Cut two ears on top of the head and dot the eyes and nose with red food coloring.

Here's a whole group.

Steam them for around 10 minutes, turn off the fire and then let them stay in the pot for a few minutes before opening the lid. You wouldn't want them to deflate on you :(, all your hard work would be wasted.

Enjoy. :D

.

.

Red Bean Paste

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:16:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 07:27:00 +0000

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

Ingredients
5 cups of rice, seasoned with rice vinegar and sugar, to taste
5 eggs
1 avocado, sliced thinly, into 20 strips
4 tbsp roe eggs mixed with 4 tbsp mayonnaise

2 sticks imitation crab meat, sliced into strips
2 cucumbers, sliced into 20 slices
10 pieces of seaweeed

Whisk 5 eggs until uniform in mixture and cook in two batches. The point of this is to make the eggs layered. cooking it in thin layers and folding it in half, cook a little more egg on the other side. Fold it in half again and add a little more egg on the other side. Do this so that after you fold it over, like an omelet, you will have 4 layers of this egg. Then cut the egg into strips.

When all the ingredients are ready, get out your seaweed and rice. Carefully spread the rice on the seaweed to prevent tearing. When placing the filling, try to place it with the smooth side against the rice, so when you roll it up the sushi will not be malformed. Place the egg, avocado, cucumber, crab meat, roe eggs, and anything else you would like to add onto the rice. Roll it up carefully using a bamboo mat. Also, placing the fillings depending on the color will make the sushi prettier. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect! so when you start off you might have trouble rolling it up. As you go along, it will get easier and easier and soon you will be a master. :D

Cook the sushi rice and season with rice vinegar and sugar. Cover the rice with saran wrap to let it cool down slowly.

Cucumbers and avocado.

Slice the avocados into thin pieces.

Set aside the avocado.

Whisk the eggs and prepare and grease a pan for cooking the eggs.

Cook a thin layer of eggs.

Divide the 5 eggs you whisked into two batches.

After the first layer is almost cooked, fold it in half and pour another thin layer onto the other half of the pan.

Let it cook a little longer and then fold it in half again.

So that it becomes like an omelet.

Add yet another layer by pouring in some more whisked eggs.

Then you end up with this.

Slice the "omelet" into thing strips, about finger width.

Here are all the rest of the ingredients, ready to go.

Here are the fish eggs mixed with some mayonnaise, with enough to make it spreadable.

The fish eggs were so shiny and sparkly I couldn't resist taking several pictures.

Here's imitation crab meat, torn into strips.

The brand of seaweed my uncle used.

Spread a thin layer of rice onto a piece of seaweed like that.

Place the toppings on top like that.

Roll it up.

Wrap your sushi in saran wrap to keep it fresh while you finish rolling the rest of your sushi. This also keeps the seaweed from sticking to the other rolls.

Tada!

Enjoy all your hard work.

Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 07:14:00 +0000

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.

Mound of dough.

Portion the dough out into several small, golf-sized pieces.

Roll out the dough.

Add a dollop of red bean paste.

Wrap up the bun and using a knife, indent the bun.

Using a new toothbrush, sprinkle red food coloring on the buns.

This post was not written until today. However, I made these all the way back in March (29).

Fettucine Alfredo

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:57:00 +0000

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.

Prepare the Parmesan cheese. I just used already-grated cheese.

Heat up the heavy cream, butter, and then season it with salt and pepper.

Stir.

Add the noodles to the bowl with half of the Parmesan and heavy cream mixture.

Add more Parmesan and mix. Enjoy. :)

Whole Wheat Loaf Bread

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 01:39:00 +0000

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.

Ingredients A
120 g Whole wheat flour
85 g Bread flour
4 g Instant yeast ( 1 tsp )
130 g Milk

Ingredients B
85 g Bread flour
15 g Caster sugar
1 tsp Salt
50 g Milk

15 g Unsalted butter

Directions:
Mix whole wheat flour, bread flour, yeast, and milk together until a ball forms. Cover the bowl with saran wrap and proof for 90 minutes, more or less, depending on the temperature.

After around 90 minutes, when the dough has doubled in size, mix the dough in with the ingredients listed under B. Knead the dough until smooth.

Add in the butter and knead it into the dough until the dough passes the window pane test.

Cover dough and proof for 60 minutes.

Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces, shaping them into balls. Rest the dough for 15 minutes to allow the dough to relax.

Shape the balls into a rectangle 20cm by 10cm.

Rolling up the rectangles like you would a swiss roll. Put the rolls into the pullman loaf tin and proof for 50 minutes.

Bake for 30 minutes at 390*F.

Thank you Lena for sharing this wonderful recipe!

Help Me

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (E.) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:48:00 +0000

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.