x3Baking

Pan Pizza

2012-02-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

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 wholemilk 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 pizzadough. The purpose of greasing the cakepans with so much oil is to make the pizza's crust nice and crunchy. I decided to lessen the amount of oil, butnot by much.

Mix the milk, sugar and 2 tbsp of oil. Mix together the flour, yeast and salt in alarge bowl. Slowly knead in the milkmixture into the large bowl. Theinstructions asked for a mixer, but I don't have a dough hook. Knead the dough until it forms a round balland is smooth. Then grease the bowl andplace 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 aball. On a slightly floured surface,roll out the dough so that it has a 9 1/2 inch diameter, making sure that the crustsare thicker than the middle. Place themin 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 a1/2 inch crust. Sprinkle as much cheeseand toppings as you want and then bake for around 20 minutes until the crust isgolden brown. Remove from oven and letthe 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

2012-02-09T00:06:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-12T00:06:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-26T10:58:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-22T14:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-20T00:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-07T00:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-30T00:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-29T00:30:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

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.

Mix dry ingredients.

Mix wet ingredients.

Mix together.

Pour batter in foil lined and greased pan. I recently got a nonstick spray and it's awesome. It saves me from spending a few minutes greasing the pan.

Bake and then cool for around 2 hours before frosting.

Make the frosting and spread on the cake.

The cake's color is more close to the picture above. I couldn't get the lighting right, so some pictures have different colors.

I'll be submitting it to Aspiring Bakers #7 – Chocolate Delight (May 2011) hosted by DG from Tested and Tasted

Croissants

2011-05-17T22:57:00.000-07:00

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.)

Make the croissant dough first.

Mix everything together until a ball forms.

Add more flour if needed. Then let it rise for one hour in the refrigerator.

Meanwhile, make the butter square. Sprinkle a few tbsp of flour onto the butter square and start pounding away.

And pounding...

Then refrigerate the butter square as well for one hour.

After one hour, the dough should be puffy and the butter should be ready.

Roll out the dough into a square and place the butter square on top.

Enclose the butter inside by wrapping up the corners and pinching to seal the edges.

Then roll out the dough again. You can see some of the butter.

Fold the dough like you would fold a letter.

Make another two folds.

Wrap with saran wrap and put in the fridge.

After two hours..

Repeat the rolling out, folding and refrigerating.

Roll out the dough again and cut into triangles.

Roll the triangles up. Before doing that, make sure to make a small slit. I didn't bother taking a picture of the slit and rolling because my camera would have suffered too much abuse if I did that.

After refrigerating the dough for 10 hours, you'll finally be able to brush the croissants with egg wash and bake them!

This one was the prettiest one.

Enjoy! Your whole house will smell nice and buttery.

The croissants will be especially hot, so don't burn yourself.

Here's the inside.

Some croissants are weirdly shaped, but by that time I couldn't care less. It was already close to 1 in the morning, and I was still making croissants.

Although they were pretty successful, I doubt I ever want to make croissants again, unless I feel like impressing someone, but then it's just way too much trouble. --Is that even grammatically correct?? Well this was a super long post! Good luck to anyone who wishes to try this recipe.

Oh yea, the lighting was off because I took most of the pictures at night. So the dough's color varied sometimes from picture to picture.

Croissants are good with nutella, tuna & mayonnaise, or whatever you can think of. I used to eat tuna and mayo with croissants for breakfast when I was little. My brother thought it looked disgusting, but one day he tried it out and loved it. :P So yea, chocolate can also be incorporated into these croissants before you bake them!

Right now, I'm just being really random. This is my 100th post! Yay! How far I've come! Before I didn't even know how to bake bread. :) And I would always burn my baked treats. Is this my longest post ever?

Chocolate Chip Muffins

2011-05-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

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

I added a little less than 1 cup sugar. I was able to make 2 dozen muffins.

Mix the wet ingredients.

Mix the dry ingredients.

Mix together.

Distribute the batter evenly.

Bake.

I'll be submitting it to Aspiring Bakers #7 – Chocolate Delight (May 2011) hosted by DG from Tested and Tasted

Boston Cream Cupcakes

2011-05-06T01:24:00.000-07:00

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

For the pastry cream, whisk together the sugar, salt and eggs.

Bring the heavy cream to a simmer.

Then whisk in the cornstarch into the egg mixture.

Then add a little of the hot cream into the egg mixture and mix, then just mix everything together and continue cooking it until it thickens.

Add vanilla and butter to the pastry cream and whisk together.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

For the cupcakes, generously grease and flour the cupcake tin.

Whisk together the dry ingredients and then beat in the butter. (Yes, it's possible :) I was a bit skeptical, but it worked out.)

Beat in the eggs, one by one. Then add the milk and vanilla and beat until batter is fluffy.

Bake

While the cupcakes are baking, make a glaze. The glaze will need to be set to the side and cooled for 30 minutes or so.

Holding a knife at around a 45 degree angle to the cupcake, cut out some cones.

Slice off the tip of the cone so you're left with a thin top. Fill the cupcake with pastry cream and then top it off with the tiny "cap".

Glaze with a spoon.

Enjoy!

You're probably wondering where the recipe is....here it is. I found it after searching for it online because I didn't feel like typing up a recipe. I have the same exact recipe in my book though. Here's another link, but with some different adjustments.

I'll be submitting it to Aspiring Bakers #7 – Chocolate Delight (May 2011) hosted by DG from Tested and Tasted

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake

2011-04-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

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

1 3/4 cups white sugar, I reduced the sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY®'S Cocoa Powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, room temperature
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water + 2 tsp of instant espresso

7 tbsp butter, softened
2/3 cup HERSHEY®'S Cocoa Powder
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup milk, warm
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1.Heat oven to 350 F. Grease and dust two 9-inch round cake pans with cocoa powder.

2.Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water with the instant espresso. (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

You just have to eye it when portioning the batter.

3.Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Frost with "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting.

Bumpy!

4.To make "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting: Bring butter to room temperature. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla.

Frosting the first layer!

Place the second layer on top.

Frost the whole thing and pipe decorations if desired.

Cut the cake~

5.One Pan Cake: Grease and flour 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Heat oven to 350 F. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Cool completely. Frost.

6.Three Layer Cake: Grease and flour three 8-inch round baking pans. Heat oven to 350 F. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake 30 to 35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Frost.

7.Cupcakes: Line muffin cups (2-1/2 inches in diameter) with paper bake cups. Heat oven to 350 F. Fill cups 2/3 full with batter. Bake 22 to 25 minutes. Cool completely. Frost. About 30 cupcakes.

Giant Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-04-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

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

Recipe from Annie's Eats
This recipe was rated a 9.3 by my brother and received rave reviews from my friends. My brother said that it should be even sweeter because the chocolate powder was dark enough to overpower the sweetness of the cookies and was a bit bitter. It should also be smaller, according to what my brother said. Personally, I thought it was just right.

This is a really big cookie with deep chocolate overtones, lots of chocolaty flavor that chocolate fanatics will enjoy. Moist and soft, it resembles a brownie in a form of a cookie. It will satisfy anyone's chocolate craving and maybe even leave you drooling for more. :)

Portion out dough to four ounces each.

Baked.

Cooling on racks.

Soft and moist.

Baked March 2.

Rotiboys

2011-04-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

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"

Basic Sweet Buns
300 gm bread flour
4 gm yeast
4 gm salt
1 egg + milk around 210-225 gm (I used 220)
50 gm honey
30 gm unsalted butter

Coffee Topping * I halved the recipe and was still able to cover all 10 buns
75g Butter, room temperature
60g Sugar
2 eggs
75g Plain Flour
* 1 tbsp Instant Coffee Powder dissolve in 1 tbsp warm water
* 1/2 tsp Coffee Paste

Jessie's note:
* Depending on your affinity for the richness of coffee taste, you may adjust the amount

Method:
♥Preheat oven to 180°/ 355°F
♥ Mix together the bread flour, yeast and salt.
♥ Add the egg and milk mixture and honey; knead until smooth.
♥ Then add the butter, kneading the dough until smooth and elastic.
♥ Proof the dough for around an hour or until double in size.

The time will vary depending on the weather.
♥ Punch down the dough, if possible (dough was too sticky for me to properly punch it down). Portion the dough into 60-70 gram portions. Shape them into balls and rest for another 10 minutes. I was able to make 10 pieces, although one piece was noticeably smaller.

Sticky!

♥ Shape the buns and proof until doubled in size, another hour or so.
♥ For the topping, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
♥ Mix in the eggs, until uniform in mixture.

♥ Add the flour, coffee mixture (optional), and coffee paste; stir well.
♥ Pour topping into a pastry bag or any small plastic bag. If using a small plastic bag, snip off a tiny corner. Pipe the topping in a swirl on top of the buns, reaching the middle of the buns. As the buns bake, the topping spreads and covers the whole bun.

♥ Bake for around 12-15 minutes or until the coffee crust turns a golden brown.

(Made sometime in March)

Steamed Buns 饅頭 (Mantou)

2011-04-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

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.

185 g starter
280 ml Warm milk
672 g All-purpose flour
1.68 g (1/2 tsp) Active dry yeast
1/2 tsp Salt
1 tbsp + 2 tsp vegetable oil
½ + 1/3 tsp Baking soda
Extra flour for kneading, around 5 tbsp total (1/2 tbsp each mantou)

Starter dough:
100 g all purpose flour
65 g water, or more if needed
3 gm active dry yeast
A pinch of salt
1 tsp sugar

Before

After a couple hours (there should be tiny bubbles)

Mix all the ingredients together to make a dough, adding more water if needed until the dough comes together. Knead until smooth. The dough should not be sticky, a little tacky, but not sticky. Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for a couple of hours at room temperature.

After a few hours, the starter dough will become sticky like this.

Proof the yeast in a warm bowl of milk, just until the yeast dissolves. In a large bowl, add flour, the starter torn into small pieces, salt, oil, and the milk. Knead the dough until it becomes smooth and elastic, passing the window pane test. Also, depending on the weather, more or less milk may be needed.
I added milk little by little, in increments and kept on kneading the dough until I felt that the dough was soft enough.

I poured the milk all the way to the top because I wanted it to be enough.

Knead flour, oil, and starter dough together.

Add the yeast and milk, kneading until very soft.

Proof.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rise for 3-4 hours at room temperature. If you’re in a hurry, feel free to let it rise in the preheated oven (preheated for ONLY 2 minutes, otherwise your bread will develop a crust) Oh yea, spraying water inside the oven might be a good idea :)

After the long rise, dump your dough on a floured surface. If you have a silpat, feel free to use that. I didn’t need to sprinkle flour on my “silpat”. Sprinkle baking soda evenly over the surface of the dough. Knead in the baking soda and shape the dough into a log and divide it into around 10 pieces. I don’t know about you, but I like big mantou.

Now, shape the pieces into balls and flatten them a little. Sprinkle a generous amount of flour on the dough. Fold the piece of dough in half and press down to enclose the flour inside. Rotate the dough a bit and fold in half again. While holding the dough with your right hand, stick your left thumb into the middle of the dough, making a dent. Use your right hand to press down on the other side, kind of making a sandwich. Anyway, just do this to make the ball round and create layers within the mantou. This was what I learned from Angie. I never knew that this was what you had to do to make delicious, layered mantou. If my instructions confused you, please look at Angie’s instructions, they make more sense.
So after the pieces are shaped into balls, place them in a tray, cover with saran wrap and let them rise until doubled in size.

Then doubled in size...

they look very soft and pillowy.

I let them rise for 30 minutes in the slightly preheated oven. Instead of repeating the process of folding in the flour, I just boiled water and started steaming my mantou. I just couldn’t wait any longer. Also, I didn’t want to fold any more flour into my mantou. I was scared that the mantou wouldn’t take anymore flour.

Boil water to steam the buns. After the water has boiled, place the buns onto the steamer and steam for 20 minutes on medium high heat. The water should be continually boiling.

One of the prettier mantou.

My Dad's estimated recipe - just a nice memory to keep :D
Ingredients
1 finger down, 80% full of flour around 6 4/3 cups
1 1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp of yeast
1 1/2 cup of water
1 1/2 cup of water
1/4 cup more water

1. Get the milk, if it is cold, microwave it for 20 seconds or until it is room temperature or warmer.
2. Add the yeast to the milk and stir so that the yeast will be submerged in the milk.
3. Add to flour, add water, add water, mix.
4. Knead the dough until it is elastic
5. wait for it to rise
6. after it rises (doubles in size), punch it down.
7. Let it rise (double in size), punch down.
8. Let it rise, punch down
9. Add 1/4 cup of flour, knead it in and then let the dough rest for a little while before shaping the buns or making the baozi.
10. Knead the ball of dough in flour and make it a mantou.
11. For Baozis get a ball of dough and roll it out into a circle, add the filling, fold it up by making pleats.

Afterward, let rise for 1 1/2 hour, then steam for 20 minutes.

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

2011-04-06T23:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes and Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting

2011-04-05T20:53:00.000-07:00

I was browsing for a recipe to use up my sour cream and I remembered this chocolate cupcake recipe that I bookmarked a while ago. After I made it, I was glad that I remembered this recipe. These are the best chocolate cupcakes I have tried baking so far; my brother rated them a 9.2.

The recipe resulted in denser cupcakes, with a deeper chocolate taste. The frosting was also very good, but mine were a bit grainy. Maybe you’re supposed to use a mixer, instead of hand mixing? I also think I baked them longer than I was supposed to because although the cupcakes were really soft after I took them out of the tin, after they cooled down they developed “crusts” (only on the edges though). But after you let them sit out for a day, they become moist again.

I made this all the way back in February. Just this past Saturday I made a birthday cake for my brother. Looking back at this recipe, I'm surprised by the similarity between the cake recipe I used and this cupcake recipe. I'll be sharing that recipe tomorrow hopefully, my blog's 1st birthday! I was shocked when I found out that tomorrow is the anniversary, because I always thought I made my blog in May. How forgetful I am!

Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes and Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting
Recipe from Baking Bites

Note: You can reduce the sugar by 1/4 cup without any consequences.

Finished batter, as easy as 1-2-3.

Cracked tops....

Making the frosting.
Melt butter and chocolate.

Add sour cream.

Done!

Chocolate Chip Chocolate Muffins

2011-04-02T23:33:00.000-07:00

I made these on the same day I made the lemon matcha marble cake. My brother brought them to church as a snack for his Bible drill the next day.

Here's what I think... Next time, I will increase the amount of chocolate chips. Other than that, I was happy with how the muffins turned out. I wasn't able to get the pretty cracked tops that most muffins have though.

I was able to make 14 muffins. Make sure not to over bake them, otherwise they will be a bit dry. I wasn't able to get the pretty cracked tops that most muffins have though. I also decreased the sugar by one to two tablespoons, so maybe that's why?

I got the recipe from Brown Eyed Baker, who got it from Dorie Greenspan.

Chocolate Chip Chocolate Muffins

Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler.

Whisk the dry ingredients, then whisk the wet ingredients.

Add the wet ingredients, including the melted chocolate and butter, and mix into dry ingredients. Do not overmix.

Lemon and Matcha Marble Pound Cake and Award

2011-03-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

I remember seeing this recipe for the first time and thinking, wow that's a lot of eggs! So, I halved the recipe and ended up with a short cake. It was very pretty and my brother rated it a 9. I reduced the sugar from 260 grams to 220 I didn't want to risk the texture, but I knew that Von's pound cake had less sugar so it would be fine. Next time, I will try further reducing the sugar.

This cake is relatively simple to make, you don't even need a mixer! I just did everything by hand. The texture was really nice. I didn't have humongous holes, maybe that's because hand mixing makes it harder to get holes.

But I tend to have a problem with marbling cakes! I don't marble them enough because I'm scared of mixing the batters into one shade of color. :/

Lemon and Matcha Marble Pound Cake

Whisk the eggs and sugar together.

Add vanilla.

Add sour cream.

Fold in the flour with a spatula.

Fold in the butter.

Take out a portion of the batter and mix in the matcha.

Layer the batter and swirl.

Bake and you're done. :)

I would like to thank Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids for this award. She also gave me the One Lovely Blog Award too. I feel very honored to be receiving awards from Lena and Zoe. Please visit her blog. Check out the amazing cupcakes she just baked for her son too! They're very cute. Also, I would like to give this award to the previous 15 bloggers I awarded the "One Lovely Blog Award". I'm going off to sleep now.

P.S. I baked this all the way back in February! I can't believe it's already the end of March already....how time flies.

Rich and Sweet Berry Scones and Award

2011-03-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

These scones are pretty fun to make because you can pretend that you're making puff pastry because of the folds you need to make. They weren't too sweet and sprinkling some sugar on the tops is a good idea. I did not brush the tops with butter because I felt that it was unnecessary, and I only topped one scone with sugar. The sugar topped scone was less prone to browning. It also made for a prettier scone. While I baked these scones, butter leaked out. I don't think that's supposed to happen, but I don't know what I did wrong. Anyway I hope you enjoy the recipe.

Also, this past week I received an award from Lena from Frozen Wings. I didn't get around to writing this post until now, but I would like to thank her for giving me my first award. It really means a lot with me and I would like to share it with several other bloggers. Please read more to find out who got the awards. Also, please check out Lena's blog; she has many beautiful bakes and delicious food. Thank you again Lena!

Rich and Sweet Berry Scones

Some people already posted up the recipe. Because I did not make any changes in particular, I 'll just give you a link to some people who already shared the recipe. Btw, this recipe is from my favorite baking book ever, America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.

For people who like concise instructions click here.
For people who like detailed/lengthy instructions click here.

Zest the lemon, but don't zest yourself. XD

Add in the zest to the dry ingredients.

Grate frozen butter. This took quite a while and my hands were freezing. It was quite a workout. I realized I grated too much butter for the dough when I read the instructions and found that two tbsp of butter was to be reserved for brushing the scones... too late, I had already coated the butter with flour.

Toss the grated butter in the dry ingredients.

Add in the milk and sour cream. Stir until just combined.

Dump the dough out onto a surface and give it a few extra kneads, to make the dough stick together.

Roll it out into a square and fold it into a letter.

Fold again.

Put the dough into the freezer for a bit and then roll it out into a square again.
Then sprinkle some blueberries on and press into the dough. I used frozen ones.

Roll it up cinnamon roll style and cut into 8 triangles.

Bake

Here are some rules to abide in order to accept this award:

1.Post a link back to the person that gave you the award
2.Share 7 random things about yourself
3.Award 15 recently discovered blogs
4.Drop them a note and tell them about it. *I'll get around to it when I have the time.

I want to award these amazing bloggers. Many of them were very encouraging when I first started my blog, from then to now. A few I don't comment as much on, but I do enjoy reading your blog a lot. All these bloggers motivate me to try out new things. Please do check out their blogs. :) Sorry I don't know all your names.

Angie @ Angie's Recipes
Bakertan @ Baking Library
Cooking-Gallery
grub @ Grub town
Happy Homebaker @ Happy Home Baking
Honey Bee Sweets
Jess @ j3ss kitch3n
Jessie @ Hearty Bakes
Kristy @ My Little Space
Mary @ Keep Learning Keep Smiling
Pei-Lin @ Dodol & Mochi
Sharon @ Sharon Moh
Von @ Vondelicious!
Wendy @ Table for two…or more
Zoe @ Bake for Happy Kids

1. I have a terrible habit of procrastinating. When I have a major deadline approaching, I like to pretend that it’s not there. Hahaha I still finish all my homework though on time. I even procrastinate for writing my blog posts too.
2. My favorite color is pink.
3. I love roller coasters; that may be surprising to some people because I am known as the quiet, shy person. I’m slowly becoming more outgoing now; all my friends have commented on that. :D
4. I want to think of a way to help out Japan.
5. I’ve always wanted to hold a bake sale or something to raise money for a good cause.
6. I’m a very curious person who asks a lot of questions. :D I was like this as a child too. You might have noticed this if I ever commented on your blog and bombarded you with questions.
7. I want to become an elementary school teacher or do something with baking.

I'm submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #5 Fruity March Thank you Jess @ Bakericious for hosting this event. It's my first time doing this. :)

Wheat Mantou II and Ham and Cheese Bread

2011-03-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt like blogging recently, but I still bake a lot. So now I have lots of posts that I still need to write. Anyway....

I wanted to try replicating this Chinese supermarket's mantou because I really like their mantou's texture. It's soft and you can eat it layer by layer. I always love peeling off the mantou skin and eating that first before peeling off layers of the mantou and eating it bit by bit. Is that weird? :D So because I wanted soft, layered mantou, I tried making wheat mantou again by adapting the recipe I previously used.

Sorry the picture is a bit washed out.

My bread tin has some grooves, so the bread has these cool looking lines.

Looking back at my previous bread loaf, I noticed that my swirl wrapping is improving. :)

Here the breads are rising.

I used my pullman loaf tin for the second time! It made my bread look taller than usual. I can't wait to use it again.

With the mantou recipe I tried last time, it produced a crumb that was too tight for me to be able to eat it layer by layer, so I decided to remake the mantou using different flour proportions. I added all purpose flour and decreased the amount of whole wheat flour. Now I'm wondering if the supermarket just uses white whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat flour....

This time, the mantou indeed was softer and looser in texture. I let them rise even longer because I like soft breads, not dense ones.

Here's the recipe for the mantou. If you don't like the strong, hearty flavor of wheat, substitute some of the wheat flour with all purpose flour.

I also made the basic ham and cheese bread on the same day, it's basically family favorite now. (Not including my brother, he didn't even want to taste it. He doesn't like eating toast. I couldn't sway his decision.)

Here are the previous basic bread posts.

Purple Yam Mochi

2011-03-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

My aunt made some more mochi one day and brought some over to my house and shared a few with my family. There's a twist, instead of using red bean paste, she used mashed purple yam for the filling. Because making red bean paste is very time consuming, she tried out this new method recommended by her friend. I think this new flavor tastes really good. It doesn't have the "feel" of red bean mochi, but if you are in a bind and crave mochi with sweet fillings, go ahead and try this out. So here is the mochi she made, along with the simple recipe.

For the quick and easy mochi recipe with a video tutorial, click here. Continue reading for the yam filling's recipe.

Purple Yam Mochi

The second one is yam too, but the lighting was a bit off. This one was rolled in dessicated coconut instead of potato starch.

Red Bean Mochi

Yam Filling
Ingredients
1 Purple Yam (amount actually depends on how many mochi you want to wrap)
sugar, to taste

Wash the yam and steam until you can easily poke a knife through. Don't steam too long, otherwise it will become mushy in a bad way. Mash and add sugar to taste. Now wrap filling in mochi.

The two mochi in the middle have a coconut topping with a yam filling.

Another variation would be black sesame paste, just like the ones from dim sum.

小牛牌 Little Ribs

2011-03-06T21:08:00.000-08:00

When I was little, my mom would cook this pretty often. However, now we only eat this once in a while. The ingredients below are estimates because my mom adds ingredients by eying the amount, not measuring like me. Hopefully, I will learn how to cook one day without measuring ingredients. Sorry, but I don't know the English name for this dish...so my translation may sound a bit weird.

小牛牌 Little Ribs
Recipe from my mom

some ribs
BBQ sauce or black pepper sauce -2-3-4 tbsps
Soy sauce around 1 tbsp or more, depending on the amount of meat

Directions
Cut ribs, get rid of the fat by peeling it off. If there is too much fat, cut it off with a knife.

Marinate the ribs for around 30 minutes in the BBQ sauce or black pepper sauce. Use enough sauce to marinate all the meat.

When cooking it, no oil is needed for the pan because there will be a lot of fat coming out.

Add the meat to the pan by laying it on its side. Cook on medium heat for a few minutes so the meat won't become tough.
Cook on one side for a few minutes, then flip over to the other side.

Then cover the pan with the lid, checking from time to time to see when it is done on that one side. After it is done on that side, flip it over to continue cooking. This will only take a few minutes and then you're done!

The remaining sauce leftover from this dish is good for noodles. Just cook and drain the noodles, then mix the sauce with the noodles.

Btw, these pictures were taken with the old camera, before it died.

Sour Cream Pound Cake Take Two

2011-03-01T23:20:00.000-08:00

Recently, I always want to revisit the old recipes that I have tried and wasn't 100% satisfied with the results. I want to remake several things in hopes that I will be successful. So one of the recipes I revisited was the sour cream pound cake by Von. The cake tasted delicious, but it did not look as delicious as Von's because mine had humongous holes in it.

So I tried it again, baking it in a 8x4 inch pan and I was extra careful to avoid over mixing the batter. I didn't over mix it terribly last time, but just enough so that I was left with big holes. This time, I succeeded! The holes definitely aren't as big as last time's.

After
Okay, fine there still are lots of holes, but the first time's were huge.

Before

Batter and lined pan.

I line my pan by tearing a rectangle sheet of parchment paper and then cutting 4 long slits so that I can place it in the pan.

Smoothed out batter.

Tada!

Now a time of suspense, time to check for holes.

Braided Hot Dog Bread

2011-02-21T21:13:00.000-08:00

I got this recipe from Daily Delicious. I believe that this is the first time I tried a recipe from her blog. I always see her updates and everything she bakes looks so professional, like it's from a bakery.

I enjoy baking bread more sometimes because it's healthier than cookies and cakes. But, I also despise how the temperature needs to be warm for the bread to rise quickly. I have to rely on my preheated oven, but I'm afraid of drying the dough out. I can't wait until the weather here is warmer.

I made this bread with packing it as lunch for my brother in mind, but he gets hungry easily eating the bread I make, so he prefers bakery bread. Also, my dad has a sweet tooth; so unless the bread I make is sweet, then I end up with bread stuck in the freezer. So I guess I'll be trying more sweet breads from now on.

Fresh from the oven, the bread tastes so soft and bakery-like. After one day, they still maintain the same freshness, although they become a bit drier. To resolve that, all you have to do is re-bake the bread for a few minutes. I only made 7 pieces of bread with this recipe because I wanted larger sized bread.

Braided Hot Dog Bread

Mix together the dry ingredients.

Pour milk in the bowl with the egg until it weighs around 220 grams.

Whisk the egg mixture and add it to the dry ingredients.

Mix together the ingredients.

It's actually not that sticky.

Proof until double in size.

Divide into balls. I originally made 9, but I later decided to combine some dough together.

This time I was able to make flower shaped buns! Unlike last time, when they turned out into caterpillars. The trick is to use more dough.

Let it rise, brush with egg wash and then sprinkle cheese on them.

Look at the texture. :)

Jenny's Brownies

2011-02-13T22:22:00.000-08:00

This Saturday was so fun! (1/29/11) Chinese school ended early because there was a Chinese New Year fair. I really enjoyed walking around with my friend while looking at the fair. Everything there was outrageously priced, but that's because of the law of supply and demand in economy. :) One container of sushi (4) was $5! 1 slice of pizza was $2, 1 cotton candy was $2, and...you get the point. Toward the end of the fair, things were going on sale. Even though everything was overpriced I still had a great time. My friend E. and I decided to bake together at 3. She just finished her finals last week and wanted to celebrate by baking brownies.

I went to her house, so I brought some of the ingredients over. We made Jenny's Brownies, found on Cookie Madness. It was a simple recipe and it produced good results. We might have overbaked it a bit because it was a bit hard.

When I returned to home, I enjoyed some of the yummy nian gao that my mom had steamed for Chinese New Year. I ate sooo much. After that, I went to my Uncle's house and ate dinner there before going back home again. Then I made some blueberry muffins in a cinch as requested by my aunt. I haven't made those for such a long time! They tasted really soft, and they still stayed nice and moist the next day.

Jenny's Brownies

We topped them with some cranberries.

Vanilla Cupcakes

2011-02-12T22:56:00.000-08:00

I made these with using up my extra chocolate glaze in mind. I decided to try scooping two balls of the solidified glaze and plopping it into the cupcake batter to see how it would turn out. Seems like my idea was not the best because halfway into baking it, the chocolate was leaking out of the cupcake. It appeared like a volcano spouting lava. XD

Although the texture of my cupcakes was a bit dense, my friends still really enjoyed the cupcakes and ate 2 each. I think that if I mixed it a few strokes less, the texture would have been perfect.

I used up all my glaze (from the chocolate glazed donut muffins)!

Here's the recipe.

Wet and dry ingredients about to be mixed together....as usual, I overmixed. :( I seem to have trouble baking successful vanilla cupcakes.

Here are the 2 experiments.

Look at that lava!

The texture shows a cupcake that is definitely overmixed.

Lemon Cloud Tea Cookies

2011-02-12T22:05:00.001-08:00

I made these cookies for my church youth group counselors as a thank you, because my counselors always help me out when I need help. They're always there for me when I need them and they always spend a lot of time talking to me to see how I'm doing. So these were for TD Valentine's Day and counselors' appreciation night. Luckily, on this Friday I didn't have school and I was able to prepare the presents. I really had fun wrapping the presents and everything, but it took quite a while to wrap the boxes. We were going to put thank you letters for the counselors into the boxes and also give a cup of cookies.

I made these and they weren't anything special. :( I did add a bit too much lemon juice, causing the dough to become overly sticky. Also, I omitted the zest. That must have been a necessity for the cookies because they were a bit bland. I omitted the zest because I didn't have a zester, or so I thought. I actually do have one; I only found out after my mom was looking through her cabinets and found a few things and asked me if I needed them. Then I discovered that we had a zester. All this time, my mom didn't know what it was, so it was just sitting there in the cabinet. Don't you love it when you find out that you had something you wanted all along?

Anyway, most people who made these cookies were happy with the results, so don't be afraid to try this out. I got this recipe from Wendy from Table for 2 or more... and the original recipe is from Joy the Baker.

Lemon Tea Cloud Cookies

The dough was sooo sticky! I added too much lemon juice by accident.

I had to chill the dough for a while before I could get these faint criss-cross lines. I was a bit frustrated by then.

I wrapped these boxes.

It took me around 1.5 hours to wrap. XD

...because of these.

Messy room!

I was going to stamp the boxes and decorate them, but wrapping them wiped me out.

Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-02-11T14:27:00.000-08:00

I made these cookies on Chinese New Year on a school day. Now that it's second semester, I've been a bit more free these days.

These cookies have the best aroma ever. Mine turned out a but crunchier than how it's supposed to be, but the flavor is really nice. My brother ate one after another. Also, the cookie dough is the fluffiest one ever. If you're a cookie dough lover, I bet you won't be able to resist eating this one! Personally, I don't like eating cookie dough.

You can find the recipe on Brown Eyed Baker. My AFK Family Baking Book has the same exact recipe, the only difference between the two recipes was the directions for shaping the cookies. My book said just to scoop 2 tbsp of dough and shape it into a ball and place it onto the cookie sheet. Only baking one sheet at a time and rotating the sheets halfway through baking. (I forgot to rotate the sheets, but the cookies turned out fine.)

Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Mixing the butter and the sugars.

After adding in the flour, I added the chocolate chips.

Stir until just combined.

Roll into 2 tbsp balls.

Bake.

Red Bean Nian Gao Pancake 紅豆年糕餅

2011-02-10T23:53:00.000-08:00

Whenever my mom makes red bean nian gao, she also makes a pancake sandwich with them. The pancake uses a very simple batter that takes a minute or two to prepare. Depending on your own preference, you can choose to make the pancake thick or thin. The pancake surrounds the rectangular slice of nian gao while it's being cooked, allowing the nian gao to slightly soften, resulting in a perfect balance of texture between the pancake and the nian gao.

Red Bean Nian Gao Pancake 紅豆年糕餅

Ingredients
1/2 cup flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
additional water, if needed

red bean nain gao 紅豆年糕, sliced into rectangles

proportions are more for reference, the batter might need a bit more liquid

Mix together all the ingredients. Feel free to add more sugar.

While the pan is being heated with some oil, dip the slices of nian gao into the batter. When the pan feels hot enough, place each piece onto the pan and cook on medium heat, in order to avoid burning the pancakes and to allow the nian gao to soften.

Cook the pancake for around 1-2 minutes on each side. Depending on how thick the layer of pancake batter is on the nian gao, the time to cook it will vary. I like a thin layer of pancake, so I don't drown the nian gao in the pancake batter.

Flip it to the other side.

Then when you're done, you should have something like this...

My mom likes making thicker layered pancakes, but I prefer mine thin-skinned. So in the picture above, that pancake has a thinner skin as opposed to the ones that are shown cooking in the pan.

I saw on Keep Learning Keep Smiling, Mary Moh's blog, that you can fry them with eggs too! What an interesting thought. I never tried it like that before; just thinking about it is making me hungry. Grub also suggested frying radish cake with eggs too. I'll suggest the idea to my mom. :)

Daikon Nian Gao 蘿蔔糕

2011-02-09T22:54:00.000-08:00

It's a Chinese New Year tradition for my mom to make nian gao every year. She will always make 3 different flavors and give them out to relatives and friends. As a child I really liked the red bean nian gao, but I would never eat daikon nian gao or taro because I was really picky back then. Now, I like eating all three flavors. For the savory nian gao, it is best paired with a soy sauce with minced garlic.

Daikon Nian Gao 蘿蔔糕 is also better known as turnip cake or radish cake. They aren't made out of turnips, but daikons, so the name isn't as accurate. You can find these "cakes", fried, at dim sums. They have a solid texture. When pan fried, they have a nice, crispy outer layer and a warm, semi-soft inner layer.

Daikon Nian Gao 蘿蔔糕
Recipe from my mom

Please note that the amount of the ingredients used is just a reference. I didn't have a chance to measure them out or weigh them because my mom was quickly making it. I might be making some corrections tomorrow after I ask my mom if this is correct. I'll also be adding a video, right now my windows video maker is being weird.

Ingredients
2 large daikons, they were as long as and as thick as my forearm
1 tbsp salt, you'll see a picture of it later
1 tbsp white pepper
dash of msg, optional
1 16 ounce bag of rice flour
3 tbsp dried shrimp, soaked in water until soft
water, reserved from the daikons

Grate two large daikons.

Cook it on high heat in a wok until it is not raw. Water will start seeping out from the daikons. Reserve it, because it will be used later on.

Add salt and pepper to taste. Around 1 tbsp or more each. Add a little msg, optional.

Stir and add in the mini dried shrimp, also known as 蝦米.

Mix together the rice flour and the reserved daikon water together. Make sure that the water has cooled down or is lukewarm before doing so.

Then add the batter to the cooked daikons and stir. Mix until thoroughly combined and pour into separate containers. Steam for around 30 minutes on high fire.

Before

After I ate it

紅豆年糕 Red Bean Nian Gao

2011-02-07T23:52:00.000-08:00

Here's the recipe as I promised, enjoy. I will be sharing several more in the coming days.

Red Bean Nian Gao 紅豆年糕
Recipe from my mom who learned how to make this from my grandma

Ingredients
1 12 ounce package of red beans
1 16 ounce package of glutinous rice flour
1/2 cup sugar, more or less (to taste)
Water

Rinse the red beans twice. During the third "rinse", add water 4 times the amount of red beans.

Cook the beans on high fire. After the water boils, turn fire to low. After 30 minutes of cooking the beans on low fire, check from time to time to see if the beans are soft. When they are soft, add ½ cup or more of sugar until the red bean soup is sweet enough.

It will need to be sweeter than usual because when you add in the glutinous rice flour, the intensity of the sweetness will decrease. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

Wait until the soup has cooled somewhat. It shouldn't be too hot, otherwise the nian gao will start cooking once the glutinous rice flour is added in. Add the glutinous rice flour and stir. If the consistency is too watery, add a half bag more. The batter should be thick enough for you to make ribbons.

I recorded a very short video. You get to listen to my brother practicing playing piano too.
Pour the batter into a metal or steam-able container (stainless steel, ceramic bowl, etc). It can be any size or shape. Depending on your preference, you can directly pour the batter in the pan or line it with parchment paper for easy removal.

Steam for 30 minutes or until a knife stuck in the slab comes out clean.
The inside should be dark in color and it should not have white streaks.

Right after it is finished steaming, it will be very soft and sticky. Yum!

I couldn't resist eating it, look at all the edges that disappeared.

If 紅豆年糕 is left to cool overnight, it will harden. In order to achieve that soft, mochi like texture, microwave a few small slices for 10-15 seconds. Also, after it hardens, you may slice it into 1 cm thick pieces and make a pancake with them. I'll talk about that later.

Matcha Shortbread

2011-02-04T23:25:00.000-08:00

After eyeing these cookies for quite a while, I finally made them on Christmas day. When I saw the recipe on Dodol & Mochi, I knew I wanted to make these cookies one day.

After a while, I inquired my mom to see if we had any green tea powder. She thought for a bit and said no. A few days later, when my mom picked me up from school, she surprised me by saying that she bought some green tea powder for me. I was ecstatic. My mom knows me so well and she always does so many things for me. I have come to take many things for granted, but now that I think about it, I'm so lucky to have such a great mom. Now that I mentioned my mom, it's only fair to mention my dad too. My dad is always so patient and hardworking. Thanks dad and mom!

The cookies were flaky. When you take a bite of it, the cookie gives in with such a nice feel. I don't really know how to describe them... But they also "melt" in your mouth. It's not too sweet and the green tea flavor is wonderful.

I didn't feel like taking out my hand mixer, so I hand mixed the dough. It took a long time to cream the butter and sugar together and then to get the matcha to evenly combine with the rich mixture, but after a while it all came together.

I took pictures of the process, but they disappeared somewhere.

Matcha Shortbread

This is the whole batch of cookies I made.

A lonely Christmas tree.

This plate of cookies quickly disappeared into the stomach of my family members.

Look at my hands glittery with sugar. Isn't the sugar so pretty? It kind of caramelized after baking, so I was getting it off the baking sheets.

I baked this tangzhong bread and shared it with some guests who came to visit my grandparents on Christmas day.

This time, I think I did something wrong so the bread was not as soft. :( Nevertheless, the guests all enjoyed the bread (luckily).

Happy Chinese New Year!

2011-02-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year! May your year be prosperous. I'm going to be posting a nian gao recipe soon, three different flavors in fact. I'll update this post soon; I'm going to sleep now.

Update: This was what I had for dinner with my uncle, aunt, cousins and my family.

It was a potluck. I basically took pictures of the same thing from different angles...the pictures are essentially the same thing, but I didn't know which one looked the best.

Wheat Mantou 麥饅頭

2011-02-01T17:39:00.000-08:00

I finally got my courage up a few weeks ago to make these wheat steamed buns. My dad always makes regular steamed buns and they are so good that I can eat 3 at a time and they're the size of my palm! I told you I like my carbs. :)

Wheat steamed buns are basically dough molded into pieces and steamed for around 20 minutes. They are also known as mantou,饅頭, and they have a nice "spongy" texture. Some steamed buns may be denser, while others are as fluffy as a cloud. There are a variety of these buns: sweet, savory, wheat, filled and possibly even more. My mom always go to the Chinese supermarket to get these soft wheat mantou and I've always wanted to try making it myself.

After making it, I'm pretty happy with the results. Next time, however, I will replace some of the whole wheat flour with all purpose flour because it had an overly strong wheaty/earthy flavor. The texture was not as soft and fluffy as the store bought mantou, but I'm sure that can be changed the next time I make it. I had to add a bit more whole wheat flour because my dough was a bit sticky.

Wheat Mantou 麥饅頭
Slightly Adapted from from Rasa Malaysia
Makes 12

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup wheat pastry flour
2 tsp yeast (it didn't specify what type, so I just used instant yeast)
2 tsp baking powder (it helps prevent the mantou from getting ugly, wrinkled tops)
1/2 cup warm water
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup warm milk (more may be needed)

Directions
Proof the yeast in a 1/2 cup of water mixed with 2 tbsp sugar. Stir the sugar into the water to dissolve it and set the yeast mixture aside for 10 minutes.

Whisk whole wheat flour and wheat pastry flour together.

Add in the yeast mixture and mix for a few seconds, preferably using a dough scraper. Then add in 1 cup milk and continue stirring until all the ingredients are combined. If the dough is still dry, add one up to 1/4 cup milk, maybe even more, depending on the humidity.

Knead until the dough forms into a ball, it may take 3 minutes or so. Please do not over knead it. Cover with saran wrap and proof the dough until doubled in size, in a warm place, around 1 hour.

Prepare little pieces of parchment paper around 1.5 inches x 2 inches for setting the dough on. The mantou will be steamed on these papers for easy removal from the steamer.

After the dough has doubled in size, knead in the baking powder. In the original recipe's directions, it asked for a paste of 2 tbsp water and 2 tsp baking powder, but my dough was already a bit sticky so I just directly added the 2 tsp baking powder. Don't over knead the dough!

Shape the dough into a ball and portion it into quarters.

Sprinkle whole wheat flour onto the surface of the counter. Place the portioned dough onto the counter and roll into rectangles.

Starting from the shorter side, roll the dough toward yourself so that it forms a roll, just like rolling cinnamon rolls.

Pinch the side ends together and then cut the log into 3 pieces or any way you prefer. Place each piece onto a snippet of parchment paper and place them on the steamer pan.

Let them rise for 20 more minutes. If you prefer tighter crumbed steamed buns, don't even let them proof any longer, just directly steam it. However, if you like softer, fluffier buns they have to have an additional 20 minute proofing time.

Prepare the steamer by boiling water in a pan. After the water boils, place the tray of buns onto the pan and steam. Steam these buns for around 20 minutes, on medium high heat. If they are under steamed and the pan lid is opened, the buns might deflate. If the water droplets on the pan lid drop onto the buns, the buns will be ugly and wrinkled. So I think you can err on the side of oversteaming the buns, without any negative consequences. (At least I don't know of any) After the time is up, turn off the fire and let it "cool" for a few minutes before removing the buns and steaming the next batch.

These may be served with red bean paste, pork floss, braised beef and more. Or, just eat them plain.

They may be frozen after they are cooled, just place them in a zip lock bag. When you want to eat them again, just microwave with some water sprinkled on top until it is soft again for a quick breakfast/lunch/dinner. If you don't like microwaves, these buns may be re steamed.

Notes: Remember that you are steaming buns, don't forget to turn off the fire or you will find yourself with a burnt pan and burnt buns. Once, my dad made buns on the 4th of July and when we came home, we discovered a pan of burnt, hard as rock buns and a smoky kitchen. That wasn't fun....but our house didn't burn down. whewf

Make sure you add enough water to the pan, you don't want to run out of water and risk the deflating of your mantou while you add more water to the pan.

Also don't let them sit outside at room temperature for more than a couple of days, they will mold. I know this from experience...maybe this is common sense. haha

Chocolate Glazed Baked Doughnut Muffins

2011-01-29T23:10:00.000-08:00

After going through several recipes, trying to use up my sour cream, I finished up the last of my sour cream with this recipe. Originally, I planned to make one batch of these donut muffins, but after realizing I would have a few tbsps of sour cream left, I decided to use up all the sour cream and adjust the amount of ingredients accordingly.

The method used to make these muffins involves reverse creaming. Reverse creaming is when you add butter to the dry ingredients and work it in, instead of creaming butter and sugar first. This makes the texture of the treat more tender and results in a tighter crumb. This method is also used when making scones and biscuits.

These donut muffins really did resemble donuts. They're the healthier version of donuts. I thought it tasted pretty good, not too sweet and nice texture. My brother didn't like these as much because he suspected me of putting whole wheat inside. (Shh, he doesn't know yet ;) My friend said that it was a bit dry, but I think that might be because it was a day old. I also gave one to my teacher because she loves cupcakes and this is classified as a cupcake imposter, she liked it enough to ask me for the recipe. With that said, I think these are best eaten the day of baking.

Chocolate Glazed Baked Doughnut Muffins
Recipe from Joy the Baker who adapted it slightly from Doughnuts
Recipe adjusted by me to make 12 doughnut muffins
makes 12 doughnut muffins

Please note: Because of my wacky adjustments, I used a scale to measure everything out and some ingredients were not measured out exactly as required... I bet you'll be laughing after you see how I adjusted the ingredients. :D

Please refer to Joy the Baker for detailed instructions and a normal amount of ingredients.

For the doughnut muffins:
187 grams all-purpose flour
23 grams whole wheat pastry flour
1.83 teaspoon baking powder
.45 teaspoon baking soda
.91 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (I used ground cinnamon)
.91 teaspoon salt
137 grams granulated sugar
51 grams unsalted butter, chilled and cut into about 14 cubes
.46 cup whole milk, scalded (Just use around 1/2 cup milk)
110 grams plain yogurt (I used sour cream)
1.83 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 extra large egg, beaten

For the chocolate glaze:
1/4 cup unsalted butter
2 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons light corn syrup (To compensate for the extra sugar in my chocolate, I only used 1.5 tsp light corn syrup)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped (you can also use bittersweet, it’ll just be a sweeter glaze) I used semisweet chocolate chips instead.
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

Because I increased the muffin recipe ingredients by 83%, I thought it would be better if I increased the glaze too. However, after I made the glaze I realized that I had tons leftover. So making the original amount of chocolate glaze is more than enough for 12 muffins.

Get all the dry ingredients and whisk them together.

Add the chilled butter cubes and work it into the flour,

so that it has a grainy texture.

Whisk together the yogurt, egg and vanilla extract before whisking in the warm, scalded milk.

Add wet mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until just incorporated.

Close up..

Spoon batter into pan.

Bake the donut muffins and prepare the glaze.

Add everything except for the chocolate and powdered sugar.

After everything is melted, turn of the fire and add chocolate.

Stir until melted.

Add in sugar.

Now that the muffins are done, it's time to glaze them.

Dip them in the glaze and remember to decorate them with sprinkles.

Notes:
1. Scalded milk is when you heat milk until it is close to boiling, but turn off the heat before it even boils. At this point, the milk will look frothy. I know that for breads, scalding milk allows for better rising. Maybe that's why we also need scalded milk for these donut muffins.
2. If you have leftover chocolate glaze, either eat it all up or be creative. :) I made cupcakes and scooped out 1 tsp balls and dropped them in the cupcake batter. Afterward, frost the cupcakes with the remaining glaze. The glaze loses its luster after refrigeration. To resolve that, just reheat the glaze for a few seconds in the microwave.

New York Style Coffee Cake

2011-01-25T22:28:00.000-08:00

Last month, I bought a huge container of sour cream. I wanted to make Honey Bee Sweet's marble cake and to attempt making many more desserts that required sour cream. With that container of sour cream I was able to make 1 batch of scones, 1 marble cake, 1 sour cream pound cake, 1 New York style coffee cake and 1 batch of chocolate glazed donut muffins. I was halfway through the container of sour cream when I didn't know what else to make. I went on google reader and found this recipe that used a bunch of sour cream. Right then and there, I decided that I would make this cake.

The cake was pretty simple. The only problem I ran into while making this cake was I ran out of eggs. A few steps into the cake making, I looked in my fridge and discovered that we only had one egg left! Luckily, my aunt and uncle live only a few blocks away, so I quickly called and asked if I could have some eggs. My grandma answered the phone and said, "Come on over." I rode my bike there, got the eggs, returned home and promptly started continuing my cake mixing. Problem solved!

I didn't have a 9x13 glass pan so I used a 8x12 glass pan. I chose to decrease the topping by 25%. Boy am I glad I did that! When the cake was baking, it rose; if I had made the full amount of topping, my cake would have spilled over. That would have been a terrible disaster... Now it's time for the recipe.

Thanks to Karly from Buns In My Oven for sharing this recipe!

New York Style Coffee Cake
Very lightly adapted from Buns In My Oven who got the recipe from Baked Explorations
(I changed the proportion of the crumb topping and the cake. I also slightly decreased the amount of sugar in the cake.)

Ingredients
Crumb Topping
3/4 cup brown sugar, semi firmly packed
6 tbsp granulated sugar
a scant 1/2 tsp of salt (I tried .4 tsp)
3 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup butter, melted
234 grams all purpose flour or 2 cups flour minus 2 tbsp

Cake
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
12 tbsp butter (1 1/2 sticks)
a scant 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar (I definitely didn't use the whole amount)
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups sour cream
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350*F and butter the 8x12 inch pan. I used the leftover butter wrappers from all the butter that was used in this recipe and rubbed the leftover butter on the pan. A metal pan may be used, but the cake will have crispy edges.

For the crumb topping, mix the sugars, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl.

Whisk in the melted butter until the mixture is combined.
Mix in the flour until uniform in mixture. Spread crumb topping on a sheet of parchment paper to dry.

For the cake, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.

Cream butter to a smooth consistency, add the sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until just combined. Don't over mix!

Scrape the sides of the bowl and continue mixing for 30 seconds. Add the sour cream and vanilla extract, just beating until uniform in mixture.

Add the flour mixture that was set aside in three portions. Making sure to scrape the bowl after each addition. Again, do not over mix.

Spread the batter into the prepared glass pan.

Now, grab a fistful of the crumb topping and squish it together. Then peel off pieces and scatter on the cake.

Repeat these steps until all the topping is used up. There should be a thick layer of topping.

Bake at 350*F for 55 minutes if using a 8x12 inch pan. Perform a toothpick test to see if the cake is finished baking. Make sure to rotate the pan every 15 minutes or so while baking (rotate the pan 2 times total). Cool pan on wire rack for 30 minutes.

Serve hot and warm, or cool.

If unable to finish the cake, it may be stored in a tight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

The cake is really soft and moist when it's hot. When it cools down, it is a bit denser but still lovely. My family loved this cake. Since it was such a big cake, I also brought some to school for my friends. A., the friend who gave me the sugar cookie recipe, said that it was the best cake ever. Other people also gave good reviews of this cake. If you like coffee cakes, this is a must try!

P.S. I also found the exact same recipe here.

Cheesecake Brownie

2011-01-24T21:29:00.000-08:00

I invited my little cousin J to bake with me yesterday. 12/23/10 After oscillating between several different recipes, I decided that we should make cheesecake brownies together. I found the recipe on Bun In My Oven, who got it from David Lebovitz. It took us forever to melt the butter and chocolate, but luckily, the rest of the steps were a breeze.

This is the 2nd time that I have used a David Lebovitz recipe; I like his chocolate and cheesecake recipes a lot. These brownies are just as good as his black bottom cupcakes. The brownies were a bit too sweet for me, but I thought that they went together very well with the cream cheese. The rich filling melded very nicely with the chocolaty brownie.

My brother rated it a 9.6. The .4 was taken off because of the not crunchy enough sides. I always ask my brother for a rating after he tastes the baked goods. :) A 9 or above is definitely a good score.

Cheesecake Brownies
Slightly adapted from David Lebovitz's recipe

Ingredients
Brownies
6 tablespoons (85g) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
4 ounces (115g) semisweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup (110g) sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature - I used a warm water bath
1/2 cup (70g) flour
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup (40g) mini chocolate chips
Filling
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 large egg yolk
slightly less than 5 tablespoons (70g) sugar
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare a 9x9 inch square pan by lining it with parchment paper, greased foil or by just buttering/greasing it. I used two square tin trays for little brownies. Melt the butter and chocolate chips in a saucepan on low heat. Keep on stirring until the mixture is smooth.

Turn off fire and beat in the 110 grams of sugar and then the eggs.

Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt and mix into the chocolate mixture.

Next, mix in the vanilla and mini chocolate chips.

Pour batter into square pan, or in my case, spoon batter into small square cavities.

In a medium bowl, beat the room temperature cream cheese, egg yolk, sugar and vanilla extract until smooth.

I was lazy and didn't bother taking out my hand mixer.

Plop spoonfuls of the cream cheese mixture onto the brownie batter. Using a knife or spatula, swirl the cheesecake mixture and brownie batter, like you would a marble cake.

Bake for 35 minutes or so. If you are using a tart pan or square tins, make sure to check the brownies before the allotted time. Brownies should be set when they are done.

Cool in pan, before taking the brownies out and serving. They're great with a glass of cold milk.

These may last for a couple of days in an airtight container. I had to leave mine in a food container before I had the chance to give them out. Also, I froze one and it still tastes good after a period of time.

Enjoy!

Sugar Cookies

2011-01-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

I've only eaten sugar cookies a few times in my life and the few times I've eaten them were when my friend A. made them.

On Club Day, a club fundraiser event at my school, my friend who is in charge of book club had a bake sale. The cookies included cc cookies and sugar cookies. After lunch, which was when the sale took place, there were still some leftover cookies. I didn't buy any cookies until after school when I saw my friend again. She offered me some cookies and I couldn't resist and bought them. I was so hungry after school that I ate 3 cookies all by myself while waiting for my mom to pick me up from school. I felt terrible....after getting the recipe from my friend, I found out that each cookie had 150 calories and a whole bunch of sugar (obviously). Oh well, what's done is done. So here is the recipe for the addicting cookies, enjoy!

I made these for my dad's coworkers because he was returning to work after taking a short vacation. I started preparing them at around 9 pm and chilled them for a few hours before finishing baking and packaging them at 2 am. Now that was the latest I have ever stayed up till to bake. 0_0 It was totally worth it though!

Sugar Cookies
Recipe from my friend A.

Ingredients
1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup + granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 cup oil
2 t vanilla
1 t baking soda
1 t cream of tartar
1/2 t salt
5 cups flour

Cream butter with powdered sugar and 1 cup granulated sugar.
Beat in eggs until smooth.
Slowly stir in oil, vanilla, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt and flour.

Chill dough for easy handling.
Shape into walnut size balls.
Dip in granulated sugar.
Place on baking sheet and press down.

Bake at 350 degrees 10 to 12 minutes.

Makes about 4 dozen.

When I was mixing all the ingredients together, I thought that the dough was very, very soft. I was worried and called my friend. She told me that I was supposed to mix all the dry ingredients before slowly adding in the wet ingredients. I was aghast! The recipe's directions were totally different from what she just told me. Fortunately, these cookies were a success.

Notes: To have a shorter baking time, flatten these cookies more. For puffier cookies, do not flatten these cookies as much. In order to achieve a pretty, sparkly cookie you have to roll them in even more sugar.

Cupcakes: Red Velvet and Chocolate

2011-01-10T20:13:00.001-08:00

I revisited two cupcake recipes in the span of 24 hours and baked around 36 cupcakes for my Chinese school classmates. This Saturday was my brother's turn to bring snacks so I decided to prepare the snacks for him. Did I mention that I'm in the same class as my brother? It's actually not that bad having a class with him, although we do bicker sometimes. Also, you might be wondering if I feel stupid being in the same class as him, considering that I'm 3 yrs older than him... not really. We started learning Chinese at the same time, so he's been learning it for as long as I have. :p

I made red velvet cupcakes the night before Saturday Chinese school and chocolate cupcakes along with cream cheese frosting early in the next morning. The night before, I had to finish my 500 word Chinese essay about Christmas and various worksheets that I did not do during my winter break. I tried waking up early, but I didn't finish everything until 8:30ish. I was around 20 minutes late to Chinese school, oops!

I decided to remake these red velvet cupcakes because I realized that the last time I made them, I over beat the batter. It didn't make the cupcakes dense or horrible, but there were unsightly holes. At that time I didn't realize that anything was wrong, but in retrospect I do now. Then I chose one bowl buttermilk cupcakes because I needed a dozen more cupcakes. Using the easy chocolate cupcake recipe would produce 24, so I went with the buttermilk recipe.

The red velvet turned out nicely this time around. There were still some holes, but not as many. This batch provided me with 22 or so red velvet cupcakes. There was supposed to be 24 cupcakes, but it seems like whenever I use this recipe, I always end up with less cupcakes. When I was switching the trays, to ensure even baking, I was nervous that something bad would happen. Nothing terrible happened, whewf.

As for the chocolate cupcakes, they tasted really good. I decreased the sugar by a little. But I made a major mistake, I whisked all the dry ingredients except for the cocoa powder and added the milk. I realized too late that I didn't add in my cocoa powder. By the time I added it in, the cocoa powder had clumped up and was not evenly distributed in the batter... There was nothing I could do at that point, but to bake those cupcakes and hope for the best. After they were done baking, I tasted one and it had some chocolate clumps. None of my classmates mentioned anything about them though. My brother told me that someone had a weird look on their face. :/ Then he also added that no one else would notice because they probably don't bake.

My messy frosting skills. Cupcakes were frosted in a rushed fashion, as I was late to school. My lovely mom also helped me.

Wow, I finished baking! Very blurry picture, taken in a hurry. Notice the chocolate cupcakes in the corner?

Note: Last time I made these, my dad didn't really like them. This time, he loved them for some reason.

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Marble Cake

2011-01-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

On the last day of my grandparents stay in the U.S. I baked a cake for them. I had wanted to bake this cake a week ago, but I didn't get to it until today.

Many other bloggers have made this marble cake too and all of them gave excellent reviews. Thank you Honey Bee Sweets for sharing this recipe! I will definitely be using this recipe again and again.

Like what Honey Bee Sweets said, the cake had a nice velvety texture to it. Right out of the oven, it had a nice, thin crisp exterior. Although the two batters weren't distinguishable when the cake is viewed from the top, they are inside the cake. Cutting through the cake, I could tell that it was going to be very yummy. When I brought a piece to school the next day to share with my best friend, she told me that she enjoyed it very much.

While making this cake, I had some doubts. The batter was surprisingly thick! I was beginning to think that I did something wrong while I was folding in the flour. At one point it was so difficult to even make one fold that the batter even resembled soft cookie dough. The batter was even harder than my sugar cookie dough before it got chilled. Regardless, I proceeded as the recipe told me to and it turned out fabulously. The one thing I forgot to do was actually give the batter a few swirls, so the cake wasn't all that marbly. I know, I know, there's no such word, but I can't think of any better word to describe it.
Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Marble Cake
Recipe from Honey Bee Sweets and adjustments from Bakericious

Ingredients for a 10 cup bundt cake
Chocolate Paste
2.5 tbsp cocoa powder
2.5 tbsp hot water

Cake Batter
210g unsalted butter, room temperature
275g caster sugar (I used regular granulated sugar)
4 medium eggs (I used 167 grams)
2 tsp vanilla extract
175g sour cream
350g all purpose flour
2 1/3 tsp baking powder
1/6 tsp baking soda (I estimated)
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup chocolate chips (I used mini chocolate chips and I didn't use that much)

Directions
Preheat the oven to 355*F. Butter and flour a 10 cup bundt pan. Make a paste of 1 tbsp of butter mixed with 1 tbsp of flour, brush it on the pan until it coats the surface of every crevice.

In a small bowl, mix the cocoa powder and hot water together to make a smooth paste. I believe this is also called blooming the cocoa powder and water to bring out the chocolate flavor.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Blend in the eggs and then vanilla. Add in the sour cream, and scraping the bottom of the mixing bowl to make sure it is evenly combined.

Sour cream and batter.

All mixed together.

Fold in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and blend well. Lastly, mix in the chocolate chips into the batter and mix well.

Remove 1/3 of the batter and mix in the chocolate paste in to it.

Spoon in big scoops of vanilla batter into the bundt pan and alternating with some spoons on chocolate batter as well to create the marble effect. Repeat till all the batter has been put in.

Place in the oven to bake for 35 to 40 minutes (I had to bake longer for some reason, it must be my oven temperature), depending on your oven. Bake till golden brown and the tester comes out clean. If the top of the cake browns too quickly, cover with foil first until done.

Once baked, remove from oven and cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes, before removing the cake from the pan and cooling it completely.

So excited, I wonder how the marbling will turn out.

With the urging of my brother, I cut the cake before it cooled.

This is a keeper!

Chocolate Chip Swirl Marble Bread

2011-01-05T00:17:00.000-08:00

A while ago, I saw this recipe on Kitchen Corner, then I saw it again on Honey Bee Sweets and Happy Home Baking. I didn't make it before because I didn't have a pullman loaf tin, but now I do. I got a pullman loaf tin on Amazon for only $23! I think that it is a really good deal in the US because usually these loaf tins cost around $60 or more, what a rip off! Well, I'm really happy that I was able to get this loaf tin at $23 because now it went back up to $30. The first bread I made using this loaf tin was none other than then chocolate chip swirl marble bread.

The first time making this, I thought it was pretty successful. It took quite a while to proof the bread, but it was worth it. It turned out as soft as bakery bread and I was pretty happy with the results. Because the original recipe was made for a smaller loaf tin, I will increase the ingredients next time so I can get a taller loaf. Also, I will work on my dough shaping skills because my swirl was a mess. In fact, some slices didn't even have a swirl.

For the recipe, please refer to the links I posted above.
Chocolate Chip Swirl Marble Bread

Making the roux for the dough. I think it's pretty similar to tangzhong.

Finally, the cheese and milk come together!

The plain dough with cc.

After proofing.

The chocolate dough, before and after proofing.

Both doughs rolled out...

and placed on top of each other.

Then rolled up swiss roll style.

Lid covering the pan. Btw, I oiled the loaf tin for safety precautions.

Done baking!

I was a bit sad that it didn't get to the top.

Cross section

Texture

Sorry the pictures are repetitive, I just couldn't decide which ones to use.

It just shows how drastically different pictures can be with various camera functions.

P.S. I used a bread machine. It was too cold that day and I baked this on a school day. I'm so glad I'm a senior in school now.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-12-31T00:15:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year's Eve everyone! It's already the last day of 2010 which also means my winter break is going to end soon. :( This year zoomed by for me. So many things happened: applying to colleges, finishing my SATs, making my own blog, becoming more interested in baking, having my grandparents from Taiwan come and visit, and much, much more. I could mention more, but it would take too much time. I don't exactly have any resolutions for this new year because I end up not following them. Enough of my rambling, I hope everyone has a great year ahead of them.

I made these cookies once before, back when I didn't have a blog. I brought them to a church gathering and I remember this guy being very disappointed when the cookies ran out. I made these again for my youth group Christmas gathering. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com and slightly adapted it to my own tastes.

Actually, here's my review from a year ago:
This cookie is literally the best chocolate chip cookie i have ever made. It looked like it was store bought. all the cc cookies i ever made turned out kind of pale or cakey. these cookies taste nice and chewy. My brother even rated them a 9.6 out of 10 (that is a pretty high rating based on his tastes) You should definitely use this recipe. What I did was use a little lesser white sugar (so that it wouldn't be too sweet), use a little less butter (so it wouldn't be too fatty),and use the same amount of everything else other than the chocolate chips. For the chocolate chips i used about at most a half cup. DO NOT use the full amount of chocolate chips unless you like your cookies being full of chocolate chips. I then used a tablespoon to spoon out the dough onto the baking sheets. Afterward, you should kind of "smush" them so that they are flatter and not round. Otherwise, they will stay round. This cookie was the best cc cookie recipe i ever tried!

I love the easiness of making this cookie. All you have to do is get all the ingredients and quickly mix it together. I didn't feel like using a hand mixer so I just hand mixed the ingredients together to make these cc cookies.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
From allrecipes.com, adaptations are noted in parentheses

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar (I used a little more than 3/4 cup)
1/2 cup white sugar (I used a lot less than 1/2 cup)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (I used 1/2 cup)

Directions
Preheat oven to 325*F. Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended.

Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended.

Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon.

Scoop out 2 tablespoons of cookie dough at a time and roll into balls. Place them around 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet. Flatten them slightly before baking.

Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted.

Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

2nd Time Cinnamon Rolls

2010-12-27T14:28:00.000-08:00

Packaged and ready to be given away to my teachers as their Christmas gift

I originally wanted to give them to my friends too, but I ran out.

I made Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls again. The last time I made them, they were sliced into 1 1/2 inch pieces. This time they were sliced into 1 inch rolls, so I was able to make many more rolls. I had extra rolls that I didn't know where to put, so I put them into cupcake liners.

I forgot to take a picture of how they turned out, but they reminded me of roses after they were glazed.

I didn't measure out the cinnamon this time so the filling in the rolls weren't consistent.

Oh yea, I got a new 9 inch cake pan!

I ran into some problems this time around. I baked it for specified amount of time, but it still wasn't done even though the rolls were thinner. I continued baking it, but then I almost forgot about them and semi burned the tops. :( For some rolls, I even burned the bottoms into a terrible crunchy mess. I was pretty disappointed with myself, but I couldn't really do anything about it.

Another problem I encountered was that I had to go somewhere when I was still proofing the dough. I could only hope for the best and leave the dough out in my living room. Luckily, when I came home it seemed to be fine. (I forgot what I was doing that day; I only remember that it was on Sunday and that I went to my uncle's house to eat)

This time the dough was also stickier than last time, now I know that last time I incorrectly measured out the amount of flour. Remember how I said that I forgot how many cups of flour I added? Well apparently, I added extra last time so the dough was easier to work with. If using the correct amount of flour, the dough will be stickier.

That day sure was an adventure. I look forward to making these rolls again so I can find the perfect method.

Oh! I almost forgot. My English teacher and peer mentor teacher, along with their husbands, all think that these rolls were delicious. I'm so glad that they were happy with the results. whewf

Snickerdoodles

2010-12-26T15:42:00.000-08:00

I made these snickerdoodles on a school day before winter break for my brother's English class Christmas party. It took me 2 hours to prepare, bake and clean up. I think these cookies are pretty time consuming, but they are worth it. The hardest part is rolling the dough into balls and dipping it into the cinnamon sugar mixture because it's a hassle to keep your hands clean and unsticky.

Snickerdoodles
Slightly Adapted from The America's Test Kitchen Baking Book

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups sugar, divided (1 1/2 cup + 1/4 cup)
1 tbsp ground cinnamon (use less cinnamon if you use less than 1/4 cup of the sugar)

Set A
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1 cup butter (as opposed to the original 1/2 cup butter+ 1/2 cup vegetable shortening)
2 large eggs

Place the oven rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat oven to 375*F. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Mix together the cinnamon and 1/4 cup of sugar in a little bowl for rolling.

Next time, I will use less than 1/4 cup of sugar and less than 1 tbsp of cinnamon because there is a lot leftover.

Whisk together Set A in a medium bowl.

Cream the butter and 1 1/2 cup sugar in a large bowl so that it is light and fluffy, medium speed. Beat the eggs in one at a time until it is evenly distributed. (30 seconds)

Now, with the mixer on low speed, gradually add in Set A until it becomes a dough. (30 seconds) Use a rubber spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl and turn the dough to make sure that it is mixed well.

Wet your hands and scoop out 2 tbsp of dough at a time. Roll the dough into balls and coat with the cinnamon sugar.

Set the balls on the prepared cookie sheets with 2 inches of space in between.

Bake one cookie sheet at a time for around 10-12 minutes. If you want puffier cookies, just bake until the edges are golden brown and the centers are soft and puffy.

If you want flatter cookies, bake for a longer time. Make sure to rotate the cookie sheet halfway through the baking time. Also, if baked only for 10-12 minutes, the cookies will not look fully cooked near the cracks.

These cookies were flatter, but my baking tray was also smaller, so they baked into each other.

Cool the cookies on the cookie sheet for around 10 minutes before cooling them completely on a wire rack.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T21:35:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! May everyone have a great Christmas and New Years. I hope you all enjoyed Christmas dinner, spending time with your family/friends/loved ones. Another year has passed so quickly, soon it will be 2011!

Warning: The rest of this post is long and may be boring...it's a recap of my day. Also, the rest of this post is jumpy because I wrote my paragraphs in random order. haha

This Christmas I didn't do anything special because my relatives were all too busy to come celebrate. However, I enjoyed Christmas day by baking the Japanese Coconut Custard and Matcha Shortbread. This day was busy, busy, busy! The phone rang more than usual, and several people came over to my house at different times. My aunt visited with her fiance and my grandpa's business partner's son and his family came over too to see my grandpa and grandma. Looking back, I realize that even if I didn't have a huge family gathering, today was still pretty eventful.

For my family, Christmas is also a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. On Christmas Eve we went to a church service. They had a skit this year that was wonderfully executed. Me and my brother certainly enjoyed watching it very much. Some parts were a bit cheesy, but that added to the enjoyment. :) To add to an already good day, my grandpa and grandma from Taiwan also came along with us. They're currently staying at my house and it's very nice to have them here with me and my family because we haven't seen them for years.

My Birthday Feast

2010-12-23T21:53:00.000-08:00

This is one long overdue post. It's already close to the end of December and I still haven't written about all the nice things my mom, dad, uncle and aunt did for me on my birthday last month. I'm really thankful for all the thoughtful gestures that they did for me on my birthday. I was really touched and happy. My mom made my favorite dishes for dinner and my dad helped out. My aunt made some egg tarts and my uncle/aunt/cousins made a really sweet card. Here are a few pictures of the dinner...

Soda Crackers with Smoked Salmon, Cranberries, and Cream Cheese

They were really yummy. These were my mom's idea.

Cat Ears

One of my childhood favorite food that I mentioned before on my blog. I specially requested my mom for this handmade "noodle". I now kind of know how to make them. They are basically 1 egg, a few cups of flour and water. Just mix until it becomes a hard dough. Then pinch off pieces of the dough to create this noodle that resembles cat ears. :) Cook them in boiling water. They go along with a vegetable and meat soup. It was very time consuming for my mom and dad to make. I'm very thankful for their patience and love.

Cat ears without the soup.

Drumsticks

My mom also baked some drumsticks. Sorry for the terrible picture, I didn't want to make everyone wait while I took it. (^_^')

Egg Tarts

My aunt brought along some egg tarts that she made. Aren't they so cute? Look at how many she made!

Birthday Cake and Card

Here's the cake I made and the thoughtful card that my uncle/aunt/cousins wrote for me.

Sour Cream Chocolate Muffin

2010-12-15T18:10:00.000-08:00

When I first saw these on Dodol&Mochi, I was intrigued. Her muffins looked moist and chocolaty; they also used sour cream! I think the sour cream was main reason why I made these muffins. Whenever I get sour cream, I always end up with a tiny bit left over that I don't know how to use up. So this post came out at the right time.

I would say the muffin is good. I thought that it was a bit oily though. The texture was nice and it reminded me of the chocolate muffins I made previously with the recipe from Cookie Madness. I just didn't like how oily it was because when I held the muffin and took my fingers away, I could see my fingers glistening with oil. What a contradiction right? I like to bake, but I don't like oily things. I have nothing against this recipe though. Something to take note of, my muffins look very different from Pei-Lin's muffins, so maybe it's something that I did?

Sour Cream Chocolate Muffin
Recipe from Dodol & Mochi
I made 8 muffins.

This one has a nicer dome. I don't know why, but my muffins don't look as moist as Pei-Lin's? :(

Ingredients
(A)
120 g all-purpose flour
15 g natural cocoa powder
½ tsp baking soda

(B)
25~35 g granulated sugar
50 g brown sugar
1 large egg – at room temperature
75 mL sour cream
45 mL heavy cream or milk (I used milk, I just measured out 45 grams)
55 g melted butter or neutral-flavored oil e.g. vegetable, canola, or corn oil (I used vegetable oil.)

60 g bittersweet chocolate chips (I just used as many as I wanted - semisweet)
Enough bittersweet chocolate chips – for topping (Same as above)

Please refer to Dodol&Mochi for the detailed instructions.

Dry Ingredients

Wet Ingredients

After mixing the wet ingredients.

Fold in the dry ingredients.

Pour batter into cupcake liners.

After baking.

11/2010

Red Bean Mochi

2010-12-11T00:59:00.000-08:00

On Thanksgiving, I learned how to make mochi with red bean filling. Actually, I learned how to make mochi a few years ago, but I really wanted to learn from my aunt because I love eating her mochi. Guess what, her mochi does not use any oil at all, other than that used for preparing the container.

Mochi with Red Bean Filling

Ingredients
enough oil for container (my aunt used a 7"x4" glass container I think)
1 bag glutinous flour
2/3 cup sugar (original recipe called for 1 cup, but that was too sweet)
2 3/4 cup water
1 tsp matcha (optional)
Red bean paste, preferably home made

potato starch for dusting the mochi

Oil a microwavable container. In my case, a glass container was used. Add 1 bag of glutinous flour and 2/3 cup sugar. Stir it around a little. Add the 2 3/4 cup water and mix until there are no lumps. At this point, you can add the matcha powder if you want. It will tint the mochi a little green. After it is microwaved, the mochi will become darker in color. So even if the green is not noticeable, it will be after you microwave it.

Adding the matcha.

My cute cousin is helping out.

Done mixing the matcha

Microwave for 7-10 minutes, covering the container with saran wrap. I don't know if microwaving saran wrap is good for you though.

After you finish microwaving it, if you see 2 shades of green, that means your mochi is still raw. Continue microwaving for a couple more minutes.

A healthier alternative to microwaving is steaming it. However, the mochi will need to be spread into a thin layer in order for it to be steamed through.

As shown below, the red bean paste has to be solid enough to be shaped into balls.

The red bean ball will be around the same size as the mochi that you scoop out and put in the potato starch. Just dip the mochi into the potato starch one one side and put the red bean ball on top of the mochi. Start wrapping it. Try to smooth out the mochi so that it will wrap around the whole red bean ball. When this is achieved, pinch the ends together. It's a bit hard to explain, but it's like wrapping steamed buns. 2 youtube videos are posted below with my aunt's awesome mochi wrapping skills. She can wrap around 3 mochi in the time that takes me to wrap one. :D

Mochi in potato starch.

The video is a bit cut off, sorry about that. While my aunt was scooping out balls of mochi, the mochi was still pretty hot.

Look at her skillful wrapping! If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? Sorry for that cliche, I just couldn't resist.

Oh yea, all these pictures are taken with my new camera. I really like playing with it. I'm still learning all the new things that I can do with it.

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

2010-12-04T00:43:00.000-08:00

I saw this recipe on Wendy's blog all the way back in July. I was really interested in making it for my mom's birthday, but then I changed my mind and made a sponge cake instead because my mom prefers sponge cakes over cheesecakes. I still haven't blogged about the sponge cake I made because apparently sponge cakes are not my thing.... I tried out one sponge cake recipe 2 times and it was successful on the second time. I tried another recipe once, and it majorly deflated. The texture of that cake was nice, but the cake was around 1.5 inches tall.

I decided to make this cheesecake for my own birthday instead. I was very, very worried because after my bad experience with sponge cakes, I surmised that cakes are not my thing. Especially cakes that require egg whites and egg yolks in order to make it all light and fluffy.

I made it through though!! After 2 hours spent in the kitchen mixing the batter and stuff, I accomplished mixing what seemed like a successful cake.

I ran into several problems along the way, which I will go into detail later in this post.

The cheesecake was tasty. My aunt, uncle and parents remarked that it tasted just like the one's from the Chinese bakeries. I have to agree. :) Thank you Wendy for this great recipe.

~~I found out that I don't really like this type of cake though.~~ The day I made it, and I tasted it, I found out it was a bit too dense for my liking. But when I tasted it the next day, it became more delicious! So I would recommend that you refrigerate it first before serving. A warm cheesecake does not taste good, no matter how fresh from the oven it is. (That's just my opinion.) Also, my brother said that the bottom was a bit soggy, but that was because of the moisture that it got from cooling down in the pan on a really cold day. (around 57 degrees) The cake didn't taste soggy when I ate it the next day though, so I don't know.

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake
Recipe from Wendy (Table for 2...or more)

Ingredients for a 9" cake pan
166 gm cream cheese
120 ml milk
20 gm butter
40 gm flour
32 gm cornstarch
4 egg yolks

While separating the egg yolks and egg whites, some of the egg yolk dripped into the egg white. I was starting to worry again because I read somewhere that egg whites should not be "contaminated" otherwise it will be hard to get them all nice and fluffy.

I carefully used a small spoon to spoon out the yolk part and only tiny, barely noticeable traces of egg yolk were left. whewf...

4 egg whites
a pinch of salt
1/8 tsp cream of tartar and a few more pinches (I eyeballed it)
100 gm sugar

Cook cream cheese, milk, and butter on low heat in a heavy saucepan. Mixing the mixture until it is smooth and uniform. (I used a wooden spoon, a whisk would be easier)

Boil some water to prepare for the water bath

When the cream cheese mixture is warm, the flour and the cornstarch can be whisked in. Whisk the mixture until smooth.

Add the egg yolks into the cream cheese mixture and whisk until uniform in mixture.

Beat egg whites until frothy in another CLEAN bowl. Add the cream of tartar and beat until the egg whites have soft peaks. Then gradually add in the sugar and beat until the egg whites are stiff, a soft droopy peak that will hold its form)

Now, mixing the egg whites... it took around 10-15 minutes to get it the way it had to be. I used cold egg whites.

Fold in 1/4 of the egg whites into the cream cheese mixture. Then fold in another 1/4. Now, pour the cream cheese mixture into the remaining egg whites and fold.

While folding in the batter, I was very nervous because I was scared that the egg whites would deflate. I learned that you first add some egg whites into the other batter to kind of temper it. So that when you add it back into the egg whites, it's easier to fold together.

Pour the batter into a prepared pan.

I was planning to use a spring form pan, but
water leaked into it because apparently my wrapping technique was not up to par. As a last resort, I just used my regular 9 inch cake pan to bake this cheesecake in the water bath.
Bake at 320*F for around 1 hour or so, until the top is golden.

I had to bake this for around an hour because I used a 9 inch pan instead of the recommended 8 inch pan. I also increased the recipe by 33% as recommended by Wendy if I wanted to use a 9 inch pan.

Other variations:
1
2
3

Sour Cream Pound Cake

2010-11-29T00:09:00.000-08:00

So, I just baked my first pound cake today. (10/24/10) In fact, I am typing this post as it's baking in the oven right now.

I can't believe how it's already the end of October! Wow, then it's going to be November and then I will have to send in my college apps. These days I really wanted to bake some bread, especially some bread with matcha. However, my kitchen scale was not functioning even after I changed the batteries. Then one day I tried looking at the scale again and it worked. Whewf...I was so worried that my scale broke. It does use up batteries quite fast though.

I made this pound cake for English class because we just read the book Frankenstein, and now we have a non-fiction research project. I decided to do one on food during the Romanticism period. I discovered that pound cakes were created during the 1700s and that they are called pound cakes because of the simplicity of the ingredients. A pound of butter, sugar and butter along with some eggs would give a pound cake. Back then, most women couldn't read so just memorizing the ingredients by pounds made it much easier for them to make pound cakes.

Then I immediately thought of Von's recipe. She shared this beautiful pound cake recipe on her blog. It looked amazing! The texture was perfect and everything, so I just had to make it. I was a bit doubtful of how mine would turn out and I didn't get to try the recipe out until today because I ran out of yogurt/sour cream.

However, after making it, it wasn't that bad. I was worried mine would not turn out because I have very few successes on baking cakes. Luckily for me, the batter was pretty thick and it smelled really good. The only sad part was that there were a lot of holes in my pound cake.... it didn't look like Von's pretty, tight crumbed, yummy looking cake. I'm guessing that I might have overbeaten the eggs and incorporated extra air into the batter, causing the little holes. Please correct me if I'm wrong though.

Sour Cream/Yogurt Pound Cake
Recipe from Vondelicious who got it from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

Ingredients

90g butter (I used 95g)
1 cup sugar (I decreased it by a bit too)
3 eggs, room temperature
½ cup sour cream or yogurt, room temperature (I lost track of the sour cream I used. I was measuring it out in tablespoons because I my 1/4 cup measuring cup disappeared. I lost track @ around 6-7 tablespoons...)
1 ½ cups plain flour
¼ tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
½ tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325*F. Prepare a 8x4 or 9x5 loaf pan. (I used a 9x5)

Make sure the butter, eggs and sour cream are at room temperature. Instead of letting them stand at room temperature for 30 minutes, I micro waved the sour cream for 10 seconds in 2-5 second intervals to make sure that it did not curdle. I also did the same with the butter to speed up the process. For the eggs, I put them in a bowl with warm water to heat them up, water that was warm enough to bring the eggs to room temperature without cooking them in their shells.

Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda together in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, beat the butter with the electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds, gradually adding in the sugar. I creamed the two ingredients together in less than 10 minutes. After the butter and sugar mixture is light and fluffy, beat in the vanilla. Then, beat in the eggs one at a time, around 1 minute each egg. (Von’s note: don’t overbeat the eggs, otherwise the cake will be tougher)

Add in the flour mixture and sour cream or yogurt to the butter mixture in separate additions. What I did was add 1/3 of the flour, then ½ of the sour cream, another third of the flour, the rest of the sour cream and then all the remaining flour, beating them in in that many additions so that they were uniform in mixture, but not overbeaten. (Please refer to Von’s blog for more details :)

Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake the pound cake at 325*F for around 60-75 minutes. After that, cool on a wire rack for around 10 minutes before removing the cake from the pan to cool completely

Note: Fresh from the oven, the cake and its texture was really nice. The texture reminded me of velvet for some reason. It was just really soft and yummy. Then I froze it for the English project and sliced it the next day so that it stayed fresh. Maybe freezing it changed the texture a bit because it wasn't as soft as before after it defrosted.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

Today's Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Things I'm thankful for:
My family for always being there for me and bearing with me too, my friends, God, my house, my school, my material things, my blog, my blog supporters, my life. I'm pretty much thankful for everything I have because I know that I'm very lucky. Not everyone is able to have what I have. I don't need to worry about not having a place to live, no food to eat, or just any basic necessity, I have them all. I'm thankful for my dad for working so hard to support our family, my mom for doing the housework and cooking for us. My parents for being so patient with me every day, even if I'm in a bad mood. My brother for being nice occasionally and annoying most of the time. :P My aunt and uncle for being so generous and kind. My cousins for being so funny, maybe a little annoying too, but still. My best friends for always listening to me. I'm thankful for many more things too.

I'm so thankful that I started this blog. If I didn't I wouldn't have known quite a few nice bloggers too. I really appreciate everyone's niceness to me and encouragement. :) Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Photos of the turkey are going to be posted soon.

Caterpillar Bread

2010-11-24T23:53:00.000-08:00

I have been so busy with school and college apps recently, but now it's Thanksgiving break! I plan to turn in my college apps on Friday and from then on I will be blogging much more often. Also, marching band has come to an end...forever. No more high school marching band! I'll miss it so much. However, there are some advantages of that: sleeping in one hour and having more time to do homework.

I have always wanted to try baking the savory bakery breads for lunch and I finally got around to it. (11/7) I found the recipe on Sugar & Everything Nice. Looking at the beautifully twisted hot dog bread made me want to bake this bread really much. The only problem was that I didn't have any hotdogs. Well, that problem was soon solved after I went to the market to buy some. I always knew hot dogs were bad for you, but after seeing the nutrition facts I am so shocked and disgusted. One hot dog has around 30% dv of fat! That's terrible, however, moderation is key.

I was able to make this bread while overcoming a few minor problems. One of them was the temperature in my house was too cold. I thought I killed the yeast because the dough hadn't risen even after 1 hour. With the dough, I made 8 big buns instead of the suggested 22. They turned out as big as my hand. In terms of texture, they were really good fresh from the oven. However, after freezing it, you can't just unfreeze it and eat it, you have to rebake it in order to get a good texture, otherwise the bread will taste really dry and icky. (I think this is the case with all bread, but still.) I thought the bread was a bit too salty, so next time I will adjust the salt content. Everything else was fine I think.

Caterpillar Bread
Recipe adapted from Sugar&Everything Nice.
I made 8 pieces of bread.

Basic Sweet Bun Dough
3 cups (480g) bread flour, sifted
1 1/2 cups (120g) all purpose flour, sifted
1 packet rapid rise yeast (I used instant yeast)
8 tablespoons (110g) granulated sugar (I used 104 grams, like that makes a difference)
300ml warm milk (about 105F)
1 egg
1 tablespoon salt (I would use 3/4 tbsp next time)
5 tablespoons (60g) of unsalted butter, room temperature

Hot dogs of your choice (I used chicken because it was healthier)
Shredded cheese (I just used cheddar cheese that I sliced into thin strips)

Directions:

Whisk together the sifted bread flour and all purpose flour.
I sifted the bread flour and all purpose flour together.
Add the sugar and yeast, whisk together. Now, whisk in the salt.

Add the warm milk and stir the ingredients together until it starts forming a dough.

My dough was very, very dry and not all of the flour was mixed in yet. I was starting to get a bit worried.

Then, whisk the egg and according to the recipe, add the butter and mix together.

I whisked the egg and then just added the butter, but the butter wouldn't mix with the egg or it wasn't soft enough, so I just dumped them into the dough and mixed. Now, the dough was starting to come together and turning very, very wet. Then there were lumps because of the hard dough left over from my attempt to knead in the left over flour. Luckily, after kneading the dough for a while it softened and wasn't as wet. It was still a bit too sticky, not overly so. So I added a bit of bread flour and it was just right.

Knead dough until elastic. Then proof the dough in an oiled bowl for around one hour or until doubled in size. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming on the dough.

When the dough is finished proofing, if you press a finger into the dough the indent should stay there.

I proofed it for one hour and nothing happened. I thought I killed the yeast with the tbsp of salt. I then realized that the temp was too cold b/c it was 60...only after my mom told me. I was freaking out and i thought oh no !! what am i going to do with all that dough now...i never failed so epically before. Anyway now it's fine. Whewf.

After proofing for two hours.

Shaping dough:
I divided the dough into 130 gram pieces or something like that. Rest them for 10 minutes and then start making the shapes you want the bread to be.

I used half of a hot dog for some buns so that way it wasn't too unhealthy.

One plain bun and two others with ham. Later on, all the buns had a cheese topping.

Egg wash was brushed on.

After shaping the dough, it still needs to be proofed.
I ended up shaping the dough in several different ways.
Ideas:
Braided hot dog bun from DailyDelicious
Bun with ham and cheese swirls from Everybody Eats Well in Flanders
Flower shaped buns from Angie's Recipes They didn't work out for me because I wasn't able to make it flower shaped. Definitely harder to do than it looks.

Easy Chocolate Cupcakes

2010-11-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

I finally decided on which camera to get! I kept my Nikon L22. It's working out pretty nicely.

I made these cupcakes yesterday (10/29/10) and they were really easy to make. At first, I was a bit confused about the instructions because the instructions said to whisk liquid into flour ingredients, I wasn't sure if we were supposed to pour the whole thing in the large bowl and whisk or add a steady stream of liquid while mixing.

The problems I encountered during the process of making this cupcake was I lost count of how many 1/4 cups of cocoa powder I had added in. I seem to be pretty absentminded these days! I couldn't even remember if I had put 2 or 3 quarter cups. As a result, I just had to end up kind of guessing how many cups I had put in the mixing bowl.

The batter wasn't as runny as I thought it was going to be. The cupcakes baked on the top rack rise higher than the ones baked on the lower rack. After they have baked for half of the required time, the middle of the cupcake might look like it's sunken, but if you wait until the timer goes off, they will be fine or a bit flat, depending on the rack you bake the cupcakes on.

The cupcakes were moist and they had a very loose texture. Soft and not too sweet.

Easy Chocolate Cupcakes
Recipe from Baking Bites

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa (I forgot how much I used)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar (I used 1 1/3 cups sugar)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup vegetable oil or melted butter (I used vegetable oil, it made life so much easier)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips (I didn't use any)

Preheat oven to 350F. Place liners in 2-12 cup muffin tins.
In a large bowl, whisk together cocoa, flour, white sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt until thoroughly mixed.
In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, water, buttermilk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. Whisk into flour mixture until all of the ingredients are mixed in and no streaks of flour remain. Add in optional mini chocolate chips, if using.
So basically I just added a little bit of the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and started mixing, then I realized it's ok if I poured the whole thing into the large bowl and continue whisking then. So yea, I ended up pouring the entire contents of the medium bowl into the large bowl instead of whisking in little by little. I'm not always the best at interpreting instructions so maybe I just over thought it.
Fill muffin cups evenly with the prepared batter.
Bake at 350F for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean, or with only a few crumbs.
Remove cupcakes from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.

I made my thin and crispy cc cookies again. Actually, I made both of these things for a band comp that was the next day.

A close up pic.

One of the cupcakes that was baked on the higher rack.

Black Bottom Cupcakes II

2010-11-11T23:06:00.000-08:00

After debating for quite a while about what to make today, I decided to make these black bottom cupcakes. I found the recipe for these cupcakes on Brown Eyed Baker, who got the recipe from David Lebovitz.

I actually made these for my brother because it's his turn to bring snacks for Bible drill, a church activity that he participates in. Bible drill is when people memorize Bible verses and then they try to flip to that verse as fast as possible, under 7 seconds. Anyway, he initially requested that I make red velvet cupcakes...but I was too lazy. Last time I made red velvet cupcakes, they took me two whole hours, including cleaning up. In the end, I decided that I wanted to try out this recipe because the last time I made black bottom cupcakes, they took forever to bake and did not turn out the way I wanted them to. By that, I mean that they made me really worried when they were still uncooked when the time was up.

Here's my verdict. The cake part was nice and moist. It may be dry if you peel off a chunk and let it sit there for a while before eating it, but if you leave it whole and you eat it then it is moist. It was just right in terms of sweetness, not too sweet but enough so that it was enjoyable.

For the cream cheese portion, I didn't soften it enough so there were little lumps of cream cheese. This did not adversely affect the taste, just the texture, which was not as smooth. However, the cream cheese portion was still pretty good. Interestingly, the chocolate chips melted on your tongue when you take a bite of it. Creamy and rich=very yummy. I ate a half of the cupcake and almost couldn't resist eating the rest. Serve cold because they taste better that way.

Black-Bottom Cupcakes
Recipe from David Lebovitz The Great Book of Chocolate, found on Brown Eyed Baker.
Makes 12

In a group.

For the Filling:
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (or semisweet chocolate chips which was what I used.)

For the Cupcakes:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar (I used dark brown; I didn't have any light brown sugar)
5 tablespoons naturally unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch-process)
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup unflavored vegetable oil
1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Make the Filling: Beat together the cream cheese, granulated sugar, and egg until smooth. Stir in chopped chocolate pieces. Set aside.

A bit clumpy.

Chocolate chips mixed in.

For the filling, instead of using coarsely chopped bittersweet chocolate, I used semisweet chocolate chips that were kind of chopped. I attempted to make the cc smaller for a few minutes, until I realized that it would be a bit hard to accomplish. In the end, I just dumped the cc in the filling.

Also, I was too lazy to get out the hand mixer so I just manually mixed the filling, so it took longer than expected. My filling was also a bit clumpy because the cream cheese was not totally at room temperature.

Make the Cupcakes:
Adjust the rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F (175°C). Butter a 12-cup muffin tin, or line the tin with paper muffin cups.

In a medium bowl sift together the flour, brown sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl mix together the water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla.
Flour, brown sugar, cocoa powder and baking soda.

Oil, vinegar and vanilla.

For the cupcake batter, when the instructions said to sift together the flour, brown, sugar and etc... I thought it was a bit weird. For me, the brown sugar would not fit through the sifter so I just dumped it in a large bowl. Then I proceeded to sift the flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda together. I just sprinkled the salt into the dry ingredients because I use coarse salt.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in the wet ingredients, stirring just until smooth. Stir any longer and you will over mix the batter and end up with less-than-tender cupcakes.

There was a little glare in the picture.

Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Spoon a few tablespoons of the filling into the center of each cupcake, dividing the filling evenly. This will fill the cups almost completely, which is fine.

A lot of cream cheese for each one.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tops are slightly golden brown and the cupcakes feel springy when gently pressed. These moist treats will keep unrefrigerated for 2 to 3 days if stored in an airtight container.

I baked my cupcakes for 25 minutes and they were done! Yay! Also, the cupcakes did feel a bit springy when pressed down on.

Oh yea, it took me a total of one hour to mix prepare the cupcakes. I was just getting the feel of it, I'm sure that the next time I make these, it will take around 30 minutes or less.

The two leftovers from Bible Drill.

Baked Nian Gao 烤年糕

2010-11-09T17:59:00.000-08:00

Sorry for not posting for such a long time. I did bake these past few weeks, I just have not been able to get the pictures that I took because I borrowed my Uncle's camera. Recently, some things I made are black bottom cupcakes, hotdog buns, chocolate cupcakes, thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies, Von's pound cake!, and that's about it. I'm going to post about Von's awesome pound cake soon, as soon as I get the single picture for it. I'm also going to get a new camera soon. Actually, my mom bought one for me already, but I'm not sure if that is a good model or not so I'm still deciding. I'm debating between getting a Nikon Coolpix S4000, Canon PowerShot SD1300IS or keeping the Nikon Coolpix L22. Any suggestions? My favorite color is pink, but I don't know which camera is better. I'm getting sidetracked now... anyway back to my post about nian gao. By the way, thanks for reading that super long paragraph.

My mom used to make this for our family when I was little, back in elementary school. I remember coming back from school and finding this cake in the kitchen. After seeing it there, I would always be so happy. Then after a while, she stopped making it. I just recently asked her why and she told me that she had made it so often that everyone got sick of it. I also found out that back then, everyone was making it because it was really easy to make, really cheap, and a great gift for people. A gift as in when you're visiting someone, someone's sick, etc etc. I really missed eating this cake and didn't make it until now (Oct 31). I don't know why it took so long for me to ask my mom for the recipe, but here it is. I hope you enjoy the recipe. :)

So after making it, I ate around 1/4 of the cake. Ekks, pretty scary! It was sooo good and I did not eat it for such a long time that I couldn't control myself.
The crust tastes crispy and the middle is chewy, just like mochi. So a crispy crust with the chewy inside balances everything out and makes a great "cake"! In terms of sweetness, it was just right. It was not that sweet, so if you like really sweet dessert, you might want to add a little more sugar.

Baked Nian Gao 烤年糕
Recipe from my mom's friend

1 lb glutinous rice flour
1/2 cup sugar
3 Eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 -3 cups milk (Add more milk if you want it to be softer, less if you want it to be chewier. I used 2 1/2 cups milk)
1/2 stick butter, melted

Toppings: red bean paste, walnut, raisins (Optional)

Bake at 350*F for one hour.

Easy way: Dump all the ingredients in one bowl and mix together until uniform. Pour into a 9x13 pan and bake at 350*F for one hour.

What I did: Whisk together the glutinous rice flour, sugar and baking powder in a large bowl. Melt the butter and warm up some milk. Mix the butter, vanilla and some milk together and add into the large bowl. Add the rest of the milk and then add the 3 eggs. (I did this so that way the butter would not solidify due to the coldness of the milk. Of course, it would not matter if your milk was at room temperature though.)

Whisk everything together. Keep on whisking until the batter is smooth and there are no lumps. Pour batter into a oiled glass pan. I don't know how it will turn out with a metal pan, but you can try.

Bake at 350*F for one hour, so that the crust become golden brown and puffy. After that, take it out of the oven and cool or eat it while hot. :) The cake will deflate a bit, but that's normal.

Btw, you can half the recipe and bake in a smaller pan.

It deflated!

I got a few pieces.

My family ate a few. So quickly eaten! This was on the same day. Within a few hours too. Everyone missed the nian gao.
For the toppings, sprinkle raisin and walnuts into the batter if you want some.

For red bean paste, my mom said you are supposed to bake it for around 1/2 hour and then somehow spread the red bean paste onto it and then put it back into the oven to continue baking it for another 1/2 hour. My aunt's sister also made this variation before and I think what she did was put a portion of the batter inside, bake, add red bean and pour the rest of the batter on and finish baking. I'm not 100% sure though. If you feel adventurous, do try it out and tell me how it goes. Thanks :)

Serving suggestion: Cut into squares and serve. If a day or 2 passes and the cake is not finished yet, very unlikely but possible, just get the portion you want to eat and microwave for a few seconds to achieve the nice, chewy texture.

炸酱麵 Bean Paste Pork Noodles

2010-10-18T22:32:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Cinnamon Rolls

2010-10-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I baked them in a 9 inch pans btw.

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

More tips from:
1 Pioneer Woman
2 Bakerella

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

Marble Cake

2010-10-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

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

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

Marble Cake

Recipe from International Baking Delights by Lee Hwa Lin

Instructions rewritten for better understanding
Serves 10

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

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

Butter and sugar creamed together with eggs added in.

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

Texture of batter after flour is added in.

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

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

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

2nd time

Finished!
1st time

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

One Bowl Brownies

2010-10-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

I used a 8 by 12 or so inch pan

Mix all the ingredients together. Yes, just mix.

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

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

One Bowl Buttermilk Cupcakes

2010-10-06T18:56:00.000-07:00

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

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

One Bowl Buttermilk Cupcakes
Recipe from Baking Bites

Recipe from Baking Bites

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

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

Pork Floss Potato Buns

2010-09-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

I made these during the summer too, but I didn't have a chance to post them until now. I was debating whether I should post it up or not, but I decided I might as well. I found this recipe while browsing the bread section in Honey Bee Sweets. I decided to give it a try because I was interested in the use of a potato in the recipe and it also had pork floss! I love eating pork floss, and while it is not healthy to eat too much as it is fried and contains MSG; moderation is the key.

They turned out nice and soft. Although they had a bit of a crust, the inside was pretty good. I accidentally left them in the oven too long because when the timer went off, I took them out and tasted one. It was still a bit undone so I continued baking it, but then I forgot about them and they developed a crust. :( Oh well, next time I'll do better.

As you can see in Honey Bee Sweets' blog, her pork floss buns are pale and really soft while mine are over baked. Next time...

Anyway, I will list the ingredients below and any changes I made/the way I did it.
Pork Floss Buns
220g bread flour
80g cake flour (I substituted with flour and corn starch)
30g caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp instant active yeast
140ml ice cold water
40g egg yolk
60g mashed potato - I chopped up a potato into cubes and then I steamed it for a while until it became mashable. <- is that even a word? I would taste it from time to time to see if it was done yet. If anyone has any better way to cook potato for bread please share with me. Thank you. :)30g unsalted butter, room temperature (I used salted and omitted the salt)For the filling I didn't measure out anything. I just used as much pork floss as I thought was necessary and yea. I didn't have any Asian jerky or hot dogs to use. In order to complete the bread, I needed mayonnaise, preferably the Asian type, as a glue for the pork floss. So I searched around and found this recipe on The Kwoks Viewfinder.

Transparent Mayonnaise (透明美乃滋)
Recipe from The Kwoks Viewfinder, instructions rewritten.
Set A
100g fine sugar (I reduced the sugar, I forgot how much)
5g salt
50g butter
450g water

Set B
200g fine sugar (I reduced the sugar again, otherwise it would be too sweet)
50g corn Starch
200cc water (aka 200 ml water)

Cook set A in a saucepan or just any pan with heat on low. Stirring the mixture very often until the sugar and butter completely melt.

Add Set B into Set A when Set A starts to boil, still cooking over low heat. Turn off the heat and cool when the mayonnaise thickens and becomes transparent. Apply it to bread or whatever you want when the mayonnaise is cool.

I think I cooked my mayonnaise way too long and it become pretty thick and goey as a result. That brought back childhood memories of me eating this transparent sweet "paste". I have no idea what it's called, but I remember that I really loved eating it. Supposedly it was healthy too. Back to the topic, I could taste a hint of "mayonnaise". Next time, I won't cook it as long, quarter the recipe and reduce the sugar a bit more. I made too much mayonnaise and I had to get rid of the rest because it was too goey and I couldn't possibly use it all up.

Recently, my camera has been broken and I haven't been able to fix it. So sadly, I haven't been able to take any pictures of the things I have been baking. However, here's a list so I can remember what I did bake: cinnamon rolls (1st time), brownies (new recipe), chocolate cupcakes (really quick and easy). I that's it. I can't believe I haven't posted a new post in such a long time. I have been pretty busy. Have a great week everyone.

Cream Puffs w/ a Cookie Topping

2010-09-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

I am finally done writing my cream puff post. I have been very busy with school and all the other stuff I need to do. Like I mentioned in my last post, I made these puffs during the summer. However, I was too lazy to write a post until now.

I got the recipe from My Buttery Fingers. Her puffs looked so beautiful and delicious that I knew I had to try the recipe. Wendy said that it was as good as Beard Papa's. I agree, these puffs were pretty good. The chocolate cookie crust made these puffs hard to resist. Sadly, I wasn't able to make the pastry cream from scratch because I also made tuna heart buns on the same day and by the time I finished I was too tired. So instead, I made instant vanilla pudding for the pastry cream. Now, that won't compare to real pastry cream so one day I will have to try making these again.

Cookie-Topped Cream Puffs

Here are the flours.

Melt the butter with water, sugar and salt.

Add in the flours and mix.

Add in egg slowly.

Continue mixing until it becomes like this.

Place dough in bag.

Cut off that little corner. It's better to leave a little space so you won't touch the dough with your scissors.

Here's the cookie topping.

Very easy to make.

Little mounds of dough.

Place cookie topping on the dough.

Bake.

Finished baking.

Tuna Heart Buns

2010-09-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

When I saw Happy Home Baking's tuna heart buns, I knew that I wanted to make some too. They were sooo cute! So after a few weeks or days (I forgot how long) I finally made them. For some reason, the bread I'm making these days all have sticky dough, so it took me forever to knead the dough and I had a hard time shaping the dough into hearts later on, but I tried.

Here's the recipe for the buns.

Actually, I made this bread a long time ago during the summer, but I haven't gotten around to posting about it until now.

My thoughts on the recipe: The dough was hard to knead for some reason. It took me a really long time. The end result, however, was really good! I loved eating it. It just tastes like the basic bread they sell at Asian bakeries. The bread was soft and the crust was a bit crunchy. (I probably baked it a little too long.) I loved eating it because of the bread. I didn't like the filling as much, but that's only because I don't like mayo with tuna anymore so I skimped on the mayo. Before, I loved eating mayo and tuna sandwiches, but now I realize how much fat there is and how unhealthy it is to eat a lot of mayonnaise. Anyway, I digress, if you haven't tried out this recipe yet and you like eating savory bread you should try this.

Super sticky dough!

Portioned out and resting.

Here they are shaped and rising.

I put the filling in. I didn't have any of those dried parsley.

<3
That's how big they were.
L<3ve them. L for love :)I made them while I was also making cream puffs. It was a bit stressful because I found out that the baking times and temperature was different. As a result, I had to leave the puff's batter in the bag for a while.

Homemade Fudgesicles

2010-09-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

I remember my mom buying a huge box of healthy choice fudge bars from Costco. They were really good, but after eating a lot of the bars my brother and I both got sick of those popsicles.

Well I totally forgot about eating those from a long time ago until I saw Nicole from Baking Bite's recipe for homemade fudgesicles.

The finished product was addicting. And I, the person who is trying to eat healthier, couldn't resist eating a whole popsicle. True, these aren't that big, but they have a really high sugar content. That is a bit scary, but they were worth it! The fudgesicles were really easy to make and they were so good that my parents were fighting over the last few bites. It was a pretty funny sight. I smile just thinking about it.

The following recipe is from Baking Bites and I found that it was ok to paste the recipe on my blog, so here it is. Thanks Nicole.

Homemade Fudgsicles
Recipe from Baking Bites

Aren't the molds so cute? I halved the recipe and made 4 because I wasn't sure how it would turn out.

2 cups low fat or skim milk (I used whole milk)
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2/3 cup sugar (I think I reduced the sugar a bit, I forgot)
2 tbsp corn syrup or agave syrup (I used corn syrup)
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, combine milk, cocoa powder, sugar, corn syrup (or agave syrup) and vanilla extract. Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently, and cook just until all of the sugar and cocoa powder is dissolved. Pour hot mixture into popsicle molds and freeze overnight, or until solid.

Makes 6-8 large popsicles (depends on the size of your molds)

Dry ingredients.

Stir, stir and stir.

It was done. :)

Pour in molds.

They look hard, but in reality, they were nice and "soft".

There was a bite, but it wasn't too hard or too soft, just right. Not like an ice cube at all.

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Scones

2010-09-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

As you know, my family is a big lover of scones. If you didn't before, now you do. =D From the first time I made scones to the many other times after that, I have always used one recipe, the one from my Williams-Sonoma Sweet Treats book. Sure, I might have substituted some ingredients like evaporated milk for heavy cream, but I have never tried another scone recipe until today. I was only looking for a way to quickly use up the leftover sour cream I had from the black bottom cupcakes I made recently, when I stumbled upon this recipe. I bookmarked it immediately and finally made it today. (August 27)

Click here for recipe.

Btw, sorry for the terrible quality picture.

The texture of the scones were amazing. My grandma and dad loved these scones. They said it tasted much better than the scones I made before. The brown sugar gives these scones a surprisingly nice grainy texture between bites. Grainy might be a negative connotation when it comes to food, but it was perfect for these scones. What I mean is that you can still kind taste the brown sugar, it just adds to the already good scone. Also, right from the oven these scones were really nice and fluffy you could say. I gave some to my friend C. and her mom said that they tasted better than the bakery's scones. So thanks to Anna from Cookie Madness for this recipe.

Different lighting makes a big difference. And oh no, I think I might have broken the camera. That or it just broke suddenly. The zoom lens won't retract back in. :(

I made that awesome bread again!

This time I tried it with 3 fillings. Pork floss, turkey and swiss and coconut and raisin.

Update about school:
Wow, school is so busy already, at least it is for AP calc. There is so much hw for Calculus it's scary. Or more specifically, so much time spent doing the hw. English, a class I thought to be easy, is actually harder than I thought. The teacher is new and she's giving a lot of hw. Oh well, I'll survive. Now, there isn't a lot of weekend hw, but there is still a good amount. Spanish is taking me longer to finish than usual, as expected from an AP class. I already can't wait for the summer to come, haha. I get to go to Taiwan then as a graduation present and visit my grandparents and a few cousins there.

Marble Spritz Cookies

2010-09-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

I made these marble spritz cookies with my cousin. They are a variation of my pressed sugar cookies.

I got the original recipe from Williams-Sonoma and apparently it was "Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library Series, Cookies & Biscotti, by Kristine Kidd (Time-Life Books, 1993)."

Marble Spritz Cookies
Makes 40-60

12 tbsp (1.5 sticks) butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 1/2 to 3 tbsp cocoa powder (for the divided dough)
sprinkles, optional

Directions

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl with mixer on high speed so that the mixture is light and fluffy. Add in the egg, vanilla and salt and continue beating the mixture until the ingredients are evenly distributed. Add in the flour by beating it in, stirring it in, or kneading it in. It doesn't matter. I just first beat it in, then knead it so that the dough won't stick on my hands then. Stop when the dough comes together.

Divide the dough in two and add 2 1/2 tbsp to 3 tbsp of cocoa powder into one of the dough. Knead the powder in, add more powder if you want a more chocolaty taste. At one point, you can't add any more or else the dough will be too dry and it will become too difficult to "press it out".

Put the dough into your cookie press however you want to. Put the shape you like onto the press and start pressing out the dough onto a baking sheet. Parchment paper is not needed because the cookie is oily enough not to stick on the pan. Decorate your cookies with sprinkles if you wish to do so. Make sure to press them on so they don't fall off.

Bake the cookies at 375*F for around 10-15 minutes. So that the cookies are slightly golden. Move cookies to wire rack and cool. May be stored in airtight containers for a couple of days.

Note: I prefer not to "marble" the dough before putting it in the press because when it comes out of the press it will look a bit disgusting. So if you have a cookie press, just put the dough in without mixing it.

If you do not have a cookie press, you can still make these cookies. Just shape them with your hands or use cookie cutters.

I also reserved some dough for one flavored cookies.

Inadvertent rainbows. :)

Lots of cookies.

I burned one batch. :( I was washing the dishes and forgot. How sad.

I bought some to marching band camp in cupcake liners, hehe, just like those Danish butter cookies.

Black Bottom Cupcakes

2010-08-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

After I got my cookbook, America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book, I found this recipe. I was pretty interested in trying it out. I mean, why not? It had chocolate cupcake and cheesecake combined. So the week before school started, I made these. They were so simple to make! The only problem I had was with the baking time. I had to bake them way longer than called for, maybe it was because I substituted the dutch processed cocoa powder with natural unsweetened cocoa powder. I googled this recipe and found that other bloggers had made these before with no problem, so go ahead and give it a try.

They tasted really good. Rich cream cheese filling with a just right cupcake. My dad really loved it. When I brought the rest over to band camp, he was really disappointed.

Black Bottom Cupcakes
Recipe from America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book
Makes 12

Use miniature chocolate chips to ensure that they will stay in the filling and not sink to the bottom of the cupcake instead.

Filling
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 large egg white
1 tbsp sour cream
1/4 cup (1 1/2 ounces) semisweet mini chocolate chips

Cupcakes
Set A
3/4 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup Dutch-proccessed cocoa (I used natural unsweetened cocoa powder)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Set B
3/4 cup water, room temperature
6 tbsp sour cream, room temperature
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Position oven rack to lower middle position and preheat oven to 400*F.

Filling
In a medium bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar and salt using an electric mixer on medium speed so that the mixture is smooth. (30 sec) Add egg white and sour cream and beat in, another 30 seconds. Add the chocolate chips and stir.

Cream cheese with sugar and salt.

After beating it for a few seconds.

This is what it should look like after the egg white and sour cream is added in.

The cc chips are soo cute! I love mini things.

Now, stir it in.

Cupcakes
Whisk together Set A in a large bowl until uniform in mixture. Whisk in Set B just until it all comes together.

Set A

Set B

Grease a 1/4 cup measure and portion batter into cupcake liners. Use a rounded tbsp of cream cheese mixture and plop in the middle of each cupcake. There might be extra, so just try to distribute the rest out evenly.

So yea, it was a bit more than 1 tbsp.

Bake for 18-22 minutes so that the tops of the cupcakes start cracking. Make sure to rotate cupcake tray halfway through baking. Afterward, let cupcake cool in tray for 10 minutes before cooling on wire rack.

:( Sunken tops, even more so than it should be.

Notes: I have no idea why I had to bake mine for so long. I did, however, take them out of the oven after 18 minutes and they kind of "deflated", but that's only because mine had to bake longer. So when I took them out they weren't even close to finishing baking. Opps. I'll try this recipe again one day. Anyway, because of the longer required baking time I was starting to get stressed out. I thought I had wasted my ingredients for these cupcakes, in the end they turned out fine. I'm the type of person who likes following directions and when something goes wrong I get really stressed. I like predictable things, not surprises and I can't stand failing or making mistakes whether in real life or baking.

I can't seem to do my hw, I don't understand it at all. So here I am taking a break instead and posting a long overdue post.

x3Baking

Pan Pizza

Vanilla Cupcakes

Hoddeok 호떡 - Sweet Korean Pancakes

Oreo Swiss Roll Cake

Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃 II

Red Bean Paste

California Sushi

Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃

Fettucine Alfredo

Whole Wheat Loaf Bread

Help Me

Spam Musubi

Pantry Chocolate Cake

Croissants

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Boston Cream Cupcakes

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake

Giant Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rotiboys

Steamed Buns 饅頭 (Mantou)

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

Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes and Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting

Chocolate Chip Chocolate Muffins

Lemon and Matcha Marble Pound Cake and Award

Rich and Sweet Berry Scones and Award

Wheat Mantou II and Ham and Cheese Bread

Purple Yam Mochi

小 牛牌 Little Ribs

Sour Cream Pound Cake Take Two

Braided Hot Dog Bread

Jenny's Brownies

Vanilla Cupcakes

Lemon Cloud Tea Cookies

Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Red Bean Nian Gao Pancake 紅豆年糕餅

Daikon Nian Gao 蘿蔔糕

紅豆年糕 Red Bean Nian Gao

Matcha Shortbread

Happy Chinese New Year!

Wheat Mantou 麥饅頭

Chocolate Glazed Baked Doughnut Muffins

New York Style Coffee Cake

Cheesecake Brownie

Sugar Cookies

Cupcakes: Red Velvet and Chocolate

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Marble Cake

Chocolate Chip Swirl Marble Bread

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

2nd Time Cinnamon Rolls

Snickerdoodles

Merry Christmas!

My Birthday Feast

Sour Cream Chocolate Muffin

Red Bean Mochi

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

Sour Cream Pound Cake

Thanksgiving

Caterpillar Bread

Easy Chocolate Cupcakes

Black Bottom Cupcakes II

Baked Nian Gao 烤年糕

炸酱麵 Bean Paste Pork Noodles

Cinnamon Rolls

Marble Cake

One Bowl Brownies

One Bowl Buttermilk Cupcakes

Pork Floss Potato Buns

Cream Puffs w/ a Cookie Topping

Tuna Heart Buns

Homemade Fudgesicles

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Scones

Marble Spritz Cookies

Black Bottom Cupcakes

小牛牌 Little Ribs