Bibimbap 비빔밥

 One of my favorite foods is bibimbap.  Bibimbap is a Korean dish.  Bibim (비빔) means mix and bap (밥) means rice.  I can't remember when I first ate it, but after that first time I always craved it.  I've always wanted to try making it myself, but then all the veggies that are required scared me away from trying out the recipe.  I wanted to buy every single ingredient required before I attempted making this.  Because of this, it took me a few months before I actually tried making it myself.  However, I ended up making it with only a few veggies.  The veggies I used were bean sprouts, carrots, and spinach.  I didn't have any zucchinis, mushrooms, gosari, garlic, or sesame seeds.  I was worried it wouldn't turn out well because I was lacking so many ingredients, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Also, I used some ground pork that I had left in the freezer for a year.  It was still good! Hahaha.

I followed Maangchi's recipe for bibimbap and used Korean Bapsang for the red pepper paste sauce.


College Student's Version of Bibimbap
Slightly adapted from Maangchi's recipe.

 
 Before mixing.


After mixing.

Fruit Tarts

I made these fruit tarts around a month ago and when I finally wanted to blog about them, I almost forgot which recipe I used!  Luckily, I found it after a few minutes of searching.  The day I made them, I hung out with my friend J.  We first made a simple banana bread and then we made these fruit tarts.  Actually, I made these fruit tarts for my mom's birthday.  I followed the recipe to a tee, other than the part where I omitted the currant jelly, which I didn't have, and I added a thin layer of nutella on the bottom of the tart crusts.  I would say these tarts turned out pretty well.  Although they were not comparable to Porto's, I'm pretty happy with them.

Mini Fruit Tarts

Cream Cheese filled Pumpkin Muffins

Because I had to use up the leftover pumpkin puree, I decided to make these cupcakes that resemble black bottom cupcakes.  I really liked the idea of adding cream cheese filling to the cupcakes because I have seen these cupcakes in Starbucks.  Also, these cupcakes had a streusel topping too!

It took me around one hour to prepare everything.  This included taking out the ingredients, measuring, and mixing.  I was in a rush because I had to do this after service and before Kinderpraise; I didn't have time after Kinderpraise because I had to go back to college.  So although there were three different steps, the batter, filling and topping, the recipe is doable in around 1 hour.

I liked how it turned out.  The pumpkin cake part tasted just like the pumpkin chocolate chip cake.  However, the cream cheese offsets the sweetness of the cake while the topping gives it a nice crunch.  One problem was that because I was rushed for time, I was not able to properly make the streusel, resulting in some buttery clumps that melted on some of the cupcakes.  At first, I was worried that there was too much flour in the in the topping, but turns out I didn't need to worry at all.

Note: This post is over a year old.  Sorry for not posting anything for months.

 Cream Cheese filled Pumpkin Muffins

Pecan Tassies and ~Happy Thanksgiving!~

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

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

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

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

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

Pecan Tassies

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake

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

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

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

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