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

Green Onion Pancakes 蔥油餅

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

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

Green Onion Pancakes 蔥油餅 

Pantry Chocolate Cake

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

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

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

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

Red Bean Mochi

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

Caterpillar Bread

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.

Homemade Soft Pretzels

Wow! I haven't posted a new post in such a long time. Well, it's actually because my internet didn't work for two whole weeks. I couldn't do my summer school homework or anything else that needed to be done on the internet for that matter. It all started from a phone call home. I was calling my mom and this random person answered the phone. I was so confused. I was like, "Oh, I'm sorry I think I got the wrong phone number". I redialed with the area code and found out I called the same person again. She explained to me that she recently got this phone number; I was so freaked out. Turns out that something happened to my phone service that caused no one to be able to call my house and the internet was also disconnected. But now I'm back! Yay!

I just made these soft pretzels yesterday and they were perfect. I first saw the recipe on Lick the Bowl Good, but it's originally from Alton Brown. The pretzels were soft and chewy, with the distinct pretzel taste that tastes just like the ones from Auntie Anne's. The weather was perfect when I made them yesterday, it only took around 30 minutes for the dough to double in size!

Homemade Soft Pretzels
Recipe by Alton Brown

The dough is very easy to knead. It only took me a few minutes to get the dough smooth.


After it doubles in size, punch it down and divide into eight pieces. Roll each piece out to 24 inches or so. I just estimated the length. I think that if the dough is rolled into a thinner rope, it will taste better.



The instructions of forming the pretzel shape is pretty self-explanatory. Other shapes you can make with this dough are pretzel sticks, pretzel hot dogs and just anything you want.

Cook the pretzel in boiling baking soda water and put it on a tray.

There's egg wash that needs to be painted on. After I cooked it in the water, the pretzel would have long lines running down it's "arms". What I would do the next time I make these pretzels would be to decrease the amount of water to around 5 cups and adjust the amount of baking soda accordingly. When I was cooking it, I realized that 10 cups of water was just a waste because it's not like the pretzels soak it up or anything. It doesn't make a big difference. I thought that it was really fun to put the pretzel in the water and see it float. :) Take it out after 30 seconds using maybe 2 spatulas. That's what I did.

Bake it until the top is golden brown, it becomes cooked fairly quickly, but the golden brown color on the pretzel will not only make it prettier, but also tastier. I had fun with this recipe.