Croissants

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.)

Chocolate Chip Muffins

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

Boston Cream Cupcakes

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

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake

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

Giant Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

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