Help Me

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

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

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.

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