Citrus Ricotta Cookies

Hello hello again. So my posts have been less frequent than usual... it's been a busy busy April and especially May. But I've been making these citrus/lemon ricotta cookies with a delicious glaze, and everybody has loved them, so I just needed to share. :)

They're based off of Giada De Laurentis' (from the Food Network!) recipe. I'll be honest, I don't usually go to the Food Network recipes for my choice of recipes, but I had found a few food blogs that had made these cookies, and it sounded pretty exciting. I had a package of ricotta cheese for some reason--honestly, I can't remember why, but I decided that I needed to use it up. That, and I'm still working on that constant supply of lemons, haha. Also... it's turning to the spring/summer... who doesn't love the light burst of sunlight in their mouths? :)

These cookies aren't so much crunchy or even soft and chewy... they have a more cake-like texture, which is very interesting. It's still very nommy, though! The batter's pretty easy to work with, and uses up both lemon zest and lemon juice, yay!

Click for more ricotta cookie deliciousness. :D

Overcoming fear: French Macarons

Why hello again. So during my baking streak last week, I also decided to make macarons. I had a ton of egg whites left over from making the meyer lemon tartlets (is it tartlet or tartelette??) and I told myself that this time around, I was going to make macarons. I said this last time making... something or another. Yeah, that never happened, oops.

French macarons are another one of those things that I've been overly paranoid about baking. I'd say irrationally, but I've read about and seen many pictures of failed macarons. Also, there are billions of long-winded explanations of how to make them for a reason--they're a bit tricky to get everything right.

But look! But look! Mine came out with feet and everything!

Isn't it purtiful? They're macarons with strawberry cream cheese sandwiched in between. Not too shabby for a first time, I'd say. The shell wasn't the smoothest, and only one of three batches came out (I think because the other two batches I used baking pans with sides (like a 9x13 pan) instead of a cookie sheet, because I only had one)... and I think the "good" macarons were a little hollow inside, but uh, oh well? I've only had one macaron once in SF, but I'd say mine's not too shabby at all, not at all. Click below for more macaronage. :)

Lunar New Year and Valentine's Day!

Xing nian kuai le! Gong xi fa cai. (i.e. Have a prosperous new year.) Oh yeah, and Valentine's Day. And President's Day! ...And happy Mardi Gras today. Goodness gracious it's a bunch of things to celebrate about recently!

Of course, that means there has been lots of baking/cooking and handing out of delicious goodies. There have been various dark chocolate truffles, Chinese almond cookies, and red bean nian gao (sticky rice cake)!

So February 14th was not only Valentine's Day, but it was also Chinese/Lunar New Years! It's now the year of the Tiger... it's my year! This meant only one thing: hot pot!

Photograph courtesy of Avi

What is 火鍋 (i.e. hot pot), you ask? Clearly, as you can see from the photograph, it is loads of fun. (And no, I wasn't the only girl there!) Click below to see more of what hot pot is and for Chinese Almond Cookies and Red Bean Nian Gao (stick rice cake)! :)

Zucchini Turkey Lasagna

Hi all.

So it's been a few days, and there's a backlog of baking to write about, including that zucchini turkey lasagna I made. I haven't quite been in the mood to write much... the insane amount of cover letters going out and the few responses, much less callbacks for interviews (read: basically none) has been getting to me. Still, I feel like I owe it to my zucchini turkey lasagna to write about it! That, and my friend had introduced me to Matt Costa, who is currently rooting me on the write something. That, and my kitchen currently smells of baking bread and melting cheese, and is begging me to write about it, and I don't want to have to write a thesis worth of food blogging in a couple of days. :P

So last week I made a zucchini turkey lasagna, which can be easily transformed into a vegetarian zucchini lasagna. Honestly, I didn't follow any specific recipe... I kind of tossed together 4 or 5 various lasagna recipes together, and came up with this one. I didn't exactly take notes, but I plan to make it again (and make it better!), and I will let you guys know the recipe later. :)

But until then... look at the layers building up!



And look at the beautiful zucchini slices all lined up and pretty! ...It took a few tries to figure out how to properly slice the zucchini all nice and evenly (zucchini are not uniform in size, boo!)



The top looked pretty after baking!



Okay, so it was really hard taking pretty pictures... hot lasagna falls apart really easily! Especially when it's got giant layers of cheese in between the zucchini. Basically, a general ingredient list is:

* tomato/pasta sauce layer: tomato paste, diced tomatoes, ground turkey, onion, dahs of brown sugar, oregano, basil (I got to use my fresh basil from my sad little abused basil plant... yay!)
* cheese layer: ricotta cheese, egg, grated Parmesan, shredded mozzarella cheese
* zucchini layer: zucchini!

I wasn't completely happy with it... I'm not sure if it's because of the cheese to zucchini or tomato sauce, or if it's because I didn't think it was flavorful enough. I might try and add a little spicy kick to it, or add a starch to it... either brown rice or some quinoa (I bought a bag of quinoa... I'm still finding something awesome to make with it!).

That's about it for now... I did have a chance to bake some chocolate chocolate fudge cookies and some chewy oatmeal raisin cookies.





I have also had a chance to hang out with some of the old (and new!) Chinese dance girls! And, of course, it's not an FTD gathering unless we have food:



I made a casatiello and a batch of cinnamon buns. :)

So much home-made food, eating, and laughter. ^_^

A week of baking: Oreos, Galettes, Banana Bread, Crostatas, Brioche, and Tortes

Why hello there. It's been a while... the past week has been full of baking, and not much blogging. Still, it's now ridiculous o'clock since I have screwed up my sleeping schedule for the past 2 days, and since I am still running off the energy of just finished cleaning up my kitchen from a week of crazy baking, I figure why not bombard you with a ridiculous amount of pretty photos of food? (So I might also be running off of the bleach fumes from cleaning the kitchen... but that's aside the point)

First off in this ridiculous week of baking are home-made oreos from Wayne Brachman's Retro Desserts. If you love Oreos, but love softer cookies, this is the cookie for you. It's amazing how ridiculously close the taste is to the true Oreos. (By the way, Double-Stuffed Oreos are the best things. Ever.)

The cookies themselves are of the softer variety--though, if you bake them longer, they get crunchier.



Aren't they pretty? They're even prettier when stuffed full of unhealthy, but ridiculously tasty filling. Yum.



The same day, I also worked on these hand-sized berry galettes for dessert, which turned out better than I thought they would. I basically took 4 or 5 different galette recipes and combined them all to suit what I needed. I don't think they turned out too bad. I'm still trying to figure out the type of dough I like for something like this... I used a different type of crust than the usual one I use for pies and quiches, but I'm not sure which one I like better yet.

Galettes are fun to make, and it really does save on the trouble of rolling out the crust to make it all fit into a pie dish properly, but it's also a little harder to cut. I do like the rustic look to it, though. (Not the best photograph in the world, but it'll do for now.)



Oh yes, and I just have to say: Berries are the best food group. Yes, that's right, food group. :)



I could probably live off of blackberries and never get sick of them. <3 True, I might get diabetes, but who cares... they're blackberries. They're just amazing when you squish them against the roof of your mouth with your tongue. :)

That was all one day, then a few days later, I baked two loaves of brioche for my mother's birthday--she claims she doesn't like sweets (I'm not sure I believe her, still!), but she does love a good loaf of soft bread--and an apple crostata and a lemon torte for a lazy Sunday afternoon BBQ. This required staying up until 2:00 am and waking up at 6:30 in the morning in order to bake the brioche (which required resting in the fridge overnight after ridiculous kneading and 4 hours of rising and being attended to). It was worth it!

The brioche was probably the hardest dough to work with. I used a recipe from Epicurious. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I chose this recipe instead of another one, for example, from Peter Reinhart's book. But I did, and it was too late to change it after I had already warmed my 3 sticks of butter to room temperature. Yes, this recipe made one loaf in my 8" and one in my 9" loaf pan, and it required 3 sticks of butter and 3 eggs. Next time, I'm going to try and make it and cut the butter down by half a stick, because I think it was unnecessarily buttery, even for a brioche.



The dough was ridiculous, and veeery hard to knead by hand. It took a ridiculous amount of arm strength, and I swear my right arm is becoming a lot stronger than my left arm, but I did it, yay! What was frustrating was the part of waiting 2 hours for the first rise, and then constantly deflating the dough in the refrigerator for another 2 hours, then needing to wait for the dough to rest overnight before shaping and allowing for another rise before baking. Still, they still came out beautifully and they were well-received, yay! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the bread, but it was definitely one of the softest breads I've ever made!

So, for the BBQ, I used the left-over crust dough from the berry galettes for an apple crostata. It was fairly tasty. It's basically the pie crust, apples (I used granny smiths, as per the usual apple affair), and a cinnamon-sugar crumb topping.



Then, I wanted to use up all the lemons I had bought from Berkeley Bowl earlier in the week!



So, I used them and almond meal to make a lemon torte:



Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture of it sliced, but the torte had a nice, dense crumb. This lemon torte is not the flourless type of torte, but does use almond meal with the flour. I think it was pretty darn good, especially with the lemon glaze, yum.

Oh yeah! I had bought almond meal from Trader Joe's, and I had actually used it to make more banana bread for somebody who was diabetic, so I had used whole wheat flour and substituted almond meal for half of the flour, reduced the sugar, etc. It was supposedly received very well, so yay. In fact, I actually baked TWO loaves of banana bread on the same day, hehehe.

Hopefully loading this page wasn't getting ridiculous with all the pictures. Now I need to decide what to make next in my sparkling clean kitchen... :)

Lemon Meltaways and Dill Bread

I'm out of flour! I know, ridiculous. But I'm out of plain ol' all-purpose flour. Oops. I do have many pounds of bread flour, whole wheat flour, and white whole wheat flour. ...I just don't have good old all-purpose flour. Oops. Consequently, I now have a(nother) vetekran dough resting on my counter made up of part all-purpose flour, part white whole wheat flour, and part bread flour. ...This'll be an interesting experiment, since I have always been shy about trying out different flours in recipes. Oh yes, and I forgot to mention last time that this recipe is from the The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas.

The past few days have been pretty filled with baking... I received an order for a batch of ginger cookies, lemon meltaways, and a cream cheese dill bread. Then, I figured since I had left-over cream cheese and the whole wheat bread was running out, I might as well make another loaf for myself.

Doesn't it look tasty?



I've discovered it's amazing with something like one of those wedges of Laughing Cow Original Swiss and slices of turkey deli meat. Yum.

After the first rise:



After the second rise:



I have decided that there is just something so beautiful about risen dough. Whether or not that is because I'm biased and it means I did it right is another matter. :P

So yeah, I also realized that the bread is giant and fits in a 9"x5" loaf pan, not my 8"x4" loaf pan, so I need to make a change of that and the amount of compensation for that... oops.

Oh yes, and the lemon meltaways! I think that this batch of lemon meltaways weren't the most lemon-y of lemon cookies. I think it might have something to do with my lemon... I realized afterwards that the lemon itself wasn't the most fragrant of lemons, which probably resulted in a less lemon-y cookie. It was still tasty, though, I think.



A close-up, to address all your food porn needs:



Don't they look good? These cookies contain powdered sugar and cornstarch in the dough, resulting in a lighter, crumbly cookie that melts when you bite into it--much like a Mexican Wedding cookie, but without the nuts.

Anyhow, my new vetekran dough should be rested enough to roll out... I made it last night in part for my roommate. We were in a car accident last night on the way back to our apartment, and he was freaking out a little. We are both okay, but just a little shaken, and no other car was involved, thank goodness. Originally, he was going to stay at home and fix the car, but I convinced him to still go into work. ...Unfortunately, that means that he's not even going to be here now when it comes out of the oven! Alas.

Oh yes, and here is the second order! (I swear I'll stop posting pictures of my orders eventually, but I just think the scrapbook paper are so cute! That, and I'm obsessed with really cool boxes and packaging, and I had a field day at Joann's and at Michael's last week... I still need to find a cheaper way of packaging, though...)