It's June Already?

Why hello there. Uhm, okay. It's definitely been a lot longer than I thought it was going to be since my last post. But, but, but, I have good excuses! The month of May has been ridiculous. I'm not sure if April or May has been more ridiculous. April was full of dance performances.

"The Croton Flower Blooms," ethnic Wa Chinese dance.

Photograph courtesy of Mike Ross.

"Wind Flow," ethnic Han Chinese dance.

Photograph courtesy of Mike Ross.

Okay, I'm only kind of sorry for these dance photos. I've been going through some serious dance withdrawal the past month, and so I've been reliving performances through all my photos! Part of me really wants to find a job in San Francisco, so I can just head over to a dance studio after work. :) (Speaking of which, I really really wish people would get back to me in the two weeks they say they will after an interview... no response is worse than a rejection!! In other news, the job that I had an interview for would've been amazing--working with and outreaching to homeless and at-risk youth in San Francisco. But, alas, they refuse to get back to me.)

Anyhow, aside from dance in April, May has actually been pretty full of baking! Mainly because there has been lots of birthdays and graduations and whatnot.

There was Ryan's birthday and a yellow butter cake with chocolate buttercream frosting (he likes very sweet cakes with no fruit, hehehe.)

There was a random carrot cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting for sh$ts and giggles.

There was Mike's birthday! Lots of roomie love xoxoxo :)

That was a raspberry passion fruit white chocolate cheesecake (with an Oreo cookie crust). It was devoured, and it was delicious. It was also extremely lethal. Personally, I prefer a plain cheesecake (I despise white chocolate, haha!), but yes, it was still devoured.

And there was Alice's graduation cupcakes!

They were chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting decorated, of course, with Cal colors. :)

And finally, there was another graduation party (Eric graduated from the Monterey College of Law!) in Santa Cruz to bake for.

This was a decadent chocolate cake with mixed berry filling and cream cheese frosting. The cake itself was very rich chocolate cake that was soft with a lovely crumb... the only thing is that it also makes it a b!tch to work with (I seem to be more colorful with my language today than usual--my apologies) as it kept on falling apart, even when it was cooled, and even after it was frozen!

So life's been a little hectic and a little stressful. At least May was at least spotted with random days of sunshine and times for new haircuts (I cut my bangs!) and pretty dresses. :)

Photograph courtesy of Scott Milliken.

There have also been random things like blueberry buttermilk pancakes.

Oh yeah, and a surprise birthday party that my friends threw for me. :)

It was delicious sushi. I love sushi. I love Asian food, especially Japanese food and simple Chinese food. I ate so much sashimi that day. Yum.

And finally, on Memorial Day, there was a lovely BBQ at my apartment! Mike was having lots of fun with his new toy. :P We had grilled Hawaiian BBQ tofu, chicken, and pineapple.

Of course, there were also appetizers. There was roasted garlic garlic hummus (yes, it's that garlic-y), hummus, guacamole, deviled eggs, Italian pasta salad, and a mango Southern sweet tea.

And S'MORES! S'MORES! (and Banana Boats, but I totally forgot to take photos of them! Banana boats = banana split in half stuffed with chocolate chips and/or other things, wrapped in foil, and roasted for 5-10 minutes until warm and delicious. It's good for camping as a dessert!)

MUAHAHAHA FIRE!!!

And finally, there has been some hiking here and there. I leave you with a triptych of the beautiful Pt. Reyes. :)

More breakfast: French Toast!

Hey all,

So it's been a while! But I'm back with more breakfast foods... this time, French Toast. :) More specifically, Nutella-stuffed Brioche French Toast with Sauteed Cinnamon Apples.

I've been wanting to make french toast for a while, so I even specifically made Peter Reinhart's Brioche (from the Bread Baker's Apprentice)... it's a lot nicer than a previous brioche recipe that I've used before. But, like any brioche recipe, the dough is kind of sticky and annoying to work with, and definitely requires refrigeration. There are various versions--the Rich Man's Brioche, the Middle Man's Brioche, and the Poor Man's Brioche. The difference is mainly in the amount of butter used... I think that the Middle Man's Brioche was a good choice--not too high in fat, but still buttery, rich, and delicious.

Little brioche à têtes! :D I made one giant 9"x5" loaf, and then another 4 brioche à têtes. :) The little brioche à tête were delicious to eat on their own... I am such a sucker for carbs. They weren't the prettiest things... I tried using the knotting technique instead of making separate balls to make the shape... but I'm sure they'll be prettier next time. :)

Anyhow, so I decided to make french toast the next morning! :) Okay, so yes, they all say that french toast is best made with stale bread, that was it can soak up the "custard" mixture while still holding its shape. I really really wanted to make french toast and to use my brioche, so what I did was cut thick 1/2" slices and toast them on the lowest setting just to dry them out a little. I think stale bread would've been the best... but you work with what you've got!

Click below for more nutella-stuffed brioche french toast with sauteed cinnamon apples.

Good morning... Meyer Lemon Berry Pancakes!

Why hello there. So I apologize for being so MIA this month--it's been a long month with new friends and so many more dance performances. It's vaguely slowing down, but GREs and other things such as peoples' graduations and backpacking trips are right around the corner, so AAAH! Ridiculousness. So even though there has been a decent amount of baking and cooking, but not much photographing, and even less time around the computer. ...I think it's a good thing for me, though, hehehe.

So after another dance performance a week or two ago, I had two friends stay over since they're not from the area. They were able to stick around in the morning, so I figured... why not pancakes?? I don't really make fancy breakfast foods... boiled eggs, cereal, and oatmeal are just fine in my book. But I know everyone likes the occasional breakfast treat, so after browsing through a billion breakfast recipes... and also realizing that my refrigerator was actually pretty empty except lemons (I have a continuous supply of lemons!) left over from an order for lemon tarts and I actually had some leftover buttermilk from making the tiramisu cake (I NEVER have buttermilk!), so I decided on Meyer Lemon Raspberry Pancakes with Raspberry Maple Compote.

Admit it. It looks delicious. M... now you want pancakes. Click below for more pancakes and recipe! :)

Sheng Jian Bao (Pan-Fried Pork-Filled Buns)

Hi all! So while looking up various bao (bun) recipes, I found out that the dough for sheng jian bao (and cha shau bao/char siu bao depending on Mandarin vs. Cantonese) used pretty much the same dough, a yeast dough (as opposed to shao long bao, or potstickers, etc.). So, of course, I had to make sure of my new awesome discovery of fluffy white bun dough, and didn't feel like going to the Chinese market for cha shao meat, so I settled for making sheng jian bao! Sheng jian bao translated basically means pan-fried buns. The "fun" part of eating these is supposed to be the crispy bottom that is created from pan-frying the bun, as such.

Crispy bottom aside, these are delicious. :d They require some random ingredients more commonly found in a Chinese pantry, but, as silly as this is, I'm getting happy that my cabinets are more filled with Chinese condiments/ingredients such as Sriracha, rice wine vinegar, and Shaoxing cooking wine. I get a little smile from opening my cabinets.

Anyhow, the dough is fairly easy, and aside from draining the cabbage, it's actually a pretty simple recipe. The only majorly annoying part is (a) making sure you have all the ingredients, and (b) figuring out the best way to quickly pleat the buns so they come out pretty and the first ones aren't overly-risen by the time you finish making the last one. Anyhow, recipe behind the cut. :)

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)! :)

Holidays and 2010

Hi all!

Long time no see, I know. I hope y'all had a happy holiday season, and started off your new year with a bang. :)

I know I'm ridiculously behind in everything, but at least it's good to know that I've been busy baking (and vaguely having a life), right? There have been Christmas goodies and parties and new recipes galore, and I have a ridiculous backlog of holiday foods to put up. I've decided that I'm just going to show some pictures of the food for the holidays for y'all, and then figure out the whole specific recipes later.

I'd make some silly new years resolutions about posting more or baking more new recipes, but that's just silly. (And the holidays were actually a good time to try out new recipes!) I think my new years resolutions will be to get a job and to apply for grad school. :P However, I am resolved to write more about food and politics at some point!

Click below to find out more about Post-Thanksgiving, Fancy Pants Party, and New Years! (Christmas dinners were good too, but not made by me) :)

(Warning: LOTS of pictures behind cut!!)

Camping and Flourless Cakes

Hi all! So I was hoping to update more than just once a week, but the past week has been ridiculously crazy, some of which involved doing this whole hiking up Half Dome thing. It was awesome.



Yes, that's the top of Half Dome. That pose is a lot harder in hiking boots and on top of an uneven rock. :| Oh well.

Don't want to say too much, because hopefully I'll update my travel blog some day... some day... (As I said earlier--I'm notorious for not updating these things, but I'm trying!) The night before we summit Half Dome, we car camped at Upper Pines Campground in Yosemite Valley (by the way, I've decided I despise car camping, and I hate RVs even more... backpacking is definitely the way to go!). At least with car camping, you can go a little more gourmet with food. We opted not to really focus too much on the fine foods:



We just prepared one-bowl foods and just dug in... I mean, who really wants to wash more bowls than necessary, especially while camping? Not me. But we just made sure we had a more or less balanced meal... protein, carbohydrates, and vegetables/fruits/fiber... all in all, it wasn't too horrible.

I mean, who can deny this beautiful pot full of whole wheat rotelli pasta with marinara sauce?



At least we don't have to chow down on pine cones, right? Although, this little dude seems to be enjoying it a whole lot.



Well, fat squirrels aside, back to the whole baking thing! I received a food processor that I ordered in the mail last Tuesday night... so of course, I just had to use it! That, and it was Ezra's birthday (the guy who helped push for the generous gift certificate at my old work place!) on Thursday, so who needs more of a reason to try out this lovely flourless chocolate hazelnut cake??

I was running low on ingredients, but I found a bar of good dark chocolate, and bought some whole hazelnuts from Trader Joe's.

First, I prepared all the ingredients--separated the eggs, measured out the chocolate, the brown sugar, the butter, the cocoa powder, and the water. I even toasted my own hazelnuts!



Then, I ground the hazelnuts in my spanking new food processor!



To do this, take the toasted hazelnuts, and add a few tablespoons of sugar per cup of nuts in order for the sugar to absorb the fats released, so you don't end up making hazelnut paste (which could be good, but probably for something else). Just don't be like me, and think that you put in all the sugar when you really didn't, because I realized I forgot about half the sugar until after I folded in the egg whites...

And yes... hand-beaten egg-whites!



What a very tiring process... my right arm was definitely about to fall off, especially after the first dance class after a whole month of nothingness. But look... still peaks, yay!

Another thing that made me so excited was to use my fair trade cocoa powder!



I used Green & Black's organic fair trade cocoa powder! If you don't know what fair trade is, look it up. I just received Black Gold, an awesome documentary about the coffee industry and how fair trade works. I originally saw it in my global poverty class, and hope to make everyone I know watch it. ...I'll be sure to discuss it along with so many other food issues some other time.

Anyhow, so after mixing everything together and folding the laboriously hand-whipped egg whites and pouring it into one prepared 6" cake pan and one prepared 3" sprinform cake pan, I realized that I had about 3/4 of the brown sugar left that I had forgotten to mix in.

Well crap.

What I did was mix in the brown sugar with what was left of the batter (about 1/3 cup?) to incorporate it, pour the batter from the cake pans back in, and fold the two batter together. That way, you won't over-mix the batter even more than necessary, flatten all the egg white bubbles that you so tiringly created, and come out with a hockey puck for a cake.

It still turned out delicious.

And more or less pretty... the final cake had a piece that fell off.



I wanted to make a layer of dark chocolate chocolate ganache to pour over the top to set, partially because it would hide the ugliness of the cake, and because chocolate ganache is oh so tasty. Unfortunately, I was out of heavy cream, and basically had no time to run/bike to the store and get some. So, I improvised, and just melted some left-over chocolate from making the cake with butter, and made a drizzle pattern over it. Then, I topped the cake off with some candied rose petals and candied mint leaves that my roommate had bought me a while bag because I was eying them at The Pasta Shop in some ritzy place in Berkeley. They didn't quite go with the cake, and I would have preferred to do a really dark chocolate and a white chocolate drizzle pattern... that would have been fun, but I was already running late, and I had a lecture I wanted to go to, and I wanted to add some color to the otherwise monochromatic cake, so the candied floral would have to do. ...In the end, I think it turned out. (If I were smart, I would have put the candied petals and leaf where the hole was but no... I'm not that smart.) In the end, I ended up with one 6" cake, and two 3" cakes. ...They were all well-received. :D

A final close-up.



So I made this cake bright and early in the morning... so it was ridiculously rushed. BUT, at least I was able to use natural lighting for my pictures, buahaha!

Anyhow, the past week also involved another Anadama bread that a wonderful fellow friend ordered, but that's about it. Last night, I made a Turkey Zucchini "Lasagna," which turned out okay, but definitely something I want to play with more. I'll write about it later. For now, I should probably step away from the computer and tend to my poor, ache-y muscles.

Cinnamon Buns and a Humble Dinner

So apparently I was inspired enough to bake last night after all. I think part of it has to do with the fact that, since the only people that end up eating my baked goods are people at my roommate's office, I needed to get the baking out of me since he's not able to have any modes of transportation up here for basically the rest of the week.

First, I just wanted to show off a picture of my humble dinner, a simple pork soup.



This tends to be generally what I go for when I make dinner... often it's a nice pot of soup or stew, or the simplest stir-fry ever. I actually missed my simple home-cooked meals a lot during the mini road trip down south... I hadn't eaten out so much in such a short period of time in a while. Home-cooked meals are so nice, and can be so simple... not to mention healthier and cheaper, too! This soup is very simple. Beforehand, you get some pork ribs/bones from the market (in about 1-2" cubes) and parboil them to get rid of some of the excess blood, fat, and marrow, and then freeze that for a later date (or, just use right away). On the day you want to cook it, you boil a nice big pot of water with a slice of ginger. After it comes to a boil, you toss the pork in, let it come back to a boil, turn it down to a medium-low, and let the meat stew enough to make a tasty broth (use a ladle to scoop away the frothy bone marrow that floats to the top). Season with salt to taste. In the mean time, when it gets close, prepare your noodles. This time around I used... thick green bean noodles (also known as cellophane noodles, glass noodles... I think? I know the Chinese name...! English names are so confusing!) which I soaked in water first. Tossed the noodles in for a few minutes, tossed in (many) handfuls of spinach, and voila, it is done!

Meanwhile, there were tasty things on the rise...



Now it should start looking familiar...



Especially after being baked...



And finally, glazed!



Yes, if you can't tell already, those are cinnamon buns. :d

I used Peter Reinhart's recipe this time around. I used to use just a recipe I found on Allrecipes.com which was fun, but a lot messier. Comparing the two... honestly? I don't know if I can tell the difference. It's been over half a year since I made the other cinnamon buns, though, and I wasn't as good at baking with yeast back then either. In fact, cinnamon buns were the first yeast breads I made! I think, in the end, Peter Reinhart's dough recipe stood up to the test, though... just with regards to how it tasted after it cooled down and how well it stood together. Another big difference between this cinnamon bun and any others I've seen is that the filling isn't overwhelmed by butter. Most other ways I've seen it done is rubbing softened butter all over the insides before sprinkling it with cinnamon and sugar. Personally, I like this way better, but that might be because I don't like butter. It's definitely a lot less rich and a lot less gooey and sticky, but it tasted wonderful, especially still warm. I decided to use a simple white glaze, which hardened beautifully. I usually prefer a cream cheese frosting, but since these were going to be eaten a whole day later by people running around the office... I figured this would be a nice solution... and it was great! It hardens ever so slightly when cooled, making it less messy (even though working with it was kind of messy!).

I heard reception at my roommate's office was good. :D This shall be my new go-to cinnamon roll recipe. ...I want to make the sticky buns some day. :D

Does it look amazing? (And so cute! It's like a little snail shell...)



(order some now! :P)

Oh yeah! And I baked another banana bread again... low fat, again, as usual, with whole wheat flour (half white whole wheat, and half whole wheat), and this time, with sugar cut down and replaced with agave nectar. That stuff is interesting... I need to experiment more with it at some later point. I also added some extra spices, and I think that they added a nice touch without really being over-powering, or even discerning. Must play around with that more as well... I have another 3 bananas frozen in the freezer...

Also, I totally need to just bake during the day instead of at midnight... my pictures turn out so much prettier with natural lighting, sigh.

Pancakes and Chicken Giouvetsi

Hiiii! One thing that I've realized about keeping this blog updated is that it has required me to try and, you know, bake and cook new things. Often, I jump to my usual cupcakes or muffins or banana bread, but who wants to read and see pictures of the same food every day?? Not me.

That said, I have billions of different and new recipes to make, but I never get around to them because I keep on finding excuses not to do it--I don't have anyone to eat it, I don't have all the ingredients... you get the idea.

That said, I tried a new pancake recipe! Okay, I'm going to say right now, I don't really like pancakes. I don't even really like cupcakes or cookies--but I'll get back to that some other day. I don't really like pancakes, but I know that other people like pancakes and other such breakfast items. So, one of the things I love to do is make breakfast for people! I've made scones, home fries, french toast, blueberry syrup for said french toast... you name it! So this time around, I wanted to try these cinnamon apple whole wheat oatmeal pancakes! Doesn't it sound almost like it's healthy? I used Closet Cooking's Apple and Cinnamon Oatmeal Pancakes recipe, and it was a great hit! The only thing I did differently is that I didn't grind up the oats in a food processor since, well, I don't have one... I just used a knife and a cutting board to the oats, haha. That, and I added a bunch more cinnamon, because, well, it's cinnamon!!

On the frying pan...



And onto the plate.



Yes, those are hearts. You got a problem with that? No? Good. I didn't think so...

These pancakes were well-received, yay! They weren't your usual affair of buttermilk pancakes, but personally, I like them better that way. There were chunks of apple, and tasted of whole wheat and oatmeal goodness. :d Yum. I even liked them. Then again, it's got apples and oatmeal and cinnamon--hard to go wrong there! Hehehehe...

I've also had a chance to play around with his Chicken Giouvetsi, which apparently is a Greek dish. I've had a bag of whole wheat orzo sitting in my pantry for goodness knows how long, and I've been dying to find a good reason to use it. I've debated between making a Parmesan orzo dish, but I don't really like creamy things, or making some sort of orzo pasta salad... but nothing seemed to be that appealing. Finally, I've been staring at this Chicken Giouvetsi recipe and decided that I had to try it. I love tomato cooked things, and chicken is just awesome, so why not?

Pan-frying the onions with the pepper.



I used an Anaheim pepper because, for the life of me, I could not find a cubanelle pepper (even at Whole Foods and at Berkeley Bowl!!), and Google search told me that I could use it, so hah! I don't know how it is with the cubanelle pepper, but it was pretty fantastic with the Anaheim pepper that adds just a hint of a spicy bite to the dish.

After adding the chicken stock and the tomato puree, you transfer it all into a baking dish with the chicken pieces (I didn't have a whole chicken, so I just used two chicken drumsticks and two chicken breasts), and bake it until the liquid evaporates and the top turns gold brown.



Then you plate it, and then dig in! (Or, in my guest's case, just take a giant spoonful to the baking dish, tsktsk.)



My photo doesn't look as tasty as Kevin's, but needless to say, it was still awesome. It's a one-pan and then one-baking dish type of dish. It's fairly simple, and the part that took the longest was just waiting for it to bake (I had also added an extra cup or so of chicken broth since that was all that was left in a giant can of chicken broth). The two of us finished off half of the entire thing, and then proceeded to finish off the second half the next day. Still great out of the microwave!!

Anyhow, that's all for now. The next few days involve birthdays and parties and meeting new people, so I'm sure that there will be something cooked or baked or whatnot coming up in the next week!

I hope everyone's week is going well.

Oops, I've been busy

Why hello again! It's been a little bit since the last post... I've been ridiculously busy. Sadly, the vetekran I mentioned last was the last time I was baking something. However, it turned out a lot prettier than the previous one! And was just as tasty... and I remembered the glaze this time! :)

This was after the second rise, ready to put in the oven...



And voila! The final product!



Since then, I have not had a chance to bake with this whole... having a life recently. However, I did have a chance to make some dinner for people, and that was awesome, because I love cooking dinner for people. Dinner was Chinese, and consisted of Ma Po Tofu (i.e. Mabo Tofu, Spicy Tofu, etc), Tsao Mi Fun (basically a stir fry of vermicelli), Tze Ma Chou (Sweet Sesame Rice Balls). Forgive my inability to Romanize the Chinese language... I'm horrible at it (it could have to do with my lack of knowledge of the exact way to pronounce things in Mandarin in the first place, but sh!)

Ma Po Tofu consists of soft tofu cut up and cooked with ground meat (I don't eat beef, but I used pork, but I've also used ground turkey before.) and a spicy sauce, and in this case, I used a spicy black bean paste thing (sadly, I can recognize the bottle, but don't know what it's called).



Tsao Mi Fun is a vermicelli stir fry that consists of Taiwanese cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, and carrots. Usually you add these little tiny shrimp, but I forgot about them this time around. This was the first time I made it, (and accidentally woke up my mom to ask her exactly how to cook it) so I wasn't sure about the ratio. I think I had too much vermicelli around this time because I didn't realize how much noodles make, and how much the vegetables cooked down. Still, it was tasty. :)



Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the sweet sesame rice balls, but basically, they're these frozen little balls that you get that consists of a sweet black sesame paste wrapped with a rice flour paste/dough that you just toss into boiling water and let it simmer until it floats... it's really simple, but so tasty.

Amongst all this food, there have been trips to San Francisco, Casa de Fruta, the Santa Cruz beaches, and hiking in Pt. Reyes.

My friend living in SF took me around, and we explored much of San Francisco by foot, and yes, that includes climbing up and down all the gigantic hills. Actually, I also had a chance to take one of those cable cars that you see dinging by filled with tourists, not that I should be talking because I became one of them. I took surprisingly few pictures... I have a love/hate relationship with my 50mm fixed lens currently. It's great because it's lightweight and it's got an amazing aperture. However, it makes it VERY difficult to take photographs of people, especially at a distance, and often makes it hard to frame pictures in a place as crazy as SF.

However, while walking through the Ferry Building, I couldn't resist the beautiful colors of the tomatoes and the amazing textures/patterns that the colors created.

Aren't they beautiful?



I think they're heirloom tomatoes.



I also had a chance to visit Casa de Fruta, a "fruit stand" in the middle of nowhere in Hollister, and has the most amazing variety of dried nuts, dried fruits, chocolate-covered whatevers ever! They also have a great Casa de Sweets which has a bunch of old-school candies. Overpriced, but amazing dried nuts and dried fruit! If you haven't been there, and are heading around Santa Cruz or Monterey, it's worth a trip. If you go in the spring-time, the hills will be rolling in green with beautiful blue skies.



Don't they look so good? They have some of the best flavors... it's worth a visit if you ever make it down/up there. :)

I have a couple bananas sitting in the kitchen, so hopefully the next post will be about banana bread, and will be soon. I can't promise anything, though, since it's been crazy busy, and my roommate and my other friend and I are going backpacking at the Emigrant Wilderness this coming Thursday --> Sunday! I'm excited, since I haven't had a backpacking trip since late December... maybe I can post about the "gourmet" backpacking foods that we will be eating. :P

I leave you with a note telling you to go visit the beach and run around and spin around and leap on the sand and go let the waves wash over your toes.


Photography courtesy of Ben Bracamonte.