Everyone loves ice cream -- I don't care what anyone says. Joel can eat a whole pint in one sitting! I'm more of the annoying "please, can we get dessert?"variety, eat 2-3 bites and call it quits. I may not eat a lot of it, but I love those first few bites, especially during summer!
Clara's always loved soft serve and I used to only swear by Haagen Daaz's "hard" ice cream (even Ben & Jerry's is too "soft" for me) in a sugar cone. I think it's the reason I prefer candy over chocolate too -- the milky feeling in your throat afterwards? I'm just not into it. But Red 40, corn syrup or citric acid? Bring it on! Recently, my tastes have changed - cilantro, excessive almond flavoring and now, to my surprise-- softserve!
While I still can't manage vanilla, I'm obsessed with the matcha green tea or black sesame from Mitsuwa's Matcha LOVE by Ito En.
In keeping with the "softer" ice cream trend, my sister turned me on to Good Humor's Strawberry Shortcake bars, they. are. amazing. There's something that's so light about them, I can finish a whole bar and correct me if I'm wrong, but ice cream bars these days seem a lot larger than I remember.
I was bragging about my new found appreciation for softer ice cream and thank god our friend Walter said "if you like those, you're going to love these!" And yes, Walter is correct, I am in LOVE with the Toasted Almond (he would know, he's a 3rd grade teacher after all)-- think frozen fluffy whipped almond jelly!
So if you happen to be so lucky to be near an ice cream truck, do yourself a favor and get a Toasted Almond bar! Or get it delivered like Eva.
I'm not usually compelled to bake during the summer -- probably because it's so hot and humid, I don't want to add to the madness, but today, I was watching PBS (this is why I can't pay for cable, I won't be able to get off the couch...I watch everything!) and caught an episode of "Baking with Julia"-- Child, that is. I normally don't following recipes from cooking shows, but 2 glorious things happened in this episode featuring the late Marion Cunningham. 1 - The episode featured breakfast pastries (read: i heart carbs) and 2 - They baked muffins, scones, Irish soda bread and popovers! All four in one episode! Under 30 minutes! Marion made popover batter in a blender! Needless to say, I had to try them.
I was a little hesitant after my biscuit mishap. I was mislead by a Miss Lily featured on another PBS show: "A Chef's Life". She pulled the whole, "a little bit of this, and a little bit of that and tada! biscuit!" I got half uncooked rocks. But Marion's scones? They came out great! I've never made scones or biscuits from scratch successfully, until now and while they're not out-of-this-world, they're pretty good considering the ingredients and how quick and effortless they are to make.
The ladies forget to mention how much butter to put in during the show so I had to find the recipe. In all honesty, the written instructions look far more complicated than what she demonstrated, outlined below.
Mix all dry ingredients, lemon zest and cold butter until the texture of cornmeal.
I forgot I wanted to add craisins, but I imagine it's best to add your fixin's in before the buttermilk, combine with a fork.
Knead very briefly - just to help bring the dough together.
Divide into 2 discs, flatten, brush with butter, sprinkle with sugar and cut each disc into 6 pieces.
It's only fair that I dedicate a post to the chocolate on chocolate massacre a.k.a Sam's 27th! Her only request was death by chocolate! My mind immediately went to Jessica's cake, but this time I used the intended ganache frosting. But just to warn you, it was a hot day and Sam's rooftop bbq had no relief from the sun, which may not have worked in my favor, you decide.
I had been waiting for an opportunity bake this cake for this reason alone (inspired by Lindsay from Love and Olive Oil) How adorbs right?
The numbers were drawn (freehand) on parchment paper, but if you have access to a printer I'd recommend printing it out on firmer paper (that professional resume paper laying around the house).
If you look closely you can see where the parchment collapsed onto the cake and by sheer dumb luck didn't smear the numbers (the top was shiny smooth before, I swear!)
Don't worry Helen, your birthday's next!
What do you call the opposite of a #pinterestfail?
One of my most favorite things to do is to feed people. Even better is renting a house for a weekend with friends and making a mess in a kitchen that isn't mine!
Joel and I went upstate with a few new friends to go skiing for the first time. While I wouldn't never do it again, I chose to stay off the slopes on Day 2. Joel, of course, went from bunny slopes on Day 1 to a black diamond at the top of Day 2. I, on the other hand, had the whole kitchen to myself all day! I planned out the menu and got stumped on dessert. But I tried my hand at an improvised crostata I saw Giada bake with Bobby Flay (thank god for xFinity streaming-- don't get me started on my TV addiction). Success! Super easy, cheap and super fast! #recipetrifecta
I'm usually not a big fan of pie for two reasons - cooked fruit and excessive filling, I just want the crust. But the beauty of this free-form pie is you can't overfill it!
While Giada's is far more complicated, I've found quick success with a trimmed down 5-ingredient version inspired by Meagan Micozzi's Mixed Berry Crostata from Eat Boutique:
1 Refrigerated Pie Crust
2-3 cups of fresh fruit
1 Lemon
1/4 c granulated white sugar
1/4 c unsalted butter, diced
If you can get your hands on it, get your premade crust from Trader Joe's. By far the best tasting!
Toss 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice and white sugar with the fruit.
Roll out the dough on parchment paper and pour the fruit in the middle leaving a 2-inch border for pleating. Add butter pieces and bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Immediately zest the lemon over the pie and serve.
Two tips/warnings -- it's not a pretty dessert, it's more along the rustic trend. Secondly, when you're pleating, it actually looks better when you have less pleats. Enjoy!
I'm not one to keep flowers alive -- this household doesn't have the greenest of thumbs, but after a frigid day of errands I couldn't help myself from purchasing a few bunches from Trader Joe's. I always grab a few when I walk in, but end up putting them back before checking out.
They must have just made a delivery because the colors were so vibrant! I grabbed orange ranunculuses, orange and white freesias, and fuchsia wax flowers.
I had enough flowers for 3 small arrangements. The wax flowers are amazing -- they maintain their shape and color long after you've forgotten stopped watering.
Here's a close up of one the arrangements. New Year's resolution -- keep more flowers around the house (better late than never right?)
My mother used to make these with her family in Singapore when I was very young and really, there is nothing like a homemade Singaporean Pineapple tart. It's both salty and sweet; crumbly and chewy -- perfection! Asian cookies and desserts tend to not be as sweet as their American counterparts. The closest product I could find on the market are Sunnyhills, that (surprisingly) originated in Taiwan. Of course, they do not ship to the New York. And to be honest, I was hesitant before tasting them because the rectangular shaped ones usually taste like plastic (consider yourself warned).
When the weather gets colder, I tend to retreat to the kitchen, pulling out recipes I have wanted to try-- in particular, these Singaporean style pineapple tarts. Around October of last year, I finally bit the bullet and gave it a go. I narrowed my collection of Singaporean Pineapple Tart recipes to three:
Clara, my older sister, had sent me the WSJ article almost 10 years ago, but the recipe calls for pandan leaves. If you've lived/visited Southeast Asia, you know that pandan leaves are a subtle, almost mellow flavor. I like how Food.com describes the flavor as being "crucial to Asians as vanilla is to Westerners".
One of my favorite snacks desserts growing up were these chewy steam layered 'cakes', Kuih Lapis, I would separate the layers and eat them individually-- the original fruit roll-up! Not to be confused with these equally delicious Kuih Lapis.
Pandan leaves need to be kept fresh and to be honest, I was too lazy to search for them in Chinatown, and FatBoo's version provided a perfectly pandan-free option. I was a little skeptical, since 'cloves' don't normally come to mind when brainstorming alternatives to pandan leaves, but I have since made this recipe 5 times and I just can't believe how easy it is! (tedious, like most of my projects, but easy nonetheless)
There is no need to be this fancy...this was obviously from my first attempt. I've since changed my pineapple butchering to the straight-down-i-don't-care-about-that-last-bit style.
Grating is actually the easy part- go with the smallest cut on a box grater. And on the 3rd or 4th batch, we switched from sieve to cheese cloth, so much better! (Side note: Joel indeed wasted tried to ferment pineapple juice. I do not recommend this, at all.)
This is where I'm still finding my footing-- you're looking for that golden color, but don't go overboard, remember it still has to go into the oven. We overdid it once and it was like biting into a Haribo gummy bear.
I did make one small change- I use 1 stick of salted butter (just over 100g) and use unsalted for the rest, it was too salty for me the first time!
The cookie press is truly not necessary, but Joel's Sai-Yee (aunt) sent one to me. You can also make them enclosed -- but I wasn't into it, I couldn't judge whether my dough was evenly wrapped around the filling. I also don't like the ratio of dough to jam.
Don't be too generous with the water, but the recipe called for 1/8 tsp water per egg and this is just too egg-y for me.
When we were in Hong Kong for Christmas I was able to get my hands on some fresh pandan leaves and did a taste test with family and friends. While I do prefer the pandan leaves over the cloves, it also takes forever to extract the flavor out. I usually let the pineapple jam reduce for a little over 1 hour; with the pandan leaves, we're looking at 3 hours! No thank you!
I made this batch just in time for our Chinese New Year hotpot dinner, yum! Happy Year of the Horse!
It's the first birthday of the New Year (Happy Birthday again Jessica!) and in my new found free time, I decided to bake a cake. Normally, I tend to lean towards vanilla, but every once in a while, I'll catch myself scouring the internet for a chocolate cake recipe. Not any chocolate cake, but one that's haunted my dreams! Dramatic, I know. I'm stubborn, and when I decide on something, I won't budge - I can't budge...like a barnacle (it's my inner animal spirit, don't judge me).
A fun tidbit -- the best fruit tarts in Hong Kong? They're at The Island Shangri-la's Island Gourmet. But they don't make miniatures anymore -- those were (and still are) the BEST. It's the ratio of cream, to fruit and to crust-- which was perfect! So much so that a few birthdays ago, one of my best gals, Dorian, begged the pastry chef to dig up the recipe and make a special little batch, despite discontinuing them a while ago. Best surprise birthday ever. I digress...
My point is, sometimes you fall in love with something, but you can't find that exact flavor again, ever. And no matter how many times you get your hopes up, right before you take that bite, you're let down yet again. I've let go of the fruit tarts, mainly because I've eaten enough for a lifetime, but the 'Chocolate Cake of 2003' from The Aberdeen Marina Club is a taste-memory I can't shake and I'm not even a chocolate person! I doubt that's a word or a phrase (taste-memory) but it should be. For Joel, it's Carson's coleslaw in Chicago.
There actually wasn't anything particularly spectacular about this cake, it's wasn't made from expensive chocolate; no gold leaf; it was bought from the little market outside of the club accessible to non-members, but similarly to the fruit tarts, it was so well balanced. Moist, without being dense; chocolate-y, but not overwhelmingly so; a delicious shortbread round on the bottom (which I recently discovered) and some sort of fruit preserve, I want to say raspberry, but I just can't be sure.
I don't know if you can call it an 'adaptation', but I forgot to add vanilla! Conveniently, the recipe call for 3/4 teaspoon so I stirred in 1/4 into each pan.
Straining the raspberries was annoying, but I found the best technique was to swish your spatula up and down and/or side to side. circles = no good.
If you're like me, you probably forgot to let the butter sit out. Here's a tip: take out your day's stresses and flatten the butter with a rolling pin, let it for a few minutes, and it'll come to room temp faster.
Because I was combining 2 different recipes, I ended up with a lot more raspberry filling then what was called for with the blackberry preserves. I 'dressed' 2 cake layers with raspberry filling and then put them out on the balcony to freeze, protecting the layers from bleeding when I started with the buttercream.
And finally, the pièce de résistance! (pre Martha Stewart inspired decorations of course)
All in all a success! Hands down, the best chocolate cake recipe I've ever made from scratch. The verdict is still out on frosting- on one hand, a lot of people who don't normally eat frosting did finish it, they liked that it wasn't too sweet and enjoyed the firmer texture. But I think I'd have to agree with Matt, it could have been lighter/fluffier. I'll definitely make this again, but perhaps a fluffier buttercream filling with this butter cream on the outside, almost like a fondant encasing.
And because you'll probably want to make this cake right away, I feel the need to remind you of Bruce Bogtrotter's fateful tale:
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