in my tiny kitchen

Vanilla Cranberry Birthday Cake

2011-12-19T14:29:00.004-05:00

This cake is adapted from Gourmet's Cranberry Vanilla Coffeecake. I wanted to bake a layer cake for a birthday party using my last leftover cranberries from Thanksgiving (kept in the freezer.) I baked this cake following the recipe exactly once before and love how lovely the cake looked when cut. It had a bright red layer of the berries suspended in the middle of the cake. Too bad I couldn't take any good picture of the cake after it was cut. My camera is crappy in low light.

I made one an a half recipe and baked in 2 9-inch round cake pan for about 40 minutes in 325 degrees oven. I lowered the oven temperature a little because I wanted flat cakes. The cake was frosted with simple cream cheese frosting which I thought was the best part of the cake. Somehow the cake came out very wheaty. I don't know how to explain it. It smelled like I used whole wheat flour in the cake although I didn't. Maybe it's an old bag of flour. Other than the wheaty smell the cake was delicious. It was a little dense but moist, a little sour but sweet enough. And the frosting on it was fluffy and creamy.

Ingredients

1 1/2 sticks butter at room temperature
2 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean
3 eggs
3 cups flour
3 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
3 cups cranberries (9 oz.)

Directions

Adjust the oven rack to upper third and lower third. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease 2 9-inch round pans and line with parchment paper.
In a food processor, whirl sugar and scraped seed from the vanilla bean together a few times.
Beat butter and 1 3/4 cups sugar together with an electric mixer. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addition.
Add cranberries into the food processor and pulse with the remaining sugar until chopped.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
Stir flour mixture into the batter in 3 batches alternately with milk.
Spoon a quarter of the batter into each prepared pan. (I just eyeballed it.) Spread the chopped cranberries over the batter. Spoon the rest of the batter on top.
Bake for about 40 minutes. Rotate and switch the pans half way though baking.
Let cool in the pan for a couple of minutes then turn into a cooling rack to let cool completely.

Cream cheese frosting

1 stick butter at room temperature
2 packages of cream cheese at room temperature
1 to 2 cups of confectioner sugar

Beat everything together with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add more sugar if the frosting is too watery. Or add a few drops of milk if it's too stiff.

Giant Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-12-19T13:47:00.002-05:00

This was the first time I baked cookies in a cast iron skillet. What a great idea!

Cookie dough pressed into a greased 11-inch cast iron pan.

It's easy enough to make cookie dough. This recipe (from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain via 101cookbooks.com) makes it even easier because:

Cold butter is mixed with sugar. No need to let the butter gets to room temperature.
No need to drop and bake the cookies in batches. The dough is pressed into a skillet and bake in one piece.
It's 100% whole wheat! Super convenient when you're out of white flour.

I only used a cup of brown sugar plus 1/2 cup of white sugar and thought they were plenty sweet. The cookies definitely tasted best warm out of the oven. They were a little bit stale 3 days after (left in a cookie jar.) But that was easily fixed by popping them in a warm oven for a few minutes.

Raw Beet and Arugula Salad with Parmesan Cheese + Butternut Squash and Spinach Salad with Walnuts

2011-12-09T15:49:00.001-05:00

This is probably the longest post title ever. I wanted to post this not because I have such awesome recipes for these salad. I mean - they are salad. You toss things that seem to go well together with some salt, pepper, good oil and good vinegar. And you get an excellent dish. This post is because sometimes simple things are just effortlessly so pretty and delicious.

For the raw beet salad, I just julienned a bulb of peeled raw beet and piled in on top of a handful of ripped arugula. Then I shaved a lot of parmesan cheese over. The dressing was just olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and freshly ground pepper.

The cheese and vinegar balanced out the spiciness of arugula, while raw beet added crunch, sweetness and a little earthiness. Plus it's just so pretty.

The second salad was roasted butternut squash over baby spinach. Whenever I get a squash, if I don't have any particular plan what to do with it. I would peel, cube and roast it in the oven. So whenever I want to, I can just grab how much ever I need from the refrigerator.

For this salad, I piled about a scant cup of the cooked squash over a mountain of baby spinach. I sprinkled about a handful of chopped walnuts over the salad to add some texture. And again, the salad is dressed with simple olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

Turkey and Kale Red Curry Fried Rice

2011-12-09T15:26:00.001-05:00

I just used up the last of the thanksgiving turkey this week. I made turkey pot pie, turkey and potato hash, stir fried turkey, and turkey stock from the carcasses and bones.

With the last of the turkey, I made fried rice with red curry paste, basil and kale.

I always keep several small cans of red curry on hand. This way I always have it and I don't have a lot of unused open cans in the refrigerator. I make curry with it (obviously). I sometimes use it in pasta. And often times, I make fried rice with it.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon cooking oil
3 cups stale cooked white rice
1 cup shredded cooked turkey meet
2 cloves garlic - minced
A knob of ginger - peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons red curry paste (more if you like it spicy.)
2 - 3 cups of kale - washed and leaves ripped into bite size, stem discarded
1 cup of basil leaves - roughly ripped
Fish sauce and red pepper flakes to taste

Directions

In a large wok or non-stick pan heat the cooking oil over medium high heat.
Cook turkey with garlic, ginger and the curry paste until slightly brown (about 4-5 minutes.) Add rice. Stir until the spice is evenly distributed.
Add kale. Season with fish sauce and pepper flake if needed. When the kale is cooked but not thoroughly wilted (just about a few minutes), turn of the heat and add basil. Reserve a few leaves for garnish.

Small Batch Whole Wheat Biscuits

2011-12-02T15:03:00.001-05:00

I'm out of all purpose flour since Thanksgiving and haven't had a chance to buy some more. Being out of flour is a bit annoying but it also gives me a chance to try something new and eat a little healthier. I sometimes add whole wheat flour to biscuits but I never used 100% whole wheat flour. The first attempt I used the regular biscuit recipe and substituted whole wheat flour for the white flour. The dough was very crumbly and dry. The resulting biscuits were also crumbly and dry.

The second attempt I increased the amount of liquid (buttermilk). The biscuits came out much nicer looking and a lot bitter texture.

Here's the recipe in case I have a need to make biscuits with 100% whole wheat flour in the future.

Ingredients - Make enough for 2 people

1 cup whole wheat flour (4 1/2 oz.)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
A pinch of salt
3 1/2 tablespoons cold butter - cut into small cubes
1/2 cup buttermilk

Ingredients

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Stir flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.
With table knives or a pastry knife, cut the butter into flour until the butter reduces to pea size chunks.
Add buttermilk and fold the dough together with a spatula. I read somewhere that using a spatula to fold liquid into the biscuit dough is better than by hand because body heat from the hands can melt butter and activate too much gluten in the flour.
Gather the dough and turn onto a lightly floured baking sheet. Pat the dough down and fold over itself a few times to create layers. Pat down to about 1/2 inch thick and cut the dough to desired shape. I like my biscuits small so I cut mine to 12 biscuits.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Serve immediately.

Cranberry Sauce Mini Cakes

2011-11-28T22:09:00.001-05:00

Here's another idea for the leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving dinner. These are actually my regular cupcake recipe with some cranberry sauce. I just spooned the batter up to only a quarter full in a muffin pan because I don't have any mini muffin pan. These mini cakes are like a cross between cupcakes and cookies. They were soft and fluffy like cake. They also had nice caramelized outer crumbs and are small like cookies.

Ingredients - make 24 mini cakes or 12 cupcakes

1 stick butter at room temperature

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup cranberry sauce

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two muffin pans if making mini cakes or one pan if making cupcakes. (I baked half in muffin pans and the other half in silicone baking cups. That's how I got scalloped mini cakes.)

With an electric mixer, beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well between each addtion.

Combine flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl.

Stir flour mixture into the wet ingredients in 3 batches alternately with buttermilk. Stir in the cranberry
sauce.

Spoon into the prepared pans up to a quarter full if making mini cakes or up to 3/4 full if making cupcakes.

Bake for 15 minutes for mini cakes or 20 minutes for cupcakes. Let cool for a couple of minutes in the pans and turn out onto a cooling racks to cool completely.

Keep the cooled cakes in air tight container for a few days or in the refrigerator to keep longer.

Mini Apple Pies

2011-11-28T21:50:00.001-05:00

These pies have all the advantages of cupcakes. But they are pies - which made them even better. If you (and your friends) love pie crust, these are for you.

I cheated and use frozen pie crust from Trader Joe's. Two boxes (4 crusts) for them. I used a container that came with my set of flower cookie cutters to cut the thawed dough and line it in greased muffin pans.

For the filings, I used 8 mixed apples, juice from a lemon, 1/2 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, 2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg.

The fillings and 4 pie crusts were just enough for 24 mini pies.

After brushing the top crust with some egg wash, I baked them in 350 degrees oven for about 25 minutes.

I think I will double the amount of sugar and spices the next time I make these. Since each pie doesn't get so much filling, I feel like they need a little more intense flavor and sweetness.

Cinnamon Apple Cupcakes with Cinnamon Marshmallow Frosting

2011-10-29T17:10:00.002-04:00

I'm hooked on marshmallow frosting. Not that it's more delicious than any other frosting (it is delicious but I still love cream cheese frosting). It is just so fluffy and easy to make even when I only have eggs and some sugar in the house (granulate sugar! no need for confectioner sugar!) And since Brooklyn is attacked by a sudden snow storm today, these seem the most appropriate to bake. I'm not going anywhere in this slush unless I must.

These cupcakes are not your whimsy apple cupcakes with traces of apple. I used 3 large apples. You get pieces of the fruit in every bite. They are moist and soft. Top that with billowy and light frosting with a little kick from cinnamon. I think I need to take a break from typing to get one in my belly right now.

Ingredients - Make 28 cupcakes

2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup apple cider (or just use milk)

3 apples - peeled, cored, and chopped

Directions

Adjust the oven racks to upper third and lower third. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two muffin pans with liners.

With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addtion.

Combine flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a clean bowl.

Stir (the mixer lowest setting )flour mixture into the egg/butter mixture in 3 batches with apple cider in between the batch. Add chopped apple.

When the batter is combined spoon into the prepared muffin pans up to 3/4 full. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes. Rotate and switch pans half way through baking.

Let the cupcakes cool in the pan for a minute before letting cool on a cooling rack. If there's more batter, bake the second batch.

Cinnamon Marshmallow Frosting

3 egg whites

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

While the cupcakes cool, make frosting. In a small saucepan, melt sugar in water over low heat. While waiting for the sugar to melt, beat egg whites with an electric mixer and wire attachment at high speed until foamy. Add cream of tartar. Keep the mixer running and add a steady stream of melted sugar. Add cinnamon. Whip until the whites form stiff peak.

Pile the frosting onto the cupcakes.

Green Tomatoes

2011-10-29T12:31:00.002-04:00

I just saved these last tomatoes from the sudden snow attack in Brooklyn.

What should I do with them?

My first thought is to make a salad. But a friend suggested frying them and put in omelette. Maybe I'll do that.

Update

I ended up making fried green tomatoes.

Those little tomatoes were a pain to batter and fry. The were a bit too juicy and sour. But with some salt, pepper and deep frying - everything is delicious. I slathered some mayonnaise on no-knead bread (freshly baked this morning!), arranged a few of the fried tomatoes on top, sprinkled with sea salt and got a very delicious sandwich for lunch.

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

2011-10-24T19:22:00.002-04:00

This recipe on Hersheys.com is called Deep Dark Chocolate Cake and Especially Dark Chocolate Cake and Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake.

Yep. All three chocolate cakes are the same recipe - just with slightly different frosting.

I substituted boiling water with a cup of leftover coffee I made for breakfast in a French press. And look what I found: Black Magic Cake!

I should call these cupcakes "Especially Perfectly Chocolate Deep Dark Black Magic Cup Cakes."

Enough with the names. Now with how they tasted. Exactly what the name said. They were especially dark and perfectly chocolate and black magic little cakes. But the frosting brought them to another level of perfection. I melted 2 cups of dark (72%) chocolate chips and beat it with a stick of butter and a little bit more sugar and coffee.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 cup cocoa powder (More cocoa powder! Natural - not Dutch process.)
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cups sugar (I reduced the amount of sugar by 1/2 cup.)
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used light tasting olive oil.)
1 cup milk (I used soy milk.)
2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
1 cup strong black coffee

Directions

Adjust the oven racks to the upper third and lower third. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two muffin pans with liners.
In a large bowl, sift flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder together.
In another bowl, beat sugar, eggs, oil, milk and vanilla extract together with a whisk.
Stir flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Add coffee. Stir until combined.
Pour the (very watery) batter into the prepared pans. Up to 2/3 for each cupcake. (I first poured the batter into a liquid measuring cup with a spout. Then pour from the measuring cup to the pans.)
Bake for 20 to 22 minutes. Rotate and switch the pans about 12 minutes through baking. Make 28 cupcakes.

Dark Chocolate Frosting

2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips (I used Guittard 72% Chocolate.)
1 stick butter at room temperature
1/4 cup confectioner sugar
1/4 cup strong black coffee

Melt chocolate chips using your preferred method. (Mine used to be in a microwave. But I don't have one now so I just melt them in a saucepan over very low flame. I turned off the burner when the chocolate was halfway melted and let the rest melt from residue heat. I didn't bother with double boiler.) Let the melted chocolate cool.
With an electric mixer, beat butter with confectioner sugar. Add the melted chocolate. Mix well. Add half the coffee. If the frosting is still too thick add more coffee.

Apple Cake

2011-10-17T16:13:00.004-04:00

I made this cake 3 times in the past month. It's that good. The recipe (from Dorie Greenspan's Around my French Table) is very simple without any added spice except for vanilla and rum (which I skip without any problem.) The recipe lets the fruit shine while keep it nice and sweet - not overly healthy tasting. This is a solution for the abundant of apples when you don't feel like making pies because the recipe calls for a lot of apples - more apples that your regular apple cake.

In this batch, I mixed some pears with variety of apples.

The recipe calls for an 8-inch springform pan which I don't have. I baked mine in a 9-inch pan with 1.5 times the ingredients for 1 hour and 25 minutes in 350 degrees oven.

Here's my calculation:

I ended up using 10 apples/pears because they varied in sizes. Some of them are really tiny. Don't worry if the final batter looks too fruity and chunky. The fruit will shrink in the oven. The cake was delicious by itself both when warm and after days in the refrigerator. It's extra delicious served with cinnamon whipped cream or this Adirondack cardamom ice cream.

Baked Oatmeal with Blueberries and Bananas

2011-09-25T12:42:00.003-04:00

This dish is like bread pudding made with oatmeal. It's gently sweet from a little bit of sugar and all the fruit. It's moist, soft with some crunch from walnuts and very satisfying. I actually like it better after it's been in the refrigerator for a while rather than warm and fresh out of the oven. I pretend it's dessert rather than breakfast.Find the very well written recipe here. I love it that ingredients were given by both weight and mass. I substituted soy milk for milk and used frozen blueberries without any problem.

Onion Tart

2011-09-25T12:30:00.001-04:00

What do you do with 20 tomatoes, 20 sweet peppers and 40 onions? Those were what I was given cumulatively from my CSA in the past couple of weeks. I don't like leaving food to waste. So my diet have been consisting of all these vegetables. But how do you make a dent to such abundance?It was easy with the tomatoes. A couple batches of tomato sauce took care of them. I used an onion here an there in stir-fries, fried rice, fried noodle, soup, sauce, salsa, omelette, you name it. Onions are quite versatile little vegetable. That aside, I still have a lot of onions. So I devised a dish that stars the onions - onion tart. I would be just like the French - I said to myself. Don't the eat a lot of onions?I bought a roll of phyllo dough - organic, no less. I lined a few sheets of it in a pie pan and baked in 375 degree oven while chopping up 8 onions (The whole apartment smelled like onion for two days.) and stir frying them in a cast iron pan with olive oil, then seasoned with a few sprigs of fresh thyme, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Then, I sprinkled some crumbled feta cheese (about 1/3 cup) over baked phyllo dough, piled on the cooked onions and some more feta cheese on top. I baked it for about 10 more minutes and voila! An onion tart! This is probably the simplest onion tart ever. The French would have complicated things a little more with reduced sauce and stuff. But this tart is good. Cooked onions are mild and sweet. And they don't give me onion breath.Now, what should I do with all the sweet peppers?

Chocolate Cupcakes with Marshmallow Frosting

2011-09-25T12:04:00.002-04:00

I dream of fluffy, billowy, disappear-in-your-mouth marshmallow frosting ever since I discovered it and constantly tried to find an occasion for it. These cupcakes were for a birthday party where the raspberry cake was requested. I made the cake. These were added bonus. You could never have too many cakes. The cupcake recipe is here and the frosting here.

Raspberry Cake

2011-08-28T17:44:00.000-04:00

This is the layer cake version of the popular/most-requested-for-birthday raspberry cupcakes.

I doubled the recipe and baked the cake in two nine inch round cake pans for about 45 minutes.

After the cakes cooked, I frosted it with the same raspberry cream cheese frosting and dotted the top with fresh raspberries.

The cake looks beautiful. It was moist and balancedly sweet and tart. I just got two requests for this cake for future birthdays.

Lemon Banana Bread

2011-08-26T16:31:00.005-04:00

Lemon makes everything better. Well, almost everything and the right amount of it anyway. I was skeptical about adding lemon to banana bread. But it made these muffins feel so light and taste so good that I have to give it a try.

It was good. To quote the boyfriend, this is the best thing to happen to over ripe old bananas.

Adapted from Cooking Light's Basic Banana Bread. I skipped the glaze, upped the bananas, reduced the sugar and replaced all the spice with juice and zest from a large lemon. I also made this dairy free by using oil instead of melted butter and used lemon juice + soy milk instead of yogurt and milk.

Here's what I got:
Ingredients

5 medium very ripe bananas - mashed

1/3 cup soy milk mix with juice from 1 lemon (It will thicken and curdle.)

1/4 cup light tasting olive oil

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

Juice and zest from one lemon
1 1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup ground flax seed

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 tea salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a loaf pan or line it with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk bananas, curdled soy milk, oil, eggs, sugar and lemon together.

Combine flour, flax, baking soda and salt in a clean bowl. Pour into the egg mixture and stir until just combined.

Pour into the prepared loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour. Let cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning into a cooling rack.

Coconut Cupcakes

2011-08-26T15:22:00.003-04:00

I kick myself for waiting too long to make this Marshmallow aka 7-Minute Frosting. I chose a recipe without corn syrup and the one where I don't have to cook the eggs. I don't mind eating raw eggs. I think my eggs are fresh enough and they came from a reliable farmer that they wouldn't get anybody sick.

This is the fluffiest, the most meltinyourmouth frosting ever. And it made a LOT of frosting. I used 2 egg whites and a cup of sugar. I got more than enough frosting for 2 dozens cupcakes!

I followed my favorite cupcake recipe for the cupcake. After they cooled, I frosted them with the frosting and dipped them in unsweetened coconut flakes. So simple, elegant and yummy.

Marshmallow Frosting

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

2 egg whites

1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

Directions

In a small sauce pan over medium low heat, melt sugar with water. Turn of the heat when all the granular melted. Careful not to boil.

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar with a really clean (no grease) mixer until soft peak forms. Slowly pour hot syrup into the eggs while the mixer is running. Keep mixing until a stiff peak forms and the frosting is shiny.

Tomato Frittata

2011-08-26T15:07:00.001-04:00

I searched high and low for some recipes that use a ton of tomatoes. The first thought was tomato sauce. But pasta is out of the question. The boyfriend and I had a big argument about pasta a while back that I decided not to make pasta at home any more. And whenever we have a big argument about insignificant issues, we agreed that one of us should yell "PASTA!" to remind ourselves about the incident.

To my delight, I found the New York Times' Tomato Frittata. It's one of the few frittata recipes I found that do not use any cheese. Follow the link and look at the picture. And now look at mine below. It's pretty close right?.... And delicious!

I skipped the milk, added some fish sauce (I can't cook without it. When I ran out of fish sauce, I even dreamed that I was in an adventure hunt for it.) and used thyme and oregano as herbs.

It was enough as dinner for two with a side salad and breakfast for two. Eggs are just awesome.

Cucumber Mint Sorbet

2011-07-30T12:12:00.003-04:00

Two cucumber posts in a row. Not that they are my favorite fruit (or vegetable?). I just happen to have a lot of them from the CSA. This batch of sorbet used up 3 cucumbers! Yay! And it tastes good. When I mentioned the idea to a couple of people, one said that sounded gross and the other said that sounded like something a Brooklyn restaurant would serve. So I went for it.

And it was good. Really good, in fact. It was just sweet enough, cool and refreshing. Perfect for a hot summer day. Best of all, it's very simple to make.

Ingredients

3 medium cucumbers - peeled

A handful of mint leaves

1/4 cup Agave nectar

Directions

Blend everything together until smooth in a blender. Pour into an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. Enjoy!

Cucumber Salad

2011-07-26T01:25:00.004-04:00

I came to the conclusion that fish sauce makes everything taste good. Well, almost everything. At lease all savory food. This salad is just cucumber tossed with some mint, fish sauce, a little bit of honey and lemon juice. And it was good and refreshing. I would have added some chopped chilies to make it even better. But the boyfriend can't eat spicy food. So that's what I had to settle for. I don't particularly cucumbers because they make me burp weird. But I cleaned this salad.

Ingredients

2 medium cucumbers - peeled, seeded and sliced (To see the cucumbers, I halved them length-wise and scraped the seeds of with a spoon.)

1 tablespoon fish sauce

Juice from 1 lemon

1/2 teaspoon honey

A handful of mint leaves - chopped

Directions

Toss everything in a large bowl. Serve immediately.

Lemon Thyme Yellow Squash Muffins

2011-07-26T00:50:00.003-04:00

During the past month, I have been getting a couple of either zucchinis or yellow squashes from my CSA every single week. The boyfriend doesn't eat squashes or zucchinis. So it falls to me to not waste the food. I mostly used them in salad and fried rice. The last attempt at zucchini muffins from this recipe turned out disastrous. The whole batch was bitter with metallic after taste from un-activated baking soda.

I was scarred and afraid of any kind of zucchini bread ever since. But that was no more. The abundance of summer squashes needs its channel. I decided to try again. This time with a recipe using much less baking soda. Plus I adapted to add lemon juice to make sure that all of the chemical gets activated leaving no after taste.

I also added fresh thyme (which I got from the same CSA at the beginning of the season as potted herb) to make thing more interesting. The result is very satisfying. The muffins came out light, moist and sweet. They are a little bit tart and fragrant with thyme. This one is a keeper. The only thing I might change the next time is that I might make 8 muffins instead of 6 to make the muffins prettier. These came out with flat top overflowing the pan. But then again, I love eating muffin tops. So I might just leave them be.

Ingredients - adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon fresh thyme - leaves picked

1 cup grated yellow squash - with skin, seeds and all

zest and juice from 1 lemon

1/4 cup light tasting olive oil

1 egg

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease 6 cups of a muffin pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, sugar and thyme.

In another bowl, whisk the egg with oil. Add grated squash, lemon zest and juice. Pour over the flour mixture. Stir until moist.

Spoon into the prepared muffin pan. Fill 3 of the empty cups with water up to half full. Bake for 25 to 28 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning onto a cooling rack.

Stir Fried Garlic Chicken

2011-07-26T00:27:00.003-04:00

This is another dish I tried half-successfully to re-create. This one is called Gai-Pad-Gra-Tiem-Prik-Thai as in stir fried chicken with garlic and ground pepper. The original version is shocked-full of fried and crunchy garlic with a trailing heat from ground black and white pepper. The dish is quite dry. The meat is dark in color from the "black soy sauce" which is the thicker and sweeter kind of soy sauce than what you can find in normal supermarkets.

My version was very tasty but that's where the similarity ends. My dish was not dotted with crunchy garlic. It wasn't quite spicy enough or dark enough. Regardless, it's something delicious I can make from ingredients I already have in the house.

Ingredients - make about 3-4 portions when served over rice.

1 1/2 pounds chicken breast - cut into bite size pieces

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 teaspoon brown sugar

1 head of garlic - peeled and minced

Ground white pepper and ground black pepper

1 tablespoon cooking oil

Directions

Marinate the chicken with fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar while chopping up garlic and frying it.

In a large pan over medium high heat, stir garlic in oil until lightly brown.

Add chicken. Stir occasionally until cooked through. Add ground pepper. Serve over steam jasmine rice.

Fresh Peach Cream Cake

2011-07-08T14:30:00.002-04:00

Here is the cake that first inspired me to bake: Strawberry Cream Cake. I saw its pictures. I read the recipe. I imagined how it would taste. I begged people to make one for me to no avail. Then I ordered a mixer online and baked my first cake.

I have come a long way since then. I'm no longer afraid to use plenty of sugar, butter and white flour if it will make my baked goods taste awesome. I also gained about 15 pounds. I also learned to substitute ingredients and to experiment.

For this, I used peaches instead of strawberries. I also did not cook the filling, just macerated chopped peaches in sugar.

I served the cake in the 4th of July party and it was a hit. Even people who don't eat dessert love it. Fresh peaches gave it refreshing, light and cool feeling while contrasting nicely with soft and sweet cream. Juice from the peach also kept the cake moist.

I followed the original recipe for the cake and cream portions. Here's what I did with the peaches:

Peel, pit and slice 4 large peaches. Reserve the better looking half and chop the other half.

Combine chopped peaches with 3 tablespoons of sugar and let stand for 15 minutes.

When the cake is ready and cool, slice the cake horizontally in half. Spoon half the macerated peaches on top of the bottom layer cake. Line the outside with sliced peaches. Spoon about half a cup of whipped cream over. Then stack the top half of the cake on top.

Pile the rest of whipped cream on the top layer cake. Spoon the rest of macerated peaches in the middle and arrange the rest of sliced peaches all around. Keep refrigerated until serving time.

Honey Lemon Blueberry Walnut Ice Cream

2011-07-08T13:56:00.003-04:00

While the berries are still plenty, there is no better way to eat them than in ice cream especially when the weather is scorchingly hot. But for those who can't digest dairy, soy, and don't like stabilizer in canned coconut milk (like the finicky eating boyfriend), the raw food people have given us the raw walnut ice cream. I thank you for that.

This is the simplest ice cream recipe you will ever encounter. You just blend all the ingredients together then pour it into an ice cream maker until ready. The ice cream comes out not exactly super creamy. There's a little bit of texture to it. But it's definitely smooth enough without any nutty flavor.

Ingredients

1 cup raw walnuts

1 cup water

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Zest from 1 lemon

1/4 cup honey

Pasta with Red Curry Tuna

2011-07-08T13:27:00.003-04:00

We have this dish called Kanom Jeen. It's an intricately cooked, smooth and creamy fish curry served over soft fresh rice noodle along side various vegetables like bean sprouts, fresh cabbage, pickled cabbage, string beans, cucumbers, morning glory vegetables and basil.

When I first served this to a friend, here was my disclaimer:

"This is kind of like the Thai dish called Kanom Jeen except that I used pasta instead of fresh rice noodle, canned tuna instead of fresh fish, red curry paste instead of Konom Jeen curry paste, frozen peas which do not exist in Thailand instead of all other vegetables."

Basically, it's nothing like the original dish. But heh... it tastes good and it's easy and convenient to make.

Ingredients - make about 4 servings

1 pound uncooked pasta - any long thin pasta will do

2 cans tuna in water

1 can coconut milk

1 tablespoon Thai red curry paste (also from a can)

1 cup frozen peas

1 cup basil - leaves picked

Fish sauce to taste, salt to season pasta water, and some oil to keep cooked pasta from sticking together (I used lard.)

Directions

Cook pasta according to the directions on its packaging. Strain and stir in about a tablespoon of oil to keep it from sticking together.

While the pasta is cooking, stir curry paste in coconut milk. Strain the tuna and add to the coconut milk in a large saucepan over medium heat . Break tuna chunks into tiny pieces. Add frozen peas. Season with fish sauce. Turn off the heat. Rib basil and add to the curry. Reserve a few basil leaves for plating.

Serve the curry over pasta with a few reserved basil on top.

Laab Moo (Thai Ground Pork Salad)

2011-07-08T13:11:00.002-04:00

I don't know if this qualifies as salad. It does involve cooking (the pork.) And majority portion of the dish is the pork. And we normally eat it warm with rice and/or other fresh vegetables (like cabbages and cucumbers.) But once you have all the ingredients together, all you have to do is toss everything together.

Don't let the cooked pork and "warm" salad fool you though. This dish is refreshing (from mint and lime) and filling at the same time.

Laab with cooked jasmine rice.

Ingredients

1/2 pound ground pork

1 tablespoon uncooked rice

1 bunch of fresh mint - picked for leaves

1 lime

1 teaspoon crushed dried red pepper

Fish sauce

Directions

In a large non-stick pan, toast a tablespoon of rice until it start to brown slightly. Let cool a little then transfer to a spice grinder (I used clean coffee grinder) and grind for 5 to 10 seconds.

Cook the pork on the stove top on that same non-stick pan without any added oil or seasoning. Stir occasionally.

When the pork is thoroughly cooked, transfer into a large salad bowl. Add ground toasted rice, mint leaves, lime juice, dried pepper and fish sauce.

Carrot Bran Muffins with Streusel Topping

2011-05-14T09:11:00.005-04:00

This is a great recipe: Streusel Carrot Muffins from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain. It's a coffee cake disguised as muffins. But it has all the healthy breakfast stuff like lots of oat bran, whole grain flour, carrots and not so much sugar. That said, I couldn't leave the recipe alone.

I didn't have spelt flour. So I substituted with sorghum flour which I have left from way back when I experimented with gluten free baking. My carrots are tiny so I grated 4 of them. I got 2 cups and ended up using all of it. I didn't have allspice. So I upped the cinnamon and added a bit of cloves. I didn't want to melt butter. So I used oil. I didn't have buttermilk. So I substituted with soy milk and lemon juice.

The muffins came out moist, mildly spicy with sweet, buttery and crunchy streusel. I knew streusel was the key so I went all out - followed the recipe to the T (well - except I substituted whole wheat flour for spelt flour.) What a great idea to incorporate bran in the toppings. Here's what I ended up using:

Ingredients - adapted from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain

1 cup sorghum flour

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup oat bran

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

2 tablespoons light tasting olive oil

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1 cup soy milk mixed with juice from 1 lemon

2 cups grated carrot

Streusel

1/3 cup whole wheat flour

2 tablespoons oat bran

3 tablespoons raw sugar

A pinch of salt

3 tablespoons cold butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin pan with liners. (I didn't want a mess from all the crumbs when trying to extract the muffins from the pan. Normally I don't use liners with muffins.) I got 11 muffins from this recipe.

Combine sorghum flour, all purpose flour, oat bran, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and cloves in a large bowl.

In another clean bowl, whiks oil, sugar, egg and soy milk + lemon juice together. Add to the flour mixture. Add grated carrots. Fold the ingredients together until only a few streaks remain.

Spoon into the prepared muffin pan. Set aside.

Make the streusel. In a clean bowl, combine all the streusel ingredients. Rub everything together with fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over the batter.

Fill the empty space with water. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool in the pan for a few minutes. Remove from the pan and let cool on a cooling rack.

Cinnamon Sugar Cupcakes

2011-05-13T20:15:00.000-04:00

These don't sound very exciting but they tasted divined. Imagine a cross of sugar donuts and cinnamon bread. The secret is cinnamon sugar. Generous amount of both cinnamon and sugar on top of the cupcakes gives them a boost of cinnamon plus crunchy texture above a velvety smooth cream cheese frosting. Before you know it, you already inhale the whole thing into your belly.

Ingredients for 28 - 30 cupcakes

2 sticks butter at room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 large eggs

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup buttermilk (I used 1 cup of soy milk plus juice from two lemon.)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pan with liners.

With an electric mixer, beat sugar with butter for a few minutes until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addition. Scrape the bowl with a spatula a couple of times.

In a clean bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.

Alternately stir in the flour mixture and buttermilk into the butter in 3 batches using the lowest setting of the food processor until no streaks are left.

Spoon into the prepared muffin pan up to 3/4 full depending on how big you want the cupcakes. (I only filled to half full.) Bake for 18 to 22 minutes or until the cupcakes start to brown on the edges and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Rotate the pan half way through the baking time.

Let cool in the pan for a few minutes. Turn out and cool on a cooling rack.

Frosting

1 80z package cream cheese at room temperature

1 stick butter at room temperature

1 cup confectioner sugar

Cinnamon Sugar

3 tablespoons sugar

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

Mix sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Set aside.

With a clean electric mixer, beat cream cheese, butter and confectioner sugar until fluffy start with a low setting and gradually go up.

Frost the cooled cupcakes. Dip them in cinnamon sugar.

Raspberry Oat Bran Muffins

2011-05-02T19:59:00.003-04:00

Can you tell what my favorite berries of the moment are? Here's a hint. I used them in cupcakes, ice cream, and now muffins. I wanted a quick and convenient breakfast but these are great afternoon snack. I made them low in fat, dairy-free with extra fiber from bran. They are slightly sweet and shock-full of berries.

Ingredients - adapted from Eating Well's Banana Bran Muffins

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup light tasting olive oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup oat bran

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk (I used a cup of soy milk mixed with juice from a lemon.)

1 1/2 cups frozen raspberries

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a muffin pan.

In a large bowl, whisk eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla together until well mixed.

In another clean bowl, combine whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, oat bran, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Pour the flour mixture and buttermilk into the egg mixture. Stir until just combined - fewer than 10 strokes. Do not over stir.

Slightly break the frozen raspberries into pieces so that they don't clump together. Fold into the batter.

Divide the batter into the greased muffin pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

Red Wine Raspberry Ice Cream (Dairy Free and Raw!)

2011-05-02T13:17:00.002-04:00

I still couldn't believe it - this raw walnut ice cream - how smooth and creamy it was and how easy it was to make. So I gave it another try. This time I got fancy and added all kinds of things I have in the refrigerator.

And there it was. Delicious, velvety ice cream - if you can call it that since there's no cream in it.

Ingredients

1 cup raw walnut pieces

3/4 water

1/4 cup fruity red wine (I used pinot noire.)

1/2 cup frozen raspberries

1/4 cup honey (or more if you want it sweeter.)

Directions
Blend everything together in a blender until smooth. Pour into a running ice cream maker and let churn according to the machine's instructions.

Raspberry Cupcakes

2011-04-30T19:54:00.003-04:00

These are everybody's new favorite cupcakes (surpassing the green tea which was so last year.) I think it's the color because all I did differently from any other cupcakes was just adding a bunch of frozen raspberries into the cake batter and frosting. I guess the berries also contributed to how moist the cupcakes remained even after days in the refrigerator.

Ingredients - for 18 cupcakes

1 stick butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar (8 oz.)

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (6 3/8 oz/.)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup buttermilk (I substituted with 1/2 cup of soymilk mixed with lemon juice from a lemon.)

1/2 cup frozen raspberries

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar together for a few minutes until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addition.

In a clean bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Stir flour into the butter mixture alternately with buttermilk in 3 batches until just combined.

Slightly break the frozen raspberries so they don't clump together and fold into the batter with a spatula. They don't need to get thoroughly mixed. I think the pink streaks in the batter are pretty.

Drop by tablespoon into lined muffin pan up to half full and bake for 18 to 20 minutes. Let cool completely on a cooling rack before frosting.

Raspberry cream cheese frosting

1/2 stick butter at room temperature

1 package of 8 oz. cream cheese at room temperature

1 cup confectioner sugar

1/4 cup frozen raspberries

To make the frosting, beat all the ingredients together with an electric mixer attached with wire attachment - start with a low speed so that the sugar doesn't blow up all over the place. Once everything is nicely mixed and fluffy, frost.

Parsley Hummus

2011-04-30T19:52:00.002-04:00

The next time you want to spice up your plain hummus without the heat of chilies, try this: add a bunch of parsley. Not only that it's pretty, it tasted fresh and awesome (if you like parsley.)

I blended about 2 cups of chickpeas (soaked overnight and cooked in water for about an hour) with about 1/4 cup of Tahini, 2 cloves of garlic and some salt in a food processor. Then added about 1/2 a bunch of fresh parsley.

Basil Lime Cupcakes

2011-04-30T19:49:00.005-04:00

These cupcakes were meant to be green - for a friend's birthday which falls on St. Patrick's day although he has nothing to do with being Irish whatsoever. Oh well. I tried my best. They didn't look as green as I had hoped for but they had interesting flavor combination. Interesting. I didn't love it. I used a quarter cup of basil but I felt like I still didn't get enough of basil scent. Maybe I need to seep it in vodka or some kind of fat first? Anyhow, these are good lime cupcakes with something weird mixed in. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

1 stick butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/4 cup fresh basil - finely chopped

Juice 2 limes

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup yogurt or buttermilk

Frosting

1/2 package cream cheese - at room temperature

1/2 stick butter - at room temperature

1 cup confectioner sugar

Zest from 2 limes

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar together until fluffy - about 2 to 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addition. Add lime zest and chopped basil.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda.

Alternately stir in flour mixture and buttermilk to the butter in 3 batches. Stir until just combined.

Spoon into lined muffin pan and bake for 18 to 20 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting. Make 18 cupcakes.

To make the frosting, beat everything together with a clean mixer and wire attachment until fluffy.

Raisin Shortbread Cookies

2011-03-14T11:59:00.002-04:00

What to do with the rest of raisins when you're done with soda bread? Definitely make these.

Raisin Shortbreads from JoyOfBaking.com

There is something wonderful about simply baking flour, butter and sugar which makes shortbread cookies. Think about soft buttery flaky thing in your mouth. That plus warm chewy and sweet raisins. (We couldn't wait for it to cool down before cutting and finishing the whole thing. I only got one low light picture of it before it disappeared. Even people who disliked raisins loved them.)

Soda Bread With Raisins

2011-03-14T11:54:00.005-04:00

I didn't understand what the fuss was about with Irish Soda Bread. The only time I tasted it before this was in the dry stale tasteless quick bread somebody brought to the office for St. Patrick's day. Every year around this time, I see recipes for it popping up all over the internet. So I went out and bought a box of raisins and baked this Irish Soda Bread with Raisins.

Wow. This is basically a giant scone with crunchy delicious top. The bread was flavorful and just sweet enough from a few tablespoons of sugar and a bunch of raisins.

Lesson from this story: never trust any leftover food in the office's kitchen.

Best Cocoa Brownies

2011-03-07T22:10:00.001-05:00

I don't make very many brownies. But whenever I stop by a coffee shop, I always secretly feel a need to buy one. I never did - just because that's exactly the thing I can bake at home. I just don't.

Then came Valentines day when I had a strong urge to bake brownies. It was a miserable failure. Since then I had been dreaming of gooey-moist-deep-dark-chocolate brownies. And this was it. I went out of my way and bought the fancy Valrhona cocoa powder just for this occasion.

These brownies are almost like a giant square of chocolate truffle. They are so rich and creamy that I - who can eat a pie in one sitting - can only finish a small square at a time.

Here's the recipe: Best Cocoa Brownies (I reduced the sugar to 3/4 cup. The brownies were still plenty sweet for me.)

Raw Beet and Apple Salad

2011-03-04T12:52:00.002-05:00

I thought long and hard about what salad to serve in last weekend's dinner party with all kinds of food restriction. I wanted a simple salad that I could toss and serve but I didn't want anything boring like just tossing greens with oil and vinegar. Then I came across beetroot, red apple and watercress salad from Jamie Oliver. It sounded perfect. I had raw beets a couple of times in restaurant. They were crunchy and sweet and pretty.

The night before the party, I made it for myself. Bless me. The salad tasted earthy - as in it tasted like dirt. Raw beets are really earthy. Lemon juice wasn't strong enough to over power it. But there was no going back. I already did all the shopping. So I went for it with a few changes.

I julienne the beets and apples and tossed the salad in balsamic vinegar instead of lemon juice.

The result was sweet and crunchy (and very pretty) salad. I patted myself in the back 10 times.

Ingredients

1 small beet - julienned

1 Gala apple - cored and julienned

A bowl of mix green salad

A glug of balsamic vinegar

A glug of extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

Directions

Toss all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Adjust vinegar, oil, salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Raw Chocolate Walnut Ice Cream

2011-03-04T12:32:00.003-05:00

I had a dinner party at my apartment last weekend. It was quite challenging with all the food restrictions of my guests. Here's the list:

Diner #1 does not eat beef.

Diner #2 does not eat pork.

Diner #3 is lactose intolerant and cannot eat spicy food.

Diner #4 eats nothing a.k.a he's vegan and he doesn't eat sugar.

Diner #5 - #10 eats all the things diners number #1 - #4 do not eat and more. This is a blessing - not restriction.

Here's the menu:

2 loaves of no-knead bread

Homemade hummus

Petite Basque and Humboldt Fog cheese (two of my favorites)

Raw beet and apple salad

Vegan green curry with butternut squash and green beans

Very very mild chicken massaman curry

Brown rice

Sour cream apple pie

Raw chocolate walnut ice cream

This way everybody can have some appetizer, main food and dessert.

My diner friend #4 suggested that I tried this raw ice cream recipe. It was quite amazing and extremely simple to make. You basically blend raw walnuts with water, liquid sweetener and cocoa powder and some flavoring. Then let the ice cream maker do the work. The only down size is that I couldn't blend the nuts into completely smooth velvety texture. Well, maybe that's not a bad thing. It's textured ice cream. The raw walnuts didn't leave any taste. All you could feel was a nice sweet chocolate nuttiness.

I adapted the recipe a bit to this:

2 cups raw walnuts

2 cups water

1/2 cup Agave nectar

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup cocoa

Milk and Honey Whole Wheat Bread

2011-03-04T12:00:00.003-05:00

There's a dramatic change in my life. I go to bed by 10pm and wake up before dawn. Who said the days are longer when you are up early? My days are definitely shorter. All these things that I used to do at night, I couldn't find the time to do them. These three Netflix DVD have been on my desk for weeks - unwatched. I couldn't find time to write a new post here since February 23. I couldn't finish my knitting project I started since the last life time.

I would like to think because I was born in a tiger year, I am more productive at night.

But one must embrace change. So here it is - a post in the middle of the day.

This bread is an adapted version of King Arthur Flour's Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread. I omitted butter/oil, reduced the sweetener amount and used whole milk instead of water. The bread came out very similar to the original. So why change the classic? I needed to use up all the milk. I couldn't drink a whole glass of milk. That would be very very bad to my digestive system. So I baked it.

Ingredients

14 oz. whole wheat flour

1/4 oz. salt

1/4 oz. instant yeast

1 oz honey

9 to 10 oz. milk

Directions

With an electric mixer at the lowest speed, stir all the ingredients together for 5 minutes. Let rest for 5 to 10 minutes. Run the mixer again for 5 more minutes. Add more flour if the dough is to sticky or more milk if the dough is to dry.

Ball up the dough, and let rise in a bowl covered with a plastic wrap for 1 to 1 and a half hours until the dough almost double. I used cold milk from the refrigerator so I took almost 2 hours for the dough to rise properly.

Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Gently deflate the dough. Form the dough into a log. Here's what I do -- press into a rectangular shape. Fold in the top quarter. Fold in the bottom quarter. Then fold the dough in half. Crimp the middle seam and the seams at both ends of the log.

Place into a lightly greased bread pan. Lightly oil a plastic wrap and loosely cover. Let rise for about 1 more hour until the dough rise up about an inch above the pan.

About 20 minutes before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Bake for 35 minutes. Turn out the bread and let cool for at least an hour on a cooling rack before cutting.

Plantain Peanut Bread

2011-02-23T22:26:00.003-05:00

I'm slowly getting over my not-so-great baking experience two weekends ago. I even felt adventurous and tried something new. Well, not really. I substituted plantains for bananas and peanuts for walnuts in this banana bread recipe. To reduce the risk, I baked half a recipe in two small remekins.

Why all these substitutions? The same reasons as everybody else'. I had these ingredients and not the one listed in the original recipe. And these said ingredients needed to be consumed ASAP or they would have been wasted.

The bread came out not bad at all. The plantain gave it sort of banana flavor but more on the nutty side. And peanuts - you know - are awesome whenever and wherever.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter (1 oz.) - melted

2 generous tablespoons brown sugar (1 oz.)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 generous tablespoon honey (1 oz.)

1 large ripe plantain

1 egg

A pinch of salt

1 cup whole wheat flour (4 1/2 oz.)

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 cup peanuts (1 oz.)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a clean bowl, whisk melted butter and brown sugar together. Add vanilla extract, honey, plantain and egg. Whisk until combined and the plantain breaks down into tiny pieces.

Add flour, salt and baking soda. Stir until just combined. Fold in peanuts.

Divide the batter into two remekins. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. It's delicious warm and even tastier cold the next day.

Failed Ginger Cake and Brownies

2011-02-14T16:52:00.004-05:00

My baking karma has been on a decline. On Saturday I baked ginger cake for a birthday party from this recipe. The only good part about that cake was the cream cheese frosting.

The cake was dry. The chopped ginger added weird grainy/stringy texture. And worst of all it wasn't even gingery.

If it's not my baking karma, it could be that my powder ginger is way too old that it has lost its chi. Or that I overbaked the cake (I baked the cake in two 9 inch cake pans for 30 minutes.) Or that I left the cake out for too long (20 hours uncovered) before frosting.

I might have solved all these dry-non-gingery-cake problems, had I trusted my instinct to make a ginger syrup to soak the cake.

To make the matters worse, I decided to bake brownies for Valentines. I went with this recipe because I have an old box of unsweetened chocolate (first mistake.) And then I decided not to follow the recipe at all because I don't have a microwave to melt the chocolate and I didn't have enough butter (HUGE mistake.)

The brownies, although looking very pretty cut out with my heart cookie cutter, were dry, crumbly and not very chocolaty. I'm trying to decide whether I should damage control by stopping baking for now. Cutting my lost by just throw away the rest of the brownies. Or whether I should not waste the dry brownies and improvise chocolate pudding out of them (and very possibly post another failed baking attempt for your amusement.)

Maybe the Universe is trying to tell me something. How do one increase one's baking karma?

Carrot Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

2011-01-31T23:48:00.004-05:00

I'm loving using spices in my baked goods right now. For this birthday party, at first I was going make my default green tea cupcakes or chocolate cupcakes. But I decided to go back to the basics with this Old-Fashioned-Carrot-Cake from Bon Appetit.

I omitted the nuts and reduced the amount of sugar to 1 1/2 cups. The cupcakes came out plenty sweet and very very moist with just a hint of spice. I baked them for about 25 minutes at 350 degrees oven and got 24 cupcakes.

I halved the frosting recipe and had just enough for all the cupcakes. I even broke out my cake decorating set which my bother gave me last year for my birthday. Look at them. They are so pretty looking with those fancy dollops of frosting.

Roasted Acorn Squash and Spinach Salad

2011-01-31T23:40:00.000-05:00

The only work needed for this salad was to cut open the squash and chop it up. And it was totally worth the work. The salad tasted simple and clean with nutty crunch from toasted almonds, sweetness from the squash and freshness from lemon juice. I even got someone who refused to eat squash to finish his plate.

Here's the recipe: Gourmet's Roasted Butternut Squash and Spinach Salad with Toasted Almond Dressing

I got the wrong type of squash but no matter. The salad was delicious.

Lemon Blueberry Corn Muffins

2011-01-31T22:50:00.003-05:00

I finally moved! It has been a year-long process with all the problems with mortgages and real estate market in NYC. But it finally happened!

The kitchen went from this:

(Yes, that's all the countertop space I had.)

To this!

Haha! There's a whole thing of space on the other side!

In my last attempt to use up food while packing the kitchen, I made these lemon blueberry corn muffins. I basically used up all my lemons, frozen blueberries and corn meal that I had. And the muffins saved my soul for almost the whole week from all the packing-moving-unpacking frustration.

Ingredients (Adapted from EatingWell.com Lemon Cranberry Muffins)

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup corn meal

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup light tasting olive oil

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup soy milk

Juice and zest of 2 lemons

1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a muffin pan.

In a large bowl, stir together whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, corn meal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a separate bowl, whisk oil, sugar, egg, soy milk, lemon juice and zest together.

Pour the wet ingredients over the flour mixture. Stir gently using a spatula until there is almost no dry streak left. Fold in the blueberries.

Spoon into the prepared muffin pans and bake for 22 minutes. Let cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning into a cooling rack. Make 12 delicious tangy, cruncy and juicy muffins.

Whole Wheat Flax Seed Bread

2010-12-29T00:38:00.002-05:00

I think I just found my favorite whole wheat flax seed bread recipe. And I came up with it almost all on my own. "Almost" because I started off with Honey Oatmeal Bread from KingArthurFlour.com which I baked into Oatmeal Flax Seed Bread using half whole wheat flour and half bread flour. From that, I left out oatmeal all together, upped flax seeds and the whole wheat flour portion and made Flax Seed Bread Made With Whipping Cream. This time, I made the bread even healthier by substituting olive oil for whipping cream, reducing the sweetener and using all whole wheat flour.

The bread came out perfectly domed, crunchy and at the same time soft. It's not as sweet as the past loaves which is perfect toasted for breakfast.

Ingredients

2 oz. flax seeds

8 oz. hot water

12 oz. whole wheat flour

1/4 oz. vital wheat gluten

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

1 oz. light tasting olive oil

1 oz. agave nectar

Directions

Soak flax seeds in hot water for about 10 minutes while letting the water cool down.

Mix flour, wheat gluten, salt and yeast together in a large bowl. Add flax seeds and water, olive oil and agave nectar. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together.

Knead by hand on a lightly flour surface or right in the bowl for 8 minutes with 5 to 10 minutes pause in the middle. After the pause the dough will become more manageable.

When the dough is smooth, ball it up and let rise in the same bowl covered with plastic wrap for about an hour.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled surface (I used a silicone mat), flatten and roll up into a log shape. Crimp the seams including both ends. Drop into a greased loaf pan and cover loosely with a plastic wrap. Let rise until the dough dome about an inch over the pan - about an hour.

About 15 minutes before the dough is ready, heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Put the bread into the oven. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees. Bake for 35 minutes. Turn the bread out of the pan and let cool for at least an hour on a cooling rack before slicing.

Pumpkin Muffins

2010-12-29T00:37:00.003-05:00

What to do with all the time I get to spend at home during the snow storm which is supposedly the 6th biggest ever in New York City? I made muffins. From canned pumpkin. Well, organic canned pumpkin no less.

I started off with the trusted low sugar, low fat, half whole wheat flour muffin recipe that I always use. Replaced all the liquid in with pureed pumpkin and added a little bit of lemon juice to activate baking soda.

The muffins came out not awesome, but not bad either. They were best when warm and moist a couple of hours out of the oven. Maybe some raisins or nuts will enhance them a bit by giving contrasting texture and sweetness.

Ingredients

1 cup (4.5 oz) whole wheat flour

1 cup (4 1/4 oz.) all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 cup (4 oz.) sugar

1 14 oz. can pumpkin

2 eggs

1/4 cup ( 1 3/4 oz.) light tasting olive oil

Juice from half a lemon

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a muffin pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and all the spices together.

In a separate bowl, whisk pumpkin, sugar, eggs, oil and lemon juice until well combined. Pour over the flour mixture. Fold together until just combined.

Divide the batter into the prepared muffin pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

Vanilla Bean Coconut Ice Cream

2010-12-29T00:19:00.003-05:00

My new special boy doesn't eat dairy - which is very sad. This means no yogurt, cheese, ice cream, etc. Good thing butter is an exception. I try to be a good person by accommodating his diet instead of making fun of him. This ice cream is dairy free. It uses full fat coconut milk and eggs which produce creamy and soft custard like ice cream. The coconut flavor is not very strong. I bet I can use this as a base for many other frozen creamy deliciousness.

The original recipe is here: http://cavemanfood.blogspot.com/2009/06/coconut-milk-ice-cream.html

I just increased the amount of coconut milk to 2 cans, left out lavender and kept everything else the same. This ice cream is actually awesome. I might not go back to the real cream ice cream ever again (unless I get bored of coconut.)

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Bread

2010-12-22T00:24:00.003-05:00

I found a great recipe for 100% whole wheat cinnamon/cinnamon-raisin bread in Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain bread. But the whole process takes 2 days - granted that it doesn't take much work - it still needs a bit of planning which I didn't want to do.

I also found a great 100% whole wheat bread recipe that is failed-proof, great tasting, a bit sweet and extremely soft. It's the Classic 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread from KingArthurFlour.com. This might not be a novel idea but I was still proud of myself for figuring this out on my own... I sprinkled the bread dough with cinnamon sugar and made it cinnamon bread. The result was sweet and spicy, soft loaf of bread which was made from all whole wheat flour!

Ingredients

14 oz. whole wheat flour

2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt

9 oz. warm soy milk

1 1/2 oz. light tasting olive oil

3 oz. Agave nectar

1 egg and a tablespoon of water - lightly whisked together to make egg wash

3 tablespoons raw sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

With an electric mixer with a hook attachment, stir the first 6 ingredients at low speed for 3 minutes. Take a 10 minutes break. And stir 3-4 minutes more until the dough holds together and climbs up the hook. Or mix and knead the dough by hands for about the same time.

Ball up the bread dough. Let rise in a bowl covered with plastic wrap for about an hour or a bit more.

Grease a 4 1/2 inch by 8 1/2 inch loaf pan. In a small bowl, combine sugar with cinnamon.

Stretch out the dough on an oiled surface (I used a silicone mat with a few drops of olive oil.) Brush with egg wash. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Roll the dough into a log. Crimp shut the seams including both ends. Let rise for about an hour in the prepared loaf pan covered lightly with greased plastic wrap until the bread dome above the pan.

About 15 minutes before the dough is ready, adjust the oven rack to the middle and preheat to 400 degrees.

Reduce the heat to 350 after putting in the bread and bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool for at least an hour on a cooling rack before slicing.

Spiced Pear Cupcakes

2010-12-14T23:16:00.003-05:00

These cupcakes are muffins in disguise. They are full of fruit and not super sweet. That's how I justified having cupcakes for breakfast. The only thing that sets them apart from muffins are the yummy frosting and super fluffy texture from lots of butter and eggs...

OK. Whatever. They are cakes not muffins. Judge me. The ingredient list is almost exactly the same as the spiced pumpkin cake I made earlier this month - just exchanging pumpkin pureed with chopped pears and some yogurt.

Ingredients - make 28-30 cupcakes

3 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

2 sticks of butter at room temperature

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup plain yogurt

2 pears - peeled, cored and chopped

Directions

Adjust the oven racks to the upper third and lower third. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two muffin pans with paper liners.

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and all the spices together.

With an electric mixer, beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy - about 2 to 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between addition. Add vanilla extract.

Alternately stir in flour mixture and yogurt into the batter in 3 batches. Stir in chopped pears. Just when the streaks are almost gone, stop stirring.

Scoop into the prepared pans - up to 2/3 full as the cake will rise and dome. Bake for 22 minutes. Rotate and switch the pans after 15 minutes. Turn out onto cooling racks and let cool completely before frosting.

Cream cheese frosting

With an electric mixer with wire attachment, beat a stick of soft butter (left at room temperature) with 2 packages of cream cheese until combined. Add 1 to 1 1/2 cups of confectioner sugar depending on how sweet you want the frosting. Continue beating until fluffy.

NYTimes Pear-Pomegranate Pie

2010-12-08T00:40:00.006-05:00

My Thanksgiving dinner host sent me the link to this recipe on NYTimes.com. I told her that I would bring that to the dinner. And I eventually did - after a few hurdles. First, I nearly burned down my apartment and my first batch of homemade pomegranate molasses. According to Alton Brown, you're supposed to boil pomegranate juice with sugar and lemon juice until you get a consistency of a thick syrup - which was a big mistake. By the time the syrup cooled, I got a rock-hard black thing instead. The second try, I learned my lesson and turned the heat off when the juice looked like a normal syrup.

Then I moved on to the pie. I prepared all butter pie crust from this recipe on SimplyRecipes.com. I have used this recipe so many times with great result. But this time, somehow the butter separated from the crust and spilled over. Fortunately, I lined the pie dish with a baking sheet. The crust came out flaky and delicious. But still, by the end of the baking time I got a pull of melted butter all over the baking sheet... I'm blaming it on the Organic flour and Organic butter I started using from WholeFoods. The things you have to endure to try to eat healthy...

I followed the recipe exactly for the pear filling. I quartered 6 pears, cooked 3 at a time on a stove top with the pomegranate molasses. I sliced the 2 remaining pears and tossed them with all the other ingredients to make the pie filling. Everything was fine until it's time to check for its doneness after baking.

Those quartered pears were still not completely cooked even after 10 extra minutes in the oven. I didn't want to over cook the crust so I took it out of the oven and brought it to the dinner party.

The pie tasted great despite the fact that there were great giant hunks of pears to chew through. It was perfectly seasoned and sweetened. The crust light and flaky. The next time I try this, I'll just chop up all the pears and cook them all in the syrup before baking.

Spiced Pumpkin Cake with Caramilized Apples and Cream Cheese Frosting

2010-12-05T21:59:00.011-05:00

My computer blew up two weeks ago. It wasn't even that old - only 6 years. These electronics. Sometimes I wonder if the manufacturers put inside them timers. When certain pre-determined date is up, it just stops working.

I managed to get it to work again by wiping out everything and reinstalling the operating system - a great meditation on letting go... (Well not really, I have all my data backed up.)

When this cake was first requested for a birthday party, I said WHAT??!! Pumpkin and apples in the same cake? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. They both go well with Fall spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. And with lots of butter and sugar, everything will taste good. I decided to make pumpkin cakes layered with caramelized apples and frosted with cream cheese frosting. The result was pretty impressive. Caramelized apples kept the cake moist. Very lightly sweetened cream cheese frosting added the right touch of tang and smoothness to the spiced cake.

Spiced Pumpkin Cake
Adapted from Spiced Pumpkin Cake with Caramel Icing on Epicurious.com

3 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 sticks butter - at room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 15oz. can pumpkin

Caramlized Apples

2 small apples - diced (I used Honey Crisp.)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon butter

Cream Cheese Frosting

2 sticks butter at room temperature

2 packages cream cheese at room temperature

1 cup to 1 1/2 cups confectioner sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and line the bottom of three 9-inch round cake pans with parchment paper. (I made one two-layer cake and one single layer cake.)

Combine flour, baking powder, all the spices and salt in a clean bowl.

With an electric mixer, beat 2 sticks of butter and 2 cups of sugar together until fluffy - about 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between addition. Scrape the bowl occasionally.

Stir in the flour/spice mixture alternately with pumpkin in 3 batches until well blended.

Divide the batter into the prepared pan. Spread the batter to get flat surface. Bake for 30 minutes. Rotate the pan after 20 minutes. Turn the cakes on cooling racks and let cool completely.

For caramelized apple, cook diced apples with 1 tablespoon butter and sugar in a saucepan. Stir occasionally until the apples are tender about 5 minutes. Let cool in the pan

After the cakes cool, beat 2 sticks of butter and 2 packages of cream cheese together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add confectioner sugar. Slowly increase the mixing speed until every thing is combined.

To assemble the cake, spoon cream cheese frosting onto the outer edges of the bottom cake layer, pour apples in the middle. Stack the second cake layer on top. Repeat with the second layer if you are making 3 layered cake. Otherwise, frost with the rest of frosting.

King Arthur Flour Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread

2010-11-18T20:58:00.003-05:00

This is the one recipe I look up whenever I need to bake no-frill 100% whole wheat sandwich bread within a few hours (when there's no time to plan for long-rise no-knead bread). This is one recipe that I used over and over with out fail to produce soft, flavorful, lightly sweet and beautifully risen loaf.

The only problem (There's is always a problem. One cannot wish for a perfect world.) is that I never have dried milk that the recipe calls for. So I sometimes use buttermilk or just water. This time I used half soy milk and half water.

Look at the pictures. How perfect are those loaves? I baked 4 of them in one afternoon and all of them came out picture perfect - an event that rarely happens in my kitchen...

The beautifully written recipe and illustrations are here at KingArthurFlour.com.

Pear Bran Bread

2010-10-13T23:51:00.006-04:00

Aka the ninja bread. Let me tell you how the bread got its name. Five of us, including the driver, were in one of these Jeeps. No, not the big comfortable SUV one. Not the new shiny one either. The one that's made for one driver and one passenger plus some space for equipments. The one that's about 10 years old with raggedy canvas roof and noises coming out of its transmission system every time it hits a bump. Five of us plus our camping gears were in that cozy Jeep for 3 hours.

When I pulled out a slice of the bread to munch, I was asked what it was. The conversation went something like this:

Driver: What is that goddamn black-biscuit looking thing?

Me: It's pear bread. It's black because I put molasses.

Passenger1 (at the top of his lung): What bread?

Me (screaming): PEAR BREAD! It tastes almost like ginger bread.

Passenger2: WHAT??!! NINJA BREAD?!?

Everybody: Awesome! Ninja bread! Give me one.

Driver (oblivious): I eat no nuts but this black biscuit is delicious.

Here's the recipe: KingArthurFlour.com.

Update - 11/18/2010

The second time I baked this bread, I measured out all the ingredients, in case I get more request to make it. Here's what I have assuming that my scale works properly.

Ingredients

2 1/4 oz molasses

2 1/8 oz honey

1 large egg

1 cup buttermilk

3/4 oz light tasting olive oil

7 1/4 oz all purpose flour

2 1/8 oz bran

2 oz brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 pears - chopped

2 oz chopped walnuts

Corn Muffins

2010-10-07T00:50:00.002-04:00

The muffin streak continues...

Aren't these muffins beautiful? They are Dorie Greenspan's corniest corn muffins from Baking: From My Home to Yours.

So many people have written so many words about this recipe already including the author herself. I'm not going to dare repeat.

Just one thing - they are very truly corniest corn muffin ever!

Banana Oat Muffins

2010-10-07T00:18:00.005-04:00

I made a lot of muffins in the past couple of weeks. My friends and I have been driving upstate every weekend to help fix up a few buildings on the site for the new USA Shaolin Temple. Muffins are easy to transport and kind of healthy. What?! You disagree?!? Muffins are way better for you than lots of things people eat while in a car. These ones contained whole wheat flour, rolled oats, and 3 bananas! And just a tiny bit of sugar.

The original recipe was from AllRecipe.com. The only change I made was using brown sugar and replaced a cup of all purpose flour with whole wheat flour.

The muffins came out a bit chewy from the oats. I guess these organic oats that I have are a little thicker and need to be cooked longer than the normal kind. Other than that the muffins came out great - a little dense with strong banana flavor and just sweet enough.

Apple Raisin Cobbler

2010-10-01T00:17:00.004-04:00

I was going to make an apple pie to bring to a dinner party. I underestimated the time it takes to travel between Chinatown (for Kungfu training), NYC midtown (for work) and Brooklyn Heights. I ended up having only an hour to bake. With the crust making, the chilling, rolling out and the prettifying, there's no way I would be able to finish it in an hour. Cobbler came to the rescue.

It's equally satisfying but way easier to make. Although it doesn't look as pretty as a pie, everybody appreciates a homemade dessert - made with a dose of love.

I used Honeycrisp apples which are quite sweet and hold their shape well after baking. With about half a cup of golden raisins, I didn't need to add much sugar to have the cobbler qualify as dessert. The topping came from Jamie Oliver's Happy Days with the Naked Chef. It produced crisp, tender and buttery not too sweet biscuit like topping - perfect for any juicy fruit cobbler.

Ingredients

3 pounds Honeycrisp apples - peeled, cored and cut into small cubes

1/2 cup golden raisins

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

A pinch of ground nutmeg

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar

6 tablespoons butter - chilled and cut into small chunks

1/2 cup buttermilk

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Toss apples, raisins, spices and 1/4 cup of brown sugar together. Pour into a 9 inch square baking dish.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With a pastry blender or two table knifes, cut the butter into the flour mixture until you get coarse crumbs

Add buttermilk. With a spatula, turn the dough over itself 8 to 10 times to get a wet dough. Spoon over the fruit.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until the fruit bubbles and the top is lightly brown.

Flax Seed Bread Made with Whipping Cream

2010-09-22T23:51:00.002-04:00

I bought a pint of whipping cream to make some frosting but never got to it. For weeks I used a few drops of it here and there. Sometimes in my coffee, sometimes in steel cut oats or my breakfast quinoa pudding. I needed to come up with new ways to use the pint and figured I would replace butter in this bread recipe with whipping cream and see what happens.

These pictures were taken in my kitchen with hardly enough light to see anything so they don't really do the bread justice. It came out very wonderfully soft with light texture and a nice crunch from flax seeds. It also rose very beautifully. Good thing I wrote down what I used. This is definitely a recipe to make over and over again (when there's cream in a house and you don't want to drink it all.)

Ingredients

5 oz. hot water

2 oz. flax seeds

7 oz whole wheat flour

3 oz. bread flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 oz Agave nectar

5 oz whipping cream

Directions

Soak flax seeds in hot water for about 10 minutes.

Mix whole wheat flour, bread flour, salt and yeast in a mixer bowl. Add Agave nectar, whipping cream and soaked flax seed.

With a hook attachment, run the mixer at low speed for 7 to 8 minutes until the dough pulls away from the bowl.

Ball up the dough, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about an hour until it doubles.

Grease a loaf pan. Grease the same plastic wrap. Gently turn out the dough and stretch the surface while forming a loaf. Place in the pan, cover loosely with the greased plastic wrap and let rise for about 1 more hour or until the dough rise just above the pan.

About 15 minutes before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 45 minutes. After the first 30 minutes, check if the bread is brown enough. If it is, cover with foil to prevent over browning. When it's done baking, turn out from the pan onto a cooling rack and let cool for at least an hour before cutting.

Apple Muffins

2010-09-22T23:40:00.000-04:00

These muffins are pretty awesome. They were fluffy, soft and flavorful. I chopped up two HUGE honeycrisp apples - about one and a half pounds - for these. They made the muffins super moist and wonderful. The only change I made to the recipe (from KingArthurFlour.com) was using only 1/2 cup of raw sugar. They came out plenty sweet for me and my friends. I made them for a 3-hour long road trip and they were our lifesavers!

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies

2010-09-14T00:43:00.004-04:00

Martha Stewart is truly the queen of cookies. I love her. Whenever I need an idea for super indulgent cookies, I go to her site. And I am never disappointed. Last week I needed cookies for a ride up to the Catskill - about 3 hours away from Brooklyn. The driver specifically asked for chocolate and peanut butter. These cookies were perfect.

Except somewhere during the process of halving the recipe, I messed up. For some reasons, I halved everything else except flour and peanut butter. I quartered (used only 1/2 cup of sugar) but that was according to my plan.

The results were these cookies that didn't spread out like the picture on the site. I had to flatten them with a spoon to make them more presentable. But regardless of how they looked, they were crunchy, just sweet enough to pass as cookies, salty and delicious. Every single cookie was consumed within the first half hour of the ride.

Buttlermilk Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

2010-09-14T00:39:00.003-04:00

I made these sandwiches to bring to a day session at the US Open last week. What I like the most about going to the US Open are probably that I get to make sandwiches for friends. This year I made avocado, brie, arugula and bacon sandwiches. The bread, of course, were homemade from this recipe on kingarthurflour.com.

I had made this bread a couple of times before with great result - soft, lightly sweet and beautiful dark loaf. This time I wanted to experiment a bit. I wanted to finish the carton of buttermilk I had. And I figured I could reduce some oil and sweetener (I used Agave nectar) in the recipe.

The bread came out not as beautifully domed as the original recipe but still with great texture and flavor.

Here are what I used

8 oz buttermilk

2 oz water

1 oz light tasting olive oil

2 oz Agave nectar

14 oz whole wheat flour

2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Blueberry Crumb Pie

2010-09-01T23:46:00.002-04:00

Last week, for a friend's birthday party, we went to Buttermilk Channel - a restaurant in Brooklyn and had excellent dinner. My favorite dish was the appetizer - grilled flat bread with fresh ricotta and squash blossom. The dish was so simple but it was executed so perfectly that I kept dreaming about it for days.

For dessert, we all shared a chocolate tart, a pecan pie sundae, a banana bread pudding and a blueberry tart with vanilla ice cream.

I made it my mission to replicate the tart. It was tart - as in sour. It was full of berries and probably with minimal added sugar. It was perfect pairing with sweet and creamy ice cream.

I got pretty close. I made blueberry crumb pie with only 1/2 cup of raw sugar for 4 pints of blueberries. The pie was juicy and tart. The crust was flaky and buttery especially the day after baking - before it went into the refrigerator.

From the list of ingredients below, I got one 9-inch pie which I brought to a dinner party. The host said she had never tasted such a good pie. :D I also had enough to make additional 8 mini tarts in a muffin pan which I distributed to my friends with varying level of compliments - from "amazing!" to "not bad" to "ok"...

Ingredients

Pie crust

3 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoon sugar

3 sticks chilled butter - cut into chunks

1/4 cup ice cold water

Filling

4 pints fresh blueberries (about 7 cups) - rinsed and stemmed

Juice from 1 lemon

1/2 cup sugar (if you want sweeter pie, increase sugar up to 1 1/2 cups)

3 tablespoons instant tapioca

Topping

2/3 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 stick chilled butter

Directions

To make the pie crust, in a food processor, pulse flour, salt and sugar together. Add cubed butter. Pulse 10 more times until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Turn the mixture into a large bowl, sprinkle cold water over and mix with a rubber spatula. Gather the dough into 2 balls. Flatten and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

To make the filling, toss the berries with sugar, lemon juice and tapioca.

For the crumb topping, mix flour and sugar in a clean bowl. Cut in chilled butter with a pastry blender or two table knives until the mixture resemble coarse crumbs.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. To assemble, roll out one of disks and place at the bottom of a 9-inch pie dish. Crimp the edge. For mini tart, roll out the other disk and cut out with 4-inch cookie cutter. Arrange into a muffin pan.

Spoon the berries into the prepared pie dish and muffin pan. Sprinkle the crumb topping.

For the pie bake for 35-40 minutes and 20-25 minutes for mini tarts or until the top is nicely brown.

Let the pie cool in the dish before cutting. For the tarts, let cool of a few minutes in the muffin pan, then turn out (I used mini metal spatula to scoop out the side) to cool on a cooling rack.

No-Knead Whole Wheat Olive Bread

2010-09-01T23:01:00.003-04:00

This is another version of Jim Lahey's super easy no-knead bread. I might have needed to chop up the olives a little bit before mixing them into the dough because they keep falling out when I tried to shape the loaf. But, at the same time, I like slicing the bread and biting through big chunks of olives.

The bread didn't come out as crusty as I would have liked - probably because all the fat from olives. But it has really nice, moist and chewy texture especially where you bite into pieces of olives. It also looks really pretty with all the irregular holes inside - as a bonus.

Ingredients

200g Whole wheat flour

200g Bread flour

5g salt

2g instant yeast

300g water

140g pitted olives

Oat bran or more flour to prevent the dough from sticking

Directions

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon until well combined.

Cover with a plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 18 hours.

Turn the dough onto floured surface. Turn over itself a few times and shape into a ball.

Line a clean bowl with a kitchen towel. Sprinkle generously with bran. Place the dough on the towel. Sprinkle more bran on top. Let rise for about an hour until the dough almost doubles.

30 minutes before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a dutch oven and its lid inside.

When ready, carefully unlid the heated dutch oven. Plop the dough upside down into the pot. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Then uncover and bake for 20 minutes more or until the top is nice and brown. Remove the bread and let cool on a cooling rack for at least an hour before cutting.

To store the cut bread, I leave it on the cutting board with cut side down and cover with a clean towel.

Green Tea Cake with Green Tea Cream Cheese Frosting

2010-08-25T00:25:00.007-04:00

Finally! An excuse to bake a cake! For various reasons, a lot of my friends are away this month. I guess August is a popular month for people to be on vacation. Nobody asked me to bake anything since July 4th! It left me feeling a little bit empty inside...

This cake was supposed to be for a birthday with one condition that it had to be organic... So I trekked to Wholefoods and got all the organic flour, butter, sugar, eggs, etc. but the birthday boy got to eat only a tiny slice before I gave the rest away to my doormen, neighbors and friends.

I halved my favorite and reliable cupcake recipe and baked it in a tiny 6 inch cake pan and produced a small layer cake plus 9 cupcakes which I also gave away. I used tea leaves in the cake and matcha in the frosting. The result is distinctly green tea smelling and looking cake. I might have overbaked the cake a bit but the creamy frosting moistened the cake and helped cover it up.

Ingredients

1 3/8 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoon green tea

1/2 cup low fat yogurt

1/2 stick butter at room temperature

1 package cream cheese

1 cup confectioner sugar

2 teaspoons matcha

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 6 inch cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper (if you want a mini layered cake) and/or line a muffin pan with liners.

With an electric mixer, beat a stick of butter with sugar for a couple of minutes until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add green tea.

In a clean bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Slowly stir the dry ingredients into butter/sugar/egg mixture in 3 addition alternately with yogurt. When all the streak is gone, scoop into the prepared pans. Fill only up to half full.

Bake for 25-28 minutes in the 6 inch cake pan or 18-20 minutes in muffin pan. Let stand for a couple of minutes before turning out to cool on cooling racks.

To make the frosting, beat 1/2 stick of butter with cream cheese. Add confectioner sugar and matcha. Beat until fluffy and combined. Frost the cakes after they are completely cool.

Martha Stewart's Cream Filled Chocolate Cookies

2010-08-25T00:12:00.002-04:00

I still can't decide whether I like these cookies. They are really extremely sweet. I reduced the amount of sugar in the cookies from 1 1/2 cups to 1 cup and in the filling by half. They were still way too sweet for me. I guess this is why people eat cookies with a glass of milk.

I might try making these cookies again with darker cocoa powder. Maybe they will turn out more bitter to balance out the sweetness. I got a request to make these cookies with organic ingredients and the only organic cocoa powder I could find wasn't so great.

Here's the recipe: Martha Stewart's Cream-Filled Chocolate Cookies. The cookies actually turned out with perfect texture for sandwich cookies. They are not as cakey as other sandwich cookie recipes and not so hard and crunchy as butter cookies. They are crisp at the edges with a bit chewy middle.

The only thing I changed in the recipe (other than reducing the sugar) was substituting vanilla bean for vanilla extract in the filling.

Whole Wheat Bread with Flax and Oat Bran

2010-08-24T23:48:00.005-04:00

I'm a little bit obsessed with making yeast bread lately. During the past couple of weeks, I baked a loaf of King Arthur Flour Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread which turned out so delicious that I didn't have time to take any picture before the whole loaf was gone. I also baked a loaf of no-knead rosemary bread from my tiny rosemary plant on my window sill. I need to experiment with the proportion of liquid/flour/herb a little more before posting the recipe here.

I also baked Peter Reinhart's Oat Bran Broom Bread from his amazing whole grain bread cookbook. The reason he called it broom bread was that it has so much fiber it could clean you up...

The instructions to make the bread were on two pages - not including picture. They involve making a soaker (soaking grains and flour in water and salt) at least 12 hours in advance, a biga (fermenting minimal amount of yeast with flour and water) for at least 8 hours ahead. Then all are kneaded together with additional flour, liquid, oil and sweetener (I used Agave nectar) before 2 rises. I won't even try to write down the whole process (which is actually simple - it just requires a bit of planning) in this post.

But if you are serious about baking wonderful 100% whole grain bread, get this book. The bread came out soft and flavorful even with all that fiber from oat bran and ground flax seed. And with additional fat and sugar, the bread didn't go stale as fast as leaner bread. Five days after baking, the bread was still pretty good toasted.

Chocolate Bread Pudding

2010-08-11T22:42:00.004-04:00

From the first time I saw this post - Chocolate Bread at DavidLebovitz.com - I promised myself that my life would not be complete without trying to make this bread. Although I kept telling myself time and time again (unsuccessfully) that chocolate isn't my favorite sweet. Maybe it's that irresistibly deep brown color. Or maybe it's the aroma of baked yeast and chocolate I conjured up in my head.

The post gave very detailed account of how the author came up with the recipe and how the recipe goes. But my bread still didn't come out looking as delicious as the pictures. My bread took more than 2 hours to rise - perhaps because I didn't substitute enough instant yeast.

The bread was soft and delicious when warm and fresh. But after a couple of days it became dry and crumbly. Even my chocolate lover friend refused to eat it.

So I did what the recipe author suggested - chocolate bread pudding. How awesome would it be? Chocolate bread with chocolate chips plus even more chocolate chips baked with eggs and milk. Perfect breakfast!

So I crumbled up about half the loaf of bread (about 2 cups). Beat 2 eggs and about 3/4 cup of soy milk and about 2 tablespoons of sugar with a glug of vanilla extract. Added half a cup of more chocolate chip. Mixed everything together. Divided into 2 remekins and 4 silicon muffin cups and baked at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Baking bread pudding in silicon muffin cups was a stroke of genius. It made difficult-to-transport baked goods transportable. I shall name them cupbreadpudding.

Red Quinoa Pudding

2010-08-06T07:53:00.002-04:00

I have a friend staying with me for a few nights. She's doing an elimination diet to see if her skin will clear out. She doesn't eat dairy and wheat. I made this quinoa pudding for breakfast rather than my usual oats or yogurt so that she can eat with me.

I don't know why I don't make this more often. I tastes so good and it's good for me. It's probably the highest protein breakfast ever (aside from eggs.) The original version is here.

Ingredients

1/3 cup red quinoa or not red

1 cup water

1 cup soy milk

A pinch of salt

3 tablespoon Agave nectar

1 egg

1/2 vanilla bean

1/2 cup or more blueberries or other fruit

Directions

In a small saucepan over medium high heat, boil quinoa with water and salt for about 10 minutes stir occasionally.

Reduce the heat to low and add soy milk and scraped vanilla bean. Cook for 10 more minutes. Take care not to let soy milk boil over.

In a small bowl, beat Agave nectar with an egg. Slowly add about 1/4 cup of cooking liquid to the egg. Whisk in to temper. Add this back to the saucepan. Stir vigorously for a couple of minutes.

Turn the heat off. Serve with fresh berries. Make barely 2 servings.

Not in my kitchen...

2010-07-30T00:04:00.002-04:00

... in Mexico. This time in Chiapas, Tulum, and Taxco.

Red Wine Strawberry Sorbet

2010-07-07T08:37:00.002-04:00

It was supposed to be red wine raspberry sorbet but my raspberries went moldy in the refrigerator before I got a chance to make the sorbet. Strawberries would do. This recipe is genius. Look at it: a bottle of wine, some sugar and lots of fruit. Perfect summer treat.

I didn't strain the pulp because I was lazy and I did not care for the smooth consistency. My sorbet came out tasting like soft frozen sangria. Maybe because I didn't boil the wine long enough - which isn't a bad thing. I think I got drunk from eating half a cup of it. It's quite embarrassing, actually.

The best part of this batch of sorbet is that I froze some in ice cream pop molds. Things always taste better on a stick, I don't know why.

Peach Pie

2010-07-06T20:39:00.006-04:00

I baked this pie for our 4th of July picnic in Prospect Park (along with super awesome cider braised pork shoulder which I shredded and served as tacos.)

I experimented a bit with the pie. First, I read somewhere that there's no reason why we shouldn't pre-bake pie crust even with fruit pies in order to get crispier shell. So I pre-baked the crust for about 15 minutes before filling and then baked for 40 minutes more.

The result: Meh. I didn't get any crispier or flakier shell. So, no pre-baked pie crust in my future fruit pies.

Second, I was wondering why we only use cold water in the pie dough. Why don't we use buttermilk? My wise friend, Hannah, said it's because we want all the liquid to evaporate leaving flaky crust from layers of fat and flour. I argued that buttermilk is acidic and it can prevent gluten from forming in the dough which makes the crust tough. So I used buttermilk instead of water.

The result: The crust wasn't as flaky as usual. Maybe buttermilk has leftover residue that affected the crust texture. Hannah was right.

Finally, I didn't add any spice to the fruit (about 6 pounds of peaches) - just 1/4 cup sugar, zest of a lemon plus half the juice and 3 tablespoons of flour to thicken. I thought the filling came out great - a little tart and not at all watery to which a few people agreed and a few didn't. Hannah said the balance of sweet and tart was just right but she preferred more juicy pie. My friend, Tim, said the filling was way too sour. Not tart. Just SOUR! Dude has sweet tooth...

Anyway, by the end of the day, the whole pie was gone. I didn't even have to sell it to hard.

Oatmeal Flax Bread

2010-07-06T20:35:00.005-04:00

My house guest from last week left me an eighth container of quick-cooking oats when she moved out. When I saw it, my brain went wild with all the possibilities. I could make oatmeal cookies, crisps, raspberry bars, coffee cake, muffins, etc. I don't stock up oatmeal for this reason. I would go crazy baking stuff - turning healthy food into not so healthy but super yummy baked goods.

I decided to make bread. Honey Oatmeal Bread.

The problem was that I didn't have enough oatmeal. I didn't have honey, applesauce or instant mash potato flakes. And I wasn't going out to buy them just for this loaf of bread. So I followed the recipe as much as I could with things I had in the apartment. I replaced honey with Agave nectar, skipped apple sauce and potato flakes, upped the amount of liquid and added flax seeds. The bread came out super soft with beautiful thin crust and full of flavor - as a result of 3/4 stick of butter and lots of sweetener. I flopped the whole batch into a loaf pan and it rose way above the rim which resulted in funny looking loaf. I'll have to divide the dough next time and make a few rolls out of it.

Ingredients

8 oz. warm water

3 oz. quick cooking oats

1 1/2 oz. flax seeds

2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 oz. Agave nectar

3 oz. melted butter

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

5 oz. bread flour plus more for kneading and shaping

4 1/2 oz. white whole wheat flour

Directions

Soak oats and flax seeds in warm water for 20 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients together. Stir with a wooden spoon until everything is wet.

Turn out onto a well-floured surface and knead for 10 minutes. Rest the dough a couple of times between kneading. Add more flour if the dough is too wet. By the end, the dough should be springy and smooth.

Let the dough rise in a clean and greased bowl. Cover tightly with a plastic wrap. For about 1 1/2 to two hours until the dough doubles in bulk.

Turn out the dough onto a floured surface. Lightly stretch it out and fold into third onto itself to form a loaf shape. Crimp shut the seams.

Let rise again in a greased loaf pan for about 1 1/2 hours until the dough domes above the pan. Cover loosely with plastic wrap.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees about 15 minutes before the dough is ready. Bake for about 40 to 45 minutes. Turn out onto a cooling rack and let cool for about 1 hour before cutting.

White Chocolate Pistachio Cupcakes

2010-06-28T22:20:00.003-04:00

Warning: These cupcakes look poisonous after a day in the refrigerator.

Lesson learned #1: Let chopped nuts get in contact with frosting only shortly before serving unless you like munching on soggy nuts.

Lesson learned #2: Wet chopped pistachios look like mold.

Lesson learned #3: Too small eggs make dry cupcakes.

Lesson learned #4: My friends are so sweet they finished all these dry, moldy looking, soggy-nuts topping cupcakes without any complaint.

I got a request for some cupcakes with white chocolate and pistachio for a birthday party this past weekend - from the birthday girl herself. Although I'm not a fan of both white chocolate and pistachio, I agreed. I made vanilla cupcakes topped with white chocolate cream cheese frosting and dipped in chopped salted roasted pistachios.

Sounds good, no? Except things went wrong somewhere in the process and I learned four valuable lessons.

Strawberry Crumb Cake

2010-06-22T00:20:00.002-04:00

If you haven't tried this recipe this strawberry season, run to the store as soon as you can. Buy three pounds of strawberries and turn on your oven. Or beg somebody else to do it for you. Because this cake is that awesome (if you love your fruit in cakes like me.)

It has gooey, sour and fruity strawberry bottom with the middle layer of soft and fluffy yellow cake and topped with sweet crunchy crumb.

Lemon Blueberry Crumb Bars

2010-06-22T00:01:00.004-04:00

Here are my excuses for not posting at all during the past two weeks:

Instead of writing up a post, I have been spending a lot of time on chemistry.com looking for dates. So far, there hasn't been any success. This might just be a total waste of time. But I signed up for 3 months (they had a Memorial day sale) so I will have to keep trying.

I haven't been baking much. I have a friend from Mexico staying with me. I usually stay up late and bake at night. As a good host, I try not to make noises and make the apartment hotter than it is while my guest is asleep on my couch.

I baked these bars for a Norah Jones concert in Prospect Park which I didn't go because it rained heavily the whole entire day. So I ended up eating them for breakfast all week. What? No cookies for breakfast? But these have lots of fruit! And they are great with coffee!

Original recipe from AllRecipes.com. the only thing I changed was omitting nutmeg, add lemon juice and a few tablespoons of flour to the berries.

Flax Seed Bread

2010-06-08T23:05:00.002-04:00

I don't care that flax is not the wonder grain I thought it was. I decided I like how weirdly slimy and crunchy it feels in my mouth. This bread tastes like it's good for you. It's dense, yeasty, with the flax seed crunch that makes me chew forever. Maybe this should be called macrobiotic bread since it makes me chew more. I have a need to chase all the seeds with my teeth whenever I take a bite of it.

I adapted the no-knead bread recipe to use 200 grams whole wheat flour, 200 grams all purpose flour and 100 grams flax seeds with 375 grams water. Flax seeds really benefits from the 18-hour fermentation in this recipe (plus it's too hot to knead anyway.) They softened and became weirdly and flavorfully slimy.

I have made this in a loaf pan at lower temperature to produce softer sandwich bread. But I think the dutch oven version which made crusty and chewy bread is definitely prettier and more delicious.

Fresh Apricot Cupcakes

2010-05-26T22:22:00.002-04:00

This is one of the rare moments in my experimental baking that a seemingly good idea actually turns out great. It started from a pile small California apricots I saw at the supermarket. They looked so pretty I couldn't help but bought about 2 pounds of them. At home, I bit into one and almost spit it out. They were so tart I decided it's humanly impossible to eat them without sugar. So I decided to make cupcakes.

I wanted to preserve the tartness somewhat and decided to use only three-quarter amount of sugar I usually put in a batch of cupcakes. For the frosting, I decided on cream cheese which always works well with tart/fruity cupcakes.

I pretty much followed this Lemon Blueberry Cake recipe except I:

used 3 cups of all purpose flour

added only 1 1/2 cups of sugar

omitted lemon juice and peel

substituted chopped s small apricots for 2 1/2 cups of blueberries

baked in lined muffin pan for 22 minutes at 350 degrees

For the frosting I beat a stick of butter with a package of cream cheese, 1/2 cup of confectioner sugar and 1/2 cup of apricot preserve.

I really love the resulting cupcakes. As usual, since this has been my favorite fruity cupcake recipe, the cakes are soft, tender and exploded with fruit. You can tell they are made from apricots, not only because they are orange, but they are tart and full of flavor.

Whole Wheat Cardamom Cranberry Olive Oil Yogurt Loaf

2010-05-26T22:03:00.003-04:00

This seemed like a very good idea in my head. Why not? Cardamom goes very well with oranges. Cranberries are great with any citrus. And I made very successful whole wheat olive oil yogurt loaf before.

The execution was simple. I followed Dorie Greenspan's recipe, replaced whole wheat flour for the all purpose, and added a cup of dried cranberries and a teaspoon of ground cardamom.

The result wasn't as brilliant as the idea... Although it was nice to burp cardamom, the spice doesn't compliment the aroma of extra virgin olive oil. I'll use light tasting olive oil the next try.

Coconut Mochi Cake

2010-05-19T22:22:00.003-04:00

On my trip to Japan, I couldn't get enough of those mochi which came in all sizes and forms. They could be round with red beans inside or outside. They could come floating in syrup or on shaved ice. They could be cubes or even in animal forms. I was so fascinated by them that I bought a bag of Mochiko (sweet rice flour) which mere mortals use to make mochi. (Super humans pound their own rice in giant mortars.)

Six months went by, with the mission to clean up my pantry, I finally did something with the flour.

I made chewy-sticky and creamy coconut mochi cake, which reminded me very much of one of Thai dessert we only got in the winter fair. The cakes tasted almost the same except that the Thai version was wrapped in pandan leaves and grilled over hot charcoal.

Adapted from Epicurious.com Sweet Rice-Flour and Coconut Cake
Ingredients

1 can of 14 oz. coconut milk

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup Agave nectar

1 1/2 cups Mochiko

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup coconut flakes

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk coconut milk, eggs, vanilla extract and agave nectar together.

In a separate bowl, combine mochiko, baking powder, salt and coconut.

Fold the dry ingredients into the wet. Mix well.

Pour into an 8 inch square baking dish and bake for about 40 minutes or until the surface is brown. Let cool completely in the pan before cutting.

Banana Coffee Cake

2010-05-17T20:35:00.000-04:00

This has to be the best banana cake ever. I never thought the words banana and light would fit in the same sentence. But this is it. This banana cake is light and tender. It's super moist (especially the next day) and just sweet enough.

Here's the original recipe: Banana Coffee Cake with Chocolate Chip Streusel in which the amount of sugar I wasn't super excited about.

So I changed a few things. I reduced the sugar in the cake to 1/2 cup. Omitted the chocolate chips. And made simple topping out of ground cinnamon, raw sugar, flour and butter.

Ingredients

1 stick butter at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

3 very ripe bananas

3 tablespoons pain yogurt

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

For topping

1/4 cup raw sugar

1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons chilled butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 inch square baking pan.

With an electric mixer, beat a stick of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar until fluffy. Add an egg. Beat until well combined. Add bananas and yogurt.

In a clean bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir into the wet mixture. Pour into the prepared pan.

To make the topping, cut butter into the other ingredients. Rub with fingertips. Sprinkle over the batter. Bake for 45 minutes.

Coconut Raspberry Muffins

2010-05-08T22:27:00.000-04:00

The next item to go in my mission to clean up the pantry is coconut flakes and a bag of frozen raspberries. I was pretty impressed with myself to come up with this combination.

Well. It's not actually me. I saw Blueberry Coconut Macadamia Muffins on EatingWell.com. I just switched raspberries for blueberries and omitted the nuts.

I think I like this muffin recipe. It's not too sweet, not so oily. More than half of the flour called for is whole wheat. I think I will keep this for my other future pantry-cleaning muffins.

Whole Wheat Flax Bread

2010-05-08T20:06:00.003-04:00

I'm trying to add more flax to my diet for its anti-inflammation property. My latest annual blood test showed that I have higher inflammation in my body than normal. It must be all those knee and rotator cuff injuries. This Whole Wheat Flax Breadrecipe from KingArthurFlour.com is perfect.

This bread taste healthy. But not in a bad way. It's substantial but not too dense. It's soft and nutty and a tiny bit sweet - perfect for toasts and sandwiches.

I substituted a few items in the recipe and converted it into weight. If you haven't got yourself a scale, get one this weekend. Just for the dishes that you don't have to clean from one baking, it is already worth its price.

Ingredients

10 oz. warm water

1 oz. Agave nectar

1 3/8 oz. ground flax seeds

10 oz. traditional whole wheat flour

4 1/4 oz. bread flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon instant yeast

Directions

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. After everything is combined, turn onto floured counter top and knead until you get smooth dough. It took me almost 10 minutes but I'm a slow kneader. I didn't have to add any more flour or water but you might need to depending on the condition of your kitchen.

Ball the dough up, place in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until double in bulk (just a little over 1 hour.)

Gently deflate the dough, and form into loaf by stretching the dough surface. Let rise a again in a greased loaf pan, covered with plastic wrap until the dough rise above the pan (another hour.)

30 minutes before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 40 minutes. Let cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning the bread out into a cooling rack. Let cool for at least an hour before slicing.

(Half) Whole Wheat Challah Bread

2010-04-27T22:08:00.003-04:00

Look at these slices of bread. Aren't they beautiful? This is possibly the most beautifully risen, softest and most delicious sandwich loaf I have ever baked, will ever bake, ever. I almost don't want to bake this again for fear that I will surely mess it up.

The recipe is here: Millie's Whole Wheat Challah Bread from kingarthurflour.com.

I used Trader Joe's white whole wheat flour in place of whole wheat pastry flour and ended up using almost 10 ounces of it. It might be that white whole wheat flour absorbs less water or just that I was a little heavy handed with water.

I baked mine in a loaf pan for 20 minutes and then 10 more minutes under foil tent just like the braided version in the recipe.

The bread would be great as french toasts or sandwiches, if I could stop myself from munching the whole loaf...

Raisin Black Sesame Bars

2010-04-27T21:35:00.005-04:00

Hopefully within a few months, I will be on my way to a brand new apartment with slightly more spacious kitchen. Until then, I'm on a mission to use all the dry ingredients I currently have in the cupboard and to not buy any new ones. Starting with a jar of Tahini (from making hummus in 2007....), a bag of raisins and a lot of black sesame seeds.

After hours of browsing, I found Benne Seed Raisin Bars on Epicurious.com According to the site, benne == sesame. I modified the recipe a little by reducing butter to 3/4 cup, sugar to 1/2 cup and using a mixture of all purpose flour and whole wheat flour. The bars came out just sweet enough but not too sweet. They were crunchy with a nice contrasting texture from sprinkled sesame seeds. These could be energy bars in disguise with all the protein and fiber from sesame and raisins.

Ingredients

1 1/2 sticks butter at room temperature

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup Tahini (ground sesame) or use unsweetened peanut butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup raisins

1/2 cup black sesame seeds

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 11x7 inch baking dish. I used 2.2 qt Pyrex dish.

With an electric mixer or by hand, beat butter and sugar together until combined. Add an egg. Whisk until well blended. Add Tahini, salt and vanilla extract. Continue beating until smooth.

Add all purpose flour and whole wheat flour. Stir until combined. Fold in raisins.

Pour the mixture into greased pan. Sprinkle generously with black sesame seeds. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool in the pan. Cut into bars and store in cookie jar (not airtight - the cookies will lose its crunch in airtight container.)

PS. I'm still alive. Apparently 3-year-old Tahini is not poisonous.

Awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-04-20T23:31:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, simple drop cookies are the most satisfying and comforting. These cookies were baked and packaged as a birthday present all in under one hour. They have intense chocolate flavor (I used bitter sweet chocolate chips plus cocoa powder) with both chewy and crunchy texture.

I started with King Arthur Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies. I had only 2 ounces of shortening so I figured I would compensate the fat by adding 2 ounces of cocoa powder to the mix and reducing a little bit of flour.

I have been making little tiny cookies so much lately that I love love love these giant cookies. I got 28 cookies from the whole batch. It was awesome. You eat one cookie and you're done (or not.)

Giant cookie

Caramel Candy

2010-04-20T23:08:00.004-04:00

This was my third attempt at making caramel candy. The first attempt turned out too soft that I had to keep the candies in the refrigerator at all time. The second attempt, with the help of a stuck candy thermometer, I got a giant black rock which I promptly trashed before anybody could turn it into a weapon.

This one, I dare say, was a success!!! Although the candies went soft at room temperature in Thailand and they still had to be kept in the refrigerator. But at almost 40 degrees Celsius (about 100 degrees Fahrenheit) even my Chapstick had to be kept in the cold box.

I followed the first recipe from this page which is super easy with only a few simple ingredients. My candy thermometer was still stuck but I kept the time and continuously testing the texture under cold water.

My brother said that these candies tasted very similar to Jacques Torres' (at about a dollar a piece!) but mines didn't melt in the mouth as much as the professional candies. Mines were also more difficult to chew because they were huge. I said I almost broke my hands cutting those pieces so shut up.

Not in my kitchen...

2010-04-20T22:36:00.002-04:00

...in Thailand.

I don't have picture this time because I stayed home most of the trip and didn't take many pictures. But I have words.

My mother and I went to a meditation retreat for three days at a Buddhist temple in Lampang, the province where my mother lives. I was taught some beautiful things. The first day, we were taught the underlying reasons for meditation and what we are looking to achieve through meditating.

We were taught that objects and names as we know it are not real. Meditation is a way to recognize this fact and eventually become detached to them. You might argue that things are real because we can see, feel, taste, smell them. As an example, our hands. They are there. We can see them and feel them. But if we look deeper, our hands are made of skin and bones and blood, etc. And what are those things made of?

We were taught to look at things by their properties: earth, water, wind and fire. Earth as in the lightness or heaviness (not the physical soil because that's also not real.) Water for togetherness. Wind for looseness or tightness. And fire for hotness and coldness.

We were given 3 exercises to do during the whole conscious time that we were there. A walking meditation, sitting meditation and all other daily activities. These are to be done slowly with our minds being present focusing on every single action at all time. If, at any point, we were distracted, we were to recognize the distraction and the emotion that comes with it. Then get rid of it.

There were lots of distractions at the beginning. But it got easier as the time passed. By the end of the third day during my last sitting meditation, I sensed a calm and overwhelming bliss that I had never felt before. It was mind blowing. I never believed that my mind would be quiet enough to achieve any kind of meditative state. Of course, I shouldn't be attached to that feeling either. But as a beginner, that is something.

Here's the link to the temple's website: http://www.wattamaoh.com/

Cheddar Cheese Wholewheat Bread

2010-03-22T21:59:00.004-04:00

This bread is so delicious I ate the whole loaf in 1 and a half day. It's cheesy and crusty (from burnt cheese) and soft and chewy. I so wanted to bake another loaf but I won't be able to stop myself from devouring it again. So good it's bad.

Cheese overload.

Ingredients

8 oz wholewheat flour (I used 4 oz traditional wholewheat flour and 4 oz white wholewheat flour.)

4 oz bread flour

2 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

1 teaspoon salt

8 oz water

1 oz light tasting olive oil

8 oz diced cheddar cheese (I used Dubliner aged Irish cheddar cheese.)

Directions

Combine flour, yeast and salt in a bowl of an electric mixer. Add water and oil. Turn on the mixer at the lowest speed with a paddle hook.

After everything is wet, change to a bread hook and mix at slow speed until you get smooth dough - about 10 minutes. Knead in cheese. Let rise in the bowl, covered with a plastic wrap for about 1 and a half hour.

Grease a bread pan. Shape the dough into loaf (gently flatten the dough on floured counter top, fold the bottom half to the middle, fold the top half, crimp the edges close. Roll back and fourth to get the desired shape.) Let rise in the pan covered with plastic wrap for another 1 and a half hour or until the dough rise over the top of the pan.

30 minutes before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Turn out of the bread pan and let cool on a cooling rack for at least 1 hour before devouring. It's really great warm. Next time I might bake into rolls, so I won't have to wait.

Buttermilk Puddings with Agar Agar

2010-03-22T21:24:00.003-04:00

This is a great way to use up buttermilk in the refrigerator. The original recipe is from Gourmet using gelatin which I didn't have. What I used instead was Agar Agar powder which, in Thailand, is used for desserts similar to jello with more chew and made with coconut milk or basil seeds. I got a few envelopes of the powder and a bag of basil seeds from Chinatown to make basil seed jello last summer but never got to it.

Ingredients

2 cups milk

1/4 cup sugar

1 vanilla bean

1 teaspoon agar agar powder

2 cups buttermilk

With blueberries

Directions

Heat milk, sugar, scraped vanilla bean and agar agar powder on a stove top over medium heat until agar agar powder completely dissolves - about 15 minutes. Stir constantly to prevent jelly to form at the bottom. Don't turn your back. Milk boils over very easily.

Turn off the heat and let cool for about 30 minutes on the stove top. Do not refrigerate yet. This is so that when you pour buttermilk into milk, milk protein won't separate and become cheese.

Stir in 2 cups buttermilk. Divide into 6 individual cups and refrigerate. Agar agar sets a lot faster than gelatin. Serve cold by itself or with fruit.

Balsamic Apple Cobbler

2010-03-13T16:59:00.002-05:00

In Jamie Oliver's Happy Days with the Naked Chef, he made fruit cobbler with a few kinds of berries, a pear, an apple and "a good glug of balsamic vinegar." What a great idea! The vinegar gave the fruit a complex sweet and sour note. I was wondering if it would work without the berries.

Other than the slightly un-appetizing brownish color, the baked apples tasted fantastic - best tasting apple filling ever. I will try this again in apple pie form.

For the topping, I used buttermilk fruit cobbler recipe from Christopher Kimball's The Cook's Bible which basically a biscuit recipe with 2 tablespoons of sugar. And like recipe in this book, this will be the best biscuit/cobbler topping you'll ever make.

Ingredients

8 apples - peeled, cored and cut into chunks (I used combination of Granny Smith, Greening, Golden Delicious, and Gala.)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons salt

3 tablespoons chilled butter

2 tablespoons shortening

1/2 cup buttermilk

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Toss apples with 2 tablespoons sugar and balsamic vinegar in a 9 inch square baking dish. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes.

In a food processor, pulse flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and salt together a few times. Cut butter and shortening into small chunks and add to the mixture. Pulse into you get coarse crumbs but not wet sticky dough.

Transfer into a bowl, sprinkle buttermilk over and mix with wooden spoon.

Gather into a ball. Wrap with plastic wrap. Flatten into a disk and refrigerate.

Remove apples from the oven, increase the temperature to 425 degrees. Roll out the dough and place on top of the fruit. Bake for 15 minutes.

Let cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. Best when warm.

Very Simple Granola

2010-03-09T21:29:00.004-05:00

The deli, where I got my lunch almost everyday before the office moved, carries these yogurt parfaits. They are layers of plain Greek yogurt, slices of very lightly baked apples, honey, granola and topped with chopped fresh apples. They were meant to be breakfast. So by lunch time, there would only be one or two cups left, if I was lucky. I usually had them as afternoon snacks instead of getting candies from the evil vending machine.

About a week ago, the office moved 10 blocks north from 32nd Street to 40th Street - the land of cafes/delis/and lunch places. Since then, I have visited about 20 delis looking for something similar to the apple yogurt parfait. What I found were either overly sweetened yogurt with a few pieces of fruit and soggy granola or watery yogurt with chunks of cantaloupe and pineapples. Why you would want to add watery fruit to watery yogurt, I have no idea.

So I set out to make my own. Start with the granola - which was just lightly sweetened toasted oats. No nuts or dry fruit or any extra stuff. I came up with this recipe with just 4 ingredients: oatmeal, Agave nectar, oil and vanilla. The granola is very good on its own with either just milk or yogurt. But I like it best with honey and berries/chopped apples/chopped pears. I haven't tried with baked apples yet. So I can't say I succeed what I set out to do.

Ingredients

4 cups traditional oatmeal (320 g)

1/3 cup Agave nectar (95 g)

1/4 cup light tasting olive oil (40 g)

1 vanilla bean (or a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract)

Directions

Adjust the oven racks to top 3rd and lower 3rd. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk Agave nectar with oil. Scrape vanilla bean into the mixture. Mix well. Add oatmeal. Stir until well combined and pieces of oatmeal are wet.

Divide into the two baking sheets. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until the granola is golden brown. Stir, rotate and switch the pan after 8 minutes.

Let cool completely in the pans and store in airtight container.

Cinnamon Apple Muffins

2010-03-01T20:49:00.003-05:00

Apple madness continues.

These muffins are a little too sweet for me (but my friends loved them) even though I reduced the sugar from 1 1/4 cups to only 3/4 cup. Maybe it's because my apple are not so sour (I used Granny Smith.) The original recipe was from AllRecipes.com for Jumbo Fluffy Walnut Apple Muffins. My muffins were not jumbo and didn't contain walnuts although they are very fluffy. So I'm calling them cinnamon apple muffins instead.

These muffins came out like really good moist mini coffee cake studded with apples in every bite. I felt like I had way too much topping. I might cut it to half next time but the topping added great crunchy texture and sweetness to the muffins.

Here are the ingredients I used for the muffins:

1 stick butter at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar (I will reduce to 1/2 cup next time.)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup milk

3 medium Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and chopped - about 3 cups

View original recipe here.

Brown Sugar Apple Cupcakes

2010-02-16T21:40:00.003-05:00

Can you guess what my favorite fruit of the moment is? That's right. Apples. After, vanilla custard apple cake and vanilla yogurt apple crisp, I still want more apples in my baked goods.

So I came up with:

Brown sugar apple cupcakes

At first, I was going to make caramel apple cupcakes but I couldn't find any caramel sauce or dulce de leche at the supermarket. I wasn't going to make it from scratch again. So I had to change my plan which, by the way, turned out brilliantly (for a change.)

Diced apples

I started with my favorite cupcake recipe (you know 2 3/4 cups flour, 4 eggs, 2 sticks butter, 2 cups sugar, etc.) Replaced all the liquid with diced 3 apples (about 3 cups), reduced sugar to 1 cup of white sugar and 2/3 cup of brown sugar.

For the frosting, I made brown sugar cream cheese frosting using all brown sugar (not the usual confectioner sugar) plus a tablespoon of corn starch as a guarantee that the frosting won't melt and fall apart during transportation.

Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting

1 package of cream cheese

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon corn starch

I just beat all the ingredients together with an electric mixer until smooth and fluffy. You might want to sift brown sugar. I didn't. And I had a few tiny clumps of it in the frosting which I painstakingly forked out one by one as I frosted my cupcakes.

Cupcakes fresh out of the oven

Vanilla Yogurt Apple Crisp

2010-02-16T21:08:00.004-05:00

My last experiment baking apple with yogurt and vanilla bean worked out so deliciously that I had to re-bake. But with an (failing) attempt to limit my calories intake, I decided to skip the bottom crust, omit eggs in the middle and make the top crust healthier with oatmeal and brown rice flour.

The result, though not as satisfying as the original, was awesomely delicious and caused significantly less guilt. The crisp top was buttery and crunchy which complimented soft custard fillings. I used Golden Delicious this time. The smaller chunks totally disintegrated but the bigger ones are still intact - giving nice meaty texture.

Ingredients

6 Golden Delicious apples - peeled, cored and cut into small chunks

1 cup low-fat plain yogurt

2 tablespoons instant tapioca

1/2 vanilla bean

1 cup old fashioned oatmeal

1/2 cup brown rice flour

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons chilled butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, whisk yogurt, tapioca and scraped seeds from the vanilla bean together. Toss with apples. Pour into 8 inch square baking dish.

In a clean bowl, combine oatmeal, rice flour, sugar and salt. Cut butter into cubes and rub into the mixture with finger tips until you get coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over the pan.

Bake for 60 to 75 minutes or until the top is light brown. Let cool for at least 1 hour before serving.

Earl Grey Cupcakes

2010-02-08T20:12:00.003-05:00

It was fun having people guess what kind of cupcakes these were. The closest first try was "the spice that you get after Indian food." Because I used the actual tea leaves in the cakes, some people were scared of how they looked. I had to assured them that I didn't use any bugs.

These cupcakes came out not as fluffy as my usual cupcakes. I guess it's because I used tea (water and tea) instead of milk. But I was happy with how they tasted. The tea flavor was noticeable but subtle. I used cream cheese frosting (with added 2 tablespoons of strong tea) because that's what I had but I think they might go better with whipped cream.

Ingredients

1 stick of butter at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup strong earl grey tea (I seeped 3 bags of tea in 1 cup of hot water.)

1 bag of earl grey tea leaves

Earl Grey Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick of butter at room temperature

1/2 cup confectioner sugar

1 package of cream cheese

2 tablespoons of strong earl grey tea

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin pan with paper liners.

With an electric mixer, beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addition. Add tea leaves.

In a cleam bowl, combine flour, salt and baking powder.

Alternately stir dry ingredients and 1/2 cup of tea into the butter mixture in 2 batches. Scrape the bowl when needed. When there's no streak left, spoon into the muffin pan. Fill up to half full.

Bake for 22 minutes. Rotate the pan half way through. Let cool completely on a cooling rack before frosting.

To make frosting, beat butter and confectioner sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add cream cheese and tea. Beat until combined.

Blueberry Bread Pudding

2010-02-08T19:54:00.002-05:00

I went to a barbecue place for dinner on Friday. They gave these really nice and soft potato rolls with their meat. I could hardly finish what I ordered so I didn't touch the rolls. I took them home and made blueberry bread pudding for breakfast the next day.

I am so proud of my frugality.

From leftover rolls

To yummy blueberry bread pudding

Ingredients

4 potato rolls

1 egg

1/4 cup cream

1/3 cup milk

3 tablespoons sugar

1/2 cup blueberries (I used frozen wild blueberries from Trader Joe's.)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cube the rolls.

Whisk egg, cream, milk and sugar together. Add blueberries.

Soak the cubed rolls. Spoon into two remekins. Bake for 25 minutes. Serve warm or cold.

Homemade Cottage Cheese and Whole Wheat Whey Water Bread

2010-02-08T19:20:00.005-05:00

Alton Brown did it again. It's not often that I watched a TV cooking show and actually tried the recipe from the show. This one is just irresistible. In an episode about milk, he showed how to very easily separate curd from liquid in milk and make cottage cheese. It was worth trying just to see this happen in action and to realize I have the power to make cheese right in my kitchen.

The cheese came out dry until I added a bunch of cream/milk/and whey water back. And then it was great. I can't believe how simple it was. You basically just have to heat up a gallon of milk to 120 degree, add 3/4 cup of vinegar and watch magic happens right before your eyes.

Then just drain, wash out vinegar under cold water, and season with salt, cream and milk. I halved the recipe and got enough cheese for 2 meals.

I couldn't make myself throw away all the leftover liquid that had been perfectly good milk 5 minutes earlier. So I used a couple of cups to make no-knead bread. The result was very flavorful loaf with soft chewy texture. I will have to make more cheese just for its whey for more bread....

Ingredients

100 grams all-purpose flour

300 grams whole wheat flour

5 grams salt

2 grams instant yeast

350 grams whey water

Directions

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the whey water. Stir with a wooden spoon until everything is wet and well combined. Cover and let stand for 18 hours. The dough will be a little smelly and sour but no worries. The final product will be awesome.

After 18 hours of dough resting, dust a counter top generously with flour (whole wheat or white.) Dump the dough onto the counter top. Fold over itself a few times until the dough holds its shape. Form into ball.

Line a medium bowl with a clean kitchen towel. Sprinkle generously with bran. Plop the dough ball in there. Sprinkle with more bran. Cover and let rise for about an hour and a half.

45 minutes before baking time preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a dutch oven and its cover inside.

When it's time, carefully uncover the dutch oven and plop the dough (bran and all) into it. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for 20 to 30 minutes more or until the top is nice and brown. Let cool on a cooling rack for at least an hour before cutting.

Green Tea Shortbread Cookies

2010-01-29T16:08:00.003-05:00

The first time I had matcha tea I thought it tasted like dirt. I guess it's one of those acquired taste. And I have acquired it alright. I tried putting the stuff not only in my drinks but also in cake, cookies, ice cream, pudding, and even my oatmeal breakfast. Some turned out great, so not so much. But this is the winner. Matcha + shortbread cookies = so-delicious-you-convince-yourself-it-is-healthy cookies.

The bitterness and subtle flavor of the tea complimented the simplicity of shortbread cookies perfectly. None of the ingredients overpower the other. I use enough tea in this recipe so that cookies taste and smell like tea but are not overly bitter.

The recipe is simple. I just basically add 1 tablespoon of matcha and a teaspoon of vanilla extract to my normal shortbread cookies.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 tablespoon matcha (I got mine in a Korean supermarket for $9/2 oz.)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 sticks (1 cup) chilled butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

With a food processor, pulse flour, matcha, sugar and salt together.

Cut butter into cubes and add to the mixture. Add vanilla extract. Pulse until butter is cut into the dough and the mixture is crumbly. Stop the machine just before the dough totally stick together and ride up the bowl.

Gather into 2 balls. Flatten and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or more until the dough is hard enough to roll out and cut without sticking. If refrigerate overnight, set the dough at room temperature for about 20 minutes before rolling.

If rolling and cutting out cookies seems like too much work, just roll the dough into logs about 1 inch in diameter. Wrap and refrigerate.

Adjust oven racks to the upper third and lower third. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Roll out the dough to about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick and cut out with cookie cutter. Or if using the log method, use a sharp knife to cut the dough out into 1/4 inch thick. Arrange in prepared cookie sheets. These cookies don't expand much so just give them maybe 1/2 inch space between each other.

Bake for about 25 minutes or until the edges start to brown. Rotate and switch sheet position half way through.

Let cool on the baking sheets for a minute then transfer to cooling racks. Let cool completely before storing or serving. The cookies develop more flavor and better texture when they are cold. They stay for about 1 to 2 weeks in cookie jars (not air-tight).

Vanilla Custard Apple Cake

2010-01-22T18:23:00.006-05:00

At The Tea Lounge in Park Slope last weekend, I had an absolutely lovely apple cake. It looked like a crumb cake but the gentle hipster behind the counter said it's an apple pie. True enough, it had pie crust at the bottom. The middle were chunks of apples swimming in creamy sweet custard and topped with substantial layer of streusel.

So I made it my mission to replicate the cake at home. My attempt number one came out almost on the mark. Almost. The cake was moist and deliciously creamy. Chunks of apples were still intact and gave nice crunch. And it was perfectly sweetened - not too sweet but sweet enough to keep you (me) wanting more. Almost.... It just needs more steusel. Something more hefty to stand up to the pie crust and creamy chunky apples.

I started with an olive oil pie crust just because it only involved mixing and pressing the dough on to a baking dish. There's no need for fancy pie crust because it will soak up all the liquid at the bottom anyway. I used a combination of Granny Smith, Gala and Golden Delicious apples. Gala stays chunky after cooking while the other two become soft. Sour Granny Smith balances off all the other sweet and creamy ingredients.

Ingredients

1 recipe olive oil pie crust

6 apples (I used 2 Granny Smith apples, 2 Gala and 2 Golden Delicious.)

1 1/2 cups low-fat yogurt

3 eggs

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons instant tapioca (or just all purpose flour)

1 vanilla bean

For Steusel

2/3 cups all purpose flour

4 tablespoons cold butter

1/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons milk

Directions

In an 8 inch square pan, mix all the dry ingredients for the crust together. Sprinkle oil and milk over. Use finger tips to mix until just wet and press onto the pan. Cover and refrigerate.

Prepare the streusel by mixing 2/3 cup flour and 1/3 cup sugar together in a medium bowl. Rub in cold butter and sprinkle milk over until you get coarse crumbs. Cover and refrigerate.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Clean, peel, core and cut the apples into chunks. Whisk yogurt, eggs, salt and tapioca together. Split the vanilla bean and scrape it seeds into the yogurt mixture. Pour over apples. Stir.

Pile apples on top of the pie crust. Pour any extra liquid into the pan. Sprinkle the streusel on top. Place the pan on a cookie sheet (in case of juice overflow) and bake for 60 minutes or until the top is golden. Rotate the pan half way through cooking. Let cool before serving.

Molasses Chocoate Caramel Candy

2010-01-22T10:23:00.001-05:00

My brother asked me to buy him some caramel candies from Jacques Torres. I said: "Why?" Who eats caramel candies anyway? It's just burnt sugar and it sticks to my teeth forever. But because I am a good sister, I got him two huge boxes ($16 for 18 pieces!)

Then I tried one. Then two. Then three. And I couldn't stop. I ended up eating a third of the box...

I guess being forever sticky has its own appeal.

Not wanting to spend almost a dollar a piece for caramel candy, I set out for my own caramel candy recipe to make at home.

Here's my first try: chocolate caramel candy. I picked this one because it didn't require a candy thermometer (which is my mistake number 1.)

I cooked everything according to the recipe except that I didn't know how to check for the right consistency under cool water and ended up burning my index finger. Up to the index-finger-burning point everything was pretty easy.

I was very excited to cut and wrap the candies up. I was dreaming of mailing them to brother to surprise him.

But it was a mess. The brick of caramel doesn't quite harden enough. I guess I should have cooked it a little longer. I muscled through a few wrappings and got about 20 candies before giving up. They were soft sticky candies that tasted more like burnt molasses than chocolate. Not quite the quality I want to airmail to Thailand yet...

Bran Muffins

2010-01-16T10:35:00.004-05:00

Recipe: Nancy Silverton's Bran Muffins via DavidLebovitz.com

This is the most involved muffin recipe ever! Look at it. There's toasting wheat bran, cooking raisins and then pureeing them. It took all my will and about an hour of my morning to prepare. Well, at least I didn't have to bring out the mixer too. Look at all the dishes I have to clean afterward.

But I must say these are the most flavorful and moist bran muffins I've ever had. Plus these are no joke. Most recipes I found on the internet call for maybe a cup of bran for 2 cups of flour. This one has 2 cups of bran for only 3/4 cup of flour (and 1/4 of that whole wheat.)

I'm set for a week with breakfast.