Candied Walnut Biscotti w/ Dark Chocolate

With a cup of strong black coffee. 

Carrot Cake & Birthday Weekend

First blog post in weeks and weeks and weeks. Naturally, it was a celebration (and a new camera!) that finally prompted me to start blogging again! My parents and I have always been a fan of carrot cake - a big deal considering my parents don't even really like cake. The problem I have with most carrot cakes is there's either too much stuff in the cake or its wayyy to sweet. So instead of driving all the way to the store to buy a cake no one really wants to eat, I decided to bake one instead. Recipe is a combination of what is provided by Smitten Kitchen's maple cream cheese frosting carrot cup cakes, a can of canned pineapple and various googling of carrot cake recipes online (recipe shown below).

Carrot grating, nut meg grating & grounding of spices.

One of the reasons why I love carrot cake is the richness and depth of flavor you get from all of the different layers of ingredients. There's also a reason why carrot cake is a pain in the butt to make - grating cups and cups of carrots. At first, I tried to find a way to use the electric mixer...which failed miserably, and opted for the old-fashion method of hand grating instead. Since this was a birthday cake after all, I also went for some freshly grounded nutmeg, all spice, and cloves.

Mixing in the carrots to the cake batter & making cream cheese frosting (with a generous portion of maple syrup)

Feeling particularly ambitious, I also decided to pipet the frosting onto the two layer cake...which didn't go all that well. Apparently, its really not as easy as it looks! And homemade piping bags made from ziplog bags also don't work all that well. Nevertheless, after a few hours of chilling in the fridge, the cake came out respectable enough for me to take some pictures :) Only thing that matters is that it taste good right?

Some guesswork in the baking time but still managed to  produce a rather tasty cake :)

And that's not all! I can't skip the celebratory dinner can I?

1/2 a bushel of crabs, growler of beer and some Irish car bombs.

Happy Birthday dad :)

Bake Shop

BAKE SHOP, Praha 1. Check out the adorable website. 

+ Cupcakes of every selection
+ Super chunky chocolate chip cookies
+ Adorable sugar cubes on each table
+ Fruity jam in a jar

A French bake shop in the Jewish Quarter of Prague. What charming place filled with AMAZING baked goods. Most known for their brownies and cookies, we actually opted mostly for a selection of croissants and quiches. I will certainly be returning often to sample those macarons and cupcakes.

Baking Reunion

Every time that I am home, I almost always meet up with one of my really good high school friend and we do nothing but bake and bake and bake some more. Check out the past two baking bonazas here and here. This time, we figured it was time to branch out into something away from the usual cookies and truffles. Of course, I settled on cupcakes which really aren't much of a deviation.  Anyways, with all the hoo-ray around cupcakes for the past year and red velvet being a constant favorite, I figured I should give the Southern classic a spin. Here's a great article on the cupcakes from the New York Times. [Recipe courtesy of Brown Eyed Baker]

Ingredients:

4 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2½ tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tbsp red food coloring
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ cup buttermilk
1 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
1½ tsp distilled white vinegar [of course I was too lazy to look for white vinegar so I just used Asian vinegar]

I love gathering all of the ingredients from the pantry before every baking expedition.

Creaming egg, sugar and butter

Adding Ghiardelli Cocoa.

Adding a lot of red food dye.

Mixing in the dry ingredients.

So much redness.

Baked at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Cream Cheese Icing. I hate hate hate super sweet icing so we cut the powdered sugar content in half which made the icing kind of runny. They looked cute but not cute enough...

Chocolate was the perfect solution.

Before the drizzled chocolate, too impatient  and hungry

My overall opinion is that I am still not the biggest fan of cupcakes since it seems to be the icing that just makes it taste really good. Then again, maybe its just because I'm not very good at making them :p

Banana Bread
One baked good I can make without fail though is banana which even my mom likes even though she hated desserts when we first came to America. Now she eats all of my baked goods. lol. Thanks for the support mom :o

2 mashed bananas, 1/2 cup of oil & 1 egg

1.5 cups of white sugar, 1.75 cup of white flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg and 1 tsp of all spice.

Makes two smallish loaves.

Mmmm golden brown crust.

Used the left over cream cheese frosting and dusted with some powdered sugar.

SO, I am presently in New York and although I've only been here for 1 day, I am totally and completely in love. I did not anticipate however, that NYC would seem this overwhelming! Fortunately, I have a whole week to get acclimated before starting work. The internet in our apartment has been absolutely terrible so I haven't had to post all of the things I have been meaning to. I will probably just start making the posts really long since I can only blog when I run to a nearby cafe. Next post will feature a bon voyage dinner and the first brunch in the city!

Another Oldie but Goodie

Ever since I finally learned how to bake a perfectly chewy chocolate chip cookie without burning it (the secret is the baking time! who knew?)  I've been making this this peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe.  I absolutely love chocolate and peanut butter together. Peanut butter brownies? delicious. Peanut butter filled pretzels? amazing. Peanut butter & chocolate ice cream? ok. you get the point. Anyways, I've been making these cookies since high school. Every birthday, snack day, whatever you name it, these are my go to cookies. I've modified the recipe by using different types of sugars and different amounts of peanut butter. I personally like my cookies with extra peanut butter but that's just me. Enjoy :)

Trader Joe's has a pretty perfect peanut butter, not very sweet and super peanut buttery. YUM.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips (or in my case, the whole bag)
opt: 1 cup rolled oats

Cream together the butter, peanut butter and sugars. Then add the egg and vanilla.

Slowly add flour, salt and baking soda.

Chocolate chips!

Bake at 375 degrees F for exactly 8 minutes.

Fresh out of the oven.

Lined up (not so neatly) in rows :)

Now I just need to figure out how to package these and ship them without everything getting all smushed. Hmm.

Baking for a Cause

Last week, Sigma hosted its annual Visions of Chocolate philanthropy event to raise  awareness for the fight against domestic violence. The event featured a dessert buffet with food donations from Taglios, Naked Cupcakes and other local bakeries. In addition, there was a galore of baking done in my tiny dorm apartment from 12am until the wee hours of the morning. Kudos to my the Philanthropy chairs for hosting such an amazing event and showing some impressive baking skills :) I  have to say, I have never baked so much in one sitting in my life but it made me really really wank to open a bakery, teehee.

Chocolate with marshmellows for the Smores bars (recipe here!) and coconut for the Chocolate Coconut Macarons (recipe here!). Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of the two desserts since it we were too busy baking and I was getting really really tired by 3am.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies made entirely by the Philanthropy Chairs! (recipe here)

Mini Cherry Cheesecakes. The last time I made cheesecake was probably 3 years ago but turns out cheesecake is surprisingly easy to make.  (recipe here). The original recipe called for nilla wafers but I found them to be really awkward because they didn't fit into the mini cupcake holders. But they were definitely easier than the graham cracker crust I made for the first batch. A random tangent; I really dislike cherry flavored desserts because I always find the taste to be super artificial but the canned cherries for this dish wound up working extremely well.

Quick snapshot of half of half of the desserts that were made. Chocolate chip cake peeking out from the bottom.

Congrats again Phil chairs on a successful Visions!

And I'm back!

Wow I can't even remember the last time I posted, this semester has been absolutely ridiculously crazy. Fortunately, things are finally settling down which means I can get back to blogging! I think I must have 10 posts worth of pictures sitting in my camera right now. Here's a treat I actually made over break and did not even realize I had not posted yet!

Soo the story behind phyllo dough and apple strudels (not really a story but I'll tell it anyways) is that the first time I tried making apple strudels, it was with my grandmother. She used to make them for my dad from scratch and it was a crazy Austrian recipe she had perfected over the years. When we tried making the ridiculously thin layers of strudel goodness, the flour kept ripping apart on us  (apparently we didn't have the right brand of flour). Anyways, it still ended up being delicious but ever since then I've been terrified of making strudels.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always thought I should just use phyllo dough but for some reason I could never find it in the grocery store (of course I've probably only tried looking for it twice in my life). Since I finally bought a box over break and was on a crazy baking spree, I decided to make apple strudels on my last day at home.  I had also just seen Inglorious Bastard probably for the third time in three days and wanted to make a strudel so I could dollop a big spoonful of cream on top. (Turns out we didn't actually have any cream, but the greek yogurt worked nicely :).

I'm actually very particular about my apples. The only kind I like to eat and cook with are Figi apples. The reason for this is that they never get uncrispy. Mushy apples are gross. Seriously. (5 medium apples used here).

I also don't think you can ever go wrong when baking with apples. Every homey spice you can think of goes well with apples. I used: 1 tsp of vanilla, 1/2 tsp of lemon extract, 1 tsp of crushed cloves and all spice, 2 tbs of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of nutmeg. (I think this was for two big strudels).

We're also very big on using mortar and pestles for some reason.

Mix apples, previous spices, 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of white sugar.

I want to say I used 5 sheets of phyllo here but you really can't go wrong. Brush a thin layer of butter in between each layer and pour apples on the top layer. Fold the sides in and roll to form a log. Brush more layer over the whole thing.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool for 15 minutes before cutting. (or not).

Garnish with powdered sugar and cream (or yogurt in my case).

Random aside: Wegman's has really really delicious thick Greek Yogurt.

its a pie...or tart...or something

I've never made anything with puff pastry before. Not because I have anything against it but because I've never been able to find it in the freezer section (ok I've never looked that hard) but still, every time the thought crossed my mind I could never track the buttery layer-y dough thing down. Anyways, I finally found some in the grocery store and decided to make a little onion/mushroom tart with it.

Two problems. 1) We went to go pick up some produce from the produce junction and they were out of mushrooms (how do you run out of mushrooms??) 2) I went to open the puff pastry and realized that it wasn't a sheet like I was expecting but little circle-y things.

By then I had already caramelized way more onions then I needed and shredded a massive bowl of Jarlsberg cheese (a Swiss cheese my dad buys in big 5lb chunks). So that meant time for some improvisation. Well, I've never been the biggest fan of recipes anyways ha.

3 white onions, salt, pepper and 1 big heap of thyme on medium high for 20 minutes.

I've never been the biggest fan of onions, but these were really tasty since cooking them for so long got rid of their usual sharp odor and taste.

Bake the puff pastry for 20 minutes. Take out of the oven and let cool for 5. Fill with the onions and shredded cheese and bake for an additional 5. Garnish with more thyme.

Ta-da! They remind of horderves a really classy house wife would serve at a dinner party in the '50s. Such are the thoughts that go through my head...