I know it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve updated my blog. I know, I didn’t mean to keep all of you hanging but I’ve been busy.
First of all, in case you haven’t looked (or you don’t subscribe to my Google Feed/Feedburner over a month ago), I’ve made an announcement over a month ago that: 1) I got accepted and going to graduate school! (I’m studying Masters of Public Health) and 2) I’m going to Paris, France for vacation toward the end of May!
I’ve been AWOL, at least with my blog (I’m sort of active on my Twitter), because of planning my five-night vacation to Paris. It’ll be my first time there and I hope the Icelandic volcano won’t screw up my vacation. When I do get to Paris, all I know I have to be prepared to eat and walk a lot. Gorge on a ton of cheese, macarons and all other wonderful, carb-y, buttery French pastries and bread! Sweet jeebus, I should start dieting by the thought of that…
Please note, this is sort of a book review done all in one post. If this doesn’t interest you, feel free to peruse around my blog for restaurant reviews or other recipes.
For the past week or so, I went into a strange tunnel vision-like obsession for all things sweet and frozen. I’m talking about ice cream (along with granita and sherbet). Thanks to Helen to contribute my madness by lending me her ice cream machine, I got myself David Lebovitz‘s book, Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accompaniments, gathered a bunch of ingredients from my local market (my main haul was heavy cream). The guinea pigs were pretty much my parents and I.
Crema di Pistacchi Bronte; viscous
As a long time fan of Mr. Lebovitz’s blog, I bookmarked his pistachio gelato recipe a while ago since I hope that one day I’d make this myself. In case you didn’t know or you’re reading my blog for the first time, I LOVE pistachio gelato! There’s something innately seductive about this particular nut that I can’t explain. (Possibly it’s so buttery and creamy when it’s in a paste form?) Continue reading “Ice Cream Madness: Book Review “The Perfect Scoop”” »
Last week or so while my family was still in this weird, almost obsessed period of making almost all Chinese sweets and baked goods from scratch, I went along with it and baked dan tats (蛋撻) or egg custard tarts. You may call me crazy but my argument is, there’s nothing like a fresh baked fill in the blank and if I know how to make it, why the hell should I buy it? Unless of course, I’m desperate to eat whatever I’m aping for. I know things like the egg custard tarts and Chinese-style baked pork buns would make your head scratch and wonder why bake it since it’s relatively cheap to buy? To sum up in a word, quality.
Before I keep ranting, here’s how I made them…
I didn’t realize that until my dad translated that for me when I found a recipe via eGullet which took me to this Chinese website called Leisure Cat. Funny thing is, my dad inscribed a bunch of dim sum recipes waay back about three decades ago and actually saved his little notebook. He compared notes and found it to be pretty much legit in terms of ratios. So, I used the crusts portion and went my own way when it came to the egg yolk custard filling.
Mis en place for the “oil crust” and “water crust”
There’s two crusts to make, yes. TWO. The “oil crust” is self-explanatory. It’s made with a pile of butter, lard and a smidge of flour (if you have to compare weights between the fats and the flour). The “water crust” is the low fat part of the dough. Both are essential to give you the crisp, flaky crust. Continue reading “Baking Egg Custard Tarts (aka Dan Tats)” »
As of the past weekend, my entire family have been scheming what to cook and eat for Lunar or Chinese New Year. Coincidentally, Chinese New Year falls on the same date as Valentine’s Day this year.
Proofed, filled buns; Brushing on egg
Anyway, as we’re planning out loud what we can do and must do for tradition and for the sake of ambition of tackling dishes we’ve never done. Going along with the latter, my dad and I collaborated the effort of baking cha siu bao-style buns (aka baked Chinese BBQ pork buns) except we’ve replaced the pork filling with house ground sirloin beef. We are planning to do the real cha siu bao around next week so we won’t ruin his delicious roast pork. (Trust me, you haven’t lived ’til you tried my dad’s pork. Unless you don’t like or can’t eat pork, that’s a different story.) The meat filling must be cooked prior to filling it in your bun. We flavored the ground beef with ginger, garlic, and scallions (all finely chopped) and flavored with oyster sauce and black pepper. Let it cool to room temp and proceed working with your large glob of fermented bread dough.
After kneading, cutting the dough, rolling them out like dumplings, filling, wrapping, and proofing (as in letting the buns rise and get puffy), I brush them on with a beaten whole egg. The reason behind the latter is to give the buns a nice glazed look and it helps the browning (caramelizing) process while it’s baking away in the oven.
Cooling
What pleasantly surprised me was the fact that these buns actually look…pretty and edible. For some strange reason, I tend to be afraid of baking buns more than a loaf of bread. At any rate, they look gloriously golden brown with a beautiful sheen.
Innards, done two ways
When the buns were chomped by the teeth or cut with a knife, a gentle steam exudes from them, releasing the incredible scent of meat, garlic and a gentle hint of scallion. These were tasty. The modifications I have to do next time is to increase the oven temperature I used and shorten the baking time.
During the course of my work week, I was craving something crunchy. I can’t explain it but it’s certainly one of those times that I have the strongest, indescribable desire to eat crunchy food. Since I didn’t want potato chips or pretzels, even though it was Super Bowl weekend, I searched my house and found a bag of mixed unshelled nuts. I perused my recipe collection I collected over the years and found this: hazelnut strawberry thumbprint cookies.
It’s a simple cookie recipe. The small problem was, I didn’t have enough hazelnuts. (I’m presuming my dad liked that particular nut a lot since there weren’t that many from the beginning.) So, I thought what nut would go with hazelnuts well and almonds popped in my head and I started cracking my way through. After fifteen minutes of nut shell debris flying across my kitchen counter and floor, I had enough nut meat for the recipe.
Look like blond Rocher chocolates
After making the buttery mass of cookie dough, forming it into one-inch balls and rolling it in the coarsely ground, toasted, nuts, it does look like Rocher chocolates, except, of course, it’s made of cookie dough.
Happy New Year, Everyone! I hope you all haven’t partied too hard on New Year’s Eve…
To ring in the New Year, I wanted to make (not much baking involved in this particular cake) a showstopping cake. Since my GREs are done I had time to kill and might as well do something ambitious than the typical layer cake.
Around the beginning of November, my mom told me one morning that she wanted me to bake desserts for Thanksgiving. This wasn’t news to me since I’ve been baking desserts for my family over a decade. She requested a cheesecake (again, nothing new) and she wanted to indulge herself with a key lime pie. I rolled my eyes and said, “Sure. Just get me some ingredients that we don’t have in the house. I have the chocolate for the cheesecake.” She replied, “Chocolate? For the cheesecake?” I said, “Yes, I want to change things up. I’m tired of making the same [raspberry] cheesecake I’ve been doing for the past several years.”
I still had the bittersweet chocolate baking bar and the cocoa powder from Scharffen Berger (from the previous event they’ve invited me a few months ago) so I should be set. Thing was, I wasn’t planning on making the cookie crust from scratch since my mom kept harassing me multiple times not to waste time by baking – a blatant oxymoron (How can anyone expect desserts made from scratch NOT take time?).
The weekend prior to Thanksgiving, my parents went to their local supermarkets and told me that after visiting three different stores, they don’t carry chocolate wafer cookies. Obviously, I have no choice but to make the cookie crust from scratch now…
My dad, being a sweetheart, offered his help to get his hands dirty for the cookie crust, kneading and mixing the dried ingredients of flour, cocoa powder (admittedly, I used a combination of Valhrona and Scharffen Berger), sugar, baking soda, salt and lots of butter, until it becomes a large blob of cocoa scented dough. Then I sealed it up in plastic wrap, place it in the fridge until Wednesday evening when I have to bake everything off so it can be consumed on Thanksgiving.
Making the TKO cookie dough and the dough blobs
On Thanksgiving eve, I had to roll out the cookie dough into sheets (it’s from the TKO cookie recipe found within the Essence of Chocolate book) and bake it off until it’s hardened and dry but not burnt.
The past weekend I baked my birthday cake early. I don’t mean a few days early, I meant a week early. Why? you ask. Well, this weekend I’m pretty busy with going to the Cook.Eat.Live food event, meeting up with a bunch of friends for dinner, and trying to fit in some studying time for the GREs in between (I’m planning to go back to grad school.) I thought I might as well bake it early and eat my way through with the help of my parents and Helen.
Broken up chocolate & baked cake
Once again, the good people of Scharffen Berger came to my aid, providing me the milk chocolate for this cake recipe. The recipe, white velvet cake with milk chocolate ganache is also from Scharffen Berger’s The Essence of Chocolate. Frankly, after trying multiple recipes from their book this is a great book for baking anything chocolate-related. Six recipes attempted and all were successes. I highly recommend.
To explain what’s in the white velvet cake, it’s basically a pale yellow/white cake with a very fine texture due to the use of cake flour. It’s a very simple cake that my mom wondered why I want to do such a thing on my 24th birthday? Frankly, I don’t want to deal with a fussy recipe and don’t want to put in too much time with my birthday cake. I’m aiming for simplicity this year.
Cake slice
Anyway, the cake was good as it sounded. A delicate crumb cake, that has a hint of butter, barely sweet, sandwiched and coated with milk chocolate ganache. What’s so great about Scharffen Berger’s milk chocolate is the caramelized milk flavor that’s very swoonworthy. (Heck, when I was decorating the cake. I was scraping a third of my ganache into a pastry bag, my mom walked over to the counter where I placed the nearly empty bowl, picked up the spatula, and licked it. She told me the ganache was delicious and wanted more! Alas, I can’t spare any.) Continue reading “My Birthday Cake – White Velvet Cake with Milk Chocolate Ganache” »
Bunch of Scharffen Berger chocolates & The Essence of Chocolate book
Last weekend was quite busy for me, as I baked two cakes from Scharffen Berger’s Essence of Chocolate: Recipes for Baking and Cooking with Fine Chocolate. To those of you who follow or actually look at my Flickr photos, I did attend to their luncheon several weeks ago. I followed up with Scharffen Berger and they were generous to send me two cake recipes worth of chocolate. Awesome…
Why the hell I want to bake in the hot, humid New York City weather? It’s for the sake of my brother’s 22nd birthday and my mom’s congratulatory cake(s) for being done and over with cancer. (My mom had her last planned surgery about 3 weeks ago, reversing her ileostomy. All is well now after the minor complications.) Continue reading “Chocolate Cakes Weekend” »
The weekend of my mom’s surgery (that’s two weeks ago), I baked her coconut-lemon sablé cookies. Why? She loves any and almost every coconut dessert or confection and I think cookies are a cinch to bake. I just chose sablés because she likes the crumbly, sandy texture of this rich cookie except she never remembers the name of it. As some of you bakers out there know that sablés are sort of hard to bake because of the texture, I found out from Cook’s Illustrated that there’s a secret to getting it right and it all goes down to… Continue reading “Coconut-Lemon Sablés” »
. To those of you who follow or actually look at my Flickr photos, I did attend to their 
