Sweet Frosting

Blue and Pink / Chocolate and Vanilla Macarons

2013-05-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for my iphone photos that were then filtered through instagram. I was too lazy to take out the big one.

Instead of cake, I made these for my 23rd Birthday. I wanna say "damn I feel old" but I know it would probably offend a lot more people reading this. It has really been a week long celebration, especially with the May Long and all. I took the Friday off work and just wondered around downtown Toronto and chilled.

Saturday I spent the entire day baking these babies. To be honest, I haven't blogged in so long that I didn't know if I had it in me anymore...what if I don't remember how to bake anymore? or what if the last time I succeeded was just a stream of good luck.

So I set out cautiously this time, following my own recipe to the T. You know I used to be lazy with sifting the ingredients but this time I sifted and processed the icing sugar and almond flour twice at my home in Kingston (it was the "messier" part of the recipe).

This is a little off topic but: although my sister was the one to request the macarons in the first place, I'm forbidden from causing her any inconveniences by making a mess at her place in Toronto. I know, I totally lucked out with her as my sister. In fact, when I ordered her present (a waffle/omelette maker) from Amazon and had it delivered, I was so excited to get a call from her expecting something along the lines of "Thank you" or "awww I really like it". But nope, the first thing I heard from the other end was "What the F**K do I do with this? I don't even know how to make waffles". So I said she could return it if she didn't like it and hung up then proceeded to balling my eyes out. She sent a follow up message saying "actually, it's nice. At least I can make omelettes..."

Who am I kidding? I should be used to this by now right.

But when I look at these macarons I'm happy. They are so cute and in some way resemble me and Anna. Blue and Pink were our favorite colours; I painted my room pink while she did hers blue with clouds. Chocolate was always her favorite thing. She could eat a box of those Purdy's hedge hogs in 20 minutes.

I kept on having these mini freak outs while baking these. What if the mixture was too wet? what if I didn't let it dry enough. Despite all these worries, they turned out and they were the prettiest things ever :)

While making the chocolate ganache filling for the blue cookies, I came across the easiest way to make chocolate mousse. It's literally chocolate ganache (1/2 cream 1/2 chocolate) and you whip it in a stand mixer and it will expand and form a mousse. Excuse me while I'm giggling to myself for this brilliant discovery. It's probably been discovered before but all I've come across were the ones where you use gelatin or the one with eggs. I can eat the mousse by the spoonful; it's sinfully good.

They were a hit at the party and I've never been more proud. Nothing's better than getting compliments on your day's worth of hard work :) Now that I think I've got the hang of it, I might start making them more often.

I'll close with a photo from our birthday party. We really don't look that much alike anymore. Let me know if you can tell who's who!

Slice N Bake Easter Bunny Cookies

2013-03-26T05:46:00.000-07:00

After seeing the Pillsbury ready-to-bake cookies, I was determined to create my own. It's no easy task but after multiple attempts, I've finally got it! Due to the amount of work attached to producing these cookies, they will be a limited edition. If you got a cookie, then I must like you a lot.

First attempt was an embarrassment...Instead of a bunny image, the ears were squashed and they looked like little piglets instead. I had no choice but to eat them all by myself...life's tough!

I kept my second batch of dough as cold as possible. If the butter started melting from my hands I would put it back into the fridge to chill. After a 3 hour session of watching The Mentalist in between runs to the fridge, I had a nice log of cookie dough.This time the ears were perfect, but only they ended up on the side of the cheek. I wanted to cry.

I didn't have to remake the whole thing thank god. I sliced it open and re-pieced it together the correct way. Don't think I would have tried it a third time if that didn't work. It's honestly one of those things where I can say I've done it and never doing it again. Ever!

The cookies were amazing. Fantastic recipe from Smitten Kitchen. The secret must be in the icing sugar because Thierry's Almond Sable cookies also call for icing sugar and the cookies come out nice and crispy.

Ingredients:
(slightly adapted from Smitten's Kitchen)

2 Sticks salted butter
2/3 cups icing sugar
2 egg yolks
2 1/2 cups flour

Cream together butter and icing sugar. Add egg yolks and mix well. Add flour and mix until dough forms.

Then it's a matter of forming the bunny cookie. If you don't have patience, skip this step and proceed to rolling the dough into a log and refrigerate.

Divide the dough into 3rd's. Divide one of those thirds into half and add one of the halves onto another third. you should have 3 unequal portions: sm, med, lg.

dye the small one purple, med one pink, and leave the lg in it's original colour.

I can't help you much from this point on because it's going to be a game of trial and error. What you wanna do is roll out a bunch of logs and shape them into the bunny's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Then you gotta stack them together and wrap it in the lg piece of dough to form a log. The tricky part is making sure everything is in the right proportion and nothing gets squashed. Good luck and don't get discouraged if it doesn't work out!

Easter Deviled Eggs

2013-03-25T18:43:00.000-07:00

Toying with the technique of the Chinese Tea Eggs, I decided to make the same pattern on my Easter eggs. At first I was just gonna dye them and leave them like that but then I decided that that was a little dull and tasteless as well.

These bright colours probably scared my housemates because they looked at me with great uncertainty before reaching for one. |And I must admit, I wouldn't eat them either on a regular basis. But hey, it's Easter and you gotta have those colours!

Same procedure as you would with the Tea Eggs : Boil the eggs as you normally would. Then lightly crack the surface and roll it on your counter, pressing gently with your palm so you get smaller crackers all over. Then drop them into a ziplock back filled with diluted food colouring. Squeeze out as much air as you can and set it in the fridge over night.

Filling:
12 egg yolks
1/2 cup mayo
2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Fill a piping bag with the yolk mixture and pipe into egg whites. Enjoy!

Green Velvet Cake

2013-03-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

St. Patties is just two days away!! It doesn't seem too long ago the last time I was funneling wine and soliciting free pizza outside of Little Caesars. Let's hope this year doesn't get as crazy...or, at least I wanna stay up past 5 pm. Working the next day will be an episode, keeping in mind that my job requires a lot of driving.

The recipe I used for this cake is from Crumb Boss but it was wayyyyy too sweet. I'm going to adjust the measurements here so you don't have to go into a sugar coma like I did.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 sticks butter
2 eggs

2 1/2 cup cake flour
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp gel green color
1 tbsp vinegar
1/2 tsp baking soda

Cream together sugar and butter until pale and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time and whisk until incorporated.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix it slightly.

When you combine the baking soda and vinegar, it's going to bubble up like a science experiment. Red velvet cakes didn't always have artificial colour added to them. Initially, the red was caused by a chemical reaction from combining the baking soda, vinegar, and cocoa powder. I guess people liked the red a little too much and decided to enhance it.

When you are happy with the colour, pour into buttered/floured pans and bake at 350 until done...I baked mine in 8-inch pans so it took me about 35.

I wanted my cake to be smaller so I cut out 6-inch rounds from the 8-inch cake. It did two things: It made my cake look taller than it really is, and it gets rid of the over-cooked edges.

go to my carrot cake recipe for the cream cheese frosting. I don't usually do this, but because the cake was so green, I crumb-coated it first. Didn't wanna risk getting green crumbs all mixed up in the icing.

Refrigerate the crumb-coated cake until set then do the final coat.

I crumbled up the cut-outs from the cake and decorated the sides and top with it. For the shamrock pattern on top, I just placed a cookie cutter on top and filled the inside of it with crumbs then removed the cutter. I will use the remaining crumbs and icing to make cake pops!

Chinese Tea Eggs

2013-03-12T20:52:00.000-07:00

These tea eggs are a classic in China and they are my sister's favorite. The eggs are first hard boiled so that you can take a crack at the shell. Then they are boiled again in a dark liquid that's made from black tea, soy sauce, and spices.

I never liked eggs as a kid so I've always avoided tea eggs until recently. Since I've learnt to appreciate eggs as one of the most versatile ingredients, I am now attempting to include it more often in my diet.

I would make a big batch of these and have 2 for breakfast everyday. I still throw out the yolk because no matter how hard I try, I cannot begin to like the texture and taste. The whites, however, has a rich and slightly salty flavour from the tea and soy sauce mixture.

There's no real science to it. Par boil your eggs first so you can crack the shells.

Combine 1/4 cup loose black tea, 1/2 cup dark soy sauce, 2 cinnamon sticks, 3 star anise, 1 tsp coriander seeds, 1 tsp cardamom, enough water to cover the eggs.

Bring the liquid up to a boil with the eggs then turn off the heat and let it sit for 12-24 hours in the fridge.

Chocolate Clusters

2013-03-03T08:42:00.002-08:00

I'm not sure if you are familiar with "OMG's Chocolate clusters" that popped on the shelves of most Canadian grocery stores a while ago. I believe it was on Dragon's Den and damn... they are expensive. For a little pkg containing 135g, they charge a ridiculous amount of $5.29. I can probably make a half kilo of them for that much. Plus, it's more fun if you are making it yourself anyway right?

I've tried making them twice and found that if you temper the chocolate first, your life will be made much easier. Tempered chocolate takes seconds to harden whereas un-tempered takes hours. What you do is take 2/3 of your chocolate and melt it in the microwave. When it reaches 110 degrees, add in the rest of the chocolate and stir until they are melted. This will bring down the temperature of the chocolate. Microwave again on 10 sec intervals until the whole batch of chocolate reaches 87 degrees Fahrenheit. This starts the crystallizing process so that the chocolate hardens right away when dipped.

Ingredients:
2 cups milk chocolate
1 1/2 cup crushed graham crackers
3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

add more graham crackers and coconut as needed to reach desired consistency.

After your chocolate has been tempered, add in your graham crackers and shredded coconut. I just take whole graham crackers and break it over the bowl of chocolate, no need to crush them before hand. Stir to combine all the ingredients. I like mine packed with graham crackers and coconut with just enough chocolate to hold them together. But it's your call how you like your clusters so if you prefer more chocolate then go for it.

Coconut Tuiles

2013-01-31T11:03:00.000-08:00

I feel terrible that I haven't updated this blog for so long. A lot has changed since Christmas and I must have let it become my excuse to take a vacation.

So I haven't been able to bake all that much; instead of brainstorming new ideas, I found myself going back to the same recipes over and over for special occasions and gifts. The extra time I had I spent job hunting. I'd say it paid off. I will be starting a job with Pepsi next week as a Territory Sales Rep.

It was a lengthy interview process and I honestly didn't expect to be hired. I had a terrible first interview cause the HR guy called out of the blue and asked me what my favorite Pepsi product was...I obviously didn't have time to prep so I had no idea. And it would be dumb to say Diet Pepsi cause it was so obvious to the point that I questioned whether or not Pepsi was actually a PepsiCo product.

Then I didn't hear back from him for weeks and one morning he called and asked me if I've been getting any of the emails he sent. I said no and he said he sent out a couple emails the week before asking if I could do a second interview with the HR manager and the zone manager. I had the second interview and everything was good until they asked me :"what motivates you?" and I blurted out:" money (duh)". They laughed and it seemed fine but then I talked to my sister after and she goes :" Annie! you NEVER tell them money motivates you!".

And somehow, I got to the third interview, and somehow got the job. I jokingly said to Anna "who's dumb enough to hire me?"

So for the entire month of January I have been packing and getting my shit together for the move. I had to figure out how to buy a car, insure a car, and oh yea! get my license. Fast forward a month and I'm in my sister's apartment DT Toronto, writing a blog post that was long over due.

Coconut Tuiles was another one of Thierry's recipes. These alone made all those volunteer hours at Thierry worth it. They taste like chips, but sweet. and they cost almost a dollar per cookie at the bakery. The ingredients are not complicated but they take a frickin long time to make.

I usually make a decent sized batch and leave it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Then every time I need to go somewhere, I'll make a tray of them (10-12) to bring along.

Ingredients:

300 g shredded coconut (unsweetened)
300 g icing sugar
50g AP flour
8 egg whites
400 g melted butter (just enough to be creamy, not separated)

Whisk together egg whites and icing sugar until frothy. Whisk in flour, then coconut, then butter.

That's really it for the batter. And then you refrigerate the mixture until ready to use.

To make the tuiles, you need a silicon mat because parchment paper will just curl up from the moisture and your tuiles will crack.
Take a tsp of the batter and flatten it with your palm on the silicon mat. Wet your hands so that the batter doesn't stick to it. Dip a fork in water and smash down on the batter with the back of the fork (do it a billion times per cookie). It's doing 2 things, flattening the cookie even more and also creating a really textured surface. Get it as thin as possible without creating any gaps/breaks in the cookie.

Bake at 330 degrees for 3-5 minutes. DO NOT set a timer. you have to just watch it because they brown at different speeds depending how much water you had on your hand and fork when you made the cookies. And once they start browning, they colour fast.

When they get to the perfect colour (marbled brown and white), take them out and flip the cookies onto a tuile mold while they are still hot. You can purchase the molds from the link below, or you can be like me and make them out of paper towel rolls and aluminum foil.

Enjoy!!

http://www.pastrychef.com/TUILE-SHEET_p_1296.html

Christmas Macarons

2013-01-02T02:01:00.000-08:00

My technique is getting closer and closer to perfection! My friend wanted to order 4 dozens so he can give them out as Christmas gifts, and that is a perfectly good reason for me to get into the kitchen again. I've been at a constant battle with my parents regarding this baking thing. Long story short, my mom doesn't want me baking at all and never wants to hear the word "cake" around the house. Putting my negotiation skills to work, I've gotten it to baking once a week, and a full day's worth. At least with a good 10 hours, I can create something cool.

It is totally one of those "What Asian Mom Says" as much as I don't want to admit. My parents usually don't care about what I do so I don't know what it is that they have against baking. Anyways, so a few weeks ago I made these macarons and I had to attempt it twice before getting the colours perfect. The texture was perfect on the first try but since I used liquid food colouring, the batter was pale and too runny. The "retry" looked great with bright colours and a perfectly "puffed-up" cookie, but texture was off cause I didn't give the trays a good tap before leaving it to dry out.

I feel like no matter how hard I try to explain, it will never be good enough. One of these days I promise to make a how-to-video. For the time being, here is another set of instructions. Refer to the first Macaron post for ingredients and measurements.

Instructions:

First combine icing sugar and ground almonds in a food processor and blend until super fine and powdery. Sift through a fine strainer and re-process any crumbs that wouldn't go through the strainer. I know it's annoying and time consuming but just do it... it makes a huge difference in the cookie.

Weigh out your egg whites and almond mixture and divide them into equal portions, by weight, depending on the different flavours you want to make. I made 4 different ones : Apple Spice, Cranberry, Pumpkin, and lime.

Make a paste with your first set of egg whites and almond mixture. It should be thick and just barely stir-able with a spatula. Add your GEL food colouring and flavourings at this point before you add the Italian meringue. Add way more food colouring than you think you need because once you add the meringue, the colour will lighten up quite a bit.

Apple Spice: Freshly grated nutmeg, cinnamon stick, cloves (to taste), no food colouring
Cranberry: No flavouring, pink food colouring
Pumpkin: Freshly grated nutmeg, cinnamon stick, ground ginger, cloves, all spice(to taste), orange food colouring
Lime: Lime zest (to taste), green food colouring

I really hate putting a measurement to these recipes cause I didn't actually measure mine. If I have to, then I'd just say about 1-2 tsp of each ingredient.

Making the meringue:

Combine sugar and water in a sauce pan and bring it to 121 degrees Celsius or 244 degrees Fahrenheit. Let it reach 119 C/240 C then turn of the heat and let it reach temperature with the remaining heat from the burner. Start whipping your egg whites with a tsp of lemon juice. Once the egg whites reach medium peaks, pour the syrup in a thin stream with the mixer on medium speed. Once all the syrup has gone in, turn the mixer on high and let it go for 15 minutes to cool. Divide into equal portions and add to the almond paste mixtures.

Combining the paste and the meringue will be difficult at first because they have such different textures. At Thierry we use our hands, wearing gloves of course, to scoop the paste from the bottom and mush it with the meringue on top. Switch to a spatula when it gets to a work-able consistency.

The difficult part is getting it to the perfect consistency for piping. You wanna smear the mixture on the side of the bowl then scrape it to the centre over and over until it reaches a ribbon stage. If you scoop up some batter in your spatula and let it fall back into the bowl, it should fall in a thick strip and make ribbon patterns in the bowl for a few seconds before disappearing into the rest of the batter. (I'm so sorry if that doesn't make any sense at all).

Put the batter into a piping bag and pipe equal sized rounds onto parchment. Once you get a full tray, pick up the tray and tap/bang on the bottom of the trap to get the rounds to flatten completely. Every time I skip this process, there will be air gaps in the cookies, making them extremely susceptible to breaking.

Leave them to dry out at room temperature for an hour then bake for 12 minutes in a 325 F oven.
Let cool and stack all the parchment paper on top of each other in one tray, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 days before filling with buttercream.

Butter cream recipe:
1 cup of unsalted butter
4 cups icing sugar

Apple Spice:
Poached apples for the centre: 2 peeled and cored and cubed apples, 1 cup sugar, 3/4 cup water, 1 cinnamon stick, 4 cloves, grated nutmeg, juice of 1 lemon. Bring it up to a boil until the sugar dissolves the let it cool and soak in the syrup over night or for up to a week. When you are ready to use, pat apples dry with paper towel.
Buttercream: same spices used in the macaron shell.

Cranberry:
Roasted Cranberries: Combine 1 pkg fresh cranberries with 1 cup sugar and cook until they start poping. Add some water to it so you can strain out the juices separate it from the whole cranberries. Add some cranberry juice to the butter cream and save the whole cranberries for the centre.

Pumpkin:
Buttercream: Cook canned pumpkin purée over medium heat to concentrate the flavours and evaporate the liquid. Add the purée to the buttercream along with the standard pumpkin pie spices.

Lime:
Lemon curd: 2 egg yolks, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup lemon juice, 3 tbsp flour. Cook over low heat until mixutre has thickened. Add in cubed, unsalted butter to the mixture, about 3 tbsp, stir until completely dissolved then refrigerate.
Add lemon curd to buttercream.

Beef Phở

2012-12-18T21:51:00.000-08:00

I didn't know the proper pronunciation of this word was "pha" until just recently when I was watching The Next Iron Chef: Redemption. If the super chefs pronounced it this way, then it must be true right? Just to be sure, I wikipedia-ed it and yes, it's "pha".

Eating Phở is one of those things where you're like..its just noodles and broth. But then again, how can it be soooo good when it's only noodles and broth??? I thought you just threw a bunch of beef bones in a pot, fill it with water, add a little MSG and pray that great things happen to it. Just kidding, it's actually the spices that go in. Nothing special. It's exactly what you would find in a pumpkin pie plus a little cardamom, coriander, and star anise. Oh yea and some fish sauce makes it taste reeeeeal good.

I was skeptical during the cooking process but when it was done after 3 hours of vicious boiling, I was in heaven. I was so excited that I stupidly called my sister and was like "Anna! I invented Phở!!!" and she's "yea..okay Annie, that's definitely going on my facebook".

Ingredients:

2 lbs of beef bones
12 cups of water
1 cinnamon stick
5 whole cloves
1 tsp grated nutmeg
4 star anise
2 cardamom pod
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
5 cloves garlic
4 knobs ginger
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 tbsp sugar

Beef
Fresh Mint
Thai Basil
Cilantro
Bean Sprouts (I didn't have any on hand)
Rice "sticks" noodles

Parboil the beef bones for 10 minutes to get rid of any blood and fat. Rinse and add back to the pot along with 12 cups of cold water and the flavourings. Bring it up to a hard boil and let it go for an hour and half. Then turn it down and boil for another hour and half. After 3 hours, all the flavours should have been extracted.

Freeze your meet for 30 minutes to make slicing easier. You want to get the beef as thin as possible because all the cooking you will be doing is pouring the broth over it.

Add cooked noodles to your bowl (Cooked according to instructions on the pkg. Mine was 10 minutes). Top with bean sprouts, herbs, and sliced beef. Pour over hot broth and enjoy!

Ferrero Rocher Cake

2012-12-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

It's about time I put out another one of those cakes that I can be proud of. I spent a couple of hours designing the cake and sorta got a pretty good idea of what it's gonna be made of and what it's gonna look like. Although I had to make a few changes and add some more components, it did look pretty much the same as my drawing. I'm really happy with the texture of the cake but I think adding nutella to the frosting makes it a bit too sweet. Be aware!

I have yet to find a frosting that's not too sweet and would appeal to more people...A.K.A. my parents...and a majority of the Asian population..? It's damn frustrating when every single feedback I get is "you can add a little less sugar" when I've already halved the sugar from the original recipe.

Forgive me for this lengthy recipe. There are a lot of components and may be a little frustrating.

Cake:
1 Chocolate Cake recipe
1/3 cup Nutella
2/3 Cup finely processed, toasted, skinned hazelnuts

Buttercream:
2 sticks butter
4 oz shortening
3 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup nutella

Nutella Ganache:
1/4 cup nutella
1/4 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup heavy cream

Hazelnut Brittle:
2tbsp butter
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
3 tbsp corn syrup
1/2 cup toasted, skinned, halved hazelnuts

Combine dry ingredients and mix some together with the hazelnuts.

Blend together in a food processor until fine and crumbly, then put back with the rest of the dry ingredients.

Microwave butter until it is creamy then mix it together with the sugar. A lot of recipes will tell you to cream the sugar and butter until pale and fluffy, but this is the way Thierry does it in the kitchen for some reason. It's a lot quicker but it wouldn't be able to incorporate air like it would the other way. Oh well, if a French pastry shop does it this way then I can too right?

Add eggs one at a time until smooth and fully incorporated.

Alternate the wet and dry ingredients in two additions.

Pour into prepared pans that are buttered then lined with parchment paper. Because I'm doing 3 layers, I did 1 layer in a 8 inch pan and 2 layers in a sheet pan. Then just cut out 2- 8 inch rounds from the sheet cake after the bakes.

***Please note! I suggest doing 2 layers for this cake instead of 3. 3 layers means the sponge cakes are thinner and a higher frosting to cake ratio... AKA it's going to be sweeter.

Cut toasted and skinned hazelnuts into halves.

Combine butter, sugar, corn syrup, and water in a pot and bring it up to 320 degrees. Stir in baking soda and salt. Be careful, it will bubble up. Then stir in hazelnuts.

Spread mixture on a piece of parchment or a silicon baking mat and let it cool.

Break into small pieces.

Combine butter, shortening, icing sugar and nutella in a stand mixture and mix until desired consistency. Add milk or cream as needed.

Assemble by placing a piece of cake on the bottom. Top with a layer of frosting and spread evenly. If you are only going to do 2 layers, then start the bottom layer with nutella.

Top the 2nd layer with nutella if you are doing 3 layers.

Cover the cake with more frosting all around and over the top. Then decorate the sides with toasted, skinned, chopped hazelnuts. Do it over a sheet pan and hold the cake with your left hand and tilt it slightly. Grab a handful of nuts with your right hand and gently pat it onto the cake (the side that is tilted downward) any excess will fall back into the sheet pan. Rotate the cake and repeat the process until all sides are covered.

Combine Chocolate, nutella, and cream and microwave for a minute. Stir until chocolate chips are melted then pour over the cake. To make it easier, you can freeze the cake for 10 minutes first.

Help guide the flow of the ganache by spreading it with an offset spatula.

French Macarons

2012-11-28T23:23:00.001-08:00

Ever since I started working at Thierry, I've been collecting their pastry recipes. They are truly different from the ones you find online and they turn out much better. When I made these macarons I didn't have the exact measurements of the ingredients, but what I did know was that you use the egg whites in 2 ways instead of one.

Bear with me while I explain the difference. If you type in "French Macarons" into google, you will only get recipes that look like this. You are to mix the almond flour with icing sugar in a food processor then sift it into a bowl to remove lumps. Then you whip the egg whites with a pinch of granulated sugar and fold into the almond mixture.

That's not how they do it in the French cafes. They use egg whites twice in the recipe. One portion left un-whipped and added to the almond mixture to form a paste, and the other portion whipped with a hot sugar mixture that has been brought up to 248 degrees. I got the recipe from Thierry after I made this batch, which is taken from the book Bouchon Bakery. The idea is the same and ingredients largely similar; technique is probably the only thing that makes a difference.

I'm going to give you the recipe from Thierry and briefly go over what I did wrong in this batch and how it should be done.

Macaron Shells:

300g almond flour
300g icing sugar
110g egg whites

110g egg whites

300 g sugar
75 g water

Combine the almond flour and icing sugar in a food processor and process until it becomes a fine powder. Push it through a sifter into a bowl and add the first portion of the egg whites.

Start with a whisk and mix the egg whites into the almond flour. you can probably see that my almond mixture is kinda crumbly. That's because I skipped the step of using the food processor and really shouldn't have skipped it. It makes the cookie shell more dense, causing it to collapse. My cookies may look like they are fine, but inside they collapsed, leaving a cap between the top exterior and the bottom of the cookie.

You may need to switch to a spatula to finish the mixing process. At Thierry, they weigh out all the ingredients so they make the almond mixture and the meringue mixture in large patches. Then they would weigh out the batter into different portions to give them different colours and flavours before they fold in the meringue. I folded in the meringue first before colouring and it lead to over mixing.

For the meringue, combine the water and sugar in a small pot and bring it up to 119 degrees Celsius. Once it reaches 119, turn off the heat and start whipping the 2nd portion of egg whites on high until medium peaks. While the sugar mixture sits on the stove top, it will reach 121 from the residual heat. Turn the mixer to low and pour in the sugar mixture slowly. Keep mixing until the meringue cools down, about 15 minutes. Fold in the meringue into the almond mixture and keep folding until the mixture reaches a ribbon stage. You want to be able to scoop up the mixture and have it fall smoothly back into the bowl. If you're not sure, it's better to have it stiffer than softer.

Put the mixture into a piping bag and pipe it onto a piece of parchment paper. Let it sit uncovered for 30 mn-1 hour, or until the top loses its shine and does not stick to your finger when you touch it. This is a really important step and there's no reason you should ever skip it. This allows the top to set and harden so that moisture would have to escape from the bottom during baking, creating the "feet" of the macarons.

While you are waiting, preheat the oven to 325 (335 at Thierry but it's a convection oven). Bake for 8 minutes and take it out to cool on a wire rack.

For the filling, I made basic butter cream using 1/2 stick of butter, 1/2 stick of shortening and about 2 cups of icing sugar. I just eyed it so there's really no recipe.

I made a lemon curd using a recipe from crumb boss and added 3 tbsps of it to 1/2 cup of butter cream for the lemon macaron.

Add about 1 tbsp mint extract to 3/4 cup of butter cream for the mint macarons

Add 1/4 cup strawberry jam to 3/4 cup of butter cream for strawberry macarons.

Seafood Paella

2012-11-26T23:29:00.001-08:00

I bought a paella pan a couple months back and it's exciting to be using it for the first time. I had the most amazing black seafood paella, tinted with squid's ink, in Barcelona. I have yet to find those flavours again in my kitchen, but this will do for now.

You need some type of short grain rice and I used Japanese rice for convenience. This is the kind of dish that you can add whatever you want to. The only thing you need to watch for is the amount of liquid you use.The ratio of water to rice should be 2:1 but because I didn't have a fitted lid for my paella pan, a lot of the water evaporated without cooking the rice. I ended up using a ratio of 3:1.For my dish I used frozen whole shrimp, mussels, and sausage.

I cooked the shrimp and mussels first because I wanted to make a stock to cook the rice in. Place the shrimp in a large sauce pan with some ginger and garlic and bring it to a boil. Once it's at a rolling boil, let it go for another 5 minutes. strain the broth and set it aside.

Steam the mussels in an inch of water, then strain and add it to the shrimp stock.

Finely chop 1/2 a medium onion and 4 cloves of garlic. Dice up 1/2 cup worth of sausage.

Soak a tbsp of saffron in the stock. You want 2 cups of rice and about 6 cups worth of stock.

Saute the onion, garlic, and sausage over medium heat until the onion becomes translucent. add 1/2 cup of tomato sauce and saute for another minute.

Add you stock and bring it back up to a boil. Add the rice and give it a gentle stir. This will be the last time you touch the pan during the cooking time. Turn the heat down to low and let it simmer until the rice puffs up and all the liquid has been absorbed.

When the rice is cooked, arrange the seafood on top and you're done!

Eggs over Potato Cakes

2012-11-19T00:39:00.000-08:00

I saw this idea on the internet once and wanted to try it. My eggs turned out absolutely perfect -- which is surprising cause I cannot cook eggs for the life of me. I did what Alton Brown said to do: crack the eggs into a small bowl first, tilt the pan and add the egg into the pan. It will stay snuggled up into the corner and wouldn't spread. The problem is, the egg is gonna cook into a moon shape, so before the whites completely set, flatten the pan and drag out the egg whites with a spatula into a round shape.

For the hash browns, grate one russet potato and soak it in water. Rinse it in running water until the water runs clear. Squeeze out every drop of the remaining water and pat dry with some paper towel. Season with Salt and pepper and start frying it.

You don't need to shape it right at the start. Cook the potato first until it becomes mushy and begins to stick to each other. Then you can shape it into a nice round shape and turn up the heat to get the nice crispy sides. You may need a little extra oil for it to crisp up.

Top each potato cake with an egg and some chopped chives and serve!

Pumpkin Soup

2012-11-12T16:49:00.001-08:00

I bought a pumpkin for Halloween but I left it un-carved cause I wanted to use it after. It's not a sugar pumpkin so I hesitated using it for the soup. I decided to roast it anyway to see how strong of a flavour it has and it was alright.

Cut the pumpkin in half and roast it in a 400 degrees oven for about 90 minutes. Peel off the skin. If it's well roasted then the skin should come right off.

Ingredients:
1 small pumpkin
3 tbsp oil
2 ribs celery
2 carrots
1 med onion
2 cloves garlic
6 cups stock (chicken/veggie/beef)
1/2 tsp oregno
1/2 tsp basil
salt and pepper

I like to use what the French call a mirepoix which is a group of aromatics consisting of onions, celery, and carrots. Whenever I'm making soups or roasts, I'll always throw them in.

Cook the aromatics in the oil for a little bit to release some flavour. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the roasted pumpkin, stock, dried herbs and let simmer for 15 minutes.

Purée in a blender in batches or use a hand held blender. If you have one of those hand held ones then you're in luck. But since my sister kept mine in Toronto, I had to resort to the magic bullet.

Keep the puréed batches in a separate bowl while you go through the remaining ones. Once they are all puréed transfer back into the pot and adjust the seasoning. I added a little more salt and pepper and I was done!

That's really all you gotta do and the hardest part was the blending. Enjoy the Fall flavours !

Caramel Apples From Scratch

2012-11-02T01:05:00.001-07:00

As Halloween came and went, I saw a lot of caramel apple recipes floating around on the internet. Some I would say are...legit, and others...not so much. I'm probably offending some people when I say this but I just don't like the idea caramel apples made with those packaged caramel candies. Instead of a deep rich caramel flavour, they are more sugary and creamy.

I like the potent, almost burnt caramel flavour and I can't see myself eating anything else. The other thing is, have you ever noticed that the caramel candies never fully melt? Every tutorial I see on-line has clumps and clumps of caramel dripping off the apple and it is just unattractive. I like to make sure that my apples are perfectly cold before I dip them, and I always spin the apple over the pot it sets a little and most of the excess drips off.

I probably sound like a complete snob, but god I really like it when my food to looks perfect.

I'd prefer these apples to Halloween candy any day. Well, maybe with the exception of Twizzlers; I'm a sucker for those. Just the other day I realized that I'm actually not a fan of chocolate. It's kind of an odd discovery since I eat them all the time, but I think it's because I always have them lying around. I've mentioned before that I don't like chocolate ice cream, but I guess it's just chocolate in general that I don't like.

You'll need:
1/2 caramel recipe
6 apples
1 cup crushed almonds (optional)
1/4 cup dark chocolate (optional)
1/4 cup white chocolate (optional)

Wash the apples and cut off the stems. Insert a popsicle stick into the tops of each apple. They actually insert very easily, and around the half way point you'll feel a little resistance and the stick stops going in any further. The stick will be very sturdy at this point. Put the apples into the freezer while you make the caramel (20 minutes, try not to freeze the apples)

When you are ready to dip, take the apples out of the freezer and dry off any surface moisture.

Tip the pot onto one side and dip the apple. Swirl it inside the pot to cover all sides. Let the excess drip off then place onto some waxed or parchment paper.

You can dip some or all of them into crushed nuts or candies.

Place chocolate chips into a ziplock bag and microwave until melted. White chocolates will be harder to deal with so microwave on shorter intervals.

Drizzle over the apples and enjoy!

If you are going to keep these for a few days, I suggest leaving them in the fridge. I didn't do that so I noticed the caramels sliding off the apples after 3 days of sitting out.

Butterscotch Caramels

2012-11-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

Making caramels are much easier than you may think. All you need to do is gather your ingredients then dump them into a pot and wait until it reaches 250 degrees, the soft ball stage.

I did get somewhat frustrated with it because it took forever to reach that temperature...at some point I even thought my candy thermometer was broken. I believe it's got to do with the amount of water added to the caramel at first. water evaporates at 100 degrees C so the mixture will remain at 100 degrees until all the water is evaporated. It's just a little hunch. Maybe if anyone tries to make caramel without adding water, they can tell me if theirs came to temperature a bit faster. I swear mine took 20 minutes.

Btw, you will be needing a candy thermometer to make caramels. I got mine for 20 bucks on amazon but if you don't want to buy one, you could also do the water test, which is by dropping a little bit of the caramel into the water and see if it can be clumped into a soft but slightly firm ball. I used both the thermometer and the water test just in case my thermometer was broken.

Another thing totally frustrating was the butter... The milk solids in the butter would bubble up and give off it's moisture during the cooking process. If you look at the first caramel picture, you'll notice that it almost boiled over. I had to switch to a bigger pot to prevent spillage and it was just barely big enough to contain all the bubbles. When the butter settles down, it will start to get thick and the bubbles will become bigger.

I bought this book almost 2 years ago and it is honestly embarrassing to say that this is the first time I made something from this book. I have a horrible habit of buying cookbooks to look at the pictures but never using them.

And of course I didn't follow the ingredients exactly as is...I never do. I left out a tbsp of lemon juice and 1 tsp of salt. I used salted butter in this recipe and it worked perfectly fine.

I try to use salted butter in baking as much as possible although everyone tells you not to. The only time I don't use salted butter is in frostings. You can barely tell the difference in cakes and cookies.
The reason is simple, a block of unsalted butter cost 5 dollars and salted is only half the price. Why pay the extra if you can't tell the difference?

Ingredients:
3/4 cup butter
2 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup cream
1 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup water
1 tbps vanilla

This is already my second pot and as you can see, it was just barely large enough to contain all the liquid.

After what feels like 10 minutes of boiling, the mixture becomes thicker and you can feel the stickiness when you stir. At this point, all the moisture has evaporated and you can see that the temperature has reached beyond the water's boiling temperature and is now at the "Thread" stage.

This is what the caramel looks like when it is done. There are small bubbles but because its so sticky and the bubbles are glued to each other, the "bursting" bubbles are quite large. Does that make any sense?

The recipe actually makes double what you see here. But since I made caramel apples (Yummmm), this is what I was left with. Butter the pan and line with parchment paper. Butter the parchment paper and pour in the caramel. Let it set for at least 4 hours in the fridge.

It's quite difficult to cut them when they are right out of the fridge. Once you let them come a little closer to room temperature they will slice much easier.

Wrap them in wax paper and you'll have home-made caramel candies!

Chili Crab

2012-10-28T22:26:00.000-07:00

Oh man...it has been raining in Vancouver for the past 2 weeks and I am depressed!
I think it's getting to a point where baking won't even save me :(

I lucked out with this weather for shooting this picture today. Normally it's way to dark and grey outside to give good lighting for the photos.

This dish was inspired by a chili crab dish I had in a Szechuan restaurant. That was more like a stew with some potatoes and taro and a lot of Szechuan peppercorn. I didn't wanna saturate this dish with more ingredients than necessary so I just stuck to the basics: ginger, onion, garlic and spices.

There are many ways you can break down a crab. Some chop right through the stomach to split it in half, and others steam it first before taking it apart. I personally like to take the shell off first, wash out all the guts before splitting it so I don't get any of it on the meat.

It's a bit difficult to take the shell off when it's alive. You just need to stick the knife in from the sides and pry it open.

Rinse out the shell and put it aside. Split the rest of the crab into 6 pieces.

Sauce:

1 large onion (I used spring onions cause I ran out of regular onion)
Dried chili (to taste)
1 large piece of ginger (1/4 cup)
4 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup hot pepper paste
2 tbsp hot pepper and bean paste (optional)

If you are using fresh chilis, you can skip this step. But because mine was dried, I soaked it in 1/4 cup of hot water first. Then combine with the ginger, onion, and garlic in a blender and purée it into a paste.

Sauté the paste in 2 tbsps of oil until fragrant and some of the water has evaporated.

Add the rest of the ingredients (more or less based on taste) and stir to combine.

At this point I added a cup of water to the mixture to thin it out because the crab needs a little time to cook and I need that extra water in there to steam the crab.

Just a few pictures of the brands I used. The Korean hot pepper paste is really mild.

This is a Szechuan style hot pepper paste. It has bean paste inside and large pepper chunks. It's very salty and slightly tangy.

Toss the crab around in the mixture to coat.

Set the shells on top and let it steam. I wouldn't want all the juices to go into the sauce.

And after 20 minutes you are done!

I'm really sorry my measurements are so vague and most often people want exact amounts of what I put in. But I'm honestly a huge believer in tasting as you go. My mom never tastes when she cooks so the same dish would turn out good one week and horrible the next. Without tasting the food you never know what else needs to be in there. Sometimes I add a little sugar if it's too tangy. So try, and let me know what works for you!

Meat Lover's Pizza

2012-10-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

Pizza for Thanks Giving anyone? okay, I was really lazy this year and decided to slack off on the dinner. My sister on the other hand, who usually eats out of a can for lunches and supper, decided to throw a gigantic dinner party and made a FEAST! I'm so happy for her...and myself because it means I will get a helping hand with Christmas dinner this year :)

I think pretty soon I'll be going to her for cooking advice :)

Anyways, I went to my friend, Chris Parades', house for the Thanks giving dinner on Sunday and brought with me a low fat pumpkin carrot cake. It could still be perfected I think, so I will try again before posting the recipe.

Low fat pumpkin carrot cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting

Forgive me for the instagram photo...

No matter how Chris and his dad insisted that the cake was delicious, I thought it had long ways to go. The cake was moist, but not flavourful like a full fat cake. I also added way way way too much frosting and it overpowered the cake itself.

And now, the star of the show....the pizza!

My dad jokingly said that I probably ran out of things to blog about since I'm beginning to put things like pizza on my blog...like pizza is totally gross or something.

But hey! even my pizza is supposed to be gourmet!....you can imagine how much trouble he got into.

I played around with the dough this time and it turned out great. I have a standard recipe here but I didn't follow it this time around.

I kept some things the same...like the 2 tsp yeast, 1 tsp sugar, and 2 tsp salt, 2 tbsp olive oil and I started with 3.5 cups of flour.

Then I added somewhere between 1.5-2 cups of warm water and turned on the mixer. Maybe it's the damp Vancouver weather or maybe I added more water than I realized, another 1/2 cup of flour was needed for the dough to come together.

Now the 1/2 cup is also just an estimate. I kept on adding flour just until the dough stopped sticking to the mixing bowl, but still soft.

Then I oiled the mixing bowl and put the dough back in there to rise. Leave it in a warm place, such as the oven with the light turned on.

After it has doubled in size, divide it into 2 equal pieces ( I weighed mine just to be sure) and set it into 2 oiled bowls to rise again.

For the toppings, I used:
1 1/2 polish sausages, grilled then cut into pieces
2 hot Italian sausages taken out of the casing and sautéed
cheddar and mozzarella cheese
basil
thyme

Pizza sauce
1 can of tomato sauce
1 onion diced
4 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 tsp dried oregno
1 tsp dried basil
salt and pepper

Assemble like you would a normal pizza, bake at 400 degrees F for 16 minutes and enjoy!

Mint Chocolate Cake

2012-10-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

Mint chocolate cake....still sounds like a combination that only a fraction of the population would enjoy. I personally love the combination of mint and chocolate but I can imagine some people going.."yuck" when I say it.

It's not like a mint chocolate chip ice cream...That's all mint with bits and pieces of chocolate. And personally it's not my favourite because I don't like chocolate of any kind in my ice cream. Your palette is so frozen at that point that you'll need something more exciting than chocolate. That's just my opinion though, my sister loveeeees chocolate ice cream.

I got mixed reviews for this cake. Some loved it and others inferior to the cheesecake from 2 weeks ago. I thought it could have been better if I used more mint extract for the frosting. The minty flavour wasn't strong enough for me. My sister did say it looked really pretty though. And it's extremely hard to get a compliment from her...

There's 3 layers of chocolate cake, filled with 3 layers of mint frosting, and topped with a layer of chocolate ganache. I've seen so many ganache recipes that is a 1:1 ratio of chocolate and heavy cream but it doesn't work!!!! I've always, always, always had to use at least double the amount of chocolate chips to my heavy cream and it is one of those things I can never figure out where went wrong.

I used a swiss buttercream for the mint frosting. It's not the first time I've attempted it but it's the first time I had it come together. It is really easy to "break" the butter cream once you start adding butter to the meringue. The tip I got from Crumbboss was to add all the butter and shortening at once instead of going little by little. And when it does break, just keep whipping it and it will eventually come back. Mine did break again because I had only had half the amount of butter and shortening the recipe asked for. It wasn't strong enough to hold everything together so everything started curdling and becoming "soupy". But I kept on whipping it and it did come back and still tasted great.

I stuffed the middle layer with some chopped up mint chocolate squares and thought it adds a bit more mintiness to the cake.

For the chocolate cake recipe, click here. Scroll down to the bottom for the recipe.

Mint Swiss Buttercream Frosting
adapted from Crumbboss (less butter and shortening)

6 egg whites
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup unsalted butter
1 tbsp vanilla
2-3 tbsp mint extract based on taste
3tbsp green food colouring

Combine sugar and egg whites in a heat proof bowl and set it over simmering water. Heat it until the sugars dissolve and the mixture reaches 115 degrees F. I just used my hand wearing a plastic glove. It's easier to feel if the sugar has dissolved and if the mixture is coming up to temperature.

It will become foamy on top like this. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, whisk until stiff peaks.

Sift the powdered sugar to remove any lumps.

Whisk in the powdered sugar to egg white mixture.

Add butter and shortening all at once and whip until stiff.

Add mint extract and green food colouring as needed.

Chocolate Ganache:
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup whipping cream

Melt together and refrigerate until needed.

Assemble with a layer of cake, a layer of frosting and chopped up mint chocolates.

Heat the ganache to a pour-able consistency in the microwave. Using a spatula, help spread it to the sides and let it drip down over a cooling rack set on top of a cookie sheet.

Grapefruit, Pear, and Sweet Potato Juice

2012-10-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

What seems to be such an odd combination turned out to be amazing. Ignoring the fact that I spilt the juice all over my white dress on the way to work, it was the perfect breakfast.

While I'm talking about my juice accident, I would like to put in a little advertisement for Starbucks cold to-go cups. I've used them for weeks and weeks and nothing happened. Then the one day I decided to use a normal tumbler.............

Anyways, I had to buy a Tide-to-go from a corner store in DT and the cashier looked at me with extreme sympathy and said...you got a stain already?

I didn't think sweet potato would produce any juice because it seems so dry and starchy. Surprisingly I got about a cup of juice from 1 large sweet potato. One thing I noticed was the amount of potato starch accumulated at the bottom of my cup over time. I had to dump about 1 inch of the remaining juice because it was just like drinking thick soup of some kind.

Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato
1 grapefruit
2 pears

Avocado Smoothie

2012-10-02T23:14:00.005-07:00

I've always had something against smoothies that were green. How can puréed spinach taste good? But after this avocado smoothie and a "green smoothie" from the book I just bought, I completely changed my opinion.

The recipe calls for almond milk and I think it's both a good and a bad thing. I'm not a huge fan of almond milk and I think it brings a weird flavour to all these smoothies. But it only as 35 calories compared to the 90 calories in skim milk. I stuck to almond milk just for that reason, but I got used to the taste after a while anyway.

You could also try coconut milk but that sits at about 60 calories per cup.

Ingredients:

1 cup almond milk
1/2 Avocado
1/4 cup ice
2 tbsp condensed milk
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Blend together all the ingredients and enjoy!

Chinese Mooncake

2012-09-28T02:41:00.000-07:00

I look forward to Mid Autumn Festival every year because that's the time mooncakes go on sale in all Asian supermarkets. By "sale" I don't mean a clearance sale...They are deathly expensive but because of tradition, everyone has to buy them as gifts.

My favourite kind is the ones with salted duck yolks and lotus paste. The duck yolk represents the moon and during the mid autumn festival, the entire family is supposed to get together under a full moon and enjoy a feast.

There's a myth associated with the mooncake festival of course. There are many versions of the it but they all have something to do with Chang'e and her rabbit, and the potion of immortality. The one I was told goes something like this:

Houyi was an archer Chang'e was his wife. One day 10 suns appeared in the sky and Houyi was ordered to shoot 9 of the suns down. Upon completion of the task, he was given a bottle of elixir as a reward. The elixir was too strong to be consumed by one person so Houyi and Chang'e planned to share the dose on the night of the full moon and to become immortal together. However, on the night of, Houyi was assassinated and Chang'e decided to take the full dose of potion and ascend up to the heavens (and landed on the moon). There's also a rabbit involved. apparently it makes elixirs on the moon and kept Chang'e company when she got up there.

...I feel like a total idiot explaining that story cause it doesn't make any sense what so ever. Anyhow, what I got from that story is that we get to eat mooncake ever year at this time and that's good enough for me.

Oh btw, you know I like to do math when it comes to things like this. A box of mooncakes (4) cost between 39-50 dollars to buy. Really damn expensive so I can't exactly feast on it. But now that I can make it, it is extremely dangerous because the COG is only about a dollar.

6 egg yolks:1.95
lotus paste: 3.85
not gonna count skin cause 10 kg is only 8 dollars

Skin:
85 g golden syrup or corn syrup
25 g vegetable oil
3/4 tsp baking soda
100 g flour

Prepare the dough one day ahead.

Combine all ingredients. Mix until the syrup is evenly distributed but do not over mix. Let the dough rest in a plastic bag until needed.

Mooncake:
6 salted egg yolks
1 lb pkg of lotus paste

Divide the lotus paste into 6 equal portions, around 76 g per portion. The salted egg yolks will range between 15-17g. Together, the 2 will add up to be around 90g.

My moon cake mold holds 125 g. So the skin for each moon cake should weigh around 35g.

Another way to calculate the proportions is to divide the total weight (125g) by 4, which is 31.25. That traditionally should be the weight of the skin.

I bought the uncooked salted duck eggs in a pack of 6. Separate the yolks from the whites and steam for 8 minutes.

Weigh out each piece of lotus paste to 76 g

Weigh the 3 together to make sure it's 125g, if not somewhere close.

Wrap the lotus paste around the egg yolk

Flatten the dough into a disk and place the lotus paste in the centre. Bring the dough up around the lotus paste and start smoothing the outside of the dough upward, while pushing the lotus paste inward.The dough will stretch itself around the lotus paste.

Place the finished mooncake into the mold and press down firmly.

The one at the top is my first attempt and I didn't apply enough pressure. Makes a huge difference!

Bake at 400 F for 10 minutes. I don't suggest using egg wash for this. It will ruin the pattern on the mooncake.

Green Apple and Celery Juice

2012-09-27T19:01:00.000-07:00

I've been addicted to juices and smoothies lately so I went and bought a book. It's called Smoothies and Juices and there's 100 recipes in the book. There are four categories: fruit smoothies, veggie smoothies, dessert smoothies, and juices.

I was planning on a 7 days of juicing diet where I choose 3 recipes from the book as my breakfast, lunch and dinner. But I knew that was going to work even before I started the diet. The smoothies are usually ice cold so I can't exactly make them at work. I'd have to have my breakfast at 8 then wait till 5 for my next smoothie. So then I decided I would just make a smoothie whenever I get a chance.

The first I tried was a Green Apple and Celery Juice. It was the BEST thing ever. I drank the whole thing in seconds and pondered whether or not anything better tasting exists in this world. Or could it just be me being a freak and love the taste of all green things?

The ingredients are real simple: 2 apples, 4 ribs celery and the juice of a quarter lemon. Squeeze the lemon juice into a cup then juice the apples and celery through a juicer. Trust me, it's the most refreshing thing ever!

Of course I came across some pretty gross recipes in there as well. Never attempt cucumber/carrot/celery/tomato juice. I don't know how that recipe even made it into that book. The tomato just makes it taste like cucumber juice turned sour. It was awful and I had to dump it.

I've tried quite a few recipes so far and some are extremely good. I will continue to post the winners as I try them.

Pumpkin Cheesecake with Caramel and Pecans

2012-09-21T03:01:00.001-07:00

In my phone, there is a list of "Things To Make" . When I'm feeling adventurous, I'd scroll through and find something interesting to make. This cake was one of those, and surprisingly it didn't stay on the list very long before I decided to try it.

I was worried about the pumpkin flavour not coming through, but it did very well and hits you first like a pumpkin pie. I love this cake. and its a big deal that I love it because I normally "like" cakes, or think they are "okay". My friend said it's the best cheesecake he's ever had and I'm confident enough to believe that he's telling the truth.

The caramel was a very nice compliment to the cake.

For some reason, I always mess up my caramel the first time. This batch took me 3 tries before it finally came together. The moral of the story is...never attempt any caramels without corn syrup. I know the pros do it, but it's not happening for me. My sugar always crystallizes before it even turns brown.

I'll attach my caramel recipe at the end. Be prepared for lots of butter and cream! YUM!

As you can probably tell, I didn't use 3/4 of that jar for the drizzle on the cake. The truth is, I've been snacking on it all night...on sandwich bread and for dipping apple slices.

The recipe is adapted from Paula Deen's pumpkin cheesecake
changes will be starred *

Crust:
1 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
*1/4 cup crushed pecans
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp sugar
1 stick butter

Melt the butter in the microwave and mix together all the ingredients.

Line the bottom of a spring form pan with a piece of parchment paper. I pulled the edges through the gap of the pan so it comes out from the bottom sides.

Press the crust into the pan and up the sides. I used a little bowl with a flat bottom. A ramekin would work as well.

Filling:
3 pkg 8oz cream cheese
*16 oz pumpkin
*4 med eggs
*1/4 cup yogurt
*1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp fresh nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
*3tbsp flour
1 tsp vanilla

Beat the room-temperatured cream cheese so that it becomes lump free.

Add Pumpkin puree, sugar, and yogurt to the mixer. I only used 2/3 of the sugar from the original recipe (1 cup instead of 1.5 cup) because Paula's recipes tend to be on the sweet side.

I think 1 cup is actually the perfect amount, I didn't miss the sugar one bit.

I added the eggs 2 at a time because I didn't have the patience. There's a reason you're supposed to do it properly though (one at a time). I remember once I was making brownies and decided to add all 6 eggs at the same time. My batter never came together because there was just way too much liquid to be incorporated.

Add the spices and flour . I always use fresh nutmeg because it smells good and looks pretty fancy :D

Scrape down the bowl and give the filling one last mix. Pour into the pan and set it inside a hot water bath. Protect your cake using a lot of aluminium foil. My spring form pan is old so my cake is very likely to get flooded.

Caramel:

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup corn syrup

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup cream

Combine sugar, syrup, and water and bring it up to temperature on high heat. Do not stir, just swirl.
Wait for it to reach 385 degrees then turn amber. Technically both should occur at the same time but mine probably hit well above 400 before it got colour.

Throw in the butter and take it off the heat. Wait till the butter melts then pour in the cream.

Pour into a container and let cool before using.

Coat the top of the cake with a thin layer of caramel, then place on some pecans.

Transfer some caramel into a piping bag, and drizzle across the cake. And you're done!

Caramel Carrot Muffins

2012-09-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

This is a simplified version of the many carrot muffin recipes out there. I was asked to whip up something for my dad's lunch the next day. It was very last minute so I had to work with whatever I had on hand. As some of you may know, recipes for carrot muffins have the longest ingredient list ever. They ask for many different "moisturising" agents such as pumpkin purée, apple sauce, crushed pineapples...ect. I had none of that so I had to improvise. To bring some interesting flavours into the mix, I chose to caramelize my butter and sugar.

I apologize in advance for not uploading instruction photos. It was almost midnight when I decided to make these so the lighting was horrible as you an imagine.

Carrot Muffins:

1 1/2 cup or 3 sticks Butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar

5 carrots, shredded
3 apples, shredded
4 eggs

2 cups flour
1/4 cup corn starch
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon

Bring butter and the sugars to a boil. Swirl and stir until the sugar melts and the mixture starts to bubble. This takes some time as you'll find that the butter and sugar doesn't want to mix at first.

Take it off the heat and pour into a bowl containing shredded carrots and apples. Stir to coat and to cool down the caramel.

When the temperature drops, mix in the eggs.

Sift together the dry ingredients and pour into the carrot mixture. Stir just until incorporated and there are no more visible clumps of flour. DO NOT over mix. please. I've done it and it tastes like rubber.

Bake in a 350 oven for 25 minutes and test with a tooth pick. These were giant muffins so 25 minutes was just enough to cook it through. If you are using standard muffin tins then I'm sure 20 minutes would be sufficient.