boba cake

My sister Jenny came up from Southern California for spring break. It was a drop-in visit, so I scrambled to make a cake since I wouldn't be seeing her for her birthday.

Since she loves pearl milk tea (known as boba in SoCal), I decided to make her a cake that looked like the drink.

First I started with Betty Crocker boxed yellow cake mix. Yes, it was given to me, and no, don't judge.

So despite it being boxed cake mix, I applied learned techniques to make it. First, have the eggs at room temperature and whip them in the kitchenaid mixer. Eggs will beat fluffier if at room temperature (you can cheat by microwaving them for about ten seconds). While it's mixing I sift the dry mixture so it is airy and lump-free. Then I alternate pouring the dry mix and the wet mix (water and oil) into the mixer until everything is just incorporated. Then it goes into lightly-oiled round pans and straight into the oven.

Once the cake rounds were baked I allowed the pan to cool, then took the rounds out by running a knife around the edge. Since I don't have a cooling rack, I just inverted the rounds onto an upside-down muffin tin.



When the cake rounds cooled to room temperature, I leveled them and punched different sizes rounds out of them using metal cutters.



These were stacked one on top of the other, from smallest to largest. The bottom round was anchored to the plate with the help of some melted chocolate (chocolate chips in the microwave in 15 second intervals, stirred in between). Then the other rounds were anchored with the help of a boba straw.



Two 8" cake rounds were enough to make two boba cake "towers". I frosted them with apricot whipped cream. Usually I put fruit between cake layers, but it would have compromised stability in this case, so I put it in the whipped cream instead (basically canned apricot pureed and mixed into whipped cream). The only unfortunate part was that it made the whipped cream less smooth and spreadable.



The last-minute addition was of boba pearls. You can cook your own, which I tried, but it took more time than I had so the pearls were too hard. So I ended up using pearls plucked out of a boba drink. Unfortunately they were really slippery and wouldn't stay "glued" to the towers. If I had more time, I would have cut the pearls in half - think that would have made them stick a lot better.

The good thing is, we were able to surprise Jenny with the cake, so that allowed the cake's flaws to be overlooked a bit. When in doubt about your creation, surprise the recipient with it! I'm only half-kidding. She liked it a lot though.

rice soggies krispies

So in the month that I didn't blog, I mentioned trying things out and not having them work out. Rice krispies was one of those things.

Even though I'd never made them before I assumed I could, like other things, just make them. Well I was wrong. Apparently mastering the finer points of pastry does not exempt one from krispie fail.

In rice krispie attempt #1, I browned butter and added nutella to the mix and then topped it all with smoked almonds and chocolate syrup. I wanted the syrup to harden so I put the pan in the fridge, which I thought must have been a mistake, because the rice krispies became rice soggies (or just softies).

So then in rice krispie attempt #2 I made sure to keep the pan far away from the fridge. The kripies were crispy for like 10 triumphant seconds (okay maybe minutes) but eventually became soggy. Another fail.

I was beginning to feel like I couldn't make anything when I decided to forgo the whole making-my-own-homemade-marshamallow part and just succumbing to KRAFT jet-puffed marshmallows.



So I browned 2 tablespoons of butter and melted 26 marshmallows into it. Stirred with a silicone spatula until the marshmallows were fully melted.



Then I poured the mixture into 4 cups of rice krispie cereal (with some dried cranberries and almonds thrown in for kicks).



And lo and behold, something about the manufactured corn syrup-ness of it all meant that the marshmallow mixture didn't seep into the cereal but simply adhered to the cereal like spider silk. Crazy. Took an hour or so to set and stop being like pulling taffy.

And a day later, it still tastes great. Makes you wonder...

macarons finally

I've made macarons before, both at school and at internship. But making it at home was a whole other deal. Thanks to recipes and detailed explanations from this blog, I was finally able to make them successfully at home.



Here are the key ingredients: almost-stiff peak meringue (mine was a little too stiff) and sifted almond meal + powdered sugar.

The meringue was made with the swiss meringue technique: cooked over a double boiler. 105g of egg whites (roughly 3 eggs worth) and 110g of sugar heated to 110F, then whisked with the kitchenaid.

The sifted dry mixture was 140g of almond meal (Trader Joe's!) 90g of powdered sugar.



The dry mix was carefully folded into the meringue with a couple drops of red food coloring. The resulting dough is supposed to be a little more liquid than this, since my meringue was a little too stiff. But it's better to err on the side of too stiff than too soft with this.



Piped the macarons with a pastry bag fitted with a round tip. Then left them on the counter for half an hour to develop a "skin" (basically when you touch the rounds and nothing sticks to your finger).



While the piped macarons were sitting, I made the ganache filling. Melted 4oz dark chocolate, 1/4 cup of nutella (can be omitted) and 2 Tb of butter in a double boiler.



Then whisked 1/2 cup of heated cream into the chocolate mixture. The ganache mixture was left to cool and solidify a bit. I popped it in the fridge to speed up the process.



Once the macarons were ready, I baked them in a 275F oven for 15-20 minutes. They're ready when they are hard, almost-golden and come off the parchment nicely.



I paired the macarons based on matching size, then piped the chocolate ganache onto half of the pairs.



Now that I've successfully made macarons, it's time to experiments with colors and flavors!

holiday cookies

One of the last things I did at my internship was decorate holiday cookies. It got me in the mood to make some of my own, and I did it just like they did at internship, using a sweet dough recipe normally used for tarts. I never thought you could have a multipurpose dough - for tarts and for cookies. It's very similar to shortbread, although more flavorful, with just enough crumble and snap.

The recipe (makes about 50 cookies):

soft butter 250g
sugar 175g
almond powder 40g
yolk 1
eggs 1
flour 400g
baking powder 3g
orange zest 2-3
cold water 12g

1) Cream butter and sugar for a few minutes using the paddle attachment. 2) Mix in the other ingredients in one by one in the order listed (although yolks and eggs can be mixed together first, as with the flour and baking powder). As soon as the cold water is mixed in and the dough comes together, stop mixing. 3) Take the dough out and spread it flat in a casserole dish or other pan. It should be thicker than you want your cookies to be. Refrigerate the dough for a few hours, or overnight. 4) Roll out the dough to the desired thickness. Cut and bake for 15 minutes or until golden and firm-looking. Then cool and decorate!

Here are some of my decorations:

Classic-looking



Playful



Untraditional (since I didn't buy any holiday-specific cutters)



And I also made gingerbread cookies using this recipe. Substituted maple syrup for molasses. It turned out well, just softer than the cookies I prefer. The fun cutters were ninja gingerbread men, on loan from my friend Kim.



Happy holidays everyone!

crème caramel

My co-worker Virgie had birthday this week and I couldn't make her a cake because I ran out of flour (Thanksgiving cleaned me out). So I had to brainstorm options. The flan/pudding I recently ate from Irving Cafe reminded me that I had yet to make a proper flan. So I looked at dozens of recipes, most of which called for whole milk and/or heavy cream, neither of which I had. I was about to settle for one of the recipes utilizing low-fat milk and/or sweetened condensed milk when I decided to search creme caramel, or French flan.

And that brought me to Julia Child's recipe. I had never made any Julia Child anything, so it was time.

First, caramelizing sugar: 2/3 cup sugar and 1/3 cup water heated until the mixture *just* starts to brown (the color will deepen after you turn off the heat). Pour the caramelized sugar to coat the bottom of the desired ramekins (I used two medium sized ones). Don't worry if you didn't pour the sugar evenly - it'll even out during baking.



Next, bring 2 1/2 cups of milk (yes, I used low-fat) to a simmer. While that is going, whisk 3 eggs, 3 egg yolks and 1/2 cup of sugar together.



Once the milk is simmering, slowly pour it into the whisking egg/sugar mixture. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.



Then strain the mixture into the waiting ramekin(s).



Bake at 325F for 40 minutes, or until the creme caramel looks firm but is still wobbly and almost liquidy in the center. Pull it out to cool.



I recommend serving it warm. You can run a knife around the edge and unmold it after it spends 10 minutes sitting in cold water. (Otherwise you can always cool it in the fridge overnight and serve cold the next day.)



The creme caramel was exactly what I wanted flan to be: light and silky smooth. A little bit too sweet for my taste - next time I'll be sure to cut down on the amount of sugar.



But really, now I am a believer in Julia Childs. Wonder which recipe of hers I'll take on next!

poached pear deluxe

For my birthday in September, my friend Daniel gifted me a bottle of dessert wine. I hoped to make a dessert with it (or to go with it), and since Daniel's birthday was this month I decided to use his gift to me and make a gift for him.

Being that I've been so busy/overwhelmed lately, I decided to keep things simple and do wine-poached pears. I've poached pears before, and I've poached mushrooms in white wine before, but this was the first time with pears and red wine. Had to dilute the wine with a bit of water so I'd have enough liquid to cover the pears. Also added a cinnamon stick and bay leaf for flavor. Brought the mixture to a boil and let it simmer for a little bit over an hour, until knife tender.



Decided the keep the whole pear intact because I thought it would be more dramatic. For toppings, I had caramel sauce and sweetened creme fraiche (tied in little ziplock baggies as makeshift mini piping bags), powdered sugar, and poaching liquid reduced and sweetened with agave syrup.



Spooned the reduced poaching liquid on first, then creme fraiche, caramel sauce, and the dusting of powdered sugar (through the mesh colandar) last. It looks pretty dramatic if I do say so myself.



And it wasn't too sweet, because I didn't poach it with sugar. And Daniel liked it too. A warm and satisfying treat.

cake pops

For my roommate Megan's birthday I thought about making funfetti cake, since funfetti mix is her favorite. However, when I stumbled upon a funfetti cake pops box, I knew I had to get that instead.

I've never made cake pops before, and as with anything I've never made before there was a bit of mystery attached. Like how do you get the cake pop to be round? Or the stick to stick?

Turns out you start with actual cake. Which is crumbled and moistened with frosting. While this cake mix and frosting were included in the box, you can easily substitute your favorite cake recipe and whip up an easy powdered sugar + milk (or water) frosting.



Then you portion out the crumbly cake mixture and form them into ball-shape with your palms. Apply lots of pressure so the cake balls get firm and dense and don't fall apart on you.

Melt some chocolate in the microwave (at 15 to 30 second intervals so it doesn't burn). Dip one end of the cake pop stick into the melted chocolate and stick it into the cake ball. If you don't have cake pop or lollipop sticks, you can break up disposable chopsticks and sand the ends down with a nail file. That's what I did because the box was missing a stick.



Put the naked cake pops into the fridge to chill. Or if you're impatient like me, stick them in the freezer.

In the meantime, prepare more melted chocolate and sprinkles/decoration. Once the cake pops are thoroughly chilled, roll them each in chocolate, cover them in sprinkles, and stand them up to dry/set in a container full of sugar (dense enough to hold them up).



Rather than give Megan just a cup full of cake pops, I made her favorite yellow cake to use as a cushion.



Although the cake was frosted with whipped cream, it didn't look too nice because I didn't have my offset spatula. So I covered the cake with cake crumbs, which worked out because it made the cake look more like a cushion.

And despite the yellow cake mix being a boxed one, I ended up enjoying the super moist crumbly texture a lot. So I'm going to reverse engineer my own yellow cake mix based on the ingredients on the box. Will report back once I have some findings!

vegan chocolate mousse (and cake)

For Food & Fitness class we had to do a project on a healthy cookbook of our choice. I chose 500 Vegan Recipes because they had a recipe for chocolate mousse that I found intriguing.

It involved avocado (ripe, 1), tofu (firm, 1 pound) and agave syrup (1/4 cup).



I pureed the tofu and agave syrup first, then added melted chocolate (dark, 2 cups). It was a little grainy, but I think it would've worked if the tofu was the soft kind. I wanted to try without avocado because Whole Food's vegan chocolate mousse is really good and all it is is chocolate, tofu and brown rice syrup.



After I added the avocado the mixture became smoother/creamier.



I wanted to serve samples to the class, so I made a vegan chocolate cake to accompany the mousse. This was my first foray into vegan baking and I had no idea to expect. The cake came out dark and dense, like bread almost. Besides having no egg, no dairy, it also didn't have sugar. The only sweetness was from the non-dairy yogurt and applesauce that I put in.

The cake by itself didn't taste very good, although it did have the texture/chewiness of a regular chocolate cake.



Thankfully it tasted better with the mousse. I cut the cake into little squares and placed them in little sample cups, then piped mousse over.



The mousse actually set at room temperature, to a ganache-like consistency. Definitely didn't expect that. Also the dark chocolate taste was too strong (and I'm speaking as someone who loves dark chocolate). If I were to make this again I would use a milk/dark chocolate mixture, and/or cut down the amount of chocolate in the recipe.

If anyone has any vegan dessert recipes to share, please let me know! I'd love to try other stuff.

yummy granola bars

The most yummy thing that we've made in Food & Fitness class to date has been these granola bars. I made them at home with the recipe modified to my liking.

First, the wet mixture: 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup honey, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.



Then the dry mixture: 2 cups puffed wheat cereal, 2 cups rolled oats, 1 cup dried apricot (chopped), 1/2 cup salted almonds, 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips.



Combine the two mixtures and drop into a greased 9 x 13 pan. To press the mixture down without getting your hands all sticky, use a greased piece of parchment paper.



Bake in a 350F oven for 20 minutes or until golden. Then let cool for at least an hour before attempting to cut it. Mine didn't cut very well but you might be able to avoid that problem with either a little more honey, or a little more hardcore cooling (in the fridge or freezer).

Feel free to substitute with your own favorite puffed cereal, dried fruits, nuts/seeds, etc!

mole ice cream

Recently there was a special Oaxaca-themed dinner at my school. It was put on by the students who had attended the Oaxaca summer abroad program in order to raise money to help the students going next summer.

Each of us had a station with a dish that we'd learned to cook in Oaxaca. Mine was the octopus salad we made at the restaurant El Origen.

But to challenge myself, I also decided to make the mole ice cream I'd dreamed about when I was in Oaxaca.

I've made a savory (buttered popcorn) ice cream before, so I applied the same process to this one.

Basically, I soaked the mole spices (dried chihuacle+pasilla+mulato chiles, thyme, oregano, cinnamon, clove, peanuts, almonds, walnuts, raisins) in a milk and cream mixture, added corn syrup and sugar, then heated it, pureed it, and added beaten yolks and heated it again, and strained and cooled and churned it.



Sesame seeds were a mole ingredient I left out, to put on a tuile cookie. Like I learned in first semester, I had to cut a mold out of a cake box, spread the tuile batter on, then sprinkled sesame seeds and baked them. The silicon mat is indispensable in this case - without them the tuiles stick and never come off in one piece!



Just having the ice cream and tuile made dessert seem a little forlorn, so I added fried plantains. I didn't want them to get soggy so I pan-fried them, twice. They were hot after frying and I didn't want the ice cream to melt on them so I popped them in the freezer. I think the freezing made the outside crispier, which was a plus.



I was worried about the dessert being too savory, so I added goat's milk caramel that Cris and I made in Oaxaca. The caramel is really thick and un-drizzleable, so I made parchment paper cones for dispensing.



This is everything put together, with some cotija cheese sprinkled on top (since cheese often accompanies plantains but also for garnish).



The ice cream itself was pretty good, maybe too spicy. It tasted like chai ice cream but spicy. And everything went well together, although I did forget chocolate as an ingredient. Everyone liked it, so maybe I could do it again next time with chocolate?

tarte tatin

One of the food blogs I follow, Gilt Taste, recently put out a recipe for Tarte Tatin. I'd never heard of it before, but it's like an upside down apple pie (and plus it's French) so I jumped at the chance to make it for a dinner party.

The hardest part was finding an oven-safe pan. There are hundreds of them at school, but at home all the pans had plastic handles. And the cast iron was too big, so I resorted to unscrewing the handle off of one of the existing pans.



After that was the dilemma of making dough without a food processor (well, I have one but it's tiny). Thankfully, at one of my summer stages I'd learned to cut butter into dough by using a cheese grater, because they didn't have a food processor either.



Between the cheese grater and breaking up the butter curls by hand, I got the butter mixed in pretty well.



With some cold water and kneading, the dough was shaped into a round, wrapped in plastic and put in the fridge to chill.



Next came the apples. Golden delicious from the farmer's market by work.



Once cut and quartered, I was able to fit five in the 9" pan.



Then I cooked the combination of butter, sugar and cinnamon stick.



Took it off the heat once it started turning brown.



On top I repositioned the apple quarters, now cored (but not peeled, since I didn't have a good peeler at home).



While the apples were cooking I took the dough out and rolled it to the dimensions of the pan. I don't own a rolling pin so I used a bottle of PAM. It works pretty well (although in my previous post you'll see PVC pipe, that works even better).



The apples cooking in the cinnamon caramel is one of the best smells that can fill your kitchen. I turned rotated each slice 180º for even cooking, but you don't have to.



Once the apples were done I covered the pan and put it in the oven. When it finished baking I wrapped it in towels and took it to the dinner party.



There, I had to pop the tarte back into the oven, so the caramel could soften a bit in order for the all-important flipping of the tarte to happen.



I was nervous, but with the plate on the pan, I flipped in one motion and the tarte came out. It would probably have been prettier with the apples peeled, but it tasted pretty good (with vanilla ice cream!).



Not a bad way to make use of some apples (or other fruit) you have lying around. Although I'd still prefer apple pie :)