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Lucky Green Tea Cupcakes

March 17th, 2010

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! In honor of St.Patty’s day, I made green cupcakes, but went the non-traditional route and decided to make green tea cupcakes. Not very Irish at all, but what better excuse than to try something new and green for this holiday.

After doing some research, I decided to try to use a regular vanilla cupcake recipe and add some green tea (matcha) powder. Luckily, for me it turned out well and the combination of the vanilla and green tea tasted good. The best part about these cupcakes was definitely the frosting. It’s like a lighter more heavenly version of a buttercream frosting. I used a green tea frosting recipe from the Baked cookbook and I’m so glad I decided to try it. This frosting recipe definitely requires more effort, but the results are worth it! The frosting + cupcake made for an excellent pairing. I think everything had the right amount of green tea flavor. It was subtle and not overpowering.

One more thing before I go and eat another cupcake, if you are wondering where you can buy green tea (matcha) powder, you can usually find it at specialty food stores or better yet at Japanese markets if there’s one in your area. If you still can’t find it, you can also order it online. Just make sure you buy unsweetened green tea (matcha) powder. Also, the higher the quality green tea (matcha) powder you purchase, the brighter green your baked goods will turn out. Good luck!

A Peek Inside

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Posted in baking, dessert, holidays | 1 Comment

Julie & Julia: The Bruschetta Recipe

February 27th, 2010

One of the most memorable moments of the Julie & Julia movie was the scene where Julie and her husband are devouring this mouth watering bruschetta, made with rustic pan fried bread and brightly colored heirloom tomatoes. It literally made my salivary glands go haywire. Now that I think about it, it would’ve been awesome to be an actor on this movie set enjoying all that delicious food.

Thankfully, the food stylist, Susan Spungen shared this bruschetta recipe which she developed for the film in an article. I tried it and it tastes exactly how the actors portrayed it in the movie, delicious! At first I made a small batch just to test it out, but I had to make more because I couldn’t get enough. It was that good. So, if you haven’t seen the Julie & Julia, I suggest you make some bruschetta or something just as delectable and watch as you eat, because you will definitely get hungry watching this film.

Beautiful Heirloom Tomatoes

Love the colors!

Tomato & Basil Mixture

Bruschetta

Julie & Julia’s Bruschetta Recipe
(adapted from Susan Spungen’s recipe)

Ingredients

Provincio Artisan Roasted Garlic Bread (this can be found at Costco in a 2 loaf pack)
olive oil
kosher salt
ground pepper
heirloom tomatoes
fresh basil

Directions

1. Cut tomatoes into chunks and tear lots of basil leaves into medium-small pieces. In a bowl, toss tomatoes and basil with a good quality olive oil. Marinate for 1 hour at room temperature.

2. Cut bread into slices about 3/4 inch thick

3. Pan fry the bread in olive oil to get it toasted on the outside while retaining some softness in the center. After pan frying, sprinkle with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.

4. Season tomato mixture with salt and pepper about a half hour before serving. The salt makes the tomatoes release their juices and you don’t want that happening too soon.

5. Top bread with tomato mixture. If the bread is really crunchy, let the tomatoes sit for a few minutes before serving to soften the bread.

Note: I used the roasted garlic bread as a shortcut which I highly recommend because that bread is amazing, but if you can’t find it just substitute with any rustic loaf with a stretchy interior with lots of holes and a crisp crust. If you go the regular rustic loaf route, the original recipe tells you to rub a whole garlic clove onto the pan fried sliced bread. That’s the only difference.

Posted in cooking, food | 26 Comments

Red Velvet Cheesecake

February 14th, 2010

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I thought it would be perfect to make mini heart shaped red velvet cheesecakes for V-day and I’ve been dying to make them ever since I tried it for the first time at Magnolia’s Bakery in NYC. I had to make up my own recipe because I couldn’t really find any red velvet cheesecake recipes. I guess they aren’t that popular yet.

I was scared that this project would become a complete fail for several reasons: 1) I’ve only made one other cheesecake before and that time I had an actual recipe to follow 2) I couldn’t find instructions on baking times for mini cheesecakes, so I had to guesstimate and 3) did I mention that I’ve never done this before?!? Experimenting makes me feel really out of my comfort zone haha.

Anyway, after all my worrying and stressing and peeking into the oven every 5 minutes, the cheesecakes came out a beautiful shade of red and there were no cracks at all. Success! The final test was the taste test and it was…GREAT! It really reminded me of Magnolia’s version (maybe even better? haha) and I’m so excited that I don’t have to fly 3,000 miles to get some now. I topped it with some whipped cream and it complemented the cheesecake perfectly. Make sure to make these for your sweetheart because there’s nothing that says I love you more than a Red Velvet Cheesecake <3

Red Velvet Cheesecake

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Posted in baking, dessert, holidays | 8 Comments

Mascarpone Chocolate Chip Muffins

February 4th, 2010

I can’t even begin to tell you how GOOD these muffins are. Hands down these are the best chocolate chip muffins. I had been searching for the perfect recipe for a couple days and I am so glad I did not decide to give up and just pick any old recipe. These muffins are so soft and fluffy, just imagine clouds with pockets of melted chocolate and the mascarpone cheese gives it a suprisingly great subtle flavor.

Many thanks to justjennrecipes.com for posting the recipe! I’m not sure whether or not she created the recipe, but regardless it is definitely a favorite from now on.

Mascarpone Chocolate Chip Muffins
(adapted from justjennrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

1 (8 oz.) package mascarpone cheese
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 egg, room temperature
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I like a lot of chocolate chips)

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Beat mascarpone cheese and butter together until fluffy. Beat in egg, milk, and vanilla.
Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Stir flour mixture into wet mixture until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
Spoon batter into 12 prepared lined muffin cups. Filling them until they are almost full. I filled mine up all the way and had no problems with overflowing. They made a nice full muffin top.
Bake for about 20 min or until the top is golden brown.

Mascarpone Chocolate Chip Muffins

Posted in baking, dessert | 3 Comments

New Year, New Resolutions

January 4th, 2010

Happy New Year everyone!

I haven’t given much thought to resolutions for this year. I figured that I would just keep the same ones I come up with every year, but stumbling upon this website gave me inspiration to add some new ones to my list. I don’t like making more than a few resolutions a year, because the more resolutions the harder I find it to remember them throughout the year. This New Year’s Resolution generator website was very entertaining and if you need a little help on resolutions this generator is perfect for you! What did you decide to pick? Here are my picks:

This was a helpful reminder for me, because I almost never back up my files. Two years ago I learned my lesson after my computer crashed and I didn't back up a lot of my files. So, this year I promise to do it as often as I can remember. Which is more than once, I hope...

This year I defnintely want to create more desserts, crafts, and make use of my brand new sewing machine.

This resolution sounds like fun...have a few friends over, cook a good meal, drink some wine, and serve the ultimate dessert to top off the evening. I will definitely update you guys when this happens haha.

This one made me laugh...I like tomatoes, but I can't promise that I'd ever eat it like an apple.

Posted in holidays, life | Comments

Merry Christmas!

December 25th, 2009

Hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday filled with lots of dessert!

I went to a White Elephant Christmas Party this past weekend and whipped up two really simple and easy treats. Both of the recipes require no baking, are cream cheese based, and can be made ahead; so it saves you plenty of time during this busy season.

I wanted to make something unique and I found the perfect recipe for a Dessert Ball. Think of a cheese ball spread, but instead it’s sweet. This was so easy to whip up and once all the ingredients were combined I just popped it in the freezer until it was time to bring it to the party. The dessert ball was paired with graham cracker sticks to spread on. Everyone at the party was intrigued by the ball. This was definitely a crowd pleaser and perfect for people who like cheesecake tasting dessert.

The other dessert on the menu were Oreo truffles. I like to call these the “Wow Truffles” because every time someone bit into it, the first thing they would say is “WOW! These are so GOOD!”. It even converted my non-chocolate loving friends. You know a dessert is awesome when even people who hate chocolate start eating your chocolate dessert and rave about. The truffles were also a snap to make and had the shortest ingredient list.

Dessert Ball with Graham Cracker Sticks

Oreo Truffles aka Wow Truffles - So good even chocolate haters love them.

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Posted in baking, dessert, holidays | Comments

Extraordinary Desserts

December 21st, 2009

Took a trip to San Diego the other weekend and my very first stop was Extraordinary Desserts and like the name says, it was far from ordinary! I heard about Extraordinary Desserts from friends before, but I never thought to visit it sooner and now I wish I had. When you walk through the door you just see a long display cases filled with beautifully decorated cakes and treats. Fresh flowers were adorned on almost every dessert, which seems to be their signature style. I had to take multiple trips up and down the display just to wrap my mind around everything I was looking at and try to narrow down my choices.

I finally settled on the La Bete Noire cake (Traditional vanilla crème brûlée, chocolate truffle cream are layered in between dark chocolate cakes and moistened with Madagascar vanilla bean). It was absolutely decadent and the creme brulee layer was my favorite part, such a brilliant idea. Of course, I couldn’t leave without taking a few things to go: cherry chocolate chip cookie – not my favorite, Chocolate Chunk Shortbread- very chocolately and oh so yummy, Mini Lemon Meringue – perfect size for a small treat and a lovely lemon flavor, not too tart. I was dissapointed that they weren’t offering their famous Chocolate Crossiant Bread Pudding, but that’s ok because it just gives me another excuse to visit.

I made one more dessert stop on my trip and that was to Babycakes. It got decent reviews on Yelp, so I decided to check it out. They had a unique selection of cupcake flavors ranging from PB&J to Guava cucpakes. I decided on the Red Velvet and PB&J. The red velvet was a complete fail. I don’t know if maybe I got an old cupcake, but it was just super dense and flavorless. Sadly, I ate a part of it and just threw the rest away. Not worth the calories. The PB&J was much better and salvaged my trip to Babycakes. The peanut butter frosting was delicious and I loved the jam syrup drizzled on top. The cake was just a plain chocolate cake, nothing fancy, but at least it wasn’t as dense.

Overall, the trip was great and I’m happy that I found a new favorite dessert place, Extraordinary Desserts. Hopefully, they will decided to open a store in LA in the future!

Extraordinary Desserts Display Case

View of their bar/restaurant area

La Bete Noire Cake

Beaultiful orchids and gold flecks arranged on the cake

My Goodie Box - The shortbread was huge! Defnitely worth it!

Babycakes

Red Velvet and PB&J Cupcakes

Posted in dessert, travels | Comments

Top Chef at Home

December 16th, 2009

Now you can create Top Chef-like dishes at home with your very own SousVide machine! As seen on the reality show Top Chef and used by renowned chefs, the SousVide machine is a innovative way to cook your food and lock in its flavor. The SousVide Supreme (available at Sur La Table) is a water oven that cooks vacuum sealed food at low temperatures. Supposedly, you can achieve “perfect flavor everytime”, but don’t expect your meal to come out exactly like a Michelin Star restaurants’. I would definitely be wary of buying such an expensive machine without having the proper knowledge and experience in using it. This would be an awesome Christmas gift for hardcore cooks, but unless it came with some culinary classes or a private lesson with Thomas Keller I would definitely think twice about splurging on this baby.

Want more info? Check out the NY Times Article about the SousVide Supreme and Cooking Sous Vide is a website dedicated to cooking sous vide for home cooks.

(image via Sur La Table)

Posted in cooking, news, shopping | Comments

Thankful for All Things Pumpkin

December 1st, 2009

I hope all of you had a wonderful and filling Thanksgiving! Believe it or not, I still feel full from everything I ate over the last few days.

I’m a bit sad that the November is over because there were so many Thanksgiving themed desserts I wanted to try out, but they never made it to reality. I’m not sure how the month flew by so quickly, but I ended up making only a couple things from of my long baking list. I have so many different dessert recipes lined up just for Thanksgiving/Fall, but I guess they will have to wait until next year. The two recipes that actually made it to the oven, were Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins and Pumpkin Pie.

The Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins were an idea I got from the Starbuck’s version, but I did it semi-homemade style and used a box of Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Bread Mix. It still turned out really well and having a cream cheese center is always a nice twist.

Pumpkin pie was definitely a must bake on my list. At first, I couldn’t figure out which kind of pumpkin pie I wanted to make. I found so many versions of pumpkin pie and they all sounded so good. I decided to make traditional pumpkin pie since I had never made it before. The directions on the recipe made it seem fairly easy, but I messed up just a tad. The filling said it was good enough for one pie but I came out with enough for 2 pies. So, I made the mistake of overfilling the pie thinking it would fit…bad idea. I filled it up so much that I had a difficult time putting it in the oven without trying to spill too much. Another reason overfilling your pie is a huge mistake is that I didn’t take into account that it would rise just like any other baked good, so as it was baking it overflowed a little. But, thankfully it didn’t affect the overall taste; it just didn’t look as pretty as I would’ve liked.