A Grad Student on Valentine's Day

Another Valentine's Day has come and gone and this year, I didn't have any time or people to make and distribute Valentine's goodies to this year. Prior to moving to Japan, I never really cared about V-day but having been immersed in all the fanfare and chocolate madness that dominates the Japanese market the weeks before V-day for two years, I've grown somewhat fond of the holiday. There's just something great about making cute little chocolates and cakes for the people in your life, particularly the ones that you like haha. In any case, this year, I ended up having tons of stuff to do over the weekend and in an attempt to focus on my work, I decided that I wouldn't make anything. But towards the end of the day, I really did want something chocolate. The only thing that came to mind that would be quick and appease the craving was this one mug chocolate cake recipe that my friend's mother sent me in a recipe exchange. It is really easy to make, and even though it's made in the microwave, it's not too bad. I say it's rather perfect for the graduate student life lol. I cut the cake into pieces and drizzled a little chocolate icing on top for mine :)


fresh out of the microwave



Mug Cake

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug


Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug but don’t be alarmed! Allow to cool a little and tip out onto a plate if desired.

Too much butter is not always good...

I bought a bag of blood oranges on sale at the supermarket and I discovered that I'm not particularly fond of their flavor as is. So of course I look for a simple recipe that I can use them in. I was thinking of juicing the oranges and making a cream or panna cotta with them but I had no heavy cream in the fridge and I didn't feel like leaving the comfort of my warm apartment to go to the store. So I kept looking and I stumbled upon a blood orange tart recipe from Smitten Kitchen that looked perfect for my purposes.

The rustic look of the tart and the simplicity of the recipe were the deciding factors in choosing this recipe...and I'm sure I would have had awesome results had my head been in the right place the day I made it. I read the recipe the night before and the next morning, instead of rereading the recipe, I went by memory..for the crust anyway. Of course, I screw up and put in 1.5 sticks of unsalted butter instead of 1 stick that was in the recipe. And of course I don't catch my error until after I finished chilling and rolling out the dough. >_< But since I was out of flour, I went with what I had, and oh boy...the dough spread quite a bit in the baking process. It tasted ok, the crust was pretty flaky, but I'm sure it would have been even better with the original recipe! Next time I think I'll try again, but with a different fruit...maybe pears or apples :)



Blood Orange Tart
taken from Smitten Kitchen
note: Smitten Kitchen also provides a recipe for a dark, salted butter caramel to serve with the tart that I didn't make (thank god, I'd probably have ruined it and my pot if I did that day) that sounds delectable :)

1 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, the stick cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
3 tablespoons ice water
8 to 10 blood oranges (about 5 ounces each) [I only needed 7]
1 large egg yolk mixed with 2 tablespoons of water
Deep, Dark Salted Butter Caramel Sauce, for serving (after using Zoe Nathans, decided that I definitely prefer my own, reprinted below)

1. In a food processor, pulse the 1 cup of flour with 2 tablespoons of the sugar and the baking powder and salt. Add the stick of cold butter and pulse several times, just until it is the size of peas. Sprinkle the dough with the ice water and pulse just until moistened crumbs form. Turn the crumbs out onto a work surface, knead once or twice and pat the pastry into a disk. Wrap the pastry in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

2. On a floured work surface, roll out the pastry to an 11-inch round, about 1/4 inch thick. Transfer the pastry to a parchment paper–lined flat cookie sheet and refrigerate for 15 minutes, or until chilled.

3. Meanwhile, peel the blood oranges, removing all of the bitter white pith. Thinly slice 2 of the oranges crosswise; remove the pits. Transfer the orange slices to a plate. Working over a sieve set over a bowl, cut in between the membranes of the remaining oranges, releasing the sections into the sieve. Remove the pits and gently shake out as much juice as possible without mashing the sections; you will need 1 cup of sections. Reserve the orange juice for another use.

4. Arrange the orange sections on the pastry, leaving a 2-inch border all around. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the sugar over the oranges. Using a paring knife, thinly slice the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter over the oranges. Fold up the pastry over the oranges, leaving most of the oranges uncovered. Brush the pastry with the egg wash and sprinkle lightly with 1 tablespoon of the sugar. Arrange the orange slices on top, leaving a 1-inch border of pastry all around. Sprinkle the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar on top. Freeze the tart until solid, at least 4 hours or preferably overnight.

5. Preheat the oven to 375° and position a rack in the center. Place a baking sheet on the rack below to catch any drips. Bake the tart directly from the freezer for 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the fruit is bubbling and the pastry is deeply browned. Transfer the cookie sheet to a rack and let the tart cool for 30 minutes. Carefully slide the parchment paper onto the rack and let the tart cool completely.

Lazy Friday

I had planned to wake up early, get my paper done, and get cracking on readings for next week's classes. Of course, things never go as planned for me since my inherent laziness takes over and what ended up happening was I woke up around 8:30, browsed food blogs, watched some variety shows I downloaded, finished my paper 3 hours before it was due, browsed more food blogs, watched more variety shows on youtube, and then ate dinner. In that order. I had to do something that .. wasn't watching things on my computer, so of course I decided to bake! I had leftover cinnamon sugar from making the palmiers last week so I naturally decided to make snickerdoodles :) I love these cookies. They come out soft and so delicious!

I've used this recipe before so I know they turn out well. This time I tweaked the method just a little bit since the cinnamon sugar mix I had on hand was heavier on the sugar side than cinnamon. The cookies turned out with a light hint of cinnamon with a soft center and slightly crispy and chewy sides, mm delicious! On most days, I usually prefer the stronger cinnamon flavor in snickerdoodles, but today the light flavor really hit the spot :) I was probably just looking for a sweet end to the day lol! The only thing I'd try differently next time is to use all butter and no shortening.



Snickerdoodles
Adapted from Allrecipes

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons white sugar
1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Cream together butter, shortening, 1 1/2 cups sugar, the eggs and the vanilla.
3. Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt in a separate bowl and then mix into the wet ingredients. Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls.
3. Mix the 4 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon. Roll balls of dough in mixture and then roll balls between your hands again. Roll balls one more time in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Place 2 inches apart on parchment paper lined baking sheets.
4. Bake 8 minutes or until set but not too hard. Be careful to not underbake these cookies. Let cookies sit on the baking sheet for 1-2 minutes before removing to a rack to cool.

Celery...cookies?

So F suggested that I try making cookies with celery a while back and I've been stewing over ways to infuse celery into cookies. The first thought was to try making a sugar cookie with celery in it. My first thought was to use some sort of celery extract or juice in the dough itself and then roll balls of dough in a celery infused sugar before baking. It all sounded nice and pretty in my head, but upon trying to create this masterpiece, I discovered things don't go as well as planned all the time :X The celery sugar turned out very light in the celery flavor and I hadn't realized that I don't have a food processor, juicer, or blender to extract the liquid from the celery, so I ended up making a celery syrup by boiling celery in water and sugar. The result was a sweet syrup with a semi-strong celery flavor that came after the sweet, but that celery flavor wasn't strong enough to come out through the dough. I didn't anticipate that and even reduced the amount of sugar from the original sugar cookie recipe to accommodate for the syrup. Needless to say this was a complete failure. There was no celery flavor to the cookies, and they were not as sweet as regular sugar cookies. In fact, most of what I tasted was vegetable oil (bleh). Next time I'll stick to tampering with a recipe that I've tried before and stay away from oil :X Also, I'll wait till I have access to some sort of juice extracting contraption before thinking about making more celery cookies. Either that or I'll start experimenting with celery seeds...

Palmiers <3

I love cinnamon in cookies, in buns, in desserts and sweets in general, so of course I had to make these cinnamon palmiers when I saw them on i shot the chef. I actually made these once before over winter break and found out how long they actually take to make with all the resting in between but they are definitely worth the effort.

I really enjoyed these cookies, as did my friends and my cousin! Thus, I had to make them again! Of course it helped that S wanted to try them and didn't get any since he ran off to HK so I had reason to make these again :) The first time, I didn't really know what I was doing when I was folding the dough and making the cookies, and this time..despite having one batch under my belt, they were just as hard to shape again. I'm guessing it's because I keep halving the batches. Next time I'll do a full batch :) I also need to work on rolling them out and stuffing lots of cinnamon sugar into them too. They seemed to be lacking in the cinnamon sugar flavor this time =/ But they flaky buttery cookie is good..because of the flaky buttery-ness...:X


Sigh..they were much too pale..


In the tupperware to be sent to S lol

Recipe can be found here: A Cheap Cookie

Pina Colada Cake

Last weekend, I had a friend over and, being girls, of course we loaded up on the sweets at the grocery store before heading to my place. That meant cinnamon rolls, donuts, chocolate, juice, and a small bag of goldfish crackers to offset the sugar for lunch! We also got a couple cartons of juice. Needless to say we couldn't finish it all. Not even half. So last week I was eating donuts and cinnamon rolls instead of real food..but that's not the point here. What I'm trying to get at is that I was left with a carton of pina colada juice (new from Dole apparently!) unopened and sitting in my fridge. I'm not a huge juice drinker, so I've been drinking it (diluted with water) and kept thinking of how I could use the juice in my baking. I've had a hankering for pound cake, so I thought I'd flavor the cake with juice! Perfect!

The results? Well, I tinkered with a recipe I found on Baking Bites and then went and glazed one half of the cake while leaving the other half untouched. The verdict? I like the crunchy crust on the cake! The plain cake is quite tasty although the pina colada flavor doesn't really come out. I would recommend toying with reducing the amount of sugar and increasing the amount of juice to fix that. It is acutally sweeter than I thought it would be as well but it is a nice dense, yet pleasant pound cakey cake. Then I tried the glazed version. Glaze wins hands down. The pina colada flavor was there but not overpowering. The glaze does make the cake sweeter, but I have a sweet tooth and I'm ok with that! However, I do recommend small portions for this cake. I actually like them nice and bite-sized :) I imagine they'd go well with tea or coffee as well.


glazed half


unglazed half- see that crack in the back? I broke the cake when I inverted it ::tears::


oh so delicious! the glazed piece is the one that glistens! lol

Pina Colada Cake
adapted from Baking Bites

1 cup sugar
2 1/2 tbsp butter, soft
2 large eggs
1 tbsp Pina Colada juice
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

for glaze:
powdered sugar
Pina Colada juice

Preheat the oven to 350F and grease and flour a 9x9 pan.
In a large bowl, cream the sugar and butter until light and crumbly, then beat in the eggs one at a time, followed by the pina colada juice.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt, then stir the flour mixture into the wet mixture. Stir only until just combined.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20-24 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake and the top is golden brown.
Invert cake out onto a rack to cool.

*If using glaze, mix powdered sugar and juice to make the glaze. The glaze should be a slightly thick but liquid consistency. I started with about 2-3 tbsp of juice and kept adding powdered sugar until I reached my desired consistency. Brush the glaze on to the cake while still warm or drizzle glaze on after the cake is completely cooled. Either way is delicious (and sweet!)

Home Cookin'

No recipe for this post, but I thought I'd post about what I typically cook for myself. I tend to just stir fry whatever I have in the fridge since it's fast and easy and I really don't have a picky palate so if it's edible, I'll eat it :X

That said, this post is about a fried potato dish that my grandmother (best cook EVER) used to make when we were young. My brother and I used to fight over the last piece of potato and even now we're on an unending quest to figure out how my grandmother used to cook this. Sadly, she passed away 16 years ago, long before I became interested in cooking and baking, so the only clues we have to go on is what my dad remembers of how she used to cook and my brother's picky taste to try and figure out the proportions.

This dish is very, very simple, it's basically sliced strips of marinated pork that's fried with strips of potato and/or onion. Very simple, very quick, and I find it tasty. Of course I tend to find almost anything fried with soy sauce tasty...so it might just be me. Anyhow, there'll be no recipe since it's not quite how it should be yet and, well let's face it, it's so simple it really doesn't require a recipe to imitate anyway!