13 posts tagged “sweet”
Really, what is the difference between an apple pie and an apple crisp? Is it really just that an apple pie has a crust and an apple crisp has a crumble?
Curious.
In ANY case– I finally got around to making apple pie late last month (okay, it was an apple crisp, but it’s almost the same thing). You can find the recipe here at PineappleBread.
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You may have noticed that I've been writing and posting more on PineappleBread as of late. I was planning to migrate completely over to wordpress, but I'm awfully fond of Vox, and so I've been simultaneously posting on both. But I'm not sure what to do. Any suggestions?
Known also as 菠蘿包 (pronounced: bwoh lwoh bao) in Taiwan and other Asian countries, this bread actually does not contain any pineapple. Instead, it derives its name from the criss-cross design on its cookie dough exterior that causes it to look somewhat like the pineapple fruit. In Japan, these breads are known as melon pan (with pan being the Japanese word for bread). For that, I have no explanation.
I got this recipe from Angie’s Recipes, and I used her recipe for Japanese Melon Pan. However, I substituted the chocolate she used as a filling with red azuki beans instead. I love love LOVE azuki. Love. I made a few other modifications to the recipe as well in order to convert it properly to the English system of measurement instead of SI units. So I have posted the recipe at the bottom with my version.
(I won’t rant –too much– about this now, but I would just like to say that Americans are stupid and should have converted to using the metric system of measuring things YEARS ago and making everything easier and more universal rather than having to deal with annoying pounds and ounces and figuring out conversions between grams, weight, etc. Bah HUMBUG! End rant.)
Now, I tried this recipe twice. I thought the first batch was too small with only four pieces, so I doubled the recipe to make eight.
But the first time, as you shall see, was… well…
Not so good.
Out of the four of them, the best one looked like this:
Not that it didn’t taste fabulous. Inside, the bread and red bean were sweet and fluffy. My parents just scraped off the burnt portions (like any normal, self-respecting parents who often are forced to eat their daughter’s creations), and these four little buns were gone pretty quickly:
You see, I was in a rush that day and just left the buns in the oven and told my mom to take them out when they were done. Not a good idea. Apparently one second they were fine, and the next second… a burnt mess.
So I tried again!
TRIAL TWO.
This time I made sure I had time to be there the entire time.
Lined up, the pineapple bread buns were very cute! I had a difficult time getting the red beans inside the dough, but I think that’s just a matter of practice. And the outer cookie dough was a bit sticky to handle, but an extra layer of sugar on top helped create a barrier between my knife and the sticky dough.
Almost good enough to eat…
And… success!! It looked “normal” this time! The chronic problem of not quite-finished dough inside was there (I’m going to have to bake a bit longer next time and allow the dough to bake a little longer), but it came out beautifully.
Voila! Pineapple Bread!
The recipe is at PineappleBread.
As the weather warms and the days grow longer, I find myself feeling lighter and happier. At least, on the weekends anyway.
Extra bananas are a rarity in my household. We buy them green from Costco and then devour them in large quantities as they ripen. My dad always brings one to work for a snack, and I take bunches of them to my volleyball tournaments to keep myself and my teammates from cramping up.
This time, however, the Costco bananas decided to stay green for weeks. Bananas are some of the few fruits that ripen after being picked (most other fruits taste best when picked at their peak growing period-- bananas need no such care), so green ones will yellow and ripen with time. But this time, our bananas took over three weeks of sitting in a basket (and in a cardboard box) to no avail. They finally did turn yellow, but all too late and were already slightly mushy and brown-skinned at that point.
So I made banana muffins!! The recipe was modified from the banana nut muffin recipe at SimplyRecipes, and I added dried "antioxidant fruits" to half the batch just to try it out. You see that one in the picture above. They came out absolutely lovely, and I am eager to try for another batch soon! I'm going to modify the recipe a bit more and post the recipe later.
And I had a kiwi as part of my lunch on Friday. I heart kiwis. Yay.
The lemon syrup cake I make is something that almost never fails to please. I've been making it for years, and it has happily obliged me each time. So when I decided to have a nice food-fest this past Sunday, my lemon syrup cakes made their usual appearance. Except this time, I decided to try something a bit different.
Plus, I want to ice the next batch after I glaze it.
Sunday night was BURGER night. My dad had ordered a bunch of stuff from Omaha Steaks a couple of months back, and my mom tends to forget about the stuff in the freezer when she cooks dinner (we go grocery shopping every day, so our freezer is usually only stocked with ice cream, frozen dumplings, and frozen shrimp-- all our meat and vegetables are bought fresh daily), and we still had burgers, baked potatoes, and franks left.
Never one to let food go to waste, I decided to do something about it and announced to my dad in the morning that we were going to have burgers for dinner. And so it was. I went out and bought the things that normally go with burgers (ketchup, relish, lettuce, tomato, onions, and the like) and prepared our dinner that night.
I'm alive! I swear! I've just been... super super busy the past few weeks. Between work stress and volleyball and event after event piling on one after another, I barely get a chance to sleep, much less talk about cooking and baking! So apologies to those of you in my neighborhood-- I haven't been able to look at any of your posts, and you guys must have made some amazing food since the last time I visited Vox! I can't wait to start eating my way through your entries! :D
But after quite some time away, I am (sort of) back! I'll keep this first post short and sweet. Very sweet indeed.
This past Saturday was the celebration of the 10th annual Maryland Day at the University of Maryland. In celebration of the event and the landmark anniversary, the school decided to make 50,000 cupcakes-- enough for one for each student. They didn't take into account, however, that approximately 6000 of those students are Jewish and were observing Passover, meaning that they couldn't eat these cupcakes. Aw boo. But what is their loss is my gain! Yay cupcakes!
The cupcakes themselves weren't all that spectacular. Who in their right mind would attempt making 50,000 gourmet cupcakes? So these cupcakes were simple and straightforward, but they did their job well. And what was most impressive? The design the 50,000 cupcakes made:
Wow.
(I actually saw them assembling the cupcakes late the night before...)
In Washington, DC, we have a festival every springtime to celebrate the coming of spring and to commemorate the friendship between the United States and Japan as symbolized by the many blossoming cherry trees given to us by the Japanese many years ago. The festival is two weeks long, starting with a kite festival (I accidentally stumbled upon it one day when I was out in DC with my family-- it is quite breathtaking to see so many beautiful kites aloft, flying in the breeze) and ending with a Cherry Blossom Festival parade around the Smithsonian Mall and a Taste of Japan festival day which showcases Japanese food, art, and performances. I was able to attend the festival last year (I was in the parade, actually!), but this year, due to scheduling conflicts, I was not able to be there for the last day of celebration.
Not that it mattered too much, in the end. The weather, being milder this year than the trees may have expected, caused the blossoms to bloom early, so my friends and I meandered down the way to see the cherry blossoms last weekend. They were gorgeous.
Feeling like a complete tourist, I snapped pictures of every other flower in my path.
And mind you, there were a lot of flowers.
Pretty, yes?
More cherry blossom pr0n!!
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Alright, and I can't make a post in this food blog without actually posting pictures of edible materials, desho? SO!
In light of the fact that my last blueberry pie was so enthusiastically devoured by my coworkers, I decided to bake a new pie. This time, the crust took only about half an hour to make, which was nice. The dough came together pretty well, and I had less trouble rolling it out. However, I had a lot of dough leftover, so next time I plan to make a thicker dough for both the base and for the top crust. Perhaps I'll try baking it slightly beforehand as well.
The time I made my first blueberry pie, I bought the blueberries from Trader Joe's. They were wild and organic. This time, I found bags of blueberries on sale at my local supermarket. This time, they were non-wild and non-organic (I do like to stick with organic foods, but unfortunately with my current salary, it is probably most wise for me to be frugal where possible). The surprising thing to me was the size of the berries. Call me ignorant, perhaps, but I was a bit startled at the difference between organic and conventional berry size.
Nevertheless, I continued making my pie. And this pie is dedicated to my cousin, Ruby, because today is her birthday! To my oldest friend (she is one of the few people of whom I can truly say I have known my entire life) Happy birthday dear girl, and I hope all your wishes come true. Haha, is that too sappy?
The muffins were made from a mix I had picked up on sale from the supermarket a long time ago, and while there was nothing wrong with the muffins, I did realize while making them the difference between making desserts from scratch and from a box mix; there is a distinct aroma from the muffin mix that was so surprisingly ...commercial. I could not pinpoint it directly, but I have decided that all of my future endeavors in the baking realm shall be from scratch. At least, all the ones that I can help, anyway.
In other news, I recently cut my hair.
But I like it anyway.
Do you ever wonder what a lifetime of science and math and computer science can do to the brain of a *relatively* sane person? Well, for one thing, one develops is an ingrained love of all things dorky, obscure, and just plain weird. Me to a tee. And of course, when things tasty come around, I can't help but pounce upon them, especially when it combines the wacky with the oh-so-cool and tasty.
Hold up. What I'm trying to say is.... Remember trigonometry? Circles with their radii, tangents, and diameters? What about irrational numbers? Yea, it's all coming back now, isn't it? I'm talking about Pi (π), that mysterious number that is a mathematical constant and has children all over the world competing to memorize as many of its characters as possible (My brother could remember up to fifty-two-- 52!-- of them).
So, what does pi have to do with a food blog? Pi(e) Day, of course! Since March 14 is also written as 3.14, and 3.14 are the first few numbers used when calculating all the circles and all their related parts. It is a great, mathematical holiday during which dorks and geeks and dweebs alike all band together to partake in the great consumption of round, sweet pastries!
In previous years, I would just buy a slice of pie or buy a McD's apple pie (two-for-a-buck deal) to commemorate the unofficial holiday.This year, however, I wanted to do something different.
I made my own PIE!
Lynne, my lab's grad student, and I, being the bakers and foodies that we are, decided to celebrate our insanity (and yes, everyone in our lab is quite insane, especially since we remain working there) and giddiness for the excuse to eat pie by bringing some in on the Pie Day. And so on Friday, we did.
I made the pie on Wednesday because I had too many things going on Thursday.
To start off with, I made my own crust (recipe taken from Williams-Sonoma)! I took over the dining room table, and my father proceeded to laugh at my silliness (since the table was literally completely covered in bits of dough and flour. It was a pain in the butt to make, although I suppose it was worth it in the end. It did taste pretty doggone yummy.
And lastly, I took the extra pie crust and made "cookies" out of them. See?
I need to find a way to meld the two. If I could hear strings and voices every time I took a bite of something delicious, how perfect would that be?
But then again, if I heard discordant, clashing, out-of-tune tones every time I ate something that wasn't sensational... that would make my life miserable. Especially if I had to eat at my school diner every day. My roommate and I were sick of the food after approximately a month of living on campus, and we had to endure two years of the stuff! Luckily, those times are no more.
Instead, I spend massive amounts of time at home now poring over cookbooks and greedily deciding the next recipe that shall meet the chopping block in my kitchen. Oh yes, I am Goddess of the Kitchen!
Actually, I lie. I don't spend nearly enough time in the kitchen cooking as I would like to. It doesn't help that dinner is almost always on the table when I arrive at home. What is a girl to do when she is greeted with steaming plates of her mommy's cooking? Smile, for one. Number two? Dig in with gusto and forget that she ever thought about cooking a meal that night.
Something I decided to make on a whim while browsing the aisles of my local supermarket (and after this recipe was posted in the Food Section of the Washington Post) was Warm Lentil-Potato Salad with Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette. I saw a bag of lentils and my hand just reached out and grabbed it. I had lentil soup at a retirement party last year, and since then I've been wanting to eat lentils again. This was my chance, and I tried it out.
It wasn't great, but I think that was mostly my fault and not the recipe's. I cooked the lentils and potatoes too long and everything got mushy. I also didn't drain it well enough, which meant it continued to get mushier as we let it sit. I also don't think I added enough salt, so in the future I will have to be a little more careful about my seasoning... I will say, however, it tasted a little better the next day. I guess the liquid left in the bowl had dried somewhat. Practice makes perfect, and I definitely need lots of practice...
Since I rarely cook dinner, I make dessert. And recently, that dessert has been something I have made many many times to much success: Lemon Syrup Cake. I made one and posted a pictures of it in a previous entry, and here it is again:
Teehee.
The last time I made a gingerbread house, I was in my early years of grade school (first grade, perhaps?), and we decorated with gingerbread that had been adhered to the outside of a small carton of milk. I don't actually remember anything other than my teacher warning us in a severe voice that we were not to eat any of the icing because it had egg white in it and we might get sick from food poisoning if we ate it.
But since then, I never had the opportunity to make another gingerbread house. So when I saw this kit in Michael's (I know, I'm lazy-- kits and all... -_-), and I had a 40% off coupon burning a hole in my pocket, so I plopped down the cash and bought it. Hehe.
I don't have any good pictures (the little one to the left is a relatively decent one) of the completed project, and it actually looks slightly different from what the picture shows.
See, what happened was that Jon and I started the project one night and then realized that just putting the actual gingerbread pieces together to make the house would take a while because the house had to dry. So we left it overnight, and then when we came back to do it the next day, Jeff's two best friends were over to play for a bit before they had to go to their Hakka chamber strings practice. So we let the 12-year-olds have free rein over the design and decoration. Don't know if it was a really good idea....
So here they are, silly boys.
Very silly indeed-- all with food in their mouths. Haha. Little buggers.
So here is the last of the gingerbread cookies I baked for Christmas. I decorated it using the royal icing that came with the gingerbread house kit. Cute, isn't it? It didn't last very long, I can tell you that much. Actually, the head fell off as I was picking it up, so... I just stuffed it in my mouth. Along with the rest of the body.
Yes, I am a pig. Ooh, maybe I'll make a pig next time...!
^__^
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