cookies

I bake everything for the shop, and pretty much everyday there will be cookies. I've been making a few different types of cookies: butterscotch, chocolate chips, sweet and salty butterscotch, "blackout", etc..

Since I have to bake everyday, and the making dough part of the cookie baking usually takes a little while, I would make a bigger batch of dough, put it in a container and store in the fridge, and when I'm ready to bake the cookies I'll use a small ice-cream scoop and scoop out the dough onto a cookie sheet to bake. This method has been saving me time and energy, and helping to produce yummy cookies!

Here are a few that I like to make these days:

butterscotch cookies.

mocha chocolate chip cookies.

sweet and salty butterscotch cookies.

"blackout" cookies.

I'm thinking about making pumpkin or more autumn and winter "relevant" cookies one of these days.

mmmmm cookies.

holiday muffins

Ok they are not really "holiday" muffins, but they are the almond poppy seed muffins that I have been making for the shop these days, with a holiday twist - in holiday-inspired muffin liners! Wilton has come up with a bunch of holiday cupcake liners, packaging materials, and such, and I love how festive they look! :D

"crown" muffins

I had been struggling with making muffins with proper "muffin tops" that are rounded, tall, and delicious. The muffins I made (for the shop) this summer had been tasty, but with flattened tops. Sad.

But one day, I found a special muffin pan that's labeled as a "crown muffin pan." It doesn't even have a brand name on it... all it had was a bar code with a tiny line of words indicating what the pan was.

And it made all the difference!




These are almond-poppy seed muffins!

I made cinnamon-crumb cake muffins a few times, and look how HUGE this muffin top got! (The tip collapsed when I pulled the muffins out of the oven and knocked on the rack... otherwise it would have been rounded, too!)

So I say, getting good and cool bakeware is a wonderful thing to do.

chocolate cupcakes

I start making cupcakes for the shop again these days! Some of my favorite to make right now are chocolate ones.

For some of my friends, I even make vegan chocolate cupcakes! The recipe I use is adopted from one of Martha Stewart's cupcake recipes, and the chocolate frosting is from one of my Wilton cake books that came with the classes I took.





Vegan dark chocolate cupcakes.




Regular chocolate cupcakes.

I love making cupcakes!

halloween ghost cookies

I made some ghost cookies for my friends this year.


These are simple sugar cookies with royal icing.


I even made some vegan ones for my vegan friends this year!

OK I sort of cheated when I was making the vegan ones... my friend Andrew got me a vegan sugar cookie mix and vegan butter, so I made it according to the box. I didn't have regular soy milk around the house, so I used the peanut rice milk drink we had in the fridge. The cookies turned our really well! I found a vegan royal icing recipe online, which was pretty much powdered sugar, corn syrup, and water and vanilla all stirred together. The finished icing worked very well, too.

Hope everyone is having a safe and happy Halloween!

square sugar cookies with pink and white icing

My first batch of decorated sugar cookies for the shop!



I think they are really cute in pink and white, and they are tasty, too! :D

choux pastry with custard

I've been experimenting with different pastries and baked goods for the caffe, and one of my most recent experiment was choux pastries.

I made these choux pastry puffs, and filled them with vanilla custard that I made from scratch. They turned out better than I expected, but I still need to make the choux pastry "puffier" for next time.

i am making cupcakes

I've been making little cupcakes for the caffe these days.


These are tall little chocolate cupcakes. I like how they have a "pop-over" top!


And I'd "dress 'em up" a bit with little silly dots and flowers before displaying them in the shop.

Yay for cupcakes!

i love it when john makes dinner

John is recovering steadily, and he has been working and using his foot well. While he spends a little more time at home these days, he has been making us dinner most of the nights!

He makes yummy dinners!

Sometimes he makes rice, and we'll make some Taiwanese sausages with garlic, and "tomato eggs." Other times he will make rotisserie chicken thighs and we'll have that with kimchi or other Asian pickles. Still other times we will have noodles with yummy sauces, or curry. I can go on and on with this!

Even though we don't change our dinner menus super often, John did try some new items for our dinner table sometimes.

The other day he made us pork tenderloin with rosemary. He also put in some special ham in the tenderloin. Tasty.




And another day he made us a chicken-mash-biscuit bake. It was with chicken soup, mash potatoes, and biscuits.



I love cooking, and I also love it when John makes us dinner. These days we close the caffe at 6pm, and therefore we have a little more time preparing and cooking food. I love it!

weekend funness

This past weekend was fun. Of course I wished I could have done more than I had, but overall it was pretty eventful!

First of all, I got to meet Thriving Ivory on Friday!!! The band came and had our coffees, and hung out at the caffe. I was so excited (but I stayed cool) and happy. Their touring manager would come and have our coffee when he's in Salt Lake City, but this was the first time the whole band came! Ahhhhhhhh!

And I've been trying to bake a little more these days. I hope one of these days I will be able to offer what I bake at the caffe and people would like and buy them.

So on the weekend I made my first batch of chocolate cupcakes from scratch!


Chocolate cupcakes.

I practiced frosting these cupcakes with marshmallow creme. Turned out pretty good!

And on Sunday my buddy Brian and us went to have dim sum. He's heading off back to Portland this week, so John and I wanted to hang out with him and talk... and what could have been better than dum sum on a Sunday afternoon?




Mmmm... dim sum.

After dim sum and long happy talks John and I went to visit Shuan and Daena. It was the first time I went to their house. It was a lovely home! Their dogs and cats were super friendly and happy as well. Made me happy.


Margret is my new favorite cat!


Happy Schnitzel.


Cordelia by the window, and posing for the photo.

I didn't get to take pictures of Abby and Tofu, but they were both very nice, too!

A very lovely weekend indeed.

Ahh I love baking. I love friends. I love animals. I love weekends!

my first cake roll

I made my first cake roll!


Chiffon cake with a matcha green tea whipped cream center.

The chiffon cake turned out very well. Whipping the egg whites (until "soft peaks" can be formed) before adding them to the cake batter really made a difference. The cake was soft and moist. Yumminess!

I whipped the cream until whisk lines could form, and added sugar and matcha green tea, to make the matcha whipped cream. Oh my. It was tasty.


Ready to eat!

I wasn't able to roll the cake and whipped cream all round and pretty... but I guess it would take some practice before I would be able to make pretty cake rolls, but overall I'm happy with the finished product! Next time I'll make the whipped cream even more matcha-y as well.

Yay for cake rolls!

tuna alfredo and biscuits

My mom asked me if I cooked anything special for John after his surgery. Umm... sort of. I made him tuna fettuccine alfredo and biscuits for dinner that night.





Pretty interesting "recovery" foods huh.

roasting chestnuts is fun

My friend Andrew brought me fresh chestnuts.

I had never roasted chestnuts before, even though I enjoyed them very much. When I was little (back in Taiwan) my dad would buy me a bag of "wok-roasted" chestnuts (糖炒栗子）from street chestnut vendors when we were out about.

I loved holding a hot paper bag full of chestnuts and enjoying the aromas in a cold winter day. Ahh.

Anyhow I checked out a few chestnut roasting techniques and decided to roast them in the convection oven at the caffe.


The chestnuts Andrew gave me were HUGE.

Here's what I did:


1. Preheat the oven to 425. Wipe clean the shells of the chestnuts.


2. Cut a little X on the more rounded side of the chestnuts. I used a knife with "teeth" and "sawed" the X.


3. Place the chestnuts (flat side down) on a baking pan. Sprinkle some water on the chestnuts.


4. Bake the chestnuts on convection for 7 minutes (conventional oven 10 minutes), carefully take the pan out and turn the chestnuts (rounded side down) and bake anothet 7-8 minutes (conventional oven 10 minutes).

The outer shells would "bloom" so they are not too hard to remove. The inner shell did require a lot more work for me to peel.


The first chestnuts were all broken because I didn't know how to properly remove the shells. BUT they were really tasty!

And then Andrew brought me more chestnuts!

We roasted some more at the caffe, and they turned out very well. I even successfully removed the shells on one of them without breaking it!



Here are a few tricks I learned during these couple times of chestnut-roasting:

a. Cutting the X on the chestnuts while they are around room temperature makes it easier to insert the knife into the shells. 1/4 inch cut is what I'd do.

b. John suggested that dipping the chestnuts in water before baking may be better than sprinkling the chestnuts with some water. I did also read from an Asian lady where she soaked her chestnuts before she stir-fry them in the wok. I have yet to test this theory, though.

c. It is a good idea to use a small knife to help "pick" the inner shells off the chestnuts.

d. Chestnuts are fun and yummy.

I saw a simplified home-version of the "Wok-roasted chestnuts" technique and will probably try it out some time.

Yay for chestnuts.

holiday baking

During the holidays I did some baking. Nothing spectacular, just simple and happy little treats.


Mini parmesan cookies. These were really cute (about the size of a nickel) and tasty!


Egg custard tarts. These didn't quite work out as well as I expected.

I was hoping to make some "egg tarts," specifictly the Portuguese ones (Pastel de nata). The ones I made were more like bread pudding. Oops. I shall try again another time.

Ahhh I need to be baking.

mini pumpkin pies/tarts

I made four little pumpkin pies/tarts with the leftover pumpkin cake ingredients, and shortened the baking time (on convection) from 35 minutes to 30 minutes. They turned out pretty good!



These are so tasty and cute, and are a good way to "portion-control." hehehe.

i did some baking

Last night I did some baking.


Pumpkin cake.

We all know it, pumpkin cake is John's favorite. I'm going to make one to bring to Joanne's Thanksgiving dinner, so I figured I'd practice making one. I used regular milk instead of evaporated milk this time. It was delish. Yay!


Creamy chicken and biscuits.

This was for dinner. I was already in the baking mode so I started making this before John got home last night. I liked the milk biscuits.

Ooooo I think I'm going to do a lot of baking this Thanksgiving weekend!

sadface and madelines

Long story short: I cleaned up a spilled latte on the floor and twisted my lower back.

Hence the sad face.


Both John and a-gui made sad faces for the camera.

I stayed at home yesterday because I couldn't move very well, and it looks like I'm going to do the same today. I can still make yummy drinks, but it'll probably take a lot of time for me to get around and make stuff. John's been working very hard at the caffe all by himself. I say you go and see him, get a drink, and keep him company.

On a happier note, not too long after I twisted my lower back, I was only slightly feeling the pain and awkwardness, and I tried to cheer myself up... I baked my first batch of madeleines!


They all had the little "bump" and all!

I might have filled each of the shells of the pan a bit too full, but I was happy there were "bumps" on my first madeleines.

Will stay at home for another day and get better.

bread

I've been baking little loaves of bread these days. I like to give them to the people I like. It makes me happy!

I have also been trying different "cutting" methods on the dough to create different patterns on top of the bread:


I made a little star on this one before baking.


This one I cut a little cross on the top.


And this one had criss cross on it.

How will the next loaf look like?

brioche

So I've been testing out a few brioche recipes. I like these little French bread-y pastry-y(!) rounded things.


First attempt.

I like the fluted molds, but even though I buttered the mold the brioche still didn't come out completely easy. So I tried again in a slightly greased muffin pan:


The muffin pan fit in the smaller oven at the caffe pretty well.


The muffin pan works!

I *heart* brioche.

almond espresso sugar crisps

So I saw this wonderful recipe for espresso macarons and wanted to give it a try. I totally screwed it up. When the baking sheet went into the oven each individual pieces all got together, and I was pretty much baking a sheet of almond-espresso-eggwhite-sugar mixture.

No espresso macarons, just almond-espresso-sugar crisp when the baking sheet came out of the oven.

At least the crisps were yummy. I'll give the recipe another try, but I'm going to grind my own almonds instead of using almond meal this time.