today

after an impromptu shopping trip at stanford (which could be successful or unsuccessful, depending on how you look at it), i treated myself to haagen daaz for dinner.

i tried a few flavors and then settled on cookie dough and belgium chocolate chocolate.  the belgium chocolate chocolate made me audibly say "whoa".  I regret not just getting belgium chocolate chocolate.

anyway, instead of going home, i decided to sit outside.  it was a little past 8 but still bright.  i felt like corporate, material-girl, America.  or at least, very palo alto.  

i went to stanford to buy a pair of oxfords.  i thought urban outfitters was there.... and it will be, but right now they're still mid-construction. :(  i went to macy's, opted not to buy tights but interested in checking out more like these).  then stopped by lucky and ended up buying 2 pairs of jeans.  (might return one pair, probably won't. Hah!)  oh! and i picked up my free birthday cake bubble bath gift from sephora.  that was fun. i waltzed to the front and said, "it's my birthday! can i pick up my gift!"   as i was walking with my bag from sephora to lucky, i passed starbucks and had a passing thought, doesn't starbucks do birthday gifts too?  what's up with this?  where's my birthday present free drink?!!!!!.  I was tempted to walk in an say IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY!  but i didn't.

Anyway, i was thinking about my purchases and exceedingly happy and comfortable.  I couldn't find a pair of oxfords at aldo's, macy's, or at bloomingdale's.  but now i have jeans.  and i was eating ice cream.  and THEN, as my tongue curled around the flakes of chocolate, i realized something amazing.

THIS delicious belgium chocolate chocolate flavor was familiar!  It is the CLOSEST i will ever get to swiss chocolate ice cream from Movenpick that I used to eat in Taiwan!  It makes sense!  Belgium and Switzerland are NEIGHBORS.  And.... the flavor was ALMOST identical.  the Movenpick is definitely stronger chocolate and the sheets of chocolate are more delicate (and thus crackly), but this Haagen Daaz Belgium chocolate chocolate DEFINITELY shares a similar quality.

I was very happy.

Also, if anyone knows how to get movenpick in the states.... PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!!!!!!!

rip off

today i went to Sprinkles, got enamoured by the environment.
ate a so-so cupcake, got mad at the fact that i am now less 10 bucks
and decided i’m gonna start baking my own cupcakes
>:O

weekend baking endeavors.

lately i've been taking a lot of recipes from this Nicole's Baking Bites 

Today's was her Lemon Chess Pie.

I mean why not?
I had frozen lemon juice that I needed to use up, eggs, and graham crackers!

Well, it turns out I only had 3 normal graham crackers left and i did NOt want to use my cinnamon graham crackers for a pie crust.. SO I looked up normal pie crusts.
Then, I decided, why go thru all the trouble for a pie crust when I can just make lemon chess bars.
So i looked up a few lemon bar recipes and realized they were all around the same idea:
2 cups flour, 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 cup butter.

This is why america's fat people.

I decided to use up the rest of my graham crackers which made around 2/3 C and filled the rest with flour.
Then around 3/4 C powdered sugar and 3/4 C butter.

Mixed the dry ingredients while the butter melted in the microwave.
To save an extra pan, I simply mixed everything inside the baking dish since it has so much butter in it, it wouldn't stick!  Even though I cut out 1/4 of the butter, I still had way too much butter.

Oh and because ANONYMOUS roommate used the pie pan and didn't bring it back >:O I had to use a casserole dish.  that's okay, otherwise I would've had even more too much crust.  (that was not English, I know).

So then, I made it more of a tart rather than a bar since there was enough "bar" to push against the sides of my non-buttered casserole dish.

Then began to preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Then separated 4 eggs..  put the yolks into the bowl where I melted my butter and put my whites into a separate bowl.  To all you noobs out there; not even a SMIDGEN of yolk should be in your whites.  or any other type of fat.  Otherwise, your whites will NOT stiffen and form peaks!!

I say this because a teeeeny piece of yellow fell into the white, so I had to fish it out patiently with a fork.  by the time i was done, I deemed the oven hot enough to put the pie crust in to par bake.  (that means bake before you add stuff into the shell)

and in the bowl where I melted my butter, I wisked 2/3 C sugar, 2 Tb melted butter, and 4 egg yolks.
added 1/2 C lemon juice, 1 tsp of zest (eyeballed it), 3/4 tsp vanilla (eyeballed it), 1/4 tsp of salt (just a pinch), and abouuut 3/8 C flour (supposed to be 2 Tbs. eh oh well).. just eyeballed the amount in my 1/4C holder..

whisk whisk whisk.
Oh while adding ingredients, keep an eye on the time -- the shell should only be inside 10-15 minutes.  Of course when you have a bad oven with a live wire where everything is in Celsius, you have to play it by ear.  and sort of hope things turn out okay.


then with the 4 egg whites I BEAT ITTTTT..  and it formed foamy slight peaks. not huge stiff ones.  I think it's because of that piece of cholesterol that slipped its yellow self into my sea of whites. boo.

Afterwards, gently whisked it into my yellows mixture.  You should be gentle so you don't kill the volume of the whites.  but make sure it's all incorporated so no whites show.

Then poured it into my pie crust (that I took out minutes before; didn't have a chance to cool; wasn't even super done because my oven was too low).

Then because my oven is weird, I covered the top with aluminum and turned it on higher so that the bottom would cook.  (worried about my crust).  You're supposed to bake it at 350 F degrees for 30-35 min.

I baked it for.. I hope around that many degrees (Celsius is hard!) for about 25 min, then took off the aluminum, lowered the heat a little and kept it in there for 20 minutes more.

Then take it out, let it rest for around 15-20 minutes (that's when I did my book list) and thennnnn yeah!
you're done!

took some pictures.

it was SOUR! but GOOD.  I liked the hints of graham  cracker in that crust and I looove sour things.  It wasn't pucker your mouth sour but the lemon flavor was strong enough to taste.  That's what I get for cutting the sugar the recipe calls for virtually in half.  anyway, I liked it.

I think it's a pretty dessert since the whites separate from the lemon custard part in the middle.

Thankful for being in TW where I can bake, and where I have so many southern influences around me so that if I see a southern recipe, i recognize it for what it is!  The Lemon Chess Pie is very similar to Buttermilk Pie in consistency I believe.  It's actually sort of similar to a lemon meringue, now that I think about it.

..

speaking about pies, there's a Pie truck/van that drives around Taipei.
It's mega deliciosos~!


Oh Recipe for the ACTUAL lemon chess pie:
http://bakingbites.com/2010/03/lemon-chess-pie/

GCA Thanksgiving Dinner!

Made these with Grace and Kathy.
Fun b/c we made four and we did everything together.
Went by really fast and it was good!

Got the recipe from smitten kitchen
i love smitten kitchen apple recipes.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/11/simplest-apple-tart/

pics later!

Buttermilk Pie

So i made a pie using half of this:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Martha-Stewarts-Foolproof-Pie-Crust-59026

as crust

but i think I put in tooooo much butter... ick.  but it was good!

and then baked this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5204275

using some pointers from this:  (mainly the lime zest)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/buttermilk-pie-recipe/index.html

except I didn't put in zest.. i just stuck in huge chunks of lime rind b/c my knife le sucked.

anyway it turned out...

REally good!

custardly with a golden crust top and a yummy crust. i was surprised!

sorry no camera. no pictures.

man.. booey.

Appleberry Cobbler

i roughly followed pioneer woman's blackberry cobbler recipe  (i was gonna follow this one but i didn't have self-rising flour; and it seemed pretty important to the recipe)

combined

about 6 cups total of frozen blackberries (3 cups), frozen blueberries (2 cups), and 2 small apples chopped (minus the peel because the peel tasted so weird.... : ALWAYS taste your fruit before putting it into a dessert!  ...  usually i just leave the peel in though; because i'm lazy and my eaters are grateful regardless) ... i don't think the ratio of fruit matter.  i'm just recording it for my sake

a healthy drizzle of honey (~1/3 cup = bc honey is sweeter than sugar and bc i was in my mom's kitchen and couldn't find the sugar)

a half a ripe lemon juice (about 1 tb) 

half a lemon's lemon rind (cut up tinily b/c i couldn't find a grater)

then

preheated oven to 425 degrees.

then

combined

2 C whole wheat flour (no white flour/cake flour in the house.. don't think it makes a difference honestly.....)

1 tb of baking powder

1/4 tsp of kosher salt (couldn't find the normal salt til later)

1 tb of white sugar (i found it!.. i also eyeballed the measurement)

mixed it.

then, i thinly sliced in 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick!)  

this helped a lot in cutting in the butter since i don't have a pastry cutter.

i just use 2 knives (butter knives or steak knives are fine.. in this case i used steak knives since that's what i used to cut my apples)  and do awkward scissor motions.  the butter cuts into the flour relatively quickly; it works pretty well! .... DON'T melt the butter and mix it.. or use a blender or anything that horrendous.  thank you.

when the flour is coarse and coated tiny pieces of butter (about a quarter of a dime size)

then added: 1/2 cup milk into a 1 cup measurer (from the flour) and cracked an egg into it.  mixed it with a steak knife  (hey! less to wash!)   ... basically i eyeballed the milk measurement.

made a well in the flour mixture; poured in the milk. and roughly added more flour mixture into the center with the knife until most was combined.  then went in with my hands and tried to get into a ball more or less.

i rubbed a tart dish with butter

poured the fruit mixture (and juice) into it.

then tore off pieces of the dough and littered the top so that it looks like a cobblestone street! (hence the name cobbler...according to Pioneer Woman. hah)

THEnnnn into the oven for 30 minutes!  until the top is golden-browned!  which it was!

and was pretty good.

you could taste the lemon rind for sure and that REALLY made it pop.

the crust itself was aiight.  the berries were fine.

it was sort of watery:  i think that's why you need sugar.

you could probably also add some flour or corn starch into the mixture to thicken it.

ehh; don't care that much!  hah 

:-)