Now @ IngredientsandMethods.blogspot.com!

HI Y'ALL. I've moved to ingredientsandmethods.blogspot.com! As the title of this post indicates, I've decided that it's time to shed my sophomoric insecurities and stop defining myself as cutely awkward and quirky. Not that I'm no longer awkward, just that I don't think that should be the first word I use to define myself anymore. Plus, nothing I make is actually awkward food (what on earth is awkward food?), nor are the platters which I make my food upon particularly awkward either. Unless you count the fact that most of my meals are eaten off of Christmas-themed colored plates this year.

Regardless, I've been wanting to change my blog name for a while now. Given that these next few months will probably be the last time I have so much freedom, this seemed like the best time to move a blog. It doesn't really make a huge difference given my minimal audience, but I would be lying if I didn't secretly want to change my blog name now rather than later when I become ~internet famous~. Though my poor relationship with natural light will probably prevent that from ever happening.

Aside from a desire to shed the some-what childish name awkward platters, I also wanted to create a new blog name that would suggest at my other major life passion- science. As someone who is definitely going on to become a physician-scientist (isn't that terrifying?!), science communication is a skill I've grown to value a lot, largely thanks to the many science-related podcasts I've grown accustomed to listening to that intersect science with social topics. There's a lot of science misinformation and a lack of critical thinking tools that result in poor policy (or lack of policy) and dangerous popular movements. As someone who will (hopefully!) get to treat and diagnose people in the future, I imagine being able to clearly explain the science underlying a person's disease/treatment will be important for quelling fear and mistrust. But, I don't think my ability to communicate about science should be limited to just a professional setting. There's a tendency to compartmentalize science in society as something left for just scientist (anyone hear the phrase "I'm not a scientist but..." lately?), and I want to contribute to making science something that is integral to daily conversations. This doesn't mean everyone needs to start reading Nature on a weekly basis, but at the very least, it shouldn't be socially acceptable for people to use "oh I'm bad at math and science," as an excuse to not care.

No, my blog isn't turning into a science of baking blog. It will still run mainly about my attempts to cook random things and use up all of my excess X ingredients of the year. But, in the future (time dependent), I do want to be able to practice science communication, and share relevant musings about science/food, or more importantly the way we should think about them, and how to tease apart arguments that make sense and those that don't. Hence, all new posts will be at ingredientsandmethods.blogspot.com. I'll still be writing awkward, poorly edited posts as usual with all the poorly lit photos your heart desires.

Enjoy the random gifs!

Totoro Cookies: Best Neighbors Ever

Having totoros as your neighbors really would be amazing. A napping spot, friends to help your wilting plants grow (I would really need help here), and a cat bus to borrow when you're in a jam. Like, do any of you have neighbors who would be so generous?

Just so we're clear on my Japanese animation creds here, I've never watched any of the Miyazaki films in Japanese, or even in Japanese with English subtitles. Nope, I'm super American and have only watched these with their English dubs. I don't exactly have anything to compare to, but every English dubbed one I've seen has been great. Except maybe Ponyo. But that was mainly the general obnoxiousness of the voices of small children with minimal adorable/fanciful creatures in between. Though, the movie did result in this amazing gifset:

Anyways, I'm a sucker for movies with strong family/sibling relationships. Especially when the movies are geared towards children because I'm secretly also still 5, though probably a little busier. But only a little, because its kind of lame to try to one-up a 5 year old with the "Oh I'm so0o0o0o0 busy thing." But if Frozen was the smash-hit disney movie of the decade because of its strong female sibling relationship, My Neighbor Totoro is like the oscar, life-time achievement for sisterly relationships. Maybe it's because I'm an older sister and relate the forced responsibilities and frustrations and love, but its probably more the simplicity of the story that makes the sisters in Totoro shine. There's all these little snippet scenes of just absolutely ordinary interactions- making weird bellowing noises, greedily running out in front of one another, laughing at stupid things that really aren't that funny or make sense, small fussy arguments, things that do nothing to pull a plot forward persay, but do everything to pull you into this little world of adorable troll neighbors.

People who hate animated films, or rather, find them boring, always tell me that they just can't get into the stories because everything is so unreal- like animated singing, dancing, animals or ~magic~ just throws them off. But to me, its the opposite. Movies with real people and real settings feel unrealistic because the way the characters and stories move in all that reality is so fake and cheesy compared to what happens in real world. Like, if The Notebook were set in an animated world, with maybe some magic, or spirity Home Depots helping Ryan Gosling build that house, I probably would have enjoyed the movie at least 100% more. Animated films, aside from just being beautifully drawn/designed, establish from the very beginning that yo, this is not the real world, so don't think about all the geo-socio-economic-political problems that make everything so unrealistic. Just suspend reality, and take in this new world where wizards have star-fire powered moving houses, and things like true love can happen between a girl and a river spirit. Ok, these things definitely sound a little insane without context, but if anyone reading this ever wants to movie marathon introduction to Miyazaki films, I will be there, artisan popcorn in hand, and maybe these cookies if you give me a 2 day heads up.

These cookies were made for a friend's birthday. I was originally planning on just getting the Totoro cutters because they were cute on Etsy, but being vain and greedy, I decided I wanted to use them first to make cookies to send along with the cookie cutters. These were some seriously complicated cutters. The level of details that were in these cutters was probably the only reason why these cookies look even reasonably consistent from one to the next. I used a black food pen for the small totoros (white ones), as evidences by some really interesting eyeball design choices....

My kitchen continues to have an abundance of lavender and rosewater (surprise there), so I added some lavender to my normal sugar cookie recipe, and rosewater to the royal icing. I think I may have added too much rose water or corn syrup to the royal icing because the icing was incredibly sticky. I added some more powdered sugar, and gave the cookies an extra day to dry, which ultimately fixed the problem, but I'll have to pay better attention to my ratios in the future and not get lazy about measurements.

Totoro cookie cutters from CookieCutters4U on Etsy (they started my dream side career of 3D printing cookie cutters of the strangest, non-commerciable type). The dough needs to be legit 1/4'' thick, or thicker for the center details to become pressed onto the cookies.

Same basic sugar cookie recipe from The Kitchn, but modified with 2 tsp of lavender blended with the sugar, and about 1/2 tsp of rose water.

Royal Icing from Bake at 350, with the addition of 1/2 tsp of rose water. I only needed 1/2 the batch of frosting for the number of cookies seen the the first image, with lots leftover.

Hydrangea Cupcakes: Ultra Victorian Birthday

For anniversary 23, it's flowers right? Well, Gone Girl never made it that far in Nick and Amy's arduous romance, so we many never know. Actually, a quick google search and a click to happy-anniversary.com tells us that traditionally, 23 doesn't get a gift, while the modern gift would be a silver plate. Apparently, in a traditional marriage you only get gifts every 5 years after 15 years. Don't be selfish?

So, my bad jokes aside, I've been itching to try out this decorating technique for several years now since I was first dazzled on pinterest or foodgawker. And its always been an amusing fun fact (for myself) that it was snowing on the first day of spring on birthday anniversary 0. Sadly enough, IT HAPPENED AGAIN THIS YEAR. I have so many mixed emotions about this happening. On one hand, I love symmetry and weird quirky patterns. Like the ones you'd read about in a John Green young adult novel. On the other hand, I am sick of being cold and having dry hands. Spring is such a tease in the you are so not worth it way. If spring were a person, I would not even be facebook friends with him/her.



Fortunately, even if its literally too cold outside for anything to grow, we can at least eat things that taste like flowers. Some may call a mixture of lemon-lavender cupcakes with rosewater buttercream extremely victorian, or steampunk, or just plain hipster, but I call it economical. Mainly because I have a lot of lavender and rosewater that I need to use up soon. But victorian and steampunk also sound super fun to me too, though I would think the color palette would be slightly darker.

Eating these was literally like eating a flower due to some slightly off ratios. The cupcakes were way strong on the lavender compared to lemon, so I would recommend upping the lemon zest to two lemons. The buttercream was such a mystery. Maybe it was because happy hour dulled my taste buds but I could not taste rosewater in the frosting to save my life and ended up adding at least 1-2 tablespoons in the end before giving up. But after letting the cupcakes sit overnight, it was very obvious there was rosiness coming off the cupcakes in scent and taste. So in the end, I definitely succeeded in the whole eating flowers thing.

 

Lemon Lavender Cupcakes adapted from Cupcake Project as follows (bolded lines indicate changes):

Ingredients	Instructions
1 cup (225 grams) granulated sugar	1) blend together sugar and lavender in food processor until buds are finely grounded
1 tsp lavender buds
1 3/4 cups (175 grams) cake flour, not self-rising	2) mix together cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl, then combine with 1)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (57 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature	3) mix butter into 2) on med-low for ~2-3 minutes until a fine crumb forms (will be super dry!)
2 large eggs, room temperature	4  )whisk together eggs, sour cream, oil, vanilla, and zest in small bowl until smooth, then add to 3) until just combined
1/3 cup (75 grams) full-fat sour cream
1/4 cup canola oil or vegetable oil (60 ml)
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of 2 lemon
2/3 cup (160 ml) whole milk	5) mix milk with 4) on low until just combined
Baking Instructions
Preheat: 350 F
Fill cupcake liners slightly above half full
Bake 14 minutes, should be very light in color, with no crumb when poked with toothpick.
Remove from pan immediately and cool.

Rosewater Buttercream adapted from i am baker. I used about 0.75 of the recipe stated, and added in rosewater and vanilla. I started running out towards the end, so definitely just use the whole recipe.

Hydrangea Tutorial also via i am baker. The piping technique itself is actually pretty straightforward if you have the right tips. It took me about 2 cupcakes to get a hang of it. Note that when she says to pipe with the smaller end out, it means the smaller end out as you draw a streak of frosting parallel to the long length of the tip, not perpendicular as I initially though.

Mini Rose Apple Pies: Pi is Romantic!

First, happy belated pi day of the century!
Second, I usually find that corny math/physics pick-up lines are a little gross. Like they were written by nerdy teens who, like all teens, giggle at any and all references to sex. Like the classic "I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves." Though to be fair, those probably were written by nerdy teens who were like, woohoo calculus and boobs! 

But not all math and physics romance lines are bad! It's really actually sad that when people think about math, physics, or science really, that they think of this cold, analytical subject devoid of passion, creativity, or beauty when its really quite the opposite. There's a certain learning curve when it comes to math and sciences maybe, but those "rules" that make things like creationism false and evolution real make the world more amazing and awe inspiring-- not the reverse. Like take this physics romance courtesy of the always favorite xkcd: 

Like such an action is absolutely futile compared to the gross mass of the earth and the even grosser mass of the sun, but in terms of romance, that's a lot more effort than building the perfect dream house for the woman of your dreams whose already married to another guy (Ok I'm not sure if that's what happens in The Notebook, but its been like at least 5 years since I last watched that movie).

 

But, of course, given this is a pi day post, and one about romance, because roses, I can't get away without pointing out the most relevant math pick up line- "My love for you is like pi- never ending." Which I'm honestly 100% ok with. As long as there is also a good supply of never ending pie, mainly pumpkin and apple if possible.

These little mini pies would be extra cute for Valentine's Day, not just Pi Day, though Pi Day is obviously the better holiday. The roses were made by rolling together half moon shaped apple slices together. This works a lot better with larger slices, so I would advise picking larger apples should you choose to make these. And possibly a mandolin to make slicing thin sections an actual possibility. With those tools, I think that making the actual roses shouldn't take that long. The apples are softened by a quick zap of the magical microwave. These obviously can be clustered onto a larger, real sized pie, but I read through a reddit post that suggests full size rose apple pies are actually quite annoying to eat. This is probably the first piece of cooking advice I've gotten from reddit, but it's also endorsed by Cook's Illustrated, if you're into the more traditional avenues of food authority.



Now, I must sadly confess that these are not actual homemade pie crusts, or even actual pie crusts, but rather puff pastry. My two or three tries at pie dough have all resulted in really pathetic failures, and I just couldn't risk the effort in making roses being ruined by shoddy pie crusts. Not to worry pie purists though, I will one day learn to make the perfect pie crust, just not today.

Recipe from FMITK: From My Impossibly Tiny Kitchen.

Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies: The Post-Holiday Sales

I think I love the day after holidays more so than actually holidays. Ok, so 100% NOT the case for Christmas. And, I do like coming up with absurd witty costumes (I was The Fault in Our Stars last year. I wrote faults on stars-get it?) for Halloween. But Easter and Valentine's Day? Meh. Easter is a significantly larger deal on the East Coast than it is on the West Coast I've noticed. Anyways, the best thing about these two said holidays is that Walgreens goes all out on the excess of holiday decor and holiday themed sugar. And the day after said holidays are over, everything goes on sale for like 50-75% off.

I realize this whole discussion/excitement I have for cheap candy is not really something I should be proud of. I probably sound incredible stingy, and probably have a slightly higher risk of dietary problems because of the vast quantities of sugar that tend to hang out in my apartment. But see, this is why I desperately need to live somewhere warm so that when the cold winter days come, I can still run around outdoors like the free running gazelle I was trained to be.

 

Fortunately, I'm not actually a gazelle, because things like chocolate oatmeal cookies are probably not a part of their diets. As its been rehashed multiple times, oatmeal cookies with traditional raisins are one of the most offensive types of cookies out there. I mean, raisins in general are offensive in desserts. Oatmeal cookies themselves are great. Granted, they can sometimes taste a little dusty, but adding a healthy dose of cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice to these cookies, and replacing raisins with chocolate made for a happily textured cookie. My America's Test Kitchen cookbook for small kitchens sues granola rather than oatmeal for their cookies, so I might try that in the future.

Thank you Valentine's Day for the dark chocolate M&Ms. I look forward to yellow, green, and blues come post-Easter. Recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction.

Spinach Pizza: Easy Peasy Hello Again

Hello again! Things have been rather quiet around here since 2014. Its been a solid 2 months of 2015 with no new blog posts. Meanwhile its March, the start of springtime birthday seasons, and yet its still snowing here. I'm having a particularly bitter relationship with the snow this year. I still maintain that it is quite beautiful when its fresh and in abundant quantities, but it makes doing life things really difficult. I've been trying to go to Trader Joe's literally since New Year's. Trader Joe's is sadly not within walking distance so I have to zipcar, but every trip I have reserved has had to be canceled due to snow/winter storm weather. Granted, I think that I could probably learn how to drive in light snow, but its really not something I'd like to do while wasting time on a zipcar, you know? Anyways, the gist is that snow is making me starve (not really because I can walk through the icy tundra of unsalted sidewalks to get to Stop and Shop, but I'm just exaggerating for dramatic effect).

Despite being limited to walking distance grocery stores that stock items in a confusing way, cooking, baking, and eating have been occurring to a relative degree. January was my last month of traveling for interviews, so I'm just finally getting back into the swing of having a kitchen I can restock on a regular schedule. And regularly restocked kitchens generally mean better food for Helen, and fewer sad American cheese quesadillas (truly my low point of this past year of real adulthood).

While this spinach pizza is only marginally more difficult to make than an American cheese quesadilla, it tastes significantly more amazing. Unless I just got really lucky this time around, I think I've finally found a whole wheat pizza crust recipe that I really like! Its soft, with maybe not as much crunch as you may like for a crust, but definitely not as chewy and dense as my last batch. Spinach is still my favorite leafy green (sorry kale), and its kinda hard to go wrong when you have both goat and mozzarella cheese. And that's basically it-spinach and cheese. No giant can of sauce for one tiny pizza! The cheese itself mixes and melts with the spinach to create a pseudo-white sauce.

I added some caramelized onions and mushrooms I had in my fridge to make the pizza even more delicious. See- adding in random ingredients I have in my fridge was totally something I couldn't do a few months back, so kitchen stocking success!
Pizza recipe from BudgetBytes.
Whole Wheat Pizza Dough also from BudgetBytes.

As a generally blogging note, I think I'm going to start posting over weekends, ie Friday-Sunday rather than keeping myself to a strict 9AM Friday deadline. Thursday evenings can be kinda hard.

Bonus side note- Something I definitely don't need, but would totally want.

Maple Cheesecake and Charred Pears: No Cracks!

This was my first official homemade cheesecake, and I'm proud to say there were no cracks! Granted, there were definitely some small air bubbles in the batter because I turned the mixer to high for 5 seconds before I remembered that was probably a bad idea...but still! Even if there were cracks to be found, I guess it wouldn't have mattered too much since I covered the whole thing with pears anyways.

Being me, I couldn't aspire to make a ~normal~ cheesecake for my first cheesecake attempt, but no some gorgeous one I found on the internet made with maple syrup and the most beautiful burnt pears delicately laid out on top in a circular pattern. While I don't think I "nailed it," I definitely didn't fail. The pears on top were all supposed to be 1/8th inch thick, but unless you have a mandolin and super skillz, it seems pretty impossible to get evenly thin slices of pears, which is why I have a smattering of burnt and not-so-burnt slices on top. I think that's a sign that I probably shouldn't go into anything surgical in the future.

 Speaking of future and completely not food related, I just wanted to share with the world that I've been accepted into some medical school programs after several months of interviewing (and one more month to go), so there's a lot in my life I'm very happy and thankful for at the moment. It's a great feeling knowing that you'll actually get to pursue what you want to do and that all your hard work paid off and that the faith that wonderful, intelligent randos put into you was worth it. Ok not randos, but you get the gist of that incredibly run-on sentence.

Anyways, back to food. While the cheesecake did taste, as I quote my sister, "pretty good" (which is a huge compliment from her), it didn't actually taste like maple cheesecake? More like a normal cheesecake, which was a bit disappointing. After all, what's the point of putting in some real grade A kirkland signature maple syrup into your batter if you can't actually taste it? The crust was also supposed to be made of digestive biscuits, but since we're in America and shopping at Vons, I only found butter cookies. I think there must have been salt in the cookies to begin with because the crust ended up being a little too salty, and a little short. Maybe double the crust recipe next time since more is probably better than not enough, even if it looks ~rustic~.

Recipe from SippitySup