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.

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

Marble Bundt Cake: Fancy Shapes Eh

I learned a few things about bundt pans through this little project. One, when they say grease well, they really really mean grease well. Oh, PAM will probably be ok you think? Nope, its gonna have to be like a quarter to half a stick of butter next time. Two, all those nooks and crannies make a beautiful cake, but cleaning that? Why have they not invented disposable bundt pans?



I'm not entirely sure if I'm jesting about all of the above. The little motivated part of me is inclined to bake this cake again sucessfully, but the other part of me that hates dishes is more....meh. I do like that frosting is optional for bundt cakes given its shape. Unfortunately, the beautiful shape is kinda defeated when you fail to grease and flour your pan enough so that when you try to pry it out, only half plops out, and the remaining bits kinda crumble into a misfitting puzzle.

Being the go-getter that I am, it wasn't enough to attempt to make just a single flavored bundt cake apparently. No, I had to make a marbled bundt cake with pretty swirls of vanille and chocolate instead. This of course led to a little adventure in learning about cocoa powder and spending a solid 10 minutes starting at the baking aisle. Given that I'll probably be in CT for only one more year, it seems excessive to buy both dutch processed powder and normal cocoa powder. However, after reading several pages about cocoa power from David Lebovitz and Joy the Baker, it seems clear that many baking blogs that call for "cocoa powder" without really specifying, may actually mean dutch processed in their recipe.

I ended up going with normal cocoa powder, though I get a feeling the semi-insane part of me will end up forcing me to also buy dutch processed just to try it out (unclear why I've decided to describe my personality as separate entities in this post). If anyone is too lazy to read the links I've posted, basically dutch processed powder neutralizes the acidity found in cocoa powder, which can change affect your cake's final texture and rise depending on if you are correctly using baking powder or baking soda. The mnemonic that someone mentioned in a comment was "dutch-processed = baking powder."

Doing all of this googling also came to highlight, yet again, the lack of basic science education in our society. Several Yahoo! Answers questions popped up where frantic people asked if "chocolate processed with alkali" was bad for you or had toxins. And unfortunately, people again fell to the fallacy that processed equals evil big agro/unhealthy and unprocessed equals more "natural" and better for you. And the classic, "if you can't pronounce it, its probably bad for you!" trope. Maybe even worse, or as a result, several of the super fancy cocoa powders I was examining at the grocery store used this as an advertisement point (ie our powder is ~natural~ and 100% unprocessed for full on maximal chocolate without the chemicals!)

Sorry if that bitterness is a turn off. I just had my hair cut by a nice woman who also seemed to believe that people who touch certain parts of their heads or lose hair at specific random spots are somehow activating different parts of their brain for personality traits like motivation or confidence. Just. Whyyyyy.
Well, while my mood is now a bit sour, this cake certainly was not bitter. Despite the problems getting it out the pan, the bundt shape also meant it had a nice crust that I personally enjoyed. The chocolate and vanilla swirling could have probably been more distributed, but that is likely again my fault for not alternating the different batters well. Additionally, I found my baking time was a bit less than what was called for in the recipe. I image that this and a combination of how it took to get the cake out of the pan resulted in the cake's slight dryness. I'm not entirely sure if this a pound cake, but my cake definitely seemed a bit too dry and not buttery enough to truly be ~pound cake~.

Recipe from Sailus Food.
TL;DR:

• Bundt Pans need to be very very well greased
• Dutch processed cocoa = baked goods with baking powder as the main leavener
• Processed dos not equal "bad for you"

Chai Ice Cream: Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice

I usually have a hard time picking favorites. Maybe its because I'm a sibling, and the idea of favorites seems mean. Or that I have problems making definite decisions. You see, its that whole parallel universe idea from those sci-fi/fantasy books I read as a child. The minute you make a choice, you close the door to another alternate reality. Amber Spyglass anyone? (hint, Golden Compass, hint, Phillip Pullman)

Anyways, even if I did have the ability to travel through different worlds or realities, this Chai Ice Cream would remain the one constant in my exciting and dangerous little life. My totem if you will (if you're into Inception). It's rare for me to have a favorite, as my parallel world's intro rambling just told you, but I'm pretty confident that Chai Ice Cream is by far my favorite homemade ice cream yet. Yes. Even above pumpkin and apple pie and speculoos ice cream. Maybe it was because I took the extra two hours to boil my own chai-spiced custard base. Which I probably would have consumed on its own without freezing if I didn't love ice cream freaking much.

There are Chai Ice Cream recipes out there that probably entail just soaking chai tea bags in hot water to create a concentrate, but please please please please take the extra 2 hours, 1 hour of driving around to grocery stores, and extra $20 bucks to buy whole fragrant spices if you have the freedom of post-graduate life. Because man, while I hate recipes that call for a million things that I would only use for one recipe, this is so worth it if you're a fan of either ice cream or chai or being happy. Well, scratch the last one. I can't tell you what makes you happy, but just thinking about a bowl of this ice cream and my backyard on a stereotypically lovely Californian day certainly makes me happy.

An ice cream recipe this perfect can only come from my favorite food blog itself--Serious Eats. The comments mentioned adding sugar because it wasn't sweet enough, but ignore them. I did not ignore them and added an extra 1/4 cup, but in the end, the extra sugar was quite unnecessary.

Chocolate Creme Brulee: Traditions?

Who needs traditions when you can add chocolate to it? While I will happily make ice cream day in and day out, my sister is not a fan of frozen custard. I know, its embarrassing. A few weeks ago when I tried to ask her for help deciding what type of ice cream to make, she wrinkled her nose in a frown and implored I bake 1) something new, and 2) something either with chocolate or cheesecake. Setting aside my ice cream recipe for a few days, I sought out to find something chocolate or cheesecake like to bake for the family, and in particular my sister.

sorry and not well bruleed. but what can you do? 

Chocolate and cheesecake are probably the two flavors I am most terrified of making. Now, don't get me wrong, I love both chocolate and cheesecake. The problem with both flavors is that its so hard to get perfect. Bad chocolate is a recipe for boring cake, and I don't think I've advanced far enough in my baking experience to deal with cracking cheesecakes in the oven. However, what I am (or was?) ready for is a butane torch. Yup, that single use torch for creme brulee and meringue pie (the box will insist you can also use it to brulee grapefruit, but please, that's so boring).

A traditional go-getter may have tried making you know, normal vanilla bean, custardy creme brulee for his or her first attempt at burnt cream. But, given that the name I have given this blog to define my baking experiences is literally awkward, I figured, what the hell. Chocolate creme brulee is the one true burnt cream for my family and desires to burn things. Oh, and its just so fun to crack that sugar shell. Seriously, just look at these pictures.

Not to mention, I had a huge 1 kg Valrhona chocolate bar that I towed back with me from Belgium last summer that was still sitting around in the cabinet just waiting for me to get over my fears of chocolate. Sadly (or fortunately), this recipe required a laughably small amount of chocolate, so there's still quite a bit of chocolate left in the cabinet at home. Heres to hoping it doesn't dry out/seize or do that funky thing that opened chocolate does when its left sitting for too long....

Creme brulee is actually not too difficult to make. Maybe I've gotten accustomed to custards after all the custard ice creams I've been making, but the most strenuous part was probably just waiting for the custard to set. While the recipe from Williams Sonoma said 30-40 mins, my custard was still fairly jiggly and NOT set around the edges after more than an hour. My oven wasn't pretty happy about me constantly opening the door to check on the custard though, so it tended to hang out at a far lower temperature than the called for 325 F. I eventually just took it out because I really needed to pick up my brother from school, but after sitting overnight + a day, the custard seemed perfectly fine. Not really sure what happened, or how to assess brulees in the future, but there will certainly be brulees in the future. Perhaps normal vanilla bean ones!

TL;DR:

• Burning sugar is really fun. A butane torch is definitely worth the 30 dollars for just making creme brulees.
• Chocolate creme brulee is just as lovely as its vanilla counter part, but requires a surprisingly small amount of chocolate.
• Watching custard set is the new watching paint dry.

Crepe Cake: Aka the Leaning Tower of Crepes

Baking is often associated with love. Fresh baked cookies for your elementary school bake sale. The fruitcake your dear aunt bakes every Christmas that everyone says is lovely but secretly leaves to decay. Ok, so the latter example is probably a stereotype taken from far too many American sitcoms. In this case, this biscoff cream cheese crepe cake is more of a labor of love rather than baked with love (or er, assembled with love). Though the French would probably gaze down unsympathetically at my pleading and begging for my crepe cake to not turn Italian. Well, as Italian as the Leaning Tower of Pisa at least.

Its hard not to be immediately enamored by the sight of a crepe cake. After all, it consists of delicate, thin crepes stacked till they become something stronger and greater together. Kinda like the Avengers, but in cake form. The entire cake took two days to make, one evening of crepe making, another afternoon of crepe stacking. To be honest, my crepes probably weren't the paper thin, lacy delicacies that people like the Domestic Goddess aka Nigella Lawson think of when you say crepes. However if you wanted a semi-decent crepe that is still thin enough to be not-a-pancake, then call me up! The most difficult part of the crepe making process was getting the pan tilting and whirling just right so you got an evenly thick crepe without random pockets of nothing. I don't think I've got it down quite yet, but my imperfections just give me more excuses to make crepes right?

I call my cake the leaning tower of crepes not because of the occasionally mismatched crepe sizes, but because of the next component--the glue to the cake. The filling in the ultra-traditional crepe cake is pastry creme, but judging by the sheer number of hits on foodgawker and google, people have taken great liberties with this filling. Heck, Sprinkle Bakes even covered the whole cake with a healthy layer of ganache to make quite possibly the most beautiful cake in the history of the internet. I've been dying to make something with remaining part of the jar of biscoff/speculoos I towed back with me from Belgium, so when I saw a biscoff crepe cake, my heart was set. But I'm not about that buttercream life so I opted for cream cheese biscoff frosting.

Alas, my 3 month hiatus from baking led to one small problem--the notoriously slippery nature of cream cheese frosting. As I stacked the cake with layers of frosting in between each crepe (28 total!), the frosting began to melt quite a bit. Towards the 20th layer, things started sliding around quite a bit. The cake made several trips to the freezer to firm up. Overall, it was a very stressful labor of love. But one I would totally repeat in a heartbeat should the occasion for a crepe cake ever arise again. Except, maybe not with cream cheese.



Another thing I forgot was the speculoos is already intensely sweet, so to make a cream cheese frosting with speculoos thickened with cups of powdered sugar equals a very very sweet filling. But sweetness seems to relative from my experience with a very picky mother (shockingly, she liked the cake a lot despite its sweetness). And anyways, just look at those layers. stare long and hard at them. How could you resist baking such a beautiful creation?
(also, whipping cream melts rapidly in a warm kitchen when you're trying to take pictures of a cake while adjusting the camera settings)

TL;DR Baking Notes:

• Crepes can be stored in a ziplock bag with parchment paper in between crepes in the fridge for a few days in the fridge, or even longer frozen.
• A firm, non-melty frosting is probably ideal if you're gonna make a crepe cake that doesn't tilt everywhere.
• Biscoff frostings are really sweet.

Crepe recipe and presentation inspiration from Olga's Flavor Factory. Biscoff cream cheese frosting from Center Cut Cook.

Tres Leches Cake: Shoutout to Yale Dining

If you happen to be an ~alumni~ colleague reading this, then you're probably mildly tired of all the post-commencement photo dumps and sentimental posts. Well, at least I am. Commencement is certainly an exciting time, but after a week of senior activities PLUS 3 days worth of ceremonies and events, it gets pretty exhausting.

For my first post in post-college life, I decided to keep up with the sentimental spirit floating around social media and make tres leches, a Yale dining classic. We students do love to complain about college dining, but every once in a while, there's a few things they get right. One of which includes tres leches, a sponge cake soaked in a mixture of three milks--condensed milk, sweetened evaporated milk, and heavy cream. Now, pan or tray desserts, like brownie fudge or cobbler, in the dining hall creep me out for some reason. Something about it being produced in such a large pan quantity I think. Unfortunately, tres leches was one of these desserts, so it wasn't until junior year that I tried this deliciously moist, creamy, and milky cake. It seemed only fitting to tie off the end of my college career by attempting to recreate something I associate with friendly conversations and meals.

Unfortunately, my baking skills are still not quite up to par. Its a bit embarrassing to think that the dining hall, with its huge bulk quantity cooking and baking, can make something of a superior quality than I can in my tiny kitchen with all the time in the world. While my brother, mother, and father all seemed to enjoy the cake to a certain degree, my sister who has eaten dining hall tres leches could only laugh at my meager attempts. Rather than a ridiculously squishy, gooey, bread-pudding like texture dessert, my tres leches was much drier and dense. Granted, I get the feeling that my sponge cake was not right given its lack of rise. Which was possibly because of over beaten egg whites, too much flour, or too much folding--all of which I have had issues with in the past. I was hoping that the sweet milk mixture would soak the cake enough that these wouldn't be issues, but I tried taste testing the cake after only half a day of soaking rather than overnight as most recipes seem to suggest. The lesson here is that you really should plan your baking more in advance if you're trying to make a 9am EST deadline for a blog post the next day. 

The recipe I used was from All Recipes, but I found that there were a few things that were off. While instructions called to bake for 40-50 minutes, it only took 20-30 mins to finish baking mine. Other weird things I mentioned earlier. I used about a pint of heavy cream to make the whipping cream topping, but that was definitely way too much if you only wanted to cover the cake.

While the dining halls version of tres leches didn't have whipped cream topping or fruit on top like many of the recipes I found online, one can never go wrong with some extra homemade whipped cream and raspberries right? I'm hoping that if I try the cake tomorrow morning, the cake will have had more time to soak so that it'll be more moist. Regardless, I think that tres leches will have to eventually become a perfected recipe in my "repertoire" for any future days of college nostalgia.

Green Tea Cupcakes: A Reminder For Scales

Photography is a pretty duplicitous medium. Or rather, all images are duplications of an already existing reality or a fragment of the imagination brought to reality by a new medium.

Most notably, we discuss the distorted reality images present in the context of body photoshopping in celebrity magazine covers and spreads. You know, the extra brushing Scarlett Johansson for being The Black Widow even if she's already hotter than 99% of the general population and badass to boot (well, as the black widow). And J Law with all her photo brushing because she's apparently "fat by hollywood standards (her quote)." But anyways, I think food photography is another nice reminder (HA that transition was terrible) that the physical appearance of something or someone does not reflect on other sensory details that define a person/something. You just have to think back to your 3rd grade cliches like "Looks can be deceiving" or "Never judge a book by its cover." 

 Likewise, food isn't just the color, the shape or apparent texture of a picture. Food is more importantly defined by its actual tastes and textures and how certain combinations excite different sensory paths. I mean, photoshopping people is one thing, but the lengths food photography goes to in order to create the image of ~fresh~ or ~steaming~ or ~crispy~ or ~fluffy~ ect is mind boggling. There are stabilizers injected into meat to keep it from limping, blow torches to achieve maximal burnt colors, meticulously placed sesame seeds for the most visually appeal spread of seeds:bun ratio. All before you even make it to the freaking computer and boot up photoshop CS10000.
While for advertising, food presentation is obviously paramount, I do think food blogging can chill a little with the picture perfect food. Visual presentation is certainly important for food (hence plating!), but I think its silly when it comes at the cost of producing something that actually tastes good. I speak from semi-personal experience that 1) pretty pictures do not mean that X blogger's recipe was actually that good, and 2) these pictures that I post are a lie that involve an embarrassing number of awkward repositioning for "optimal natural light" and "clean backgrounds" ect.

 I mean, these pictures actually aren't that good, but sometimes you'll catch a behind the scene post from a food-blogger and there is literally a mini-photo studio by some random window, or on some random rustic looking box that ISN'T EVEN IN THE KITCHEN. I guess I'm more of a fan of the in-the-moment pictures, the ones you take at the scene of the crime with sticky wisps of powdered sugar lingering on the counter, bowls with scraped out batter lingering on the sides. I don't know, I try to be as sterile as possible when I bake, but sometimes things just get complicated and you end up with some batter on the counter. Pristine pictures give the false impression that I am a far better baker than I actually am, which gives unrealistic expectations when I attempt random-ass baking projects. Like these green tea cupcakes for example. I mean you can already semi-tell that these cupcakes were a bit overcooked by the dark-brown green tint. And to top it all off, you can kinda see that these cupcakes were on the dense side, mostly likely due to a combination of overbaking, using too much flour, and/or mixing too much. Common issues I need to resolve in my cupcake baking game still.

The basic TL;DR is: food pictures can be pretty, but looks are deceiving. These cupcakes were too dense so use yo scale and don't overmix.
Cupcake recipe from Cupcake Project (she also has a red bean frosting I want to try one day!) and cream cheese frosting from Oishii Treats.

And in other news, I have a tumblr (awkwardplatters.tumblr.com) dedicated to food pictures ya'll can follow if you want to look at actually nice pictures of food.

Butterbeer Ice Cream: Some Book Magic Turned Edible

My obsession with making ice cream continues with a slight turn towards my other favorite fan girl-ing interest--fantasy and sci-fi. I'm proud to say that I'm part of that group of kiddos that had the special privilege of growing up with Harry Potter. I take it as an assumption that anyone I meet that is my age has read Harry Potter. And if they haven't, I will happily give them either my paperback set, or my Chinese set if they read Chinese (unlike me LOL). If they want to read the British version of the first book, I have that as well. The hardcovers I can't loan out for two reasons. One, the third book's spine is broken after being read a few too many times out of love (there could be some excellent, albeit somewhat weird book reading and love comparisons going on here, but I'll just leave this song from Stars instead). The second reason I can't loan them out is the typical sentiment reason. I have certain memories relate to the purchase/reading of each of them that I will list below because its my food blog and if I want to have a list about my Harry Potter memories on it, I can. 

1. Sorcerer's Stone: Thank goodness for Scholastic Book orders or it might have taken me a lot longer to find these books.
2. Chamber of Secrets: Birthday present from my mother. She hid it at the top of our kitchen cabinet (ha! a food connection!) and gave it to me during my very special sleepover birthday with my (I think) three closest friends at the time. I still talk to two of them (if I'm remembering the right people).
3. Prisoner of Azkaban: Well, as I noted above, I destroyed the spine of this one. Probably my favorite out of the series.
4. Goblet of Fire: I read this once while sitting on the ledge near my family's dining table while my parents were having a dinner party. I think I wanted attention. The chapter "Padfoot Returns" smelled really bad for some reason.
5.  Order of the Phoenix: Remember when these books would come out and you'd just see a giant stack of them in Costco on a wood flatbed? Those were amazing times that solidified my love for Costco.
6. Half Blood Prince: Another one I bought at Costco and started reading while in Costco.
7. Deathly Hallows: Couldn't wait to go to Costco to buy it so I preordered on Amazon. Had to volunteer the day it was release and forced my sister to finish reading it during the day so that I could read it when I got back. Finished around 2 or 3 in the morning I think. 

Now that I have some of the theoretical readers of this blog in a fantasy book-induced nostalgia, let's talk ice cream. Or rather, foods inspired by fictional works first. It's somewhat amusing to think that a magical food/drink such as butterbeer has an "official recipe" or "real taste" in the real world. A fictional drink item can't possibly have an official or real taste if its taste, textures, smells are described by a few well-chosen words filled in with rich imagination that differs from one reader to the next. The closest you could possibly get to "real" is the author's interpretation of the food. JK Rowling can taste the butterbeer at the Warner Brother's Studio Tour or at Universal Studios Orlando and say yes, this is the warm butterbeer that Harry would wrap his hands around while sitting amongst friends in Madame Rosmerta's or yes, this is the drink that created a lifelong addiction problem for Winky the house-elf. But, like any interpretation of a book, be it the themes associated with its imagery and diction or the relationships between characters, do readers have to accept that as the canon version of butterbeer? If people can actively and maybe even justly ship JohnLock, whose to say you can't have your own non-canon version of butterbeer that can get Winky drunk just as effectively? 

 

I pose that somewhat gratuitous question because I'm actually not a huge fan of the "real" butterbeer that I tried at both the Warner Brother's Studio Tour and in Orlando. It was really quite sweet and did not taste like the happy memories of a snowy Hogsmeade that I tend to associated it with. Plus, in the real world, I've never been a huge fan of butterscotch. However, I was a huge fan of 1) the pumpkin juice (duh), and 2) the frozen butterbeer. Frozen butterbeer at the Harry Potter theme park is more like a slushy with cream than something actually frozen. But since slushy butterbeer tasted better than chilled liquid butterbeer, the logical conclusion is that the colder the butterbeer, the better it is (based on a total of two data points of course). Hence, butterbeer ice cream.

Since we're talking about official/canon/real, it doesn't seem that the "official" recipe used by Universal or Warner Brother's is actually available online. There are dozens of different homemade versions of various difficulties and taste, so clearly lots of noncanon butterbeers are out there. I mean, we're talking butterbeer ice cream here, a treat that was definitely not mentioned in the novels, so I'm not even sure why I'm still amusing myself by trying to describe fiction-inspired food under canon/non-canon labels. Maybe its food commentary on the heated debates fandoms sometimes get into over the merits of maintaining canon in fanwork.

  

Recipe from Sweet Silly Chic. The butterscotch/butterbeer sauce used in her recipe is from a separate butterbeer recipe originally from The Huffington Post. This is by far one of the more complicated recipes for butterbeer I've seen, so I wouldn't necessarily suggest that this is the best recipe if you want a quick easy version of just the drink for parties. The butterscotch sauce did work very nicely for the ice cream though. I will note that the rum extract might be important for getting the full butterbeer taste. I didn't have any rum extract or dark rum, so I added in some tennessee honey whiskey, which I don't think *actually* did anything. The ice cream tasted more buttery than I would have liked in my butterbeer, but other people in my family seemed to enjoy it. Even my hard to satisfy mother.