Salted Caramel Cupcakes

Salted caramel + cream cheese frosting + dark chocolate cupcakes to celebrate a lovely lady's birthday earlier this week. Happy birthday, Liz!

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs with chocolate ...does that make them mini eclairs?

Carrot Cupcakes

For Rei: raisin-free carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

and topped with carrot hearts!

Holiday Baking

I was a busy baker during the holidays, but not so with the blogging...

Rum-soaked raisins, apricots, cranberries...

...to make Panettone, my mom's favorite bread (recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day)

Blueberry coffee cake (recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book)

Cranberry apple butter jam cookies (I used a shortbread cookie recipe with a quick cranberry apple butter reduction for the filling) (photo: Jessica)

Maple pecan oatmeal scones with a maple syrup glaze (photo: Jessica)

Cream scones with dried cranberries, made by my sister Jessica (photo: Jessica)
(both scone recipes are from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book)

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for being home and being able to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for my family.

I like fruit that still has the leaves attached =)

Frosty cranberries from the freezer

This became cranberry-persimmon sauce (recipe from Once in a Blue Moon blog)

OM NOM NOM

My brother joined us for dinner via Skype (he was still at school).

Garlicky green beans amandine

2 lbs green beans, trimmed, washed and blanched

A handful of sliced almonds

A small pat of butter

6 cloves of garlic, minced

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Toast the almonds in a hot skillet. Add the butter and stir until it smells good and nutty. Transfer the almonds to a plate. Pour some olive oil to the skillet and when it's hot, throw in the garlic, stir for 30 seconds. Add in the green beans, sprinkle some salt to taste, and cook until done. Mix the almonds back in and serve.

Pan-roasted asparagus with Parmesan cheese (recipe from America's Test Kitchen Complete TV Show Cookbook)

Mandatory gravy - this is the only thing that I did not make (gasp! it's from Trader Joe's)

My mom made pan-fried yellow fish

And she also made sticky rice - oh so delicious! This is a must for our Thanksgiving dinner, every year.

Mashed potatoes - it's relatively healthy, but still nice and creamy, with only 2 tablespoons of butter, milk, and sour cream (this recipe came from the ATK Best Light Recipes cookbook)

Wine-poached pears for dessert (recipe adapted from Angela's Food Love blog)

Instead of the mascarpone filling, I mixed together a cup of rice pudding and a spoonful of honey and folded it into some freshly whipped cream.

That's it! I think this was my longest post yet.

Salmon Cakes

Pan-Fried Fresh Salmon Cakes -- with Parmesan cheese!

(Recipe from The New Best Recipes)

Mango Mousse Tart

A mango mousse tart for my mom - happy birthday, ma-ma!

Mousse recipe adapted from Passionate About Baking

I found that the ratio of the mango mixture and the cream was best left up to personal judgement since the 2 mangos I used yielded a lot more puree than what the recipe intended.

It's super fun making the wavy design on top; all you need is a toothpick!

Thai Curry Chicken

Thai Curry Chicken

10 oz coconut milk

14 oz chicken broth

2 tbsp fish sauce

2 tbsp Thai red curry paste

2 tbsp light brown sugar

1 large Japanese sweet yam, cut into chunks

1¼ pounds chicken breasts, cut crosswise into ¼-inch-thick strips

6 oz green beans, trimmed and cut into 1-inch lengths

A handful of chopped fresh basil

Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Bring the coconut milk, chicken broth, fish sauce, curry paste, and sugar to a boil. Simmer on low for about 5 minutes.

2. Add in the yam and simmer, covered, for about 8-10 minutes until tender. Add the chicken and green beans, cook for another 5 minutes.

3. Sprinkle in the basil; season with salt and pepper. Serve with white jasmine rice

Recipe adapted from America's Test Kitchen 30-Minute Suppers (Winter '09)

Apples

This past weekend was perfect for apple picking: chilly - but sunny - weather and the trees ablaze with color...

Fresh apple cider doughnuts!

Cortland apples

What to do with all these apples?

Bella smells... apple pie!

Mini apple pie (baked in muffin tins - recipe adapted from Weevalicious)

Still lots of apples leftover: cook up with some cranberries, sprinkle a quick streusel mix (oatmeal, sugar, flour, cinnamon, butter) on top, bake, and we have:

Cranberry apple crisp!

Happy autumn; keep warm =)

P.S. Is it just my computer, or do the photos look quite desaturated to you? Blogspot just makes everything look ill. Maybe I'll switch over to tumblr instead - no color issues there.

Sixteen

Happy birthday, Jessica

Mint chocolate chip ice cream cake.

Newman O's organic mint chocolate cookies - crumbled on top

Mint chocolate chip ice cream from the store - no ice cream maker yet :(

Brownie cookie base - recipe, halved, from A Dash of Sass

(this lovely photo taken by the birthday girl)

三杯雞 (San Bei Ji)

Tonight, my mom and I had a fun cooking competition. I had been wanting to make this delectable Taiwanese dish called San Bei Ji ever since I had it in a restaurant in Atlanta. Since there was a bunch of spare basil left over from making pizzas earlier this week, San Bei Ji was a great way to use it up. San Bei Ji is literally translated into "Three Cup Chicken." The name comes from the three main ingredients (besides chicken): soy sauce, wine, and sesame oil. Usually chinese rice wine is used, but we substituted it with some nice white wine.

Cooking with clay pots keeps the flavor in.

This is my pot of San Bei Ji. I kept it to the essential elements of the recipes: chicken, soy sauce, wine, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, sugar, and basil.

This is mom's San Bei Ji - she went easy on the soy sauce and put in shiitake mushrooms and a hot chili pepper, smart lady, for an extra hit of spice.

We gave my dad a blind taste test of our two versions of San Bei Ji. He preferred my mom's version with the spicy kick, but my two sisters liked the deep flavor of my dish. Everyone had a delicious meal of San Bei Ji.

三杯雞 (San Bei Ji) Recipe

Half a chicken, bone in and some skin on, cut into 1" pieces

10 slices of fresh ginger

10 cloves of garlic

About 1/4 cup each of soy sauce, cooking wine, and sesame oil

A spoonful of sugar

A handful of fresh basil

Shiitake mushrooms, optional

Hot dried chili pepper, optional

Heat up the sesame oil in a large skillet, throw in the ginger and garlic to build up flavor. Then add in the chicken, brown for a little bit, and add the rest of the ingredients. Give it a good stir and transfer to a clay pot if available (if not, just keep cooking in the skillet, no problem). Cook on low until chicken is cooked and sauce is reduced by a third. Serve with white rice.

Pizza Night

My little sister, Jessica, has recently taken up an interest in photography, and she has a pretty good eye for it. Jessica has been helping me take photos as I cook. So why not also try her hand at blogging?

Jessica here.

Tonight, we decided to make pizzas for dinner and each of us customized our pizzas to our individual likings. I chose to make a margherita pizza, because that's one of my favorites. (Too bad I didn't know that margherita pizzas don't have tomato sauce.) My 'margherita' pizza ended up with the extra ingredients of ham (another favorite pizza topping) and mushrooms, because we needed to use up all the ingredients we chopped, and tomato sauce. Of course, I also made sure to add lots of mozzy cheese! (Pronounced like "mott-see". That's mozzarella, in Jessica-speak)

Here's my pizza fresh from the oven.

That would be Jenn's pizza. Hers was super special.

For those of you who are gravely concerned about Beverly's lack of updates, no worries. I will be bugging her often.

Hors d'oeuvres! (That is my way of saying goodbye.) A bientot!

A Happy Birthday Cake

Happy birthday to my best friend.

Triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate raspberry ganache

Made with lots of love and lots of chocolate

Recipe from Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes via 17andBaking

Fresh Berry Gratin

Adele, this one's for you.

Delicious.

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated.

The leftover sauvignon blanc made a great sangria!

1 750mL bottle Sauvignon Blanc

1/2 orange, sliced

1/2 orange, juiced

1/4 cup Grand Marnier

1/4 cup sugar (or to taste)

1-2 apricots, halved and pitted

A handful of grapes

Mix sugar, orange juice, orange slices, and Grand Marnier together. Muddle the orange slices a little with a wooden spoon. Add the apricots and grapes and wine. Give it a few good stirs and chill in the refrigerator for a couple hours.

Chocolate Pasta

I finally made the chocolate pasta that I bought at Pike Place Market from my trip to Seattle. I threw together a berry sauce and reheated the leftover chocolate ganache to serve with the pasta. The pasta itself doesn't have much flavor to it even though it certainly looks chocolately, so the chocolate sauce really helped boost the taste. 

Caramel deLites Cupcakes

Happy birthday, Wojty!

Caramel deLites (not Samoas) cupcakes for my friend Ben W. 

The cast: brown sugar butter cupcakes, chocolate ganache, caramel, toasted sweet coconut topping, and toasted coconut flakes.

Caramel filling

Chocolate ganache poured on

Plenty of coconut topping

Recipe from cupcakeblog.