Bread pudding

Bread pudding is one of my favorite comfort desserts! I have been craving it for a while now, so I finally got down to making it =)
Here's the recipe (really easy) to make a 8-inch square pan of moist bread pudding!

Ingredients

1. 6 slices of bread (stale bread preferred)
2. 1/2 cup raisins
3. 4 eggs, beaten
4. 2 cups of milk
5. 2 tablespoons of melted butter
6. 3/4 cup of sugar (I like to do a mix of white and brown sugar)
7. 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
8. 3/4 tablespoon of ground cinnamon
9. 1/4 tablespoon of nutmeg

Instructions

1. Heat up the oven to 350 F, or 175  C.
2. Cut the crusts off the bread, and tear the bread into big chunks.
3. Lay the bread and crusts loosely in the pan. (See first photo; I also line my pan with parchment paper to minimize the amount of washing I have to do afterward)
4. Sprinkle raisins amidst the bread.
5. Combine all the remaining ingredients in a bowl, and mix well.
6. Pour the egg mixture onto the bread. 
7. Make sure that the bread soaks up the egg mixture, using a fork to press lightly on the bread. (see second photo)
8. Put the pudding into the oven, and let it bake for 45 minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly tapped. (see third photo)

Ready to eat! Enjoy! 

Placing bread and raisins loosely in a parchment-lined pan

After adding the egg mixture

Done and ready to eat!

Enjoy!

Nutella Mug Cake

This is a ridiculously simple recipe. It makes one mug of cake, almost instantly, and requires only a microwave. Tastes like a normal cake! It is really apt for people who like instant gratification, and makes me wonder why we even bake cakes.... Anyway, here goes!

Ingredients:

1. 4 tablespoons self-rising flour
2. 4 tablespoons sugar
3. 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
4. 3 tablespoons Nutella
5. 3 tablespoons milk
6. 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
7. 1 egg (Added last!)

Directions:

1. Add everything together in a mug, and whisk till smooth. 
2. Cook in a microwave at full power for 1.5 to 3 minutes  (cooking time depends on the power of your microwave). You can also have fun watching it rise and cook!
3. Ready to eat!! (I also lightly microwaved some marshmallows on the side to eat)

Like I wrote above, it is soft, and tastes just like a normally-baked cake (a bit more crumbly though), and pretty yummy for a late-night snack!

Bon appetit! 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is my favorite recipe for making dark chocolate chip cookies that are soft on the inside, yet crispy on the outside.

The whole recipe takes less than 1 hour from start to finish, and made ~60 mini bite-sized cookies:

Ingredients:

1. 2+1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2. 1/2 teaspoon salt
3. 1 teaspoon baking soda
4. 1/3 cup cocoa powder (*** Omit this if you don't want double chocolate cookies***) 
5. 3/4 cup granulated sugar
6. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
7. 1 cup (= 2 sticks) butter, softened
8. 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
9. 2 eggs
10. 2 cups semi-dark chocolate chips (I like using Guittard's or Ghiradelli)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Stir together the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda.
3. Beat together the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract until creamy.
4. Add eggs to the liquid mixture, and beat well.
5. Gradually add the flour mixture, and mix well. (The dough will become rather stiff)
6. Stir in the chocolate chips until evenly mixed.
7. Drop by rounded teaspoon-fuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. (Or use your hand to pinch off and round off a small chunk)
8. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, or until lightly browned, or the top has hardened and cracked.
9. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Enjoy! The cookies will look like little round mochi balls.

My first Omu Rice!

Made my first omu* rice today =) Paired it with japanese curry, what a simple yet delicious dinner!

*translation: Omelette-wrapped rice 

  

Salted Caramel mini Chocolate cupcakes

Was bored during this holiday season and didn't feel like doing any work, so I decided to bake!
Today's experiment is salted caramel mini chocolate cupcakes. These are mini chocolate cupcakes with a salted caramel filling, topped with dark chocolate salted caramel frosting.
The result turned out to be really yummy! =)

I adapted the recipe from here.

Using a mini muffin tray, I made 48 mini cupcakes with enough batter leftover for 4 madeleines. 
Alternatively this recipe yields 21 regular cupcakes.

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

1. 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2. 3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (I used Ghiradelli cocoa powder)
3. 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4. 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
5. 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
6. 3/4 teaspoon salt
7. 2 large eggs
8. 3/4 cup buttermilk (I made this by adding 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar to 1 cup milk)
9. 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
10. 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
11. 3/4 cup warm water

For the salted caramel filling:

1. 2 1/2 cups sugar
2. 2/3 cup water
3. 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
4. 2 1/2 teaspoons flaked sea salt, preferably Fleur de Sel

For the dark chocolate salted caramel frosting: (almost similar to before, with a caramel twist)

1. 1/8 cup  unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder 
2. 1/8 cup boiling water
3. 3/4 cups / 1.5 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
4. 1/4 cup confectioners’/icing/powdered sugar, sifted
5. pinch of salt
6. 227 grams good-quality semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled (I used Guittard semi-sweet chocolate chips, found in Whole Foods)
7. A sufficient amount of the salted caramel, from above, to your liking

Instructions:

Making the cupcakes:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. 
2. Line mini muffin tray with paper liners. 
3. Mix together flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. 
4. In another bowl, mix together eggs, buttermilk, oil, extract, and the water.
5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Fold in and mix until smooth and combined. Do not over-mix, to avoid a dense cake.
6. Spoon the batter into liners about two-thirds full. 
7. Bake approximately 10-12 minutes, or until tester comes out clean.  (If you're making normal-sized cupcakes, baking time will be 13-15 minutes)
8. Transfer tins to wire racks and allow to cool for 10 minutes; turn cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely. (Cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature, or frozen up to 1 month in air tight containers.)
9. Make the salted caramel. While waiting for the caramel to form, use a paring knife to cut a cone-shaped piece (about half-way deep into the cupcake) from the center of each cupcake and throw away the narrower tip part. Keep the wider top part of the cone as a breadbowl-like cover over the caramel filling (see photos below for example).

Hollowed out cupcakes. The small pieces at the sides are the remaining top "breadbowl" covers

Sticking the breadbowl covers onto their respective cupcakes

Making the salted caramel filling:

1. Heat sugar with the water in a heavy saucepan over medium-high, stirring occasionally, until syrup is clear; clip a candy thermometer to side of pan and stop stirring.
2. Cook until syrup comes to a boil, washing down sides of pan with a wet pastry brush as needed. 
3. Boil, gently swirling pan occasionally, until mixture is caramelized and just reaches 360°F. 
4. Remove from heat and slowly pour in cream; stir with a wooden spoon until smooth. Be careful! Adding cream can cause the whole mixture to bubble!
5. Stir in sea salt.
6. Let cool for about 15 minutes; if caramel begins to harden reheat gently until pourable. 
7. Spoon 1 to 2 teaspoons warm caramel into each hollowed-out cupcake. The caramel will slightly sink into the cupcake – just add a bit more. Sprinkle a pinch of sea salt over filling.
8. Cover the filling with the breadbowl-like cake cover from before.
9. Use the leftover caramel for the frosting.

Caramel filling inside the cupcake

Making the dark chocolate salted caramel frosting:

1. Combine cocoa powder and the boiling water in a small bowl or glass measuring cup, and stir until it cocoa has dissolved. 
2. Beat the butter, the icing sugar, and salt on medium-high speed until it is pale and fluffy–about 5 minutes. 
3. Reduce mixer speed to low, and add melted chocolate (cooled! If not the butter will melt), beating until combined and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. 
4. Beat in the cocoa mixture until well incorporated. 

Final step:

Pour the frosting into a piping bag (I used a ziploc bag and cut a small hole in the corner), and decorate the cupcakes!

Afterthoughts:

This recipe was really easy to follow, with a minimal number of steps. 

On an non-baking related note, life can be quite funny/coincidental sometimes. I was at Boudin Bakery in San Francisco on Saturday to try their clam chowder breadbowl and watched the staff make the breadbowls. That very observation helped me make my hollowed-out cupcakes today, all I had to do was recall what I saw over the weekend, and repeat on a smaller scale!

Also, as I was baking, the whole ritual of following instructions and measuring out precise quantities felt very similar to doing experiments in the lab. In fact, I was reminded of one of my first research internships, when the professor asked me if I cooked, since doing experiments was just like cooking. Very true. I wonder if my general ease with experiments has been aided by my intuition in the kitchen, or even vice versa. Either way, I'm glad to be good at both, if not I wouldn't know what to do with my hands half the time :)

Finally, a candid photo of me filling cupcakes!

Nata de coco

One of my favorite jelly desserts!
I add nata de coco to my plain froyo + mochi, nata de coco to milk tea (from the bubble tea shops), nata de coco to vanilla ice-cream, and nata de coco to my warm earl grey tea!
I heart you nata de coco 

Just some facts about nata de coco I learnt today:
It is from the Philippines.
It is produced from "the fermentation of coconut water, which gels through the production of microbial cellulose by Acetobacter xylinus."
Production process:

1. Extraction of coconut water
2. Fermentation of the coconut water with bacterial cultures
3. Separating and cutting the produced mat of nata de coco
4. Cleaning and washing the acetic acid out of the nata de coco
5. Cutting to packaging

Courtesy of wikipedia

Aren't microbes amazing? They produce yummy food like cheese, kimchi, sauerkraut, beer and nata de coco!

Paris Baguette

I can't believe that I haven't written a post about Paris Baguette yet. This is one of my favorite bakeries in the Bay Area so far, which offers a wide selection of Japanese-bakery-style pastries. Every pastry I've tried so far has been delicious -- high toast, green tea pastry, red bean pastry, sweet rice pastry (my ultimate favorite! This has azuki inside mochi inside pastry), tuna melt sandwich, strawberry shortcake (my all-time favorite cake), green tea pumpkin shortcake, etc.

I should post photos of the pastries next time before I eat them too quickly... 

Anyway, we heard that Paris Baguette in Palo Alto started selling shaved ice, so we went to try it yesterday. It was rather... disappointing =/ My boyfriend described the experience quite aptly -- "This is what you get when a bakery tries to sell shaved ice." Indeed. 

From the first look, it really looked promising. Lots of fruit, azuki on top, even mochi bits. Yummy, right? 

WRONG. Look at what's wrong in this picture. THE ICE IS WRONG. This is not the shaved ice I was expecting. I was hoping for shaved ice like the one you get from Taiwanese places, where you literally SHAVE snowflakes off the ice, not grind it up like ice-kacang or lame american snowballs =(
Or maybe I'm just pampered....
Ice aside, the strawberry sauce they poured over the ice was a little weird =/ And the melon didn't go well with the strawberry and kiwi, because the melon taste overwhelms the light kiwi taste! 
There was a huge lump of vanilla ice-cream in the middle of the whole ice tower, which was a surprise. Pleasant for some, not so much for us I guess, because it made the whole thing taste pretty random, as if they couldn't decide which style to make it in...
Or maybe we were just affected by our disappointment with the ice =(


Back to eating pastries for us..
*There is another branch of this bakery in Sunnyvale. The Palo Alto branch is newer and bigger. This is also a Korean bakery that makes Japanese-style pastries, just putting it out there. 

Paris Baguette (Palo Alto)

383 University Ave

Palo Alto, CA 94301

(650) 838-0404

Salmon baked rice

Made salmon baked rice last night! I made the cream sauce from scratch for the first time too. Here's what I did (sorry we don't have any photos this time, since we were too hungry):

Rice:
Ingredients
1. Rice (I cooked 1 cup)
2. Half an onion, chopped
3. Chopped mushrooms
4. Vegetables (I used broccoli last night)
5. Some cheese (I used mozzarella last night)
6. A deep dish

Directions
1. Cook rice, and leave to warm.
2. Pan-fry some onions and mushrooms, before adding the vegetables. Cook until the onions and mushrooms are fragrant, and the vegetables are half-cooked.
3. Beat some eggs with black pepper and some salt, and mix evenly into the warm rice (see comment here).
4. Add the egg-coated rice to the pan, and pan-fry until the egg is mostly cooked. Add some cheese so that it's nice and stringy inside the rice.
5. Pour everything into the deep dish.

Salmon:
1. Rub over with some black pepper and cajun powder.
2. Pan-fry with some oil, until the fish is half-cooked through.

Cream sauce:
Ingredients
1. 1/2 stick of unsalted butter
2. 3 medium cloves of garlic
3. Half an onion, finely chopped
4. 1 teaspoons of salt
5. 0.5 teaspoon of black pepper
6. 1 cup heavy cream

Directions
1. Melt the butter at medium heat in a pot or pan.
2. Fry up the garlic and onions just before they are fragrant
3. Add 0.5 teaspoon salt and all the black pepper to the garlic and onions. Fry it up till fragrant.
4. Stir in the heavy cream and let boil. Add the remaining salt (this is to enhance the flavor of the sauce. Add at your own discretion).
5. The sauce will thicken as the water evaporates. Take the pot off the stove once you are satisfied with the sauce thickness.

Making the baked rice:
1. Pour half of the cream sauce onto your rice that is already inside the deep dish. Sprinkle some cheese on top of the rice and sauce.
2. Place the salmon in the middle of the dish. Add the remaining sauce and cheese, so that the whole dish is covered in cheesy goodness. I used 2 cups of cheese in total for this dinner (we really love cheese on baked rice)
3. Place everything in an oven set at 350F. It doesn't matter whether you preheat the oven or not, the cheese takes time to melt anyway.
4. Your meal is ready when the cheese is all melted and forms a brown (not black!) crust! You will also notice that the cream is bubbling from under all that cheese, so be careful when you're removing it from the oven.

Afterthought: Most of the cream sauce drained through and was absorbed by the rice while baking. If you like to see a layer of sauce on top of the rice when you eat, you can make a higher sauce:rice ratio, or make a thicker sauce.