Flour's Famous Banana Bread Recipe

After trying Flour's delicious baked treats in Boston, I had to try Flour's famous banana bread recipe at home. What a moist and delicious treat!

Homemade Deep Dish Pizza

We tried to make deep dish pizza at home and I was pleasantly surprised by the results. Our crust was wonderfully buttery and flakey. However, our sauce could use a little work. 

MH made a sausage and mushroom pie and I made a chicken, mushroom, and basil pie (trying to imitate my all time favorite Zachary's stuffed chicken pie). 

Birthday Celebrations

MH and I celebrated our birthday milestones with a day trip to Catalina and a homemade Momofuku Milk Bar Cinnamon Pie. Cheers to another year of grace, wisdom, and beauty!

Pies For Easter

Pies have become my current baking craze. Since most of my pie dough recipes make two shells, I like to embrace the opportunity to make two different pies. 

On the left is a pecan pie and on the right is a custard pie. What kind of Easter goodies did you have this year?

Treats From The Heart

To celebrate Cupid's day, I made a few special treats: chocolate and vanilla oreos and custom labeled vanilla sugar cookies. To finish off my boxes of love, I packed the cookies with an assortment of light and dark pink heart cut outs. 

I hope your Valentine's day was filled with love too!

Christmas Festivities

The winter holidays came and went faster then I would have liked this year. We were late putting up the tree and started a new home project just after the holiday so my fun and enjoyment of the Christmas decorations were short lived. Nevertheless, MH and I had a great holiday season with family and friends and I was glad to be able to spend some time in the kitchen to do some baking.

MH and my Christmas breakfast cinnamon roll tradition was altered slightly by a lovely invitation to a Christmas morning brunch and a new recipe. Since MH's parent's decided to not visit for the holiday, MH's sister had us over for brunch and we enjoyed our cinnamon roll tradition together.  

I typically bake a modified version of my Mom's cinnamon roll recipe, but after coming across Lauren's Latest blog and her Cinnabon cinnamon rolls I couldn't resist giving them a try. I think this is going to be my new go to cinnamon roll recipe. They taste pretty darn close to the real deal!

On Christmas Eve we enjoyed a traditional prime rib dinner, and MH and I made roasted garlic butter roasted mushrooms, roasted cauliflower and carrots, and a sour cream apple pie. 

The pie was featured in Martha Stewart Living and I don't think I would recommend the recipe. Although the crumble and crust were delicious, the pie in whole missed the mark. There was something about the sour cream apple filling that just didn't seem right. 

Since we enjoyed all of the traditional dishes on Christmas Eve, we decided to have a non-traditional Christmas dinner and cooked up a delicious homemade mexican spread. 

We made beef tamales, chili colorado, garlic grilled chicken, carnitas, al pastor, spanish rice, black beans, roasted corn salad, vegetable lime salad, guacamole, salsa, and a pitcher of horchata. To compliment the meal, we also bought some corn and flour tortillas, chips, and Jarritos sodas from the neighborhood Mexican market.

To finish the meal I made the an Impossible Cake otherwise known as chocoflan. Making this cake is a serious science experiment. When you prepare the cake and slide it into the oven, the cake sits at the bottom of the pan with the layer of flan floating on top, and when you pull it out the layers are reversed!

The cake turned out well and I was pleasantly surprised how nicely flan and chocolate cake paired together. I hope you had a wonderful holiday filled with delicious treats too!

Cherpumple!

I follow a random assortment of blogs and after clicking through a few links I came across this gem! If you are familiar with turducken (turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken) this is the dessert version. A cherpumple is a three layer white, yellow, and spice cake, that is baked with a cherry, pumpkin, and apple inside each layer. Watch the video!

The cherpumple is just one of Charles Phoenix's fantastic creations. On his website (CharlesPhoenix.com) there are more videos of other awesome things. MH and I definitely have some good ideas for any upcoming get togethers. 

Pinata Cookies!

SheKnows.com posted a tutorial on how to make pinata cookies, and I think they are so cute!

Pinata Cookies from SheKnows.com

They seem like a lot of work, but aren't they cool?!? You can check out the tutorial HERE but basically, you layer three sugar cookies together with the middle cookie hollowed out to hold the candy. Maybe I can transfer this idea to make some fun Christmas cookies.

Happy Hearts Day!

I was feeling crafty this Valentine's day and made these treats to celebrate the day. Spearing cake bites is quite the challenge and much more difficult than I anticipated. Even though they turned out okay, I don't think I'll be making these again.

Hope someone made your heart happy today!

Birthday Treats

Birthday celebrations are always a great reason to bake! I was asked to bring a carrot cake to a friend's kid's first birthday party this weekend and I happily obliged.

Unfortunately, I forgot to tape the cake down to the plate, and when we transported the cake to the party, it slid around a bit and a few of the side crumbs fell off. Thankfully, that was the worst thing that happened and the cake still looked pretty good when we arrived.

Here is my friend's secret family recipe birthday cake. It is quite the treat and has layers and layers of cake and chocolaty goodness inside.

Since my friend was worried there wasn't going to be enough dessert, I decided to bring some lemon ricotta cookies too. I've been holding on to this recipe for a while and was glad to finally have to chance to try it out. The cookies turned out very well and were fluffy and cake-like. I think they would be perfect for picnics or with your afternoon tea. Next time I think I'll add a little bit more lemon zest to the batter to get a stronger lemony flavor though.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with family and friends!

This year MH was inspired to make a vegetable side dish for our holiday meals and he decided to make ratatouille. However, since traditional ratatouille is a stew served out of a giant bowl, he opted to make ratatouille a la Pixar's Ratatouille movie because the end result is much more aesthetically pleasing.

Ratatouille

It turned out to be a really tasty dish. We just wish it didn't take so long prepare, assemble, and bake!

Since I love baking for the holidays, I made a lattice top apple pie for our Christmas Eve family dinner, our traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas day, and a banana creme pie for our Christmas day family dinner.

Apple Pie

I didn't bother snapping a picture of the cinnamon rolls or the banana cream pie since the cinnamon rolls look the same as the ones I made last year and the top of the banana cream pie was just a fluffy layer of whipped cream. I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word on it that they turned out well and were delish!

Making Mochi

I'm a big fan of mochi, so when I found out you can easily make it at home without having to use a rice pounding mallet and execute a carefully choreographed traditional dance routine, I figured it was worth a try.

Using mochiko, glutinous rice flour, eliminates the need to complete the labor-intensive rice pounding process, and you basically combine all of the ingredients together in a bowl, pour the mixture into a greased pan, bake, cool, cut, and voila!

I couldn't find potato starch at the store, so MH and I rolled our cut mochi in a rice flour and powdered sugar mixture. Our mochi absorbed the coating after a few hours and got a little gooey, but I'm not sure if it was because of the lack of potato starch or the humidity. Nevertheless, they turned out pretty well and the next time I make them I think I'm going to try to make a few different flavors.

Here is the recipe courtesy of AllRecipes.Com:

Ingredients

- 1 pound mochiko

- 2 1/2 cups white sugar

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

- 2 cups water

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 1 (14 oz) can coconut milk

- 1/4 teaspoon red food color (optional)

- 1 1/2 cups potato starch

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 13 inch pan. Whisk together the rice, flour, sugar, and baking powder; set aside

2. In a medium bowl, mix together the water, vanilla, coconut milk and red food coloring. Blend in the rice flour mixture. Pour into the prepared pan.

3. Cover the pan with foil and bake for 1 hour. Allow to cool completely.

4. Turn the pan of mochi out onto a clean surface that has been dusted with potato starch. Cut into bit size pieces using a plastic knife. The mochi does not stick as much to plastic knives.

Pop Goes My Tart

I don't recall how or why I decided to make home made pop tarts. Making pop tarts from scratch is definitely not cost effective considering it took me several of hours to make them and you can purchase a box of eight from the grocery store for less than $3. However, it was a fun activity and I would do it again because they were such a delicious morning treat. They may just have to be rectangles/circles instead of animals to make the production time a little more reasonable.

Home Made Strawberry Compote Filled Pop Tarts

Shout out to T&J for MH and my new Silpat. It came in handy when I was making these suckers! We hope you enjoyed your pop tart samples.

Love Is In The Air

Happy Valentines Day!

May cupid's arrow pierce your heart.

Shout out to Ickity for the message-in-a-cookie cutters! I heart personalized cookie messages and hope you do too.

"In the cookies of life, your friends are the chocolate chips." - Unknown

Christmas Desserts

This holiday season, I was in the kitchen baking up a storm. Although spending so much time in the kitchen can be tiring, I love baking and creating sweet treats for family and friends. Here are a few of my creations this year!

Devil's Food Chocolate Cake for Pre-Christmas Eve Dinner

Vanilla Cake with White Chocolate Whipped Cream and Raspberries for Christmas Eve Dinner

Cinnamon Rolls for Christmas Day Breakfast

Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photo of the tiramisu I made for my family's Christmas dinner and the cranberry tiramisu I made for MH's family Christmas dinner but I'm sure you can imagine what they looked like and if not, it's quite all right.

I need to work on my finishing techniques. Frosting is definitely not my forte. It's a good thing I can get my desserts to taste pretty good. Otherwise, I'd be in serious trouble!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Ever since I had peanut butter chocolate cake at MH's cousin's wedding I couldn't stop thinking about it! Then, RAK told me about these awesome treats she had and I couldn't help myself. I had to make them to fulfill my peanut butter desires.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Whipped Cream

I changed the recipe by using box mix (sorry!) for the chocolate cake and made whipped cream instead of butter frosting.

Inside View

Unfortunately, MH was underwhelmed by them but I thought they were great. In retrospect, I should have anticipated MH's lackluster response since I was much more excited about the previous peanut butter chocolate cake than he was but oh well.

I would definitely make this again. However, a couple other peanut butter recipes have caught my eye so I might have to try those first. What do you think? (a) Peanut butter pudding, (b) peanut butter pie, (c) peanut butter cake with chocolate frosting, or (d) peanut butter cake filled with jelly.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

A few weeks ago the Nana Queen's Pudding & Wings truck was parked across the street from my office and I have had banana pudding on the brain ever since.

Bakerella has a great post with instructions how to make it yourself.

Homemade Banana Pudding

The store was out of regular Nilla Wafers so MH bought Mini Nilla Wafers instead. Aren't they the cutest?!? You can't really see the pudding in the picture, but I promise it is down there beneath the stack of bananas and Mini Nilla Wafers. Yum!

I ♥ Macarons

I've jumped on the macaron band wagon and have become an adoring fan. I guess late is better than never. According to wikipedia.org, "Larousse Gastronomique cites the macaron as being created in 791 in a convent near Cormery. Some have traced its French debut back to the arrival of Catherine de' Medici's Italian pastry chefs whom she brought with her in 1533 upon marrying Henry II. In the 1830s macarons were served two-by-two with the addition of jams, liqueurs, and spices."

Last Christmas, my brother gave me I ♥ Macarons, by Hisako Ogita, and it launched my adoration for macarons. There are a variety of websites that have great macaron recipes, instructions, and images, but this book puts all of the basics in one place for you. The book introduces macarons at a beginner level and explains the baking process step-by-step. It also has helpful suggestions for various flavor combinations, gift wrapping, presentation, and left over egg yolk recipes.

A critical step in baking macarons is making the perfect batter. The goal is to make a batter that has a "magma-like" consistency, being careful not to over mix it. I'm not quite sure what magma looks like and haven't quite refined my eye for "magma-like" consistency, but this batter seemed to work well enough.

Chocolate Macaron Batter

I did some additional online macaron research, and discovered there are many ways you can skin a cat. Each baker has their own special trick to achieve consistent macaron success. Some used aged egg whites, rap the pans, dry the macaron batter, bake with double trays, baking with the oven propped open, etc. I think you just have to find what works best for you and your oven.

Drying My Macarons

My oven tends to run a little hot, so I choose to dry the macaron batter, bake them double trayed, and rotate them halfway through their baking time. I have found that my macaron results vary based on the consistency of my batter. A thicker batter tends to yield a better shape and macaron texture. While a thinner batter tends to yield flatter and less chewy macarons.

Chocolate Macarons with Dark Chocolate Mousse

The great thing about macarons is that in any case, perfectly shaped and baked or not, they are still delicious! I truly do ♥ Macarons.

Lollipop, Lollipop, Oh What A Lollipop!

After trying Just a Bite Cake Pops, I was inspired to make my own. Bakerella has a great posting on how to make red velvet cake balls, so you can put them on a stick and voila, cake pops!

Red Velvet Cake Pops

I am not convinced that they are better then a regular slice of cake, but they are novel and a fun twist to something traditional. Give them a try if you are looking for something a little different to bring/share at your next event.

It's All In The Crust

On our way home from our camping trip we passed through Oxnard, home of the annual California Strawberry Festival, and picked up some strawberries. I think the strawberry season hasn't quite hit it's peak, but their wonderful fragrance inspired me to make a fresh strawberry cream pie.

It was my first attempt at making a traditional pie crust from scratch and I think it turned out pretty well. I love all of the decorative touches you can add to the edge of the crust to give it a different look and enjoyed the challenge of making the braid for this one. Pies are another wonderful form of artwork!