Tips of the Day!

It’s almost fall break for me! I can’t wait to be able to take a break from working and walk around while the leaves are beginning to change colors. Definitely go outside and enjoy the warm weather a few more times before it really starts to get chilly. I decided that today’s blog post will be a list of small tips when working in the kitchen!

1.     If you’re cooking pasta, cook the pasta for about a minute less than expected (if cooking for 10 minutes, cook for about 9 minutes) if you’re going to continue to cook the pasta with sauce later on. If you’re done cooking the pasta, pour the pasta into a strainer and douse the pasta in cold water so that it’ll stop cooking

2.     Make cute bunny rabbit apples! Wash an apple and slice it into eight even pieces. In the middle of one of the pieces of apple, make a small knife mark and drag the knife lightly from the middle to one corner of the apple. Then put the tip of the knife to the middle again and drag the knife to the corner closest to the last corner you dragged the knife last. In that triangle you just lightly cut on the surface of the apple skin and use the knife to slowly peel the skin off there. Once you’ve done that, you have a simple apple bunny! It should look like this:

 

3.     If your fingers smell strongly of garlic, soak your fingers in lemon juice for a few minutes, then wash your hands. The smell of garlic should more-or-less go away

4.     No matter your temptation to turn up the heat on the stove to speed up the cooking process, you definitely should not. If you’re cooking a custard on the stove, if you turn the heat up too high, the mixture may cook the eggs by scrambling, or you may curdle the milk. This is one example, but there are multiple other instances when this could happen, so if it asks for low heat, be patient and keep it on low heat the whole time

5.     Always thoroughly read recipes through before starting; you may miss the slightest and/or most important detail (ingredients at room temperature, keep on low heat, prep item ahead of time, etc.)

6.     Don’t be afraid to taste-test your dishes as you make them, whether it a roux, stew, or even batter. If you taste early on, you’ll be able to avoid serving your dining guests a salt-filled cake

7.     When working with ground meat, do not over-mix or mash it up too much when working with it; that will make the final product very hard and chewy

8.     Remember: fooling around with measurements when cooking is welcome and awesome, but definitely NOT when baking. Baking is a science with chemical bonds and reactions; every measurement must be exact

9.     To get as much juice as possible from a lemon or lime, roll it hard under your palm for a few seconds before juicing

10.  Never be afraid to make mistakes in the kitchen. In order to get all of the delicious recipes you see here today, someone went through a lot of trial and error to get there. Behind every success is a hundred failures, and the more you fail, the more delicious the reward (literally!).

I hope you find these tips useful! Enjoy~ :)

Crownies, Brookies, Your Pick!

… but I definitely think that Brookies sound much better! Hello again, hope you’re enjoying your weekend! I have definitely done quite a few desserts in a row, my apologizes, but I will definitely post a cooking-item next. Today’s recipe is very straight-forward and a yummy combination of two of the best, simple desserts out there, and I’m sure you’ve heard of them before. For those of you who haven’t, brookies are a combination of brownies and cookies to form a delicious duo, and they couldn’t be easier!

IF you already have recipes/dough/mixes for cookies and brownies ready:

You are such a pro. Now the only thing you have to do is preheat the oven to 325ºF, assemble and bake ‘em! To do this, get out a regular-sized muffin tray (should have 12 muffin holes), and fill each section about ¾ full with brownie batter. Take a small ball’s worth of cookie dough in your hands, round it out, and plop it straight in the middle of each muffin. Once each muffin hole has both brownie mix and cookie dough in it, place the tray in the oven for about 12 minutes. This ensures that the cookie dough is fully baked, but the brownies might not be, so if you poke the brownie part with a toothpick and it comes out clean, you’re done! If not, pop the tray back in the oven for an additional 2 minutes, and continue to do this until the toothpick is clean.

IF you would like the recipes for brownies and cookies:

When I want to throw a quick batch of this stuff together, I go for the mixes, and you can definitely find some high-quality ones out there at your local grocery store, but unfortunately, I do not have the recipes for my homemade ones on me in college. If you would really like to create homemade parts for this, check out foodnetwork.com, because their recipes are delicious and fairly accurate!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy~

The Crème of the Crop

Happy weekend! I hope your week went well! Mine was pretty busy like always, but Saturdays are the best because they’re the one-day I get to sleep in with no problems. But I digress; are you ready for another recipe? Today’s recipe is one that I’ve been making for a little over six years now because it is my father’s favorite: crème brulee! This dish is a custard-dessert with a burnt-sugar coating on top, and the contrast between the soft jelly-custard and crusty sugar is impossible to get enough of! The only problem with this recipe is that the burnt sugar requires a blowtorch. I have my own, and it cost between about $20 and $40, but there is another method for creating that surface which uses an automatic lighter, which is much cheaper and easier to get!

Ingredients

·      2 cups of heavy cream (I prefer to use half-and-half or whole milk so that the custard is lighter, but use whichever milk you would like; you should use a milk with a bit of fat in it though)

·      8 large egg yolks or 4 large eggs (I normally use full eggs because I don’t want to deal with leftover egg whites, but if you plan on making meringue or angel food cake or have another use for the whites, go with the egg yolks!)

·      ½ cup granulated sugar

·      ¾ tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Place 6-8 ramekins on a baking tray, and fill the tray halfway with water. Warm the milk to barely a simmer (It should NOT boil). Whisk the eggs and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved. Slowly pour the milk into the egg mixture and whisk to combine. Strain the mixture and stir in the vanilla extract. Fill the ramekins a bit more than ¾ full with the milk-egg mixture and place the tray in the oven carefully to bake for about 30 to 35 minutes. Once you take the tray out and let the custards cool to room temperature, cover each with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 8 hours. Once the custards have been chilled, cover with one of the following:

Torch It!

If you have a blowtorch, awesome! If not, bring out that automatic lighter and get ready to burn some sugar crystals. Sprinkle a very thin layer of granulated sugar over the custards, ignite your torch, and caramelize the top until the sugar has melted. Continue to do this until you’ve achieved the crispy top you desire.  

This recipe isn’t too complicated and doesn’t take a lot of time, so give it a try when you have a chance! Enjoy this fancy French dessert!

Quadruple S! (Spongy, Sweet, Strawberry Shortcake~)

You can’t run on a campground. You can only ran. Because it’s past tense (past tents).

Hahaha! Nothing like starting out a recipe with a horrible pun~! I’ll see if I can find some good cooking or baking puns to start out some of my later posts.

So hi again, hope you’re doing well! Today’s recipe is strawberry shortcake using sponge cake as the base! This is probably the first recipe I did by myself many years ago without my parents help. It’s an extremely delicious light cake that fits as a tea snack and dessert after a heavy meal. This is the version I always use, but as always, feel free to experiment with the recipe as much as you’d like to get it to suit your tastes!

Ingredients:

Sponge Cake

·      1 cup cake flour

·      1.5 tsp baking powder

·      ¼ tsp salt

·      1 cup sugar

·      6 eggs, separated (look at my egg separating blog post for tips!)

·      ¼ cup boiling water

·      1 heaping tsp grated lemon or orange zest

·      1.5 tbsp lemon or orange juice

·      1 tsp vanilla extract

·      ¼ tsp cream of tartar

Decoration

·      Lots of strawberries! (There’s no such thing as too many strawberries, so I always buy 3-4 boxes. I only use about 2 boxes, but it’s good to have some extras just in case) – remove the leaves and cut the strawberries in half

·      Whipped cream (make your own or buy the premade cans)

It’s best to have all the ingredients at room temperature, but I’ve made this recipe more than ten times and only one or two of those times did I actually have the ingredients at room temperature, so don’t worry too much about that.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF and grease two large round cake pans. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Quickly beat the egg yolks in a large bowl (everything will be combined into this bowl later) until thickened, gradually beat in the sugar until light and has slightly increased in volume, beat the boiling water until the mixture is a bit more runny, and then beat in the zest, juice, and vanilla extract. Slowly beat in the dry ingredients until combined. Clean the beaters and beat the egg whites and cream of tartar on high speed until they form stiff peaks. Divide the whites into quarter sections, and fold the whites in one-quarter at a time. Pour the batter into the greased pans and bake for 40-50 minutes.

Once the cakes have cooled down to room temperature, remove them from the pans, and cut each cake in half so that you now have four rounds of cake. Place one round on your serving platter, spread a thin layer of whipped cream, place a layer of halved strawberries, and cover with another thin layer of whipped cream. Place another round on top and repeat the layering, but when you reach the top you can design with whole strawberries, and then you are all done!

This recipe is so light and sweet and absolutely delicious~! I’m the type of person who prefers actual cake for strawberry shortcake rather than biscuits, so this recipe is perfect for me. I hope you enjoy this recipe too, and have a sweet rest of the week~ ^_^

Separ-egg Techniques 0_0

Hi again! First week of classes is a bit stressful, but my classes seem fun, so I’m hanging in there~ My post today is going to be about different ways to separate eggs! Sometimes when you need to make angel food cake, meringue, crème brulee, or some other dish that requires either yolks or whites, it’s best to figure out a technique that works best for you. I have three different methods that work for me, so give each of them a shot and then decide which one you like the most!

The Old-Fashioned Way

This version is the oldest in the book, where you simply do the separating by moving the egg back and forth between the shells to drain the whites.  You start by carefully cracking the egg in half. You have to be really careful doing this step; if you crack the egg to hard you risk breaking the thin membrane surrounding the yolk, which will make separating impossible. Once you’ve formed a crack, break the eggshell over the bowl you want the whites in in half while keeping the yolk in one of the eggshells. Now slowly move the yolk from one eggshell to the other while draining the whites into the bowl. Once the majority of the whites have been drained, place the yolk into another bowl. Continue to separate eggs until you have as much as you need!

Professional Yolker

This guy does require you to spend some money. If you go into some cooking utensil stores they’ll have different tools for egg separating. The one I use looks like this:

(it costs about $5)

And I think it’s just adorable and really useful! Its feet can hook onto the edge of a bowl and if you just crack the egg into it, the whites drain out of the small cracks and the yolk gets easily separated. Make sure when you crack the egg very carefully so you don’t risk breaking the yolk. I use this the most often when separating eggs, so I highly recommend it!

Recycler Technique

This is a really unique technique that one of my friends taught me! Crack an egg gently into a small dish. Take an small, empty plastic water bottle between your thumb and other fingers with the opening facing down above the yolk, and squeeze the bottle so it’s been squeezed about a third of its normal size. Gently place the mouth of the bottle on the yolk itself and slowly release the squeeze on the bottle so that you’re still holding it, but the suction from the bottle is pulling the yolk into the bottle. You have just separated the egg! This trick is fun and doesn’t cost extra money! Sometimes the best way to figure out how to accomplish different things in the kitchen is to experiment with different tools you already have and see how they can be used for other things. So give it a try!

I hope you found these tips useful! Have fun cooking~ ^_^

Furikake Gohan~ ... what is that???

All settled into college! I hope you’re still enjoying your summer and the warm weather before it starts getting chillier! Today I’ve decided to provide a really unique recipe I found on a cooking show I enjoy watching (It’s called Shokugeki No Soma; it’s an anime, but I strongly recommend it for those who enjoy cooking and humor!). You probably took a look at the title and wondered exactly this was. This is actually jellied broth and scrambled eggs over rice! It perhaps doesn’t sound very interesting, but it’s a light yet filling meal. Give it a shot if you’re feeling creative~

*** serves 2-3 ***

Ingredients

·      7 chicken wings

·      1 tbsp sesame oil

·      1 tsp grated ginger

·      24 oz bonito broth

·      1.5 tbsp sake

·      1.5 tbsp sugar

·      1.5 tbsp mirin

·      1.6-2 oz light soy sauce

·      4 eggs

·      1 tbsp sugar

·      Pinch of salt

·      Minced green onion, for garnish

Cook rice and keep it warm until you’re ready to eat. Heat the sesame oil in a frying pan and fry each of the chicken wings until they’re browned. Combine the chicken wings with the ginger, broth, sake, 1.5 tbsp sugar, mirin, and soy sauce in a large pot, boil the contents, and skim the scum off of the surface. Adjust the flavors if you’d like, and then after an hour or so of boiling, pour the broth into a tray (save the chicken wings), let it cool to room temperature, then refrigerate it until the felly has solidified.  Dice the jelly into small cubes, shred the chicken into pieces, and set them on the side. Whisk the eggs, 1 tbsp sugar, and salt and scramble them in a frying pan. Add a bunch of jellied cubes, scrambled eggs, and chicken pieces on top of a bowl of hot rice, and top with green onion garnish, and you’re all done!

This recipe is fun and really yummy, either for an afternoon snack or a meal, and the jellied cubes will keep in the fridge for roughly 2 weeks. I hope you enjoy this recipe!

Sorry for the long break!

Hello again~! I'm finally done with vacation and packing (finally -_-), and I move back into college tomorrow! But unfortunately I don't have a recipe post as of right now (it will definitely come soon enough, do not worry), but I will tell you about some of my favorite tools in the kitchen! If you don't already own one of these, I strongly suggest you invest in one at some point!

Silicone spatula: I absolutely love these! Whether it’s used for stirring stuff on the stove or for scraping the sides of a bowl clean to get all the cake batter into the pan, this tool has what it takes~! It’s a great multi-tasker and cheap, so I like it lots! ^_^

Stand mixer: I love all the functions this guy comes with! You can whip up different batters, create dough, or just whisk up something quick, but this tool is really convenient for creating things that would normally take a long time to whip, such as whipped cream, meringue, or butter. It tends to be a bit on the expensive side, but I do believe it’s a tool worth investing in if you really love working in the kitchen.

So that’s all for this week! Thank you again for your patience all this time, and I promise to be more on top of updating one I get all settled into college. Enjoy the rest of your summer~ ^_^