Mexican Flan

This was given by my coworker. It tasted really good, no picture yet.

Ingredients and tools:
1. 1 can of condensed milk
2. 1 can of evaporated milk
3. 3 eggs
4. 1 teaspoon of vanilla
5. 4 tablespoons of sugar
6. Pan to melt sugar
7. Glass or aluminum container
8. Aluminum foil to cover #7
9. Glass container bigger than #7

Instructions:
Heat oven to 350 deg
Fill bigger glass container (#9) with water to about half and place inside oven
Mix ingredients 1 to 4 above in blender
Place sugar on hot pan until it melts and turns dark brown.
Pour melted sugar on container (#7), spread on bottom of container
Pour mixed ingredients from blender on container (#7)
Place container on bigger container (waterbath). Make sure water level covers about half of the container with ingredients.
Bake for 30 - 45 minutes. Stick a knife in the middle of the flan to check if it is fully cooked. It will be dry when cooked.

Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookies

After trying the doubletree cookies from my coworker I insisted on finding a recipe online, they make the best cookies! So I decided to look for a recipe online and I found this recipe that they claimed to be "double tree cookies" so i decided to give it a try. I love these cookies! they came out pretty good, even when I tried this recipe for the first time. Although the shape didn't look the same (probably because i didn't chill the do (The only think i changed was using bitter sweet chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet) it was really good. I think for my personal taste, i would put less chocolate chips next time.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup rolled oats
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1-1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
2 eggs
3 cups semi-sweet, chocolate chips
1-1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Directions:
Grind oats in a food processor or blender until fine. Combine the ground oats with the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl.

Cream together the butter, sugars, vanilla, and lemon juice in another medium bowl with an electric mixer. Add the eggs and mix until smooth. Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture and blend well. Add the chocolate chips and nuts to the dough and mix by hand until ingredients are well blended.

For the best results, chill the dough overnight in the refrigerator before baking the cookies.

Spoon rounded 1/4 cup portions onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Place the scoops about 2 inches apart. Bake in a 350°F oven for 16-18 minutes or until cookies are light brown and soft in the middle. Store in a sealed container when cool to keep soft.

Lemon Bars

Lemon bars are easy to make, and they're so good! I got this recipe from allrecipe.com, the only variation I made was using 2/3 cups of lemon juice and 1 tb more flour). This recipe came out pretty easy and good; the only thing is i prefer it very tart so I will have to try again next time with more lemon juice or less sugar. :)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 lemons, juiced

READ REVIEWS (185)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, blend together softened butter, 2 cups flour and 1/2 cup sugar. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9x13 inch pan.
3. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until firm and golden. In another bowl, whisk together the remaining 1/12 cups sugar and 1/4 cup flour. Whisk in the eggs and lemon juice. Pour over the baked crust.
4. Bake for an additional 20 minutes in the preheated oven. The bars will firm up as they cool. For a festive tray, make another pan using limes instead of lemons and adding a drop of green food coloring to give a very pale green. After both pans have cooled, cut into uniform 2 inch squares and arrange in a checker board fashion.

Boulangerie-Patisserie Book

My favorite bakery Boulangerie-Patisserie, has a book, you will bet i will be getting this book next! I love to look at the pictures even though the reviews says that some recipes might not work.

Strawberry Cake

Yellow Cake Ingredients:

1 3/4 plain cake flour
4 large eggs
1/2 cup of milk
2 teaspoon of vanilla
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks of butter

Filling ingredients:

strawberries
sugar to taste

Whipped Cream:
Use heavy cream and beat in the mixer until stiff foams form.

Step 1: Make 2 yellow cake by using 2 cake pans. Mix ingredients together and let it cool completely.
Step 2: Make filling. Slice strawberries and add sugar. Let cool in the fridge.
Step 3: Put cake together. Put yellow cake first, then 1 layer of whipped cream, and then a layer of strawberries. Then layer again with whipped cream. Repeat.
Step 4: Decorate. Apply whipped cream around cake, and decorate with fruits.

Preparing to bake a cake from scratch...

Since its hubby's bday i decided to bake a cake from scratch. After looking at some recipes, videos, books i decided to make a chocolate cake. Here are some tools I bought yesterday:




For decorating:

Baking Illustrated Book

This book was given to me on my bday last year and I find this to be an excellent book. This book is not for everyone because it lacks a lot of the colorful pictures that normally people would expect but this book (and all the books from cook's Illustrated) are written from a more technical and scientific approach. Not only it has the reputation of the Cooks Illustrated editors the recipes comes from what they call, "America's Test Kitchen" which is an actual kitchen,

America’s Test Kitchen is a real 2,500 square foot test kitchen located just outside of Boston that is home to more than three dozen full-time cooks and product testers. Our mission is simple: to develop the absolute best recipes for all of your favorite foods. To do this, we test each recipe 30, 40, sometimes as many as 70 times, until we arrive at the combination of ingredients, technique, temperature, cooking time, and equipment that yields the best, most-foolproof recipe.

Our recipes, equipment ratings, taste test results, and kitchen tips are made available through our magazines, our Web sites, our television series; America’s Test Kitchen, and our cookbooks.


Pretty interesting! NO wonder the recipes I have tried are all pretty good!

Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake

Ingredients:
140g/5 oz. fine granulated sugar
6 egg whites
6 egg yolks
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
50g/2 oz. butter
250g/9 oz. cream cheese
100 ml/3 fluid oz. fresh milk
1 tbsp. lemon juice
60g/2 oz. cake flour /superfine flour
20g/1 oz. cornflour (cornstarch)
1/4 tsp. salt

Instructions:
1. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. Cool the mixture. Fold in the flour, the cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well.

2. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Add in the sugar and whisk until soft peaks form.

3. Add the cheese mixture to the egg white mixture and mix well. Pour into a 8-inch round cake pan (Lightly grease and line the bottom and sides of the pan with greaseproof baking paper or parchment paper).

4. Bake cheesecake in a water bath for 1 hours 10 minutes or until set and golden brown at 160 degrees C (325 degrees F).

Makes 1 (8-inch) cheesecake, 12 servings.

Matcha Roll Cake

I love drinking matcha so i thought i'd try desserts with it. Its awesome!

Ingredients:

¾ C cake flour
1 T plus 1 tsp matcha powder
¾ tsp baking powder
4 eggs, separated
¾ C sugar
2 -3 T milk

Filling: beat 2 C heavy cream until almost stiff, add 1 - 2 T sugar


Pre-heat oven to 400°F
Sift together flour, matcha, and baking powder 3 times, set aside.
In a clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff but not dry, set aside.
In another bowl beat egg yolks until very light. Add sugar gradually and beat until light. Add flour mixture, stir on low speed. Add 2 T milk, continue stirring until mixed.
Fold in beaten egg whites.
Spread mixture on a parchment paper-lined jelly roll pan. Bake for 8 minutes. Trim edges.

Using paper as guide, roll cake from short side, leave on a rack to cool completely.

Unroll cake, spread the whipped cream. Re-roll cake, peeling paper as you roll. Refrigerate for 2 hours before slicing.Jelly roll cake recipes usually say to transfer the cake on a towel sprinkled with powdered sugar. It is not really necessary and the powdered sugar will make the outside of the cake whitish and of course add to the sweetness. The paper is better because it will remove the brownish surface layer of the cake and the result is a cleaner, prettier cake.

Of course by the appearance you can tell i didn't do the last part and i left the brownish side on the outside. I should try to peel it off next time.