Banana Cinnamon Muffin

Now that I feel a leeeetle bit healthier. I need to bake. These very very brown bananas need to be baked. So I looked for banana muffin recipes and decided to bake these Banana Crumb Muffins from AllRecipes.com. According to all kinds of reviews on the site - these muffins are supposedly amazing. The problem is that - of course - I altered the recipe. I also misread the recipe - putting 1/8 cup of cinnamon in the crumb part instead of 1/8 teaspoon..... :P My goddamn oven also heat to 400 degrees when I set it to 375 degrees....

So here I have banana cinnamon muffins... that look almost inedible...



Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour


• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour


• 1/4 cup oat bran


• 1 teaspoon baking powder


• 1 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/2 cup sugar


• 1/3 cup vegetable oil


• 1 egg


• 3 bananas - mashed


• 1/3 cup brown sugar


• 2 tablespoon cinnamon - ummm supposed to use only 1/8 teaspoon


• 2 tablespoon all purpose flour


• 2 tablespoon butter - supposed to be 1 tablespoon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line muffin pan with 9 muffin liners.


2. combine all purpose flour, whole wheat flour, oat bran, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a large bowl.


3. Beat oil, egg and banana together in a small bowl until well combined.


4. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined.


5. Drop the batter into muffin pan.


6. In a clean small bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon and all purpose flour. Cut in butter. Crumble by hands. Sprinkle on top of muffin batter.


7. Bake for 20 minutes.

I'll see tomorrow how they come out....

Jewish Grandma's Chicken Soup

I stayed home last night not because I wanted to bake but I was sick. Had terrible sore throat and things coming out of my nose. Was weak and tired all the time. So this soup I didn't make since I'm neither Jewish nor a grandma.

I just ate it. And I think it worked. I woke up in the morning with the sore throat gone - still things coming out of my nose - still tired - but not as bad as the day before.



Ingredients
(from what I remember seeing)
About 1 pound chicken
1 large onion
2 potatoes
1 sweet potato
1 butter nut squash
2 zucchinis
2 carrots
1 celery root
1 bunch of parsley
salt and pepper
water
.... oh and 4 chillis....



Directions
In the biggest pot you have, cook chicken in boiling water. Spoon out the brown bubbly thing on top. Clean the roots and vegetables. Halve or at most quarter everything (I don't think they were even peeled) except parsley. Throw them in the pot. Season with salt and pepper. Cook in medium heat for about an hour until everything melted. Lay the whole bunch of parsley (uncut) on top of the soup. Cook a few minutes more and serve.


Jewish Grandma.

Fresh Fruit Anyone?

My brother said that my blog is not very healthy. So he's starting a blog that will hopefully inspire me to eat healthier. (He said every time he saw me I got bigger and bigger.... ~~~~>_<~~~~)

It's called Fresh Fruit a Day. He's taking advantage of the fact that he lives in Thailand where fruits are abundant.

Now - let's see when he will run out of fruits!!!!

muaaahahahahaha

~ evil sister ~

Vanilla Cupcakes with Godiva Liqueur Chocolate Butter Cream

I'm bringing these to a party. I was thinking about chai tea cupcakes. I tried a recipe I found on the web last week but they didn't come out that well. They tasted more like muffin - a little too dense - maybe because it's vegan recipe.

So I'm just going to make simple vanilla cupcakes - using my favorite recipe from Cupcake Bake Shop blog with a slight modification. I have Godiva Liqueur left from a few years back. That will go on the frosting.



Ingredients

Cake
2 sticks butter - room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk

Frosting
1 stick butter - room temperature
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cups cocoa powder
3 cups confectioner sugar
1/2 cup Godiva Liqueur

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pan with liners.


2. Beat butter and sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Add vanilla extract.


3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.


4. Alternately stir in the dry ingredients and buttermilk into the other bowl. Stir until well combined.


5. Drop by tablespoonful into lined muffin pan. Bake for 22 minutes. Made 28 cupcakes. Let cool.


6. Make frosting. Beat all the frosting ingredients together at medium speed until smooth. (I'm supposed to sift sugar and cocoa powder but I'm too lazy.)


7. Put about teaspoonful of frosting on the top of each cupcake and frost...

This is not good. I mean the cupcakes came out good. I just can't stop licking the frosting. Anyway, I need to brush my teeth and go too sleep. It's late.

Strawberry Cream Cake

This cake is what started it all. I had never baked in my entire life. One day I saw a blog post with beautiful pictures of the cake on Simply Recipes. I asked everybody I knew if they could bake me one and of course everybody refused to make me the cake... ~~~~>_<~~~~

A week later - there was a sale on Amazon.com for Kitchen Aid mixers. I bought one, started baking and started a blog.

Now that I moved - physically from Tribeca to Brooklyn Heights and virtually from LiveJournal to Blogger - this cake deserves to be in my new space.



Ingredients
2 pounds strawberries
4 tablespoons sugar

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
5 eggs (3 whites + 3 yokes + 2 whole)
6 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 package cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

Directions
1. Prepare the strawberries. Pick the best looking 24 strawberries and half them. Chop the rest and let sit in 4 tablespoons of sugar.
2. Bake the cake. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease 9 inch springform pan. Combine flour, baking powder and 3/4 cup of sugar in a bowl. Whisk 3 yokes, 2 eggs, melted butter, water and vanilla in a small bowl. Combine the two bowls and whisk until well combined.
3. With electric mixer, beat egg whites at medium speed until fluffy. Slowly add the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar. Fold fluffed egg whites into batter. Keep folding gently until the texture is smooth.
4. Pour batter into the pan and bake for 38 minutes. Let the cake cool.
5. Prepare whipped cream. Beat cream cheese, vanilla, sugar and salt with cleaned electric mixer until fluffy. Add heavy cream. Whip until the mixture is stiff.



6. Assemble the cake. Cut the cooled cake into 3 layers. Line the edges of the bottom layers with halved strawberries. Fill the center with chopped strawberries soaked in sugar. Pile a third of whipped cream on top. Repeat with the second layer. Put the top layer of cake on top. Pile on the rest of whipped cream and decorate with the rest of strawberries. Keep chill until ready to serve.

I love this cake. It's pretty to look at, light and fluffy - has lots of fresh strawberries.

Choo Chee Gung (Shrimp)

What's Choo Chee? It's basically red curry - only cooked in higher heat until the curry gets bubbly hot - so hot that it makes "chooooo cheeeee" noises.

The thing with coconut milk is that when it's boiling hot - fat gets separated from the rest of the liquid (that's was left after water evaporated.) This makes the curry so thick that it can be use as a sauce or dressing over meat (usually seafood) or vegetables cooked separately.



Ingredients
2 pounds large shrimp (cleaned and butterfly)

3 tablespoon red curry paste
1 1/2 cans coconut milk
5 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
5 shallots (finely chopped)
2 stalks lemongrass (finely chopped - use only bottom half)
1 inch galangal (finely chopped)
1 inch ginger (finely chopped)
1 teaspoon ground red pepper
1 tablespoon brown sugar
fish sauce to taste
15 lime leaves (chopped)

1 pound string bean (blanched)
1 pound collard green (blanched - I used leaves for the Miang Kum and saved the top part for this dish)


Chopped spices for the curry

Directions
1. Heat up coconut milk in a thick bottom pan on medium high heat. Add curry paste and all the chopped spices except lime leaves. Stir until fragrant and the curry is bubbly hot and thick. Add sugar, red pepper and fish sauce to taste. The curry should be thick and spicy with a bit of sweet hint.
2. Throw in shrimp. Cook for a few minutes. Turn of the heat. Sprinkle chopped lime leaves on top. Don't over cook the shrimp.
3. Serve over steamed rice and blanched vegetables.

I made this and 3 cups of rice to serve 6 people (after we had Miang Kum as appetizer. We had a bit of leftover but I finished it the same night after everybody left.... (ummm... would what I ate be called leftover? since I finished it the same night?) The curry over rice was still really good even when it's cold...

Banana Blueberry Muffins

These muffins don't look pretty - they didn't dome like normal muffin recipes - and they are supposed to be healthy - the original recipe at Epicurious.com calls them Healthy Blueberry and Banana Muffins. They turned out not bad. Very moist - not too sweet - not too rubbery like the usual low-fat recipes. Plus I don't feel too guilty eating them because they are "healthy"....



Ingredients
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup wholewheat flour
1/4 cup oat bran
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 mashed ripe bananas
1/2 cup soy milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used olive oil to increase its health factor - maybe this is why the muffins sink?)
1 egg
1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries - defrosted
zest and juice from 1 lemon

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line muffin pan with liners.
1. Whisk dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. Mix bananas, soy milk, oil, egg and lemon together in a separate bowl.
3. Stir the second bowl into the first. Fold in blueberries.
4. Bake for 20 minutes and let cool.

Black and White Banana Bread

This banana bread is awesome. I whipped it up - stuck it into the oven - went out to dinner - came back to this wonderful smell of baked banana and cocoa and perfectly baked cake/bread. I would name this recipe out-for-dinner-marble-banana-bread.



Got recipe from Culinary in the Desert. Just didn't put nutmeg because I don't like nutmeg. Didn't put lemon zest and juice because I was too lazy to grate a lemon.... I was going to just pour the batter half and half and let them mix because I was too lazy to spoon. Fortunately, my wonderful neighbor (also my dinner companion that night) didn't let me and helped me spoon the batter into baking pan. She's the only reason the cake came out wonderfully marble-y...

Miang-Kum

This thing is super easy to prepare - no cooking required (well - I cheated a little - explanation below.) But what is this thing - Miang Kum? Kum means a bite in Thai. Miang is food that requires chewing - a lot of chewing - before swallowing and/or spitting out.

So here's Miang Kum - except that it's not in Kum yet. We need to assemble it to make it into a bit size treat. It's real simple. You just drop whatever you want to eat (basically everything) onto a leaf. Wrap it up - drop it in your mouth - start chewing - and wait for this wonderful combination of flavors to burst in your mouth. I can't explain how this work. How simple ingredients - uncooked - put together very simply - can produce such delicious treats... You have to try it for yourself.



Ingredients
Any green leaves - I use collard green - we normally use this heart-shaped green leaves which I don't know how they are called in English but I can't find them here in NY.
Diced lime
Diced shallots
Diced ginger
Chopped chilies
Roasted grated coconut
Roasted peanuts
Small dried shrimp
Miang Kum Sauce - I attempted to make this sauce a few years ago. It came out really good but my apartment and all my clothes smelled like dead rabbit for about 2 weeks. So this time around, I went to a Thai grocery store in Chinatown - asked for a sauce for Miang Kum. The store keeper said they didn't have it but I could use Nam Pla Wan - meaning sweetened fish sauce which we use as a dipping sauce for sour fruits like raw mangoes - instead. I bought a can of that for $2.50 and my apartment smells like roses today.

Directions
Clean, chop, dice, roast the ingredients up. Put them in serving containers and serve!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

The original recipe at Smitten Kitchen calls it Lighter-Than-Air Chocolate Cake. I must have done something wrong. Mine came out not that light - a bit hard even. Nonetheless, the cake tasted good.



This is the first time I baked a cake without flour, baking soda/baking powder, butter/oil. This sounds healthy - although I used a dozen eggs and almost 2 cups of sugar....

My new neighbor Ellen brought over Grand Marnier for the whipped cream. Whoa - the thing tastes goooood..... I might need to buy a bottle on my next trip to duty free shops just to make whipped cream.