Raw Chocolate Walnut Ice Cream

I had a dinner party at my apartment last weekend. It was quite challenging with all the food restrictions of my guests. Here's the list:

• Diner #1 does not eat beef.


• Diner #2 does not eat pork.


• Diner #3 is lactose intolerant and cannot eat spicy food.


• Diner #4 eats nothing a.k.a he's vegan and he doesn't eat sugar.


• Diner #5 - #10 eats all the things diners number #1 - #4 do not eat and more. This is a blessing - not restriction.

Here's the menu:

• 2 loaves of no-knead bread


• Homemade hummus


• Petite Basque and Humboldt Fog cheese (two of my favorites)


• Raw beet and apple salad


• Vegan green curry with butternut squash and green beans


• Very very mild chicken massaman curry


• Brown rice


• Sour cream apple pie


• Raw chocolate walnut ice cream

This way everybody can have some appetizer, main food and dessert.



My diner friend #4 suggested that I tried this raw ice cream recipe. It was quite amazing and extremely simple to make. You basically blend raw walnuts with water, liquid sweetener and cocoa powder and some flavoring. Then let the ice cream maker do the work. The only down size is that I couldn't blend the nuts into completely smooth velvety texture. Well, maybe that's not a bad thing. It's textured ice cream. The raw walnuts didn't leave any taste. All you could feel was a nice sweet chocolate nuttiness.

I adapted the recipe a bit to this:

• 2 cups raw walnuts


• 2 cups water


• 1/2 cup Agave nectar


• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 3/4 cup cocoa

Plantain Peanut Bread

I'm slowly getting over my not-so-great baking experience two weekends ago. I even felt adventurous and tried something new. Well, not really. I substituted plantains for bananas and peanuts for walnuts in this banana bread recipe. To reduce the risk, I baked half a recipe in two small remekins.



Why all these substitutions? The same reasons as everybody else'. I had these ingredients and not the one listed in the original recipe. And these said ingredients needed to be consumed ASAP or they would have been wasted.

The bread came out not bad at all. The plantain gave it sort of banana flavor but more on the nutty side. And peanuts - you know - are awesome whenever and wherever.



Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter (1 oz.) - melted


• 2 generous tablespoons brown sugar (1 oz.)


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 1 generous tablespoon honey (1 oz.)


• 1 large ripe plantain


• 1 egg


• A pinch of salt


• 1 cup whole wheat flour (4 1/2 oz.)


• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/4 cup peanuts (1 oz.)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.


2. In a clean bowl, whisk melted butter and brown sugar together. Add vanilla extract, honey, plantain and egg. Whisk until combined and the plantain breaks down into tiny pieces.


3. Add flour, salt and baking soda. Stir until just combined. Fold in peanuts.


4. Divide the batter into two remekins. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. It's delicious warm and even tastier cold the next day.

White Chocolate Pistachio Cupcakes

Warning: These cupcakes look poisonous after a day in the refrigerator.

Lesson learned #1: Let chopped nuts get in contact with frosting only shortly before serving unless you like munching on soggy nuts.

Lesson learned #2: Wet chopped pistachios look like mold.

Lesson learned #3: Too small eggs make dry cupcakes.

Lesson learned #4: My friends are so sweet they finished all these dry, moldy looking, soggy-nuts topping cupcakes without any complaint.



I got a request for some cupcakes with white chocolate and pistachio for a birthday party this past weekend - from the birthday girl herself. Although I'm not a fan of both white chocolate and pistachio, I agreed. I made vanilla cupcakes topped with white chocolate cream cheese frosting and dipped in chopped salted roasted pistachios.



Sounds good, no? Except things went wrong somewhere in the process and I learned four valuable lessons.

Honey Nut Granola

I had two staples breakfast during my trip in Mexico: scrambled eggs with tortillas and beans, or granola with fresh fruit and yogurt. Here's how they served me the yogurt-granola-fruit combo: HUGE bowl of delicious fresh fruit (all kinds of fruit including pineapple and watermelon...), a tablespoon of yogurt, and about a teaspoon of granola sprinkled on top.

I guess that's a good and healthy way to eat. But I couldn't help missing a big bowl of granola with tons of yogurt and three pieces of fruit. So the first thing I baked when I got to my kitchen was this:



This granola is different from what I usually make as it contains a lot more nuts and is sweetened by honey. The result is super crunchy and slightly sweeter granola.

Ingredients

• 4 cups rolled oats


• 1/2 cup oat bran


• 1/4 cup ground flax seeds


• 1 cup sliced almonds


• 1 cup chopped pecans


• 1/2 cup honey


• 1/3 cup light tasting olive oil


• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Adjust the oven racks to the upper 3rd and lower 3rd of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.


2. In a large bowl, combine oats, bran, flax, and nuts together.


3. In a small bowl, whisk honey, oil and vanilla together. Pour into the dry ingredients. Stir until everything is wet.


4. Distribute evenly on 2 greased or non-stick baking sheets (I used silicone mats) and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Stir and rotate pans after 5 minutes.


5. Let cool completely and store in air-tight containers.

Chocolate Cupcakes - Three Ways

I wanted to bring chocolate cupcakes to a party. But how would I make it exciting and special? I put chilies in them. I frosted them with green tea frosting. I frosted them with pink butter cream and peanut butter. I even baked them with beer. I was running out of ideas. Almost.


Chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting

I made my killer chocolate cupcakes from my favorite cupcakes recipe. Frosted them with my favorite cream cheese frosting. (Recipe below.)


Chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting and chopped pistachios

Then dipped them in chopped pistachios. I did this before with the chocolate green tea cupcakes with great success. And this time, they are still awesome.


Chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting and chopped hazelnuts

And to up myself a little, I also dipped some in chopped toasted hazelnuts. I personally don't like hazelnuts. But people went crazy for these.

Ingredients - make 30 cupcakes

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour


• 1/2 cup cocoa powder


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1 teaspoon baking soda


• 1 teaspoon baking powder


• 2 sticks butter - room temperature


• 2 cups sugar


• 4 large eggs


• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract


• 1 cup buttermilk

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two muffin pans with liners.


2. With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy - about 2 to 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beat well after each addition. Add vanilla extract. Scrape the bowl if needed.


3. In a clean bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder together. Sift a third into the wet ingredients. Stir. Add 1/3 cup of buttermilk. Repeat until all the ingredients are combined.


4. Drop by tablespoon onto the prepare pan. Take care to fill up to only half as the cupcakes will rise. Bake for 20 to 23 minutes. Rotate and switch shelf half way during the baking time (if you bake two pans at the same time.)

Cream cheese frosting
When the cupcakes are completely cool, with an electric mixer with wire attachment, beat 1 stick of room-temperature butter with a package of 8oz. cream cheese and a cup of confectioner sugar until fluffy - about 3 to 4 minutes. Scrape the bowl a couple of times.

Wholewheat Walnut Bread

Success! I thought "oven spring" was a myth. Something that I could never achieve in my home oven. Time and time again that I slashed my bread before going into the oven, the bread came out without expanding, blooming slash marks like bakery bread.

But look!



Ha ha! That was the most beautiful and delicious loaf of bread I have ever baked. My heart filled with joy as if I just gave birth to a beautiful perfect baby. Not that I have ever given birth or that I would ever eat my baby.


Closeup!

Here's what was different: I invested in a cast iron dutch oven. Preheated it in a 450 degrees oven for 40 minutes. Baked the bread with its cover for the first 30 minutes in 400 degrees oven (yes - the plastic knob broke.)



I used Peter Reinhart's wholewheat sandwich bread formula with wild yeast starter plus 6 oz of walnuts added during kneading before the first proofing. Anybody who wants to bake perfect 100% wholewheat bread, please get this book.

PS. My two subsequent attempts failed to repeat the blooming. Hmmmmph.... Knead harder.

Cranberry Walnut Wholewheat Bread

My quest for the perfect cranberry/raisin walnut bread made with 100% whole wheat flour stops here. This is the one. I adapted the recipe from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor. The bread was extraordinary. It was soft and light. The wild yeast starter gave it wonderful complex taste.



It took a while to prepare for this bread. But it was well worth it. First, I cultivated yeast from the air with whole wheat flour and pineapple juice. That took about two weeks. I keep my yeast pet in the refrigerator and feed it every other week if I don't bake any bread. The night before baking the bread, I prepared a soaker and a mother starter. The soaker was basically soaking whole wheat flour in milk/water with dry fruit and a little bit of salt. Mother starter was kneading flour and water to the wild yeast starter and letting it rise.



Then on the baking day, all were combined with more flour and nuts. There were kneading, first rise, shaping, second rise, preparing the oven and finally baking. This sounds complicated but it's not. It just requires planning ahead and a little bit of patience.

Anybody who wants a perfect 100% whole wheat bread, please please get this book. It explains the science and everything bread fantastically. And the pictures are beautiful. I first borrowed a copy from The New York Public Library. But I used it so much during the three weeks that I had it that I bought my own.

Walnut and Date Granola

I don't know why I don't make this all the time. It's so good and good for me. Maybe because I won't make/eat other food while I have this around the house. It's great with fresh fruit and yogurt, with soy milk for breakfast (and sometimes lunch and dinner) or just on it's own when I want something crunchy to chew.



Ingredients

• 3 cups old fashioned oats


• 1/3 cup oat bran


• 1/3 cup wheat germ or ground flax seed


• 1 cup walnuts - chopped


• 2 tablespoons light tasting olive oil


• 1/4 cup apple sauce


• 1/4 cup brown sugar


• 1 cup dates - each cut horizontally into 4 pieces


• About 1/4 cup honey

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.


2. In a large bowl, stir oats, bran, wheat germ and walnuts together.


3. In a small bowl, whisk oil, apple sauce and brown sugar. Pour over the dry ingredients and mix.


4. Distribute evenly in a greased or non-stick baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Stir. And bake for 10 more minutes or until golden.


5. Stir in dates. Drizzle honey over the granola. Stir. Let cool completely and store in air-tight container.

Mexican Chocolate and Pecan Biscotti

What made these Mexican rather than just cinnamon chocolate biscotti? They are made from Mexican Chocolate (it said so on the package) given to me by my Mexican friend. There... double Mexican-ness.



This was my first batch of biscotti. They turned out good. They are great and relatively guilt-free chocolate fix. I almost chipped my tooth biting into one... which was good I guess. Because I learned not to eat too fast.

What more exciting is that I just discovered a new realm of baking. There are infinite possibility with this. So many flavor combination I can try. So many recipes I can experiment!



For this one I used this recipe from DavidLebovitz.com with a few substitutions. Chopped Mexican chocolate for chocolate chips and pecans for almonds.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Green Tea Pistachio Frosting

I missed making cupcakes. I don't remember the last time I made them. Something about repetitive motion of frosting and decorating cupcakes is meditative and calming. I have been thinking about this combination - chocolate, green tea and pistachio - for a while. How decadent would that be? Finally, I have an occasion/excuse - a birthday party.



I followed old fashioned chocolate cupcake recipe from Cupcake Bakeshop. I had some trouble with overflowing cupcakes in the oven but these cupcakes are the best chocolate cakes I have ever tasted - although not the pretties. They are light and fluffy with the most delicious crumbs and intense chocolate flavor.



After the cupcakes cooled, I whipped up green tea cream cheese frosting. My apartment is so cold this winter that even when I left butter and cream cheese out for hours, they are still hard. So whipping them took a bit of time.

Green Tea Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 8oz package cream cheese


• 1 stick butter


• 1 1/2 cups confectioner sugar


• 3 teaspoons Matcha powder


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Right after frosting the cupcakes, I dipped them in a bowl of chopped raw pistachios... I think I will be the most popular guest at the party tomorrow.

Walnut Cranberry Raisin Bread

My stock pot is awesome. Not only that it doubles as a wok, it can also bake bread! No-knead bread that is. This bread is so easy to make even I didn't mess it up. It came out crusty, dense and full of flavor. It tastes just like professional bread I buy at the farmer's market. No more spending $5 a loaf for me!



Original recipe is from King Arthur Flour. I increase the amount of whole wheat flour to 2 cups and water to 2 1/4 cups because I felt like my dough wasn't wet enough.



I can't believe baking bread can be this easy. So basically you stir all the ingredients together. Cover and leave for at least 8 hours. Ball the dough and move to a greased pot. Let rise for 2 more hours. Cover and bake.

Note to self: don't forget to grease and flour the pot with corn meal. The first time I tried this recipe I forgot just that. The the bread was stuck to the pot. Stuck so bad that I ate the entire loaf of bread (over a few days) out of the pot...

Wholewheat Walnut Raisin Bread

There's this bread from Fort Greene farmer's market that I love. Whenever I see it, I have to buy a loaf. And I would finish the whole thing in two days by myself. It's wholewheat walnut raisin bread. It's with hard crust and big holes in side. And It's filled with sweet golden raisins.

So I wanted to try baking it at home. Maybe I could stop paying $5 for a loaf of bread.

Here's the result.



I followed this recipe from KingArthurFlour.com. I just used normal wholewheat flour with 3/4 cup of golden raisins and 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts. My bread was tasty but a little on a dry side. It didn't have big holes like the original version. I love it anyway. Maybe I just love eating bread in general - especially the ones I knead with my own hands.

Pistachio Shortbread Cookies

Happy thanksgiving! And here's a recipe that's completely irrelevant to the turkey day. These cookies are probably the best nut cookies I have ever had ever ever. They are delicate, crunchy, buttery and all the good things that cookies should be. Most of all, the dough is prepared in one bowl (food processor bowl.)



Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour


• 1/2 cup sugar


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 3/4 cup raw shelled pistachios


• 1 cup (2 sticks) chilled butter

Directions

1. Combine flour, sugar, salt and nuts in a food processor and run for a few minutes until all the nuts are chopped.


2. Cut butter into cubes and add to the mixture. Pulse until butter is cut into the dough and the mixture is crumbly.


3. Gather into 2 balls. Flatten slightly. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.


4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Adjust the oven racks to the lower third and the upper third. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.


5. Roll out the refrigerated dough to 1/4 inch thick on floured surface. (I covered the dough with plastic wrap and ran rolling pin over it to prevent sticking.) Cut out with cookie cutter. I got 55 cookies.


6. Bake for 12 minutes. Switch the cookie sheet position half way. Leave the cookies on the cookie sheets for a minute before transferring to cooling racks. Let cool completely and store in air tight container.

Mini Sweet Potato Pecan Pies

We had a Thanksgiving party at the office today. Each of us brought food to share. I brought this. This is the first sweet potato pie I have ever made and it came out great! Everybody at the office loved it. Rebecca even said that these mini pies won the tastiest award of the day - although she always said she loved my food whenever I gave her anything to eat, it was still flattering.



I got the recipe from Simply Recipe - my favourite food blog. I baked mine in muffin pans and got 16 mini pies. I figured they would be easier to carry and if there were leftover, they wouldn't look like leftover. I could give them to my friends after work. It's just that there were only crumbs left by the end of the first hour.

I used 3 frozen pie crusts from the supermarket, divided and pressed into greased muffin pans. The pies baked for about 20 to 22 minutes at 375 degrees in my oven. And because I made mini pies, I chopped all the pecans instead of just half so that I can drop them easily.

I need to find excuses to make more of these. They are delicious... Maybe I'll start baking mini pies for birthday parties instead of cupcakes.

Coffee Chocolate Chip and Hazelnut Cookies

I'm moving up in the baking world. I got a cookbook! It's called "Cookies -- simple and delicious easy-to-make recipes." I found it in the second-hand bookstore on the way home from work. This recipe was rated very easy (out of easy, very, and extremely easy.) I reduced butter and sugar, used ground flax instead of bran, instant espresso powder instead of brewed coffee - and I got these....



Ingredients

• 1 stick butter


• 1/2 cup brown sugar


• 1 egg


• 1 tablespoon instant espresso powder


• 1/2 cup all purpose flour


• 1/2 cup wholewheat flour


• 1 tablespoon ground flax seed


• 2 cups oatmeal


• 1 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips


• 1 cup coarsely chopped hazelnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.


2. With electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg. Add coffee. Beat until well blended.


3. In a separate bowl, whisk all purpose flour, wholewheat flour, ground fax, oatmeal, baking soda and salt together.


4. Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Fold in chocolate chips and hazelnuts.


5. Roll the batter into balls, place them on the prepared cookie sheets. Flatten them with the palm of hand. Bake for 15-18 minutes. I baked mine for about 20 because I like my cookies crunchy. I got 32 cookies.

This is the first time I used hazelnuts. They have very strong nutty smell - kind of competing with coffee/chocolate. The cookies came out nice - not too sweet and very very crunchy. I think I left the nuts too chunky. Will pay more attention chopping then the next time.