When life gives you Meyer lemons..

I love citrus. Especially the more tangy and bitter kinds, i.e. grapefruits and pomelo. Meyer lemons are in a class of their own; a cross between lemon & mandarin oranges, they are sweeter than a lemon with a floral fragrance which give them such a unique taste. 

'Tis the season.. My favorite way to use Meyer lemons is a simple lemon bar with a shortbread crust. Low on time yesterday -- I searched for a fast and easy recipe to use these heavenly fruits in, and I came across this one for muffins. It uses the entire lemon: rind, pith, pulp and juice, which really intrigued me so I had to make them! I actually ran out of sugar so I wasn't able to put the cinnamon sugar sprinkling on top of these and I probably only was able to add 3/4 cup instead of the 1 cup required from the recipe. Consequently, my muffins weren't super sweet, but I think I prefer it that way. I also filled my cupcake liners pretty full so I ended up with 12 larger muffins rather than 18. The Meyer lemon flavor definitely shown through and permeated the whole muffin. There is NO substitute for a Meyer lemon, so go out get yourself some.. your tastebuds will thank you.

before baking: as you can see, the batter was kind of on the runny side
these only took 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven

the finished product!

HOW CUTE IS THIS?!??

-J

"Twice cooked"

 [note: last post before finals crunch time starts.. foresee a lot of baking after those are done :)] Soooo, I've been kind of obsessed with ginger and molasses lately.. the gingerbread loaf from Starbucks is a-m-a-z-i-n-g! If you haven't tried it you MUST. It's really sad that they don't serve that year-round. (the cream cheese frosting is also awesome.)

I've been looking for ways to use the molasses that was leftover from making those gingersnaps, and I was going to a friend's house for dinner so I wanted to bring something.. I stumbled across this gingerbread biscotti recipe, which was adapted from the Joy of Baking recipe. And thus, I decided to make biscotti for the first time. It seemed like an extremely simple recipe and I didn't even have all the ingredients -- I left out the oats and added a cup of mini chocolate chips. I also added about a tbsp of freshly grated ginger, which probably made them a little more on the chewy side. These were such a hit, I couldn't believe how much everybody liked them! They were nice and hard to the touch but were, at the same time, moist and a bit chewy. Who knew that biscotti were easier to make than cookies?! I'm definitely going to make these again, maybe adding some dried cranberries next time.

This was after baking the 2 loaves.. the dough was extremely sticky so it was pretty difficult to shape into anything. Also in the photos from the recipe I used their loaves were long & skinny.. the way I did mine was basically as you see in this photo; they did not really spread out too much.

I cut really huge biscotti apparently

laid out for the 2nd baking

flipped to bake the last side

the end pieces hehe

finished product!

-J

Thanksgiving is the best holiday

I have celebrated Thanksgiving with one of my closest friends for the past 5 years. This year it was at her parent's house so we didn't do the majority of cooking like we've done in the past while away at college. We did learn how to make her mother's delicious oyster dressing that there are never any leftovers of and we made our pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. 

see those whole oysters in there??? there is nothing that tastes like this in the world.

the spread

my beauteous plate.

Pumpkin Cheesecake with gingersnap crust and cinnamon-maple whipped cream :)

Since there weren't any leftovers from the oyster dressing, we decided that we wanted more and this time we helped make it.. which means, I know how to make this now and I can have it more than just once every year. I documented the cooking process and was glad to discover that this really was not too difficult to make. I think the key is just getting the seasonings right and having good quality oysters. The adapted recipe comes from Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen cookbook, which I learned that any pepper listed in ingredients needs to be halved or else it is too spicy. Her mom didn't follow the recipe in the book exactly, so that is what I'm going to show in the following steps:

"Holy trinity" of diced green bell pepper (4 cups), onions (4 cups) and celery (5 cups)... plus some garlic (half a head) and 1/4 cup green onions.
Sautee with 5 tbsp butter over medium heat until softened and a little browned. It's always amazing how much the volume of veggies shrinks after 15 minutes of cooking.

The spice mixture: 2 tsp salt, 2 tsp garlic powder, 1-2 tsp cayenne pepper, 2 tsp sweet paprika, 2 tsp black pepper, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp dried oregano leaves, 1 tsp dried thyme leaves
We sprinkled these seasonings into the sauteed veggies gradually as they browned.

getting there...

Then you pour the liquid of the oysters into the pan. We also poured half of the oysters in the pan and broke them up with the spatula.  Added a couple dried bay leaves too.

Beautiful oysters!
For this recipe you really need to buy fresh oysters that come shucked already like this so all the liquids are also there. I know that they sell oysters like this at Whole Foods Market but these were specially brought from out-of-state by my friend's grandfather.

Then we added a mixture of regular unseasoned bread crumbs and panko bread crumbs to dry up the excess moisture. We ball-parked it but it should be about 1 cup. You can also use homemade bread crumbs! Obviously throughout the cooking process you should be tasting everything to make sure the seasoning is how you like it.

Finally, pour into a buttered casserole dish.

Put the rest of the oysters in and just make sure they are mostly covered by the dressing mixture.

Sprinkle some bread crumbs on top and then bake it in the oven for about 1 hour at 350 degrees. I think you can also make this the night before and just stick it in the oven the next day when the feast is.

The finished product. This might not look like much but there is so much flavor in here; I could seriously eat this whole pan by myself.

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving and ate themselves into food coma like I did! It really is the best holiday as long as you plan ahead to avoid stressful times in the kitchen :)

-J

Why so snappy?

Since I recently discovered my affinity for gingersnap cookies, I sought to make them for myself. I haven't baked in a really long time and never have I ever used molasses before. Looking through a couple different recipes, the biggest discrepancy I saw was whether to use ground ginger or freshly grated ginger. So I found 2 different recipes that were seemingly similar and made half batches of each. The recipe using fresh ginger involved less butter and the recipe using ground ginger involved more spices (one of which I didn't even have).

left--fresh ginger, right--ground ginger

 To say the least, the resulting cookies could not be more different! Taste-wise, the fresh ginger cookie is more moist and has nice kick to it. It is also sweeter. The ground ginger cookie is much spicier. Also I am assuming that the added moisture from the fresh ginger made the batter a lot softer and that led to the cookies flattening out a lot more than the ground ginger ones. There wasn't too much different about the wet ingredients between the 2 recipes other than the fresh ginger one involving 2 tbsp less butter. Is that really enough to affect the texture of the cookie? The other difference was the timing of adding the spices, one added it into the dry mixture and the other added it to the wet.

Before mixing the dry & wet ingredients together: left is ground ginger (hehe you can see the spices in sifted flour), right is fresh ginger

ground ginger cookie dough

fresh ginger cookie dough -- so soft I had to refrigerate it for about 2 hours before I could roll it into balls

Before & After on the cookie sheet

On my makeshift cooling rack (which is just one of our extra oven racks haha) -- I really should invest in a cookie dough scoop so my cookies are more uniform in size. I tend to get impatient by the end and start rolling larger balls of dough to get through with it!

By the time these finished, the sun had set, so the lighting of this photo is artificial.
Also, notice the blobs these cookies turned out as. I did not foresee them to flatten and spread out as much as they did since the last batch had no problems of that kind.

 The conclusion is that I think that I prefer the fresh ginger one for its texture and in future creations I'm going to try a combination of fresh and ground ginger to envelope all these layers of flavor into the cookie. Up next.. pumpkin snickerdoodles anybody?


-J

October has come and gone..

Beer choices for the month. I love the fall seasonal beers. So. Good.

So, I had a craving for some pumpkin cheesecake and ended up making it with this recipe at my friend's house--SQUARE CHEESECAKE! I only had my camera phone to use to take these pics (sorry for the blurriness), but as you can see we didn't have a circular spring-form pan on hand so we ended up using a square pan that had a bottom you could push up. It was a bit more difficult to use, but I think it came out pretty well considering our last minute preparations and the fact that it was the first time either of us have made a cheesecake from scratch. I did leave the egg yolk out and eyeballed the spices (I love nutmeg so I probably put a little more of that in there than the recipe called for). I think the gingersnap crust really made this cheesecake wonderful and it wasn't too heavy like most cheesecakes are. It was kind of more like a mousse texture; we did eat it about an hour after letting it cool so I'm wondering how it would be if it had been refrigerated overnight. Oh! we also served this with some freshly whipped cream that had vanilla extract in it and we sweetened it with maple syrup instead of sugar. We are definitely considering making this again for Thanksgiving. It was truly a very simple recipe, especially with the aid of a food processor to make the crust and a stand mixer to mix the other ingredients together.

And then.. there are some things I have been loving this month -- recently acquired things.

New Shoes! Got these from Nordstrom Rack. I thought they were so cute -- I have been wanting some nude-colored shoes for a while now. I love the thick chunky heel on these.

Got another candle from Bath & Body Works..
this has such a refreshing smell  -- definitely brightens any day, being stuck indoors recently because of never-ending rain!

Coach Poppy Flower perfume. Being someone who never wears perfume, this one really caught my attention. I smelled it one day and for the rest of the week, I couldn't stop thinking about it so I had to go back an buy it. It is a definitely very light girly scent, a great combination of floral & fruity. It makes me feel very happy wearing it.

This Madison wristlet is so nice to have on hand. I love the bold red color and the soft material it is made of.  It is the perfect size to use as a clutch on a night out. It has a lot of pockets inside with compartments to put your ID/credit cards so there is no need to use a wallet in there. I've also been able to fit a small point-and-shoot camera, cell phone & car keys in here with no problem.

Fun & easy nail design I wore to a masquerade ball.
Zoya Helen is the nude color and OPI You Make Me Vroom is the red.

Masquerade! BOO!
I love Halloween particularly because you get to dress up. so much fun.

!HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Hope you all had a great Halloween despite the crazy weather Mother Nature has given us this weekend all over the country.

Halloween nails inspired by this.
The orange underneath the design is Hi Def from Sephora by OPI, and I used the Kiss Nail Art Paint polishes with the long skinny brushes to make the plaid design.

And I didn't forget my toes! Hehe if only my toenails were larger I could do more with them.

-J

Quinoa Lunch

So.. school started this week. As I sort my new schedule out, I am also trying to think of some new ideas for lunches. I want something hearty but also healthy. I have gotten really into quinoa--it is an awesome source of protein and very filling! I did make a lunch with it last school year and I tried to use it in a different way -- so I was inspired by this recipe for a kind of quinoa quiche/frittata. I was too lazy to actually go to the grocery store to get the ingredients from that recipe so I just used whatever vegetables I had lying around the fridge. It was tricky for me to figure out how much quinoa to actually cook. The original recipe said 1 cup precooked quinoa, but I took 1 cup of dry quinoa & cooked that -- which resulted in like 4 cups of quinoa. I forgot how much bigger it gets after it's cooked!

Ingredients: 4 eggs, 2 cups cooked quinoa, shredded carrot, diced onions, diced tomato, 2 hot peppers, 1 ear of corn, cooked salmon, 2 cloves of garlic minced -- I was able to make 12 muffin sized portions with these ingredients.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Beat eggs and stir into cooked quinoa.
3. Mix everything else in there, add some salt & pepper to your taste.
4. Generously butter muffin tin and fill with mixture.
5. Bake 20 minutes.

I think 2 of these muffin sized quinoa cakes or whatever you wanna call them make a perfect serving for a meal. I like to eat mine with ketchup :) I also have a side of pickled cucumbers here.

Thoughts: These turned out kind of crumbly and a lot of the bottoms stuck to the pan, which was annoying. I think maybe I put way too much corn in there or not enough egg to hold it all together. Other than that I really enjoyed the flavor & texture, and think it's a really awesome way to change up how you eat quinoa!

Here it is all packed for the week! I brought it for breakfast and lunch since one meal for the amount of time I'm at school usually leaves my tummy grumbling by the end of the day.

-J

some creations

These are some of my more recent creations. I love key lime pie so much that made another batch of them and stored them in the freezer so that I could have one whenever my heart desired. This time I hand crushed the graham crackers for the crust so it came out more coarse but still held together beautifully. HOW CUTE IS THIS TINY BUNDLE OF JOY???

Here is a semi-failed baking product, and I haven't baked since... I saw a recipe for baked avocado donuts. I LOVE AVOCADOS. They are probably in my Top 5 favorite things to eat. Of course I was gonna give this recipe a shot, plus I had about 5 ripe avocados sitting in the fridge. Since I don't own a donut pan, I decided to convert into muffins and did not make any frosting. While these muffins tasted quite nice and I loved the way they looked - what a vibrant green color! - the butter + oil that the recipe called for made these muffins quite oily. Avocados, by nature, contain a lot of fat. In these muffins, I feel like next time I will opt to leave out the butter -- 1 cup is really too much.

I know that school is over for most people by now, but here are the last 2 lunches that I made to bring to school this spring semester.

At the time that I made this, the weather was really starting to warm up so I was in the mood for a cold noodle salad. Soba noodles it was! I had a bunch of cilantro stems left over from a previous guacamole feast, so I decided to make a vinaigrette with them. So into the VitaMix went the cilantro stems, olive oil, soy sauce, sugar and balsamic vinegar. Everything was eyeballed until I achieved the tasted that I liked. Other than soba noodles, you can basically add whatever veggies you have on hand. I had carrots, cucumbers and green onions. This would be awesome with some pieces of chicken or tofu as well. This noodle salad was great after refrigeration, so it was perfect to bring to school.

This pasta was created because I had a lot of arugula that I got tired of eating in a salad with. Therefore - pasta! I took a can of tuna and pan fried it in some olive oil and a lot of red chili pepper flakes. This created kind of a paste that was full of flavor. Then I added a 14.5 oz can of fire roasted diced tomatoes (+ juices) and let that simmer down to a sauce. After the pasta was boiled, I added it to the pan with a bit of pasta water and added the arugula. That's when I turned off the heat. The arugula wilted and added a nice spiciness to the pasta. This was very filling lunch for sure.

-J