De Baking Psychopath

I recently made a batch of brownies and baked them up in the square muffin pans to see how they'd turn out. The pans were marketed as a brownie and bar cookie pan, and you can see the appeal that this would have for brownie crust-lovers. Each piece with four sides of crust!! How did they turn out? Okay. The brownies tasted good and were nicely set without being overdone. The crust on each edge was present but not very substantial...I am not sure whether this had to do with not enough cooking time (i.e. if I had filled each cup a little more and required a longer period of baking in order to get the center set, would the edges have built up more by then?) or the particular qualities of the box mix brownies I was trying to use up and used for this test. In any case, I ended up with 12 perfectly portioned brownies, no cutting necessary! And they came out of the pan fairly easily (with a little help from a bit of parchment paper at the bottom of each cup). So for the reason alon...

Tender beef, soft and sweet onions, and fragrant curry--all bundled up in a fluffy and moist bread. This is a wonderful on-the-go breakfast or lunch, a satisfying after-school snack, and (dare I say it) probably a really good accompaniment for beer in the wee hours of the night. The inspiration for these buns comes from two sources: 1) my mother's steamed bread recipe from when I was little, and 2) a beef curry filling method/recipe from a prolific Taiwanese home cook whose house we went to for a party after Christmas this past year when visiting some family friends--this lady also was the maker of the original beef curry steamed buns we tasted a few years ago. I've been wanting to get the recipe for the filling for those buns ever since I tasted them originally, and it was an exciting day this holiday season when I finally met her again and got the inside scoop. As my mother's recipe consists of a list of 4 ingredients handwritten on a post-it (no instructions give...

Six months have passed since my Comprehensive Examination ; the deadline for reassembling my committee for my thesis proposal and first official committee meeting had come. I had been considering different recipes for this committee meeting for a long time before the appointed day, way before I even started preparations for the presentation itself. (Certainly you can see my priorities are in order.) I am glad to announce that my committee meeting occurred this past Friday, and it went well by all accounts and in all aspects: we finished in a timely manner without sacrificing thoroughness (very important due to the time constraints of the professors in my committee), my preliminary data were generally convincing, and the proposed experiments and overall aims of my thesis proposal were accepted with only few minor changes (big thanks to my mentor who helped me make the aims statements much more elegant-sounding). So now I can officially change my status to a "PhD candidate" w...

Spring is upon us, although it is still taking a bit of imagination to believe that it really is Spring because of the erratic weather. I think tomorrow we have a forecast of possible snow showers?! It seems like we're running through all four seasons sometimes, since we've had a couple of 80 degree days already, interspersed with downright chilly days. At a recent department potluck, I decided to find a treat that emanated Spring, and to me one of the fruits that reminds one of the Spring/Summer interface is blueberries. Mmm, I love blueberries, especially in quickbreads and cakes. (You may remember other posts I've had about blueberries: blueberry muffins and blueberry mochi cake , and of course the recent blueberry coffeecake . I have yet to make and post about my favorite blueberry muffin recipe, the one I've been making since early college. That'll have to wait until another time.) And of course one of the classic pairings with blueberry is lemon. These...

On April 12, this blog turned 1 year old! Although I did not have a post ready to celebrate this joyous occasion, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you, my readers, for sharing this culinary journey with me. Approximately 65 recipes posted this year! I've meanwhile probably accumulated a to-do list of at least 5 times that magnitude with all the recipe books I've bought and recipes I've printed or copied, so stay tuned for more deliciousness in the year to come!

This plate is proof that: 1) You do not have to settle for cardboardy frozen waffles from the store, or make the effort to beat the crowd at the local popular breakfast joint on a Saturday morning in order to get good waffles, and 2) You do not have to spend over $10 for a decent waffle iron!! So Michael and I impulse-bought the cheapo, generic brand (Chefmate) waffle iron at Target a couple of months back. I've been pining away for a waffle iron for a little while now, partly because this was a breakfast item that Michael professed little experience eating, and yet he was not inclined to buy any supermarket frozen waffles in order to try them firsthand. And certainly as we knew with pancakes, such things are much better enjoyed at home in the comfort of pajamas rather than outside in some busy, greasy breakfast joint. To our delight and surprise, we've been getting pretty tasty results with this little cheapo thing. There are couple of waffle iron-specific idiosyncrasies t...

I'm starting to run again. I decided to set myself some running goals, such as a certain number of miles to be run/week, irregardless of how much I run in any one given session. The treadmill is my preferred mode of running. Maybe it's the control freak in me, but I like knowing exactly how fast I'm running, and I like to be pushed to maintain the pace I set by the belt moving continuously. No stoplights, crazy drivers, slow-walking pedestrians, random 15% gradient hills (!!), or my own inertia to distract and slow me down. My Achilles heel many a day has been going running right after work (basically, dinnertime) but not eating a snack or something to tide me over and give me some energy to run. Which sometimes then results in me cutting my workout short because I fall victim to mild acute hypoglycemia and become lightheaded and nauseated. So my purpose in making these energy bars is two-fold: 1) in preparation for my increasingly-frequent running workouts as I work up...

I've gotten increasingly frequent and urgent requests for my baking to take a more savory and healthy trajectory. And for the requester, that doesn't mean to just replace the flour with whole wheat flour and sugar with Splenda. Indeed, I also have in mind a couple of goals for the upcoming months: to get in shape for the Rachel Carson 1/2 challenge in June (yes, super-crazy), and to slim down a bit so I have room to gain a few pounds back on my eating-marathon when I visit the homeland in July. So expect in the next few months to see the repertoire here shift slightly away from cookies and cakes and more towards granola/energy bars and savory breads. As my baking is largely determined by personal cravings and social events (such as an upcoming bake sale this week and a departmental spring potluck in early April), however, you can predict that you will be able to see more of the usual yummy treats as well. For now, though, I bring you two savory muffins to kick start the div...

This cookie is an Ultimate cookie: loads of chocolate, ground oats, toasted nuts, even toffee bits. The result is a chocolate chip cookie that is heartier, nuttier, and more complex in flavor than your average chocolate chip cookie. When just a tad underbaked and still warm from the oven, it has that dark, chewy, ooey-gooey texture that would pair wonderfully with some ice cream or a glass of milk They are supposed to be a copycat of cookies made by The Christie Cookie Company , the sole supplier of the Doubletree hotel cookies (although apparently the Doubletree CCC and the signature Christie CCC are not one and the same). I have never stayed at a Doubletree nor tried a Christie's cookie, but that doesn't stop me from trying or enjoying their copycat recipes! This recipe has earned the unique distinction of being the first CCC recipe I made solely to freeze the dough for easy access later. I found these satisfying enough after the first try to make the full recipe (which ...