De Baking Psychopath

This cake was made for a multi-purpose party: two birthdays and one graduation. There is nothing new about this cake recipe-wise. The yellow cake is taken from the spectacular Pecan Praline Bourbon Cake , and the frosting is none other than my mother's chocolate cream cheese frosting . But the combination of the two elements, along with a generous dousing of Kahlua, can only be described as synergistic: a level of deliciousness that exceeds the sum of the individual components. Layers of Kahlua-soaked cake. Cake being swaddled in a thick layer of creamy frosting. At this point I could have been finished...but it looked so plain . So I tried to do some piping, then some stencil work, both of which failed miserably and had to be wiped off. I ended up coating the top with a sprinkling of black cocoa for contrast. The taste of the cake is reminiscent of a chocolate tiramisu, so the cocoa was very appropriate as well as classy. Ready to eat! As the birthday boy would say, "N...

We ran out of curry beef steamed buns. More buns were needed. The dough recipe is the same as last time , with the only two differences being: 1) I measured each dough ball to be 1.5 ounces instead of 2 ounces, so we got more buns out of the same recipe, 2) we proofed the buns after wrapping but before steaming for a longer period of time (at least 30-45 minutes), and we got a much better fluffy texture for the bread. This time we decided to go with a more traditional filling: pork and cabbage. The recipe is loosely adapted from a dumpling filling recipe from our beloved book Regional Cooking of China by Margaret Gin and Alfred E. Castle. Pork and Cabbage Bun/Dumpling Filling Ingredients : ~2-2.5 lbs ground pork (we ground up some pork chunks with our food processor) ~2 tablespoons ginger root, frozen as a chunk and grated 4 green onions (scallions), minced 1/3 head of cabbage (doesn't really matter what kind), finely diced and sauteed with olive oil, salt and pepper until soft...

This is where part of the other half of the can of pumpkin I used for the pies went. This is muffin number three from the weekend of muffin baking awhile back. For most of my life, I've eaten and baked my mother's version of pumpkin bread, which has been much modified to suit our family's tastes--less sugar, pine nuts instead of walnuts, no raisins, etc. It's a delicious recipe that reminds me of my childhood, but I haven't tried any other pumpkin bread/muffin recipe in recent memory so I lack a frame of reference to compare it to other recipes. So when I decided I needed to make pumpkin muffins as part of the evacuation plan for the leftover pumpkin puree, I looked around for a new recipe and found this promising recipe in Baking: From my home to yours , which is full of tasty-looking muffin recipes. This recipe tries to recreate the pumpkin muffins sold by Sarabeth's Kitchen, a famed specialty bakery and restaurant chain in NYC. While I've never had...

One of the great local food traditions is the annual Greek Food Festival, hosted by a local Greek Orthodox Church once a year for a week in early May. My lab always gets together to pick a day to venture out to eat lunch at the Greek Food Festival. A bit pricey for a weekday lunch, but super yum. All the classic savory stuff is there: gyros , moussaka , pastitsio (love this stuff--it's like the Greek version of lasagna), souvlakia (lamb kebabs), spanakopita (spinach phyllo pie), dolmanthes (stuffed grape leaves)... and some authentic-but-not-so-stereotypical stuff like fish plaki (baked fish with onions and tomatoes), souzoukakia (meatballs in tomato sauce), oregano chicken , tiropita (cheese phyllo pie). And there's a whole separate section for pastries. Just for pastries. Like baklava , diples (fried pastry sprinkled with honey and walnuts), galatoboureko (my favorite--custard baked in phyllo), kataife (ground nuts and cinnamon wrapped in a nest of shredded phyl...

This is the second of three muffin recipes I made last week (yes, three). I like having muffins in the freezer at work to eat for random hunger attacks. Beats eating a candy bar. This recipe comes from Nigella, who is one of my culinary heroines, and true to her other recipes that I've tried so far, these are easy, yummy, and flavorful. The pears can get quite molten hot, so if you decide to eat these warm, be just a tad careful. The sweet fruit and warm ginger flavor go very well together, and the muffins turned out moist and tender. Pear and Ginger Muffins (adapted from Nigella Express ) Ingredients : 1 & 3/4 cups flour (I used 1 cup AP flour, 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour) 3/4 cups granulated sugar 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon ground ginger 2/3 cup sour cream 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 tablespoon honey 2 eggs 1 & 1/2 cups peeled and chopped pears (about 1/4 inch dice; I used canned pears) Instructions : Preheat oven to 400 d...

I recently helped coordinate and contributed to a series of bake sales to help fundraise for a long-standing tradition here: a gigantic theatrical undertaking that the fourth year medical students write, choreograph, arrange, and perform for the whole community. It's what Senioritis-striken 4th years do with their time after they find out where they're going to residency and before they graduate. Since this year's graduating class is the class I started medical school with, I felt some kinship and decided to help out in the cause--not by actually performing in the play (wayyy too much time commitment), but by doing what I do best: baking! Anyways, for the last bake sale, I dolled up my cookies and cake and candied nuts in some nice cellophane wrappers and put little tags on them, hoping to draw a slightly higher price point. I don't know if it actually worked, but my theory is that when you individually wrap items, it looks more professional and sanitary to a potent...

I rave on and on about American style brunches--you know, the scrambled eggs, the muffins, waffles, pancakes, bacon... But what I grew up eating as Saturday brunch is pictured above: a big bowl of rice congee topped with (clockwise from top) silken tofu and soy sauce paste, fried gluten and peanuts, pork sung (aka "fuzzy pork," according to Wiki), omelet with scallions and pickled daikon radish, and little cucumber pickles. Yes, it's a lot of canned and pickled things. Mmm, but it tastes so good on rice! If you want to go even more decadent, one could always add some pork stewed in soy sauce, or thousand year eggs , or some fresh stir-fried greens. Or you could just curl up with a jar of cucumber pickles and a bowl of rice, like some people I know (*coughcoughJesscough*). No judgment here.

I thought I had messed this one up. As I was cleaning up the table after popping the muffins into the oven, I saw the jar of baking soda sitting on the far side of the table, suggesting it had not been brought forward and used. CRAP!! The one tablespoon of baking powder that I distinctly remember putting in would help it rise, but without the extra base from the baking soda to balance out the low-pH of the yogurt, would the whole thing just turn out sour?? Luckily, the answer is no. The muffins came out really moist, just barely tangy, and lightly sweet. Interestingly, there was a slightly springy quality to the crumb, almost as if I had put in mochiko (glutinous rice flour) even though it is composed of all wheat flour. Was it because I left out the baking soda? I have no idea. Or maybe I did put it in and forgot?? If anyone makes this recipe, you'll have to let me know how it turns out when made correctly. But for being a failure of accuracy, it didn't turn out to be a ...

There are many reasons why this pie came into existence: 1) Two gigantic cans of pumpkin puree kept whispering to me every time I opened my baking cabinet (they had been hastily stockpiled back in the Fall when I'd heard about the Great Pumpkin Shortage, not realizing that it did not affect my area...) as well as two graham cracker crusts, 2) there was not one single from-scratch cookie or muffin left in the house and it was starting to drive me insane, and 3) when given the choice between pumpkin muffins and pie, Michael chose pie. (I might make muffins anyway, shhh!) The cheesecake layer was...inspired. I was going to divide my pumpkin pie filling between the two graham cracker crusts, and I somehow intuitively knew (by my super ninja mental calculation skillz, of course) that there would be a little extra volume to spare in each crust, so I figured, why not add a mini cheesecake layer?? And because pumpkin swirl cheesecake is SO yesterday, I decided to keep the chee...

Pecans. Bourbon. Soft yellow cake. Light and creamy cream cheese frosting. I don't know what else to say in introduction to this cake. Other than that it was "so f***ing good!!" as commented by more than one person who ate this cake at a party for which the theme was a celebration of the American Southern culture. The only thing I could have done to make this MORE Southern was to add some peach jam or liqueur, but I had neither on hand, but in any case, the cake certainly was more than sufficiently yummy without it. The cake layers were soft and moist but sturdy enough to allow for easy manipulation when I was building the cake. The frosting I lightened up from the original recipe in two ways: 1) less powdered sugar than was called for in ratio to the cream cheese, and 2) folding in a container of Cool Whip, a tip borrowed from my mom's chocolate cream cheese frosting recipe . Although this made the frosting more prone to get oozy at room temperature, it sets up a...