De Baking Psychopath

My New Year's resolution this year had been to cut down on my hoarding and commit to try to buy smaller amounts of ingredients (particularly baking ingredients), and only when I had a specific application in mind.  I had done a mini-purge of expired ingredients from the pantry, and the guilt over the wasted food/ingredients drove me to strive to do better this year That being said, I knew that there were many ingredients that we did in fact go through consistently, and therefore I felt less guilty continuing to buying in bulk quantities, such as flour, my beloved Ahmed Mango black tea , instant espresso , and oats of various sorts from Bob's Red Mill.   Furthermore, at the beginning of shelter-in-home, I had a realization that we were already pretty well stocked to hunker down for a good long while, with exception of fresh produce and dairy items.  I had still a decent amount of flour left over from holiday time, when I stocked up on a couple extra bags o...

Like many college students, I subsisted on a specific set of food items due to inadequate kitchen access, a mandatory meal plan, and busy lifestyle. One of my student center food court indulgences was a large blueberry muffin and cafe mocha from the coffee stand, often on the way to or from morning classes. The muffins were tender but stretchy, with a beautiful crown and crunchy edges. Slathered with a pat of salted butter, they were the epitome of breakfast. And when they showed up in the day-old discount rack next to the register, wrapped in plastic wrap, I did a (mental) happy dance and whisked away as many as were available and that I could carry back to my dorm room. Fifteen seconds in the microwave and they were as good as new! I've tried many a blueberry muffin recipe in the years past, and although many were delicious, none had that rich buttery flavor or soft stretchiness to the crumb as the legendary muffins from college. I attributed those qualities to mas...

I love ricotta! Ricotta pancakes have been all the rage on the Interwebs lately, so I decided to give them a shot one recent weekend. These lemon ricotta pancakes were moist, fluffy, springy, and fragrant. I used the recipe found on this fellow blogger's site verbatim. The cake flour in the recipe gives the pancake a fine, tender crumb, and the ricotta keeps it very moist. Instead of a blueberry sauce, though, we made a quick Nutella ganache by combining hot cream and Nutella in a roughly 2:1 ratio and whisking until smooth. An easy way to elevate your routine weekend brunch to new elegant heights. Yum!

A few weeks ago, I officially entered the realm of "late twenties" and promptly heard my biological clock ticking like a time bomb. To herald the next decade of worrying about when to have kids before my risk of having mutant babies becomes too significant for safety, I decided to throw a scrumptious brunch and declare, "To heck with my slowing metabolism and biological clock! I am going to STUFF MY FACE." And I invited my friends to join me. I've been trying very hard to keep the sweet stuff to a healthy minimum. So here are these gorgeous roasted Hasselback potatoes stuffed with lovely slivers of garlic. And this yummy onion, mushroom and cheese frittata that I threw together on a whim and prayed would turn out okay! (It did!) And a loaf of sundried tomato and Parmesan cheese bread, made with the no-knead dough of the week! Soooo good. Moist, flavorful, savory! But of course it wouldn't be a PARTY unless there were some sweets! Front and center ...

Previously on this blog, I have revealed my go-to buttermilk pancake recipe . It has stood the test of time and trials of other recipes, emerging yet victorious again with my latest innovation-- replacing the buttermilk for Greek-style yogurt! When asked for descriptors for this new version, I got these responses: "Fluffy...Good crunch on outside...moist...holds shape well." Which are actually a good demonstration of exactly what was lacking in the previous version: heft and structure. The original recipe was moist and tender to almost the point where there was some collapse of the crumb, which sometimes comes across as being mushy instead of moist. I've been on a Greek-style yogurt kick lately. It is thick and goes well with many sorts of jams and cereals/nuts, I can get non-fat versions in bulk on my normal grocery shopping runs to Costco. Here, they boost the protein content, with twice as much protein as normal yogurt or buttermilk. I like the sturdiness ...

For the most part, I'm a morning person. This means that on any given weekend day, I am usually wide-awake by 7 or 8 am (with help from my hungry cats, of course) and have to get out of bed due to an inability to return to sleep and a restless mind. Once the cats are fed and my OCD tendencies to clean up around the kitchen are satisfied, I find myself in the mood for making brunch food. And since I can usually count on a couple hours before the hubby drags himself out of bed (can you guess he's a night owl?), I can get a good start on something delectable to surprise him for his (late) breakfast. Usually I go for making a batch of pancakes or French toast, but one recent weekend, I had my mind fixed on cinnamon buns. A soft and fluffy yeasted bun would be ideal in texture, but with this baking powder-dough version on my radar, the compromise in having a non-traditional coffee cake-like texture was perfectly acceptable in exchange for the advantage of savin...

First topic of discussion: breakfast. A working day's breakfast in Taiwan is pretty simple: coffee or tea, maybe milk (although oftentimes this is from powder rather than fresh as fresh is rather expensive in Taiwan), maybe toast from a local bakery (Japanese style bread--more buttery), maybe oatmeal or other sweet multigrain drink mixes, or maybe something more traditional (as as pictured below at my grandmother's house) such as rice and veggies/meat if you have the time and someone to cook it for you at home. Otherwise one might pick up a cheap meal on the go at a local bakery or convenience store (such as 7-Eleven), where you can get pretty much anything from lattes to stuffed rice balls to sandwiches to beer (breakfast of champions!). More modern influences have introduced the ideas of cold cereal, bagels, waffles, and donuts (to be pictured in an upcoming post) but these are pretty pricey still and more trendy rather than common. A busy young professional may also choose t...

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.

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...

Have I mentioned that I love breakfast/brunch foods? Maybe once or twice... Interestingly though, this is the first coffeecake I've ever made. This particular blueberry coffeecake has been on the to-do list for ages, ever since I saw it on the blog Burghilicious . I love blueberry quickbreads, period. Muffins, tea breads, pancakes, etc. And the fact that this recipe comes from a bed and breakfast inn increases the appeal of the recipe exponentially for me. I love the romance and homeliness of tried-and-true B&B classic recipes. They emanate an aura of history and homemade comfort food. ...and of course, the two tablespoons of cinnamon in the topping of this recipe was calling my name. Loudly. So one weekend, as I was pondering what to do with the last dregs of a bag of frozen blueberries, I decided to make it. The recipe can be found here . The only change I made was to substitute half the flour for whole wheat pastry flour. This coffeecake was hearty/dark/rich wit...

I love lazy weekend mornings. But even more so, I love lazy weekend morning brunches: Pancakes, waffles, French toast, herbed scrambled eggs, muffins, eggs over easy, sausage with maple syrup, cafe au lait, omlettes, donuts, biscuits, cinnamon buns....and on and on... Homemade brunch enjoyed slowly over a lazy morning. Yum. I've discussed pancakes before on this blog, but when I found these Oatmeal Pancakes on the blog Orangette , I knew it was time to switch up the usual pancake routine a bit. First there is an overnight soak of 2 cups of oats in 2 cups of buttermilk, to which you add 2 large eggs and 1/2 cup of melted unsalted butter/margarine the next morning. Whisk to combine. In a separate bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Then add the dry to the wet ingredients and whisk to combine. The batter will start bubbling and poofing, so hurry up and start cooking! Heat your nonstick sk...