Category Archives: food

Blueberry Mochi Waffles

My new waffle recipe (in addition to the normal waffles I make… Which I’ll post sometime) is blueberry mochi waffles.

I follow the recipe here for mochi cake, except I put it in a waffle maker instead of an oven. With my waffle maker, I do it on heat setting 3 or 4 (depending on whether or not you want them dryer and crunchier or softer and moister) until the waffle maker comes back up to temperature.

Mochi Cake Batter
1 pound mochiko (1 box)
1 cup butter (2 sticks), melted
2 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk (12 oz can)
4 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla
12 oz frozen blueberries (or 1 can blueberry pie filling)

In a large bowl, combine (by hand) the sugar and melted butter. Add evaporated milk and mix well. Add eggs and mix. Finally, stir in baking powder, mochiko and vanilla.

The blog entry I referenced suggests layering in the blueberries to avoid getting streaky purple batter… For waffles I think it’s a lost cause and end up with beautiful dark golden brown waffles, despite the streaky purpley batter. Also, they’re soft when they first come out of the waffle maker but harden in the next minute or so. Personally, I prefer them softer.

Oops.

True to form, I’ve stopped updating.

In the last few weeks I’ve gone through:

6lbs of mushrooms courtesy of my brother. They were made into mushroom consomme, mushroom risotto and multiple batches of scrambled eggs.

20lbs of loquats courtesy of some farm up in Brentwood. 20lbs of loquats for $40?! I’m sold. I made jam out of them, but haven’t eaten it. Mostly I’ve just been eating them.

30lbs of cherries, from the farm across the street from the loquat one. I made cherry chocolate biscuits (Boulevard cookbook, delicious.), cherry ice cream (minus the chocolate), cherry brownies (tastes weird) and things like cherry compote. No pies or jams though.

Also delicious, though not in great quantities, were blueberry mochi waffles. Take this batter and put it in a waffle maker. I used heat setting 3 for 4 minutes.

Next up tonight are Oreo-reeces and salted caramel brownies.

I’ll post pictures sometime. Maybe.

Eclairs & Bacon Scones

I don’t have pictures since I lent my camera to a friend of a friend in need of video-recording capabilities…

But last night I made bacon and ham scones (both with swiss cheese) and eclairs. And damn they were delicious. Every single lump of fat and carbs.

For the scones, I followed the Peppered Pear and Goat Cheese Scone recipe from the book Savory Baking. I had to use a little more milk since swiss cheese is less spreadable than goat cheese, but it worked out well. Flakey and full of piggy goodness.

For the eclairs, I followed this recipe for the dough and this one for the pudding and the chocolate. But, a couple notes (mostly to myself, like most of this blog) —
1. Small eclairs are easier to make crispy, but use a proper pastry bag for piping.
2. That pudding recipe results in pudding that still tastes a bit like corn starch, find a new one
3. Straight pudding is too heavy, a mix of half half whipped cream and pudding is delicious
4. The chocolate glaze on that is very chocolatey, maybe a little too dark. Try adding some milk chocolate instead of all semi-sweet.

Clearly, it’s time for eclair science. Hopefully with pictures.

Also, the original recipe for the Peppered Pear and Goat Cheese Scones is pretty good. I mean, it’s so good I made scones twice in two days. And I usually hate scones.

Dinosaur Cookies

Over the last two nights Danielle and I have made some pretty awesome (at least to look at) cookies. Dinosaurs-who-eat-children cookies! It’s actually three dinosaur shaped sugar cookies glued together with icing. The center one has a hole cut in it to hold the contents of the dinosaur’s stomach. In this case, upon CH’s suggestion, sour patch kids — since everyone knows dinosaurs eat children! Roar!

Adapted from this guide.

Make some colored blobs of dough.

Carefully make a block of dough in stripes. Freeze it overnight.

Slice it into sheets. Then bake it.

Quickly, before the cookies cool and they get hard to cut, use a dinosaur cookie cutter on them. Also, a circle to cut out their stomachs. Carefully assemble them with royal icing. Two whole dino cookies + one with a cut out stomach in the middle

Fill their bellies with sourpatch kids.

Let them sit for 30 minutes to dry before standing them up. It might be helpful to flatten them gently since the dinosaurs probably aren’t perfectly flat but be careful not to break them.

Miners Lettuce

I always thought they looked like mini land lily pads… Maybe for faeries?

But, anyway, now that I’m grown up, I’ve figured out that the faerie lily pads of my childhood are edible. And rather tasty. And easy to find. Which makes them perfect for the newbie forager, such as myself.

Black Cod?

This weekend I bought a piece of fish labelled as “black cod” from Monteray Market (Fish market?) in Berkeley. I cooked it up in a little soy, black bean paste and sesame oil… But I was surprised to find that my fish reminded me a lot of Patagonian Toothfish/Chilean Sea Bass, which I try to avoid eating. It was fatty, slightly flakey and mild flavored. My dad got suspicious and pointed out that maybe “black cod” was a name for a scarier sounding fish, the same way Patagonian Toothfishes are marketed as “Chilean Seabass.” Wikipedia tells me that there is a black cod — complete with anti-freeze proteins in its blood. But also, that “black cod” is sometimes applied to sablefish, and Wikipedia even adds that sablefish is similar to Chilean Seabass. Now I’m wondering, which fish did I eat?

Buddha’s Hand

I’m not sure why this fruit is named Buddha’s Hand and not… lets say… Cthulu fruit or monster’s hand, but it is. It’s also delicious. I adopted this one from work, it was part of a display of avocados at the end of day on Friday and it was starting to feel a wee bit squishy, as citrus tends to as they enter old age. So this Buddha’s hand was adopted.

Then candied. Nom. The fruit is all skin and pith, no actual ‘flesh’ — but the pith, unlike most citrus, isn’t bitter. I cut up the whole fruit, cooked it in 2 cups sugar/2 cups water, then let it out to dry. It didn’t quite crystalize as I’d hoped, but it’s still a great candied citrus flavor. Additionally, the sugar syrup it was cooked in is delicious — slightly tart, mostly fruity citrus. I’m looking forward to mixing it with some soda water for some Buddha’s Hand sodas. I drink weird things.

Icebox cakes/Lazy people cakes

I made two icebox cakes this weekend — one was a thank you to a friend’s parents for taking care of my dog, the other was for my own (and my roommate’s) piggery.

Layers (alternating) of graham crackers, whipped cream, more graham crackers, chocolate pudding & repeat. Let sit for half a day or so (longer than that, it gets soggy) and eat! The picture above was after it had sat and was ready for eating. Below is a picture right after I assembled it. It then went in the fridge for a few hours.

Notes for next time: More whipped cream! The cake wasn’t bad, but a little dry this time. Also, eat it right away since it’s way better when the graham crackers haven’t completely turned to mush. Yinmeng says it’s similar to a giant s’more.

Bawwwston

I went to Boston last weekend to visit my little brother. There’s a view from the plane, complete with dust-induced flares and artifacts. I swear that’s not Photoshop.

We did the things we usually do… Eat too much (as evidenced by the menu… and his blurry hand that’s scribbling out our oyster order), bicker, play games. But! We also saw the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds orchestra. Of which, I have no pictures.

But most importantly… I ‘ling dropped his apartment. See Mr. Zerguhling (as named by my ultra-creative brother) below. He took me probably about 4-5 hours end to end to sew and I’ll be posting a not-very-detailed tutorial sometime soon. I’m in the process of making another one and I’m trying to document it.

raccoon*

adventures of a cosmic procyonid