Raspberry Almond Cookies

When I made my Fruity Cheesecakes for my niece's birthday, I had dough leftover from the crust. Since the recipe was originally for cookies, I decided to use the leftovers for cookies.

Pictures are better quality than usual because they were taken with my dad's professional Canon, seeing how my camera was way too far, and I was in a rush (had to leave for school)...

So, I took the crust dough, added some butter to make it shape-able, since it usually requires pushing into the bottom of a pan to take shape, and formed it into a cylinder. I cut that into little circles, made a dent in it to pour a spoonful of raspberry jam inside.

Baked, and they turned out yummy~ Sweet and crumbly butter cookies with a hint of almonds~

Fruity Cheesecakes

My niece's birthday was yesterday, and I was asked to make two cheesecakes. Since I never do two of the same ones, here they are:

Raspberry-vanilla topped with whipped cream:

This one was a (failed) marble of raspberry and vanilla cheesecake. Because of the bad mixing and the difference of texture, it cracked very badly. Hence the whipped cream =D

Nah, I wanted to put whipped cream on top anyways. It just adds some creaminess and a nice appearance to the whole thing.

Apple-Caramel cheesecake:

This is a vanilla cheesecake with some diced apples inside. There are baked apple slices on top, and the whole has a caramel sauce drizzled on top.

And here they are, side by side =D

Apple Cupcakes

Apple cupcakes. I made them because I wanted to give fruity cupcakes to this elderly lady, but didn't want to make them too sweet. Hense the tweaking of the original recipes.

I got the recipe off a All About Cupcakes, though I had to tweak the recipe a bit. I don't recommend following my recipe, because the cake itself wasn't as fluffy as it should've been.

Anyways, I followed the website's recipe, except I put about 1/2-3/4 cup of milk instead, and only 1/4 cup sugar.


Frosting. This time was not a buttercream frosting. I found the recipe on Tasty Kitchen.

I did a half batch (and still had a bit too much for my 12 cupcakes), and again, I only incorperated a little sugar at the time. I was delicious.

With the leftover frosting and the 2/3 of the apple I had left after decorating, I stewed the apples, topped them with the lightly sweet frosting, and ate it as a creamy apple dessert. That was super delicious!

Cupcake

A pretty failed cupcake I made. We ate most of them before I could get a picture in. I think they look ok, but they were too... dense, not fluffy enough.

Buttercream icing's homemade, but too sweet (even though I put half of what the recipe told me...

Slightly raspberry flavored (I put the milk from the recipe with some leftover raspberry jam and pulsed a couple times in a food processor before adding).

Mini Marbled Cheesecakes

I had some leftover cheesecake ingredients, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to experiment a bit =D

(All pictures were edited slightly due to bad lighting and photography conditions)

First, I made them mini sized~ I used two sizes of cupcake tins (silicone ones) to make these. 24 mini cheesecakes were made, and 6 small ones (2 of the mini ones didn't fit on the tray...) They all have an almond cookie crust as a base.

First up, we have the Green tea-Vanilla cheesecake!

I made a quarter-batch of vanilla flavored cheesecake, and a quarter-batch in which I mixed in some Matcha (green tea powder). I was really scared the green tea would be drowned by either the vanilla, or the cheesecake flavor. Then I was scared it would be too strong. It turned out fine, though. I attempted marbling cheesecake as well this time, and some of them are failures in that prospect. This one is topped with some sliced almonds.

Overall, the green tea experiment was pretty much a success!

Then, I made Rose-Raspberry cheesecake.

Same as the Green tea-Vanilla, I made quarter batches each of rose flavored cheesecake, and cheesecake in which I mixed raspberry jam. I topped this one with a dollop of raspberry jam, for additional color. When I made the first ones, this cheesecake looked a lot like smoothies =D

Here's more pictures:

These are the medium-sized cheesecakes.

Stuffed Eggplant meal

September 24, 2012

I made two types of stuffed eggplants. One was stuffed with leftover Okonomiyaki veggies tossed in leftover pizza sauce that my brother left. The other was eggplant, zucchini, and tofu tossed with some tomatoes. The whole draped in a criss-crossed pattern of cheese and served with penne.

Pseudo Okonomiyaki (vegan version)

I found the recipe on Your Vegan Mom, though I made it super non-traditional (therefore without cabbage... and vegan... and with whatever I had).

From biggest to smallest:
Batter bowl, seaweed bowl, and sauce bowl.

Ingredients: (for a full meal for 2 people)
- 1 cup broth (explanation below)
- 3/4 cup normal tofu
- 1 1/4 cup flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 2 pinches of salt
- A bunch of shredded veggies
>>> In this okonomiyaki: 3 white mushrooms, 2 carrots,1 small potato, 1/3 zucchini, small piece of eggplant. I used up half of that in this batch.

Procedure:
For the broth: having made snap beans previously, then carrots after that, I kept on using the same water that I refrigerated after use. This was the base for my veggie broth. All I had to do was add a small spoon of mushroom seasoning/soup base.

1. Blend tofu and broth until smooth (it smelled like soy milk when I opened the cap of the blender)
2. Shred your veggies
3. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Add the broth/tofu mix. Stir well.
4. Add in the veggies (a little less than the volume of batter).
5. Lightly oil your pan. Make your "pancakes" (thinner makes it crispier. I made small ones, though normally, you would use a large pan).

For the topping, use a barbecue sauce, or soy sauce. I was daring, and tried making the mayonnaise (haha, this part is not vegan), maple syrup, soy sauce, and sesame oil mix in the recipe in the link above.

I put some sushi seaweed in a blender and pulsed a few times to get the shredded seaweed. At some point, I added some roasted sesame seeds. Delicious and filling dinner.

Especially good followed by a cup of hot matcha milk~

(for those who don't know, matcha is green tea powder)

Cookies

I baked some cookies today, not quite satisfied with the way they turned out (despite the nice visual). Chocolate chips and walnuts, as usual. I found them tastier accompanied by a cup of matcha milk.

Army of cookies

Sweet and Sour

A sweet and sour tomato sauce I made today to eat with fresh white bread from the bakery. I looked up a couple of things online, then went by instinct ^^.

Sorry for the bad quality. iPad camera
just doesn't work as well as a Canon.

Ingredients:
- Sugar
- Water
- 1 can peeled tomatoes
- rice vinegar (I find it less strong than regular vinegar, and it matches the flavor better as well)
- Snap beans (I had to use it up, so... traditionally, green bell-peppers and pineapples are used)
- Cornstarch or potato starch (I used potato starch)
- Salt, to taste

Procedure:
1. Boil/steam the snap beans.
2. Mix sugar and water and heat until dissolved.
3. Add in the tomatoes. For better results, squeeze the tomatoes or crush them so there aren't too many "lumps."
4. Add a little vinegar.
5. Mix the starch with a little water. Add in and stir. If using potato starch don't let it boil.
6. Taste test and add flavor as needed (I went for a bit more sweet)
7. Add in the veggies.
8. Enjoy with rice, or like me, on bread ^^

Celery casserole

Sept 16, 2012

Original recipe
The recipe below is my own tweaking. I didn't have time to measure everything out, and I didn't have all the ingredients. Also, my cousin and I aren't too fond of bell pepper, nor do we eat spicy food. I just had quite a bit of celery left (for 2 people) and I needed to make something or it would've gone bad.

Ingredients (2 servings):
- 4 branches celery
- 1 carrot
- 2 mushrooms (more would've tasted better ^^")
- cooking cream
- shredded cheese
- butter
- 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
- salt/sugar to taste
- olive oil

1. Cut celery in thin slices. Dice the carrot.
2. Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan. Lightly sauté the carrots. Once near tender, add in celery until soft.
3. Add cream, then diced mushrooms. Add cheese and stir until melted.
4. Pour into pan/baking dish.
5. Soften some butter (I had about a tsp size lump), and mix with the breadcrumbs. Spread over the casserole filling.
6. Bake at 175°C for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown on top.

I didn't have much expectations for this dish, but it turned out pretty good, nice and creamy. I most likely will do it again, though with different vegetables.

Enjoy~

Potato salad~

Sept 16, 2012

- Potatoes

- Carrot

- Celery (green celery makes it prettier, but I only had white)

- Lemon

- Salt, pepper

Dice the veggies. Boil the potatoes. Slightly cook the carrots until they aren't raw, but they aren't soft either. If you want to, do the same with the celery.

Mix everything together, add salt and pepper to taste.

My proportions:

3 medium potatoes + 1 carrot + ~1 branch celery + 1 lemon

Cookies and Cheesecakes

Cookies~
Baked on Sept 1st, 2012. Chocolate chips and walnuts.

Cheesecakes~
Sept 9, 2012

~Red Clock cheesecake~
**Rose and raspberry** Strawberry decorations with my cousin's help (center strawberry).

~Peach cheesecake~
**Vanilla peach** Center lemon and strawberry with my cousin's help once again.

The peach one was too dry because not only was the topping just fruits, so not much juiciness/fruit sauce like usually, but by my cousin's urging, I tried to brown the top of the cheesecake a little, but it didn't really work out...

The two cakes together:

And packed together with another cousin's banana cake as packed leftovers for yet another cousin to bring home ^_^