Crepe Cake: Aka the Leaning Tower of Crepes

Baking is often associated with love. Fresh baked cookies for your elementary school bake sale. The fruitcake your dear aunt bakes every Christmas that everyone says is lovely but secretly leaves to decay. Ok, so the latter example is probably a stereotype taken from far too many American sitcoms. In this case, this biscoff cream cheese crepe cake is more of a labor of love rather than baked with love (or er, assembled with love). Though the French would probably gaze down unsympathetically at my pleading and begging for my crepe cake to not turn Italian. Well, as Italian as the Leaning Tower of Pisa at least.

Its hard not to be immediately enamored by the sight of a crepe cake. After all, it consists of delicate, thin crepes stacked till they become something stronger and greater together. Kinda like the Avengers, but in cake form. The entire cake took two days to make, one evening of crepe making, another afternoon of crepe stacking. To be honest, my crepes probably weren't the paper thin, lacy delicacies that people like the Domestic Goddess aka Nigella Lawson think of when you say crepes. However if you wanted a semi-decent crepe that is still thin enough to be not-a-pancake, then call me up! The most difficult part of the crepe making process was getting the pan tilting and whirling just right so you got an evenly thick crepe without random pockets of nothing. I don't think I've got it down quite yet, but my imperfections just give me more excuses to make crepes right?

I call my cake the leaning tower of crepes not because of the occasionally mismatched crepe sizes, but because of the next component--the glue to the cake. The filling in the ultra-traditional crepe cake is pastry creme, but judging by the sheer number of hits on foodgawker and google, people have taken great liberties with this filling. Heck, Sprinkle Bakes even covered the whole cake with a healthy layer of ganache to make quite possibly the most beautiful cake in the history of the internet. I've been dying to make something with remaining part of the jar of biscoff/speculoos I towed back with me from Belgium, so when I saw a biscoff crepe cake, my heart was set. But I'm not about that buttercream life so I opted for cream cheese biscoff frosting.

Alas, my 3 month hiatus from baking led to one small problem--the notoriously slippery nature of cream cheese frosting. As I stacked the cake with layers of frosting in between each crepe (28 total!), the frosting began to melt quite a bit. Towards the 20th layer, things started sliding around quite a bit. The cake made several trips to the freezer to firm up. Overall, it was a very stressful labor of love. But one I would totally repeat in a heartbeat should the occasion for a crepe cake ever arise again. Except, maybe not with cream cheese.



Another thing I forgot was the speculoos is already intensely sweet, so to make a cream cheese frosting with speculoos thickened with cups of powdered sugar equals a very very sweet filling. But sweetness seems to relative from my experience with a very picky mother (shockingly, she liked the cake a lot despite its sweetness). And anyways, just look at those layers. stare long and hard at them. How could you resist baking such a beautiful creation?
(also, whipping cream melts rapidly in a warm kitchen when you're trying to take pictures of a cake while adjusting the camera settings)

TL;DR Baking Notes:

• Crepes can be stored in a ziplock bag with parchment paper in between crepes in the fridge for a few days in the fridge, or even longer frozen.
• A firm, non-melty frosting is probably ideal if you're gonna make a crepe cake that doesn't tilt everywhere.
• Biscoff frostings are really sweet.

Crepe recipe and presentation inspiration from Olga's Flavor Factory. Biscoff cream cheese frosting from Center Cut Cook.

Tres Leches Cake: Shoutout to Yale Dining

If you happen to be an ~alumni~ colleague reading this, then you're probably mildly tired of all the post-commencement photo dumps and sentimental posts. Well, at least I am. Commencement is certainly an exciting time, but after a week of senior activities PLUS 3 days worth of ceremonies and events, it gets pretty exhausting.

For my first post in post-college life, I decided to keep up with the sentimental spirit floating around social media and make tres leches, a Yale dining classic. We students do love to complain about college dining, but every once in a while, there's a few things they get right. One of which includes tres leches, a sponge cake soaked in a mixture of three milks--condensed milk, sweetened evaporated milk, and heavy cream. Now, pan or tray desserts, like brownie fudge or cobbler, in the dining hall creep me out for some reason. Something about it being produced in such a large pan quantity I think. Unfortunately, tres leches was one of these desserts, so it wasn't until junior year that I tried this deliciously moist, creamy, and milky cake. It seemed only fitting to tie off the end of my college career by attempting to recreate something I associate with friendly conversations and meals.

Unfortunately, my baking skills are still not quite up to par. Its a bit embarrassing to think that the dining hall, with its huge bulk quantity cooking and baking, can make something of a superior quality than I can in my tiny kitchen with all the time in the world. While my brother, mother, and father all seemed to enjoy the cake to a certain degree, my sister who has eaten dining hall tres leches could only laugh at my meager attempts. Rather than a ridiculously squishy, gooey, bread-pudding like texture dessert, my tres leches was much drier and dense. Granted, I get the feeling that my sponge cake was not right given its lack of rise. Which was possibly because of over beaten egg whites, too much flour, or too much folding--all of which I have had issues with in the past. I was hoping that the sweet milk mixture would soak the cake enough that these wouldn't be issues, but I tried taste testing the cake after only half a day of soaking rather than overnight as most recipes seem to suggest. The lesson here is that you really should plan your baking more in advance if you're trying to make a 9am EST deadline for a blog post the next day. 

The recipe I used was from All Recipes, but I found that there were a few things that were off. While instructions called to bake for 40-50 minutes, it only took 20-30 mins to finish baking mine. Other weird things I mentioned earlier. I used about a pint of heavy cream to make the whipping cream topping, but that was definitely way too much if you only wanted to cover the cake.

While the dining halls version of tres leches didn't have whipped cream topping or fruit on top like many of the recipes I found online, one can never go wrong with some extra homemade whipped cream and raspberries right? I'm hoping that if I try the cake tomorrow morning, the cake will have had more time to soak so that it'll be more moist. Regardless, I think that tres leches will have to eventually become a perfected recipe in my "repertoire" for any future days of college nostalgia.

Ba Chi Canteen: Pork Belly Canteen Indeed

side note: all store fronts in NOLA are the cutest

As its namesake suggests, Ba Chi Canteen is a Vietnamese restaurant in New Orleans, LA that specializes in pork belly. Well, that and a whole host of generally delicious asian, fusion-y food. Can you tell that I don't actually know anything about food writing? Self deprecation aside, this was the very first place we went to eat after landing in New Orleans during "Dead Week," aka post-finals, pre-senior week, pre-pre-commencement (cue tears). While others may have sought warm beaches and cheap booze, we flew out in search of good eats, jazz, and swamps for our post-college relaxation break. It would be amusing if I counted the number of times the phrases "hashtag NOLA hashtag notmyrtle" were repeated every time we ate or saw something spectacular.

apologies for the slight blur. sometimes I get too excited about actually consuming food for nonsense like focusing

One of our friends who came with us was in New Orleans the previous summer and is planning on moving back there post-graduation, so she made sure to give us all the deets on the best food places, bars, second-hand stores, and all the other things that revolve around a 20-year-old's life. I'm so glad we had her around or else we probably would have never made it to Ba Chi Canteen, let alone started our trip there with a dish of kimchi fries. To be honest, I still am mildly confused about exactly what kimchi is, though a quick google search would easily remedy that. Regardless, asides from animal style-fries a la In-N-Out, I'm not really a huge fries person (years of conditioning to hate potatoes from the mother). But if you lather then with gooey cheese and savory meats and pickled things, even I'm a convert.

And honestly, just look at these pork belly spring rolls. My NOLA friend really hyped these up for us, and while normally hype just leads to disappointment, these definitely lived up to the hype. Not only are they just really gorgeous and wrapped SO well (in general, translucent things are fascinating), but the rich, warm fat of the pork belly mixed with peanut sauce and crunchy vegetables inside made each bite a perfect mix of flavors and textures.

For our entree at this meal, we all essentially ordered the same thing--a pork/pork belly banh mi. In retrospect, these sandwiches were really too huge and could have easily been shared. I mean just look at that terrible bread:filling ratio. However, French bread rolls are classic it seems when it comes to banh mi slash po boys down South, so maybe I need to expand my tolerance level of different bread:filling ratios (you've already heard me rant about the egg cheese sandwich ratio anyways, so I'll spare the details). Regardless, even with the abnormal bread:filling ratio, the banh mi was really quite divine. When I was young, I was certain that I hated pickled vegetables, but as this sandwich reinforced, pickled vegetables are a great way to reinforce or add flavor it seems. I only managed to get through half of a sandwich, and proceeded to pick out the fillings of the second half, which may have been slightly blasphemous. But if you don't deconstruct your food, or play with it even just a little, are you really eating for yourself? Or just the convention of how your should be eating things?

NOLA: Beignets x 3

Since my last post three weeks ago, I have survived finals, received surprisingly good grades from said finals, and have someone ended up in New Orleans for a "vacation" that continues to be trumped by the difficulty of trying to do things on an iPhone. Such as write this post. Granted the fact I can even do things like write this post is a testament to the versatility that is the modern iPhone. But just because you can, doesn't mean it's comfortable. I mean my poor PhD electrical engineer big wig dad took a year to transition to a iPhone and still hates it.

Anyways, New Orleans. The land of loose vacation morals surrounded by streets lined with churches and anti-abortion buses. It's a very confusing and very sad at the same time. Clearly life moves on as it must, but driving by the Superdome today just made me think about all the death and general lack of humanity that occurred in that building and the neighboring streets and hospital a mere 6ish years ago (I had to edit in that link later because the iPhone app doesn't do text urls, but it's a great article that will make you wrestle with ethical questions that, if you are lucky, will never have to answer in reality).

It was strange to see a place that was filled with so much death rebuilt as a place defining of rowdy sports and aggressive Americanism, and yet what else could better signal the strength of a surviving city? Heck, San Francisco had it's worst earthquake decades ago with plenty of deaths, but it's not like we set aside locations of tragedy as permanent memorials out of both a physical and emotional necessity to move forward and away.

But back to food. This is actually about the world famous Cafe du Monde beignets. Yes those fluffy fried pieces of dough worth more than one trip per vacation, let alone day. There's something to be said about tearing your fingers through a piping hot piece of fried dough and inducing mild burns caked with a thick layer of powdered sugar to boot. Sure it's just another piece of fried dough, but it's a damn delicious piece of dough that does what all fried dough does in all countries--bring people together.

*the fun point of this entire 3x series of beignet photos is that they were all taken on separate trips to Cafe Du Monde.

Not Feelin' the Bloggin' Tonight

I had a few preconceived ideas about what I would write about tonight. None of which I will actually write about since it is already 12:45 AM and I have essays about medicine and science to write about. Gotta love that carefree senior year (wait what?). So, think of this post as an ultra-hip alternative, creative writing exercise. Or something. Just go it with.

1) Nilla Wafer Strawberry Ice Cream Sandwiches

My friend's and I do this little thing called "Wolfpack Mondays," which started off as a singular evening of cheese and bread to celebrate a dear friend and to commiserate with a rather unfair rejection. Given, we are all seniors, the urge for nostalgia and friendship formed Wolfpack Mondays. It's actually quite a nice little tradition, though like all college extra-curriculars, its fallen a bit by the wayside during the midterms/ahhh I have to deal with real life things.  And honestly, I'm mildly a sucker for waxing in exclusivity when it comes to friends. Which is a rather poor combination when your negative personality (as demonstrated just now) tends to make forming great friends a rather uphill battle. But hey, the most negative people are often the most idealistic because they hold such high expectations about the world right? But anyways, I've been trying to make Wolfpack Mondays into an excuse for me to make food night. It's been a bit of a hit/miss. On one had, I did manage to make oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies. But on the other hand, the attempt to make Nilla Wafer ice cream sandwiches with sliced strawberries ended up becoming an eat Nilla Wafers and strawberries party when the ice cream turned out too be a bit too goopy for forming structurally sound sandwiches. 

Oh, btw, there are only 5 Mondays left, including commencement, for those who are wondering.

2) Gluten Free Pasta Partay

My second alternative after Monday night Nilla Wafer ice cream sandwiches were a dud was to make a little post infused with science on gluten-free pasta, what it means to be gluten intolerant, what celiac disease is exactly, and why you should not consider switching to gluten-free just because you think its healthier. On Thursday, I attended a special Pasta E Basta guest chef dining event that featured a gluten-free pasta menu (sponsored by Barilla), that included a little demo on how to make pesto and boil pasta (since that is a skill...?). Alas, since listening to an America's Test Kitchen podcast episode where they discussed the practice of taking pictures while dining out, I've been a little self-conscious of the act. Regardless of pictures or not, the pasta was really excellent. Barilla definitely gets major props for making a fine mixture of corn/rice taste and have the texture of normal wheat pasta. Plus, the macaroni and cheese they served was to die for.

But, speaking of gluten free, definitely check out the blog Science Based Medicine about gluten sensitivities  (list of gluten related posts). I've also linked one of their more recent posts that gives a good overview of celiac vs. non celiac gluten sensitivities. Gluten-free is definitely a little confusing since it is both a serious disease for some, and a rather silly diet fad for others. I remember thinking that both celiac and gluten sensitivity were primarily a fad diet thing before I found out one of my childhood friends has celiac and she made me realize that there are several people out there who do suffer serious consequences from eating gluten. Celiac is actually a very specific autoimmune response to gluten that can kill you if you don't eliminate gluten from your diet. There are other non-celiac gluten intolerances that are an active area of medical research, which you can read more about in the links I have posted. Some of the fad-diet gluten-free labeling is actually detrimental to people with actual celiac because they can only tolerate a very specific parts-per-million (ppm) of gluten in foods. However, currently there isn't very strong regulation about what this ppm is, so companies looking to cash in on the gluten-free diet fad may label foods as "gluten free" when in fact they have a higher than tolerable ppm of gluten in them.

I think this post turned into just a 2x as long post rather than a short, hey look at the things I was thinking of writing about. My bad. Also, I apologize for the lack of food photos, but check out my tumblr on the left side bar if you ever need to stare at food pictures. Or you know, go to foodgawker.

An Egg Sandwich Tale

This is again that part of the year where I don't really bake or cook because I'm occupied with eating in the dining halls and thinking about how happy I am to have gotten a 40/75 on an exam (only 2 points below average! hell yes!). 

So instead, we have another long rambling food ode. This time, on the more savory side. This story is rather a star-crossed tale if you believe in the mildly endearing, alumni donation campaign better known as the Harvard-Yale rivalry. While my family is currently solidly in the dark blue camp of things (I mean, come on, dark blue is just such a swoon worthy color), there was once a period of time a few years back where we may have become a split H-Y household. My sister stood balanced between these two schools. One with a strong undergraduate community filled with student organizations and passions teetering at the edge of overpopulation and catastrophe, the other with the best damn egg sandwiches ever. Ok, so technically Crema Cafe, the location of said best egg sandwiches is not actually at Harvard, but Harvard square is approximately the same thing. Just with more tourists.

Egg sandwiches are a classic at any point in your life, but even more so during your college years. Late night snack, morning hangover "cure" (the eggs may help a little but thats about it), and you've basically covered the two most important meals for a college student. Unfortunately, the go-to place for egg and cheese sandwiches over here is no longer a place I can visit due to a they-don't-pay-their-workers kerfluffle. Nevertheless, even if those egg sandwiches were made by paid workers, they still wouldn't be as good.
The perfect egg sandwich must not only consist of bread, eggs, and cheese at a minimum, but also must combine said pieces in the appropriate ratio. Each component must also stand alone as an edible individual food. This means, perfectly toasted english muffin, fluffy eggs so light and perfectly shaped you'd think a special mold was needed to make then (which is true), sharp white cheddar cheese that cuts through your sandwich like a long, lost friend. And in this particular case, a perfect slice of tomato that doesn't get awkwardly pulled out in its entirety on your first bite.

There are few things quite as lovely as a perfect english muffin. No, those thomas english muffins are not the perfect english muffins. I don't have much experience with english muffins to be quite frank, but I want all my future english muffins to be like the ones from Crema. So flipping light and soft, with such a deliciously crispy outer layer. The perfect exterior for the perfect toasting--not too mushy, not too crumbly. Combined with my endless love for quality cheese and my immense appreciation for fluffy eggs, well, lets just say I would gladly accept warm egg sandwiches as payment in lieu of cash.
I may be a bulldog/yalie/whatever half endearing, half pretentious name you'd like to use today, but when it comes to egg sandwich loyalties, you'll see me up north in a square surrounded by crimson.

Quesadilla Remixes: The Infinite Playlist

By infinite, I mean exactly three. I was going to save this post for later after I've accumulated many more quesadillas that I have photographed. But then, I didn't bother to take pictures of my meh Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies stuffed with mini oreos since it felt mildly like cheating, and lighting at night in the student kitchen is mildly embarrassing. So instead, quesadillas! 

I already can tell. Quesadillas are the things that are gonna get me by next year when I am out in the big scary real adult world with no meal plan. You'd think a person running a food blog would be tizzy about the idea of getting to cook up elaborate, fun, fantastic meals. But this person running a food blog is also seriously lazy and has a hard time getting off the couch once she's sat down with her laptop for the evening.

Granny Smith Apples, Cheddar Cheese, and Pumpkin Butter

The best thing about quesadillas is that they can be endlessly varied and still taste great. After all, if you think about it, the tortilla is really just a vehicle for the ooey-gooey and whatever else inside. You could easily fill your daily meals with a breakfast quesadilla (eggs anyone?), two normal cheese quesadillas, and a dessert quesadilla (that melted pb and nutella guys) without much thought or effort.

Grilled Mushroom, Cheddar, and Avocado (yea its a repeat, sorry!)

And once you get bored of your most basics of basics, you can experiment with literally every part of the quesadilla. Tired of white flour tortillas? Try whole wheat! (they aren't that good tbh) Corn tortillas! Larger tortillas! Mini tortillas! Sick of cheddar? Stuff in every cheese you have ever loved for a giant oozy cheese party! Hell, you could even put ice cream in a tortilla (lightly baked with cinnamon sugar of course) and have yourself an ice cream quesadilla. 

Peanut Butter, Nutella, Banana

Qusadillas are the potatoes to my meal planning. I may not care for mashing, frying, baking potatoes or real food sometimes, but I've always got my quesadillas. And I could always just stuff one with a baked potato if I really wanted. Maybe.